I
 
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 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
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 i
 
 
 SEPTENARY MAN: 
 
 OR, 
 
 The Microcosm of the Macrocosm. 
 
 A STUDY OF THE HUMAN SOUL 
 
 In Relation to the Various Vehicles, or Avenues, of Consciousness, 
 
 (Technically Known as the Seven Principles) by Means of 
 
 which it Brings Itself into Relation with the Outer 
 
 Cosmos; Including a Brief Examination of 
 
 Dream and the Problems of Heredity. 
 
 BY 
 
 JEROME A. ANDERSON, M. D., F. T. S. 
 
 The Universe is composed of "the Same" and "the Other." Plato. 
 
 THE LOTUS PUBLISHING COMPANY, 
 1170 Market Street, San Francisco, Cal. 
 
 The Path Office, 144 Madison Avenue, New York City. 
 
 December 25, 1895. 
 
 4
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1895, 
 BY JEROME A. ANDERSON, 
 
 1170 Market Street, 
 S \n Francisco, California.
 
 - 7 
 
 £13 
 
 ©educated tqQ 
 
 BY A. GRATEFUL, STUDENT.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 TN ISSUING this brief examination of the septenary classification of man's 
 ■*■ nature, the writer especially disclaims any authority for any statements 
 contained therein other than as these appear reasonable, and as they seem to 
 fit into and fill out vacant places in the theosophic philosophy. It is simply 
 the work of an humble student, issued with the hope that it may assist fellow 
 students. 
 
 The subject has been treated from the same standpoint as the writer's book 
 upon Reincarnation. That is, the seven Principles of man have been studied 
 from their scientific aspect solely. No proofs have been advanced except 
 those capable of scientific demonstration. This scientific demonstration, of 
 course, recognizes that logic, philosophy, and reason afford the very highest 
 proof of which any metaphysical problem is capable. It has also been held 
 that, where other more direct proofs seemed wanting, analogy might be applied 
 without warranting any charge of dogmatic assertion, and that the laws gov- 
 erning matter and force, and the aspects of consciousness, upon one plane of 
 the Cosmos might be reasonably carried over into other planes . Therefore, 
 when dealing with such abstruse metaphysical problems as Atma, Buddhi, or 
 Prana, for example, the proofs of their existence and nature must of necessity 
 lie largely along philosophical and logical lines, while the more material Prin- 
 ciples, as the Linga Sharira, together with some aspects of Kama and Manas, 
 have been studied, and their nature deduced from their observed behavior 
 upon this, the molecular, plane of the Universe. 
 
 The writer makes no claim to that intuitional perception which grasps truth 
 
 without the necessity of logical analysis. He can only grope along the paths 
 
 of analogy and reason. Therefore, while admitting the work of intuitional 
 
 writers to be much more valuable, he still believes there is a large class of 
 
 his fellow students who, like himself, must perforce adopt the lower method, 
 
 and to such it is hoped the book will appeal; and also that it may be of some 
 
 service to the great cause we all serve — Humanity. 
 
 J. A. A.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Man, the Microcosm. — An Old Teaching — Nature of the Macrocosm — 
 Spirit and Matter — Vehicles of the One Consciousness — Seven Great 
 Divisions — Dominant Vibration Constitutes a "Round" — Sold Spe- 
 cially Related to a Particular Hierarchy during a Round, Nature of 
 Incarnation, etc 9 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Body. — All "Bodies" must Correspond to the "Matter" of any par- 
 ticular Round — The Pathway to Form and Incarnation — Senses not 
 in the Physical Body, Proofs — Cycles Governing Incarnation — Latent 
 Force, What — Hierarchies of Builders — Compound Source of Bodily 
 Entities, etc 27 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The I/INGA Sharira. — Composed of Third Round Matter — Plastic un- 
 der Thought — Theory of Emanations — Source of Linga Sharira, its 
 Functions and Fate — Cause of all Form — Preserver of Species — "Seance 
 Phenomena," etc 40 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Prana. — Universal Principle — Manifested Jiva — Relation to the Soul and 
 Body — "Fiery Lives" — Monads — Cycles of Life, etc 52 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Kama. — Consciousness in the State of Desire — Source of — Nature of — 
 Relation to Thought — Individualizing Effect of Kama — Animal De- 
 sire — Relation of Instinct to Desire and to Intuition — A Human Ele- 
 mental Synthesizes the Body — Nature of this Elemental — A Glimpse 
 of Man's Microcosm — The Effect of Death — Reincarnation of the Per- 
 sonality, How, Why — Effect of Suicide, Accident, etc 63 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Lower Manas. — The True Soul Seeking to Express Itself in Molecular 
 Matter — The Two Forces in each Human Breast — The Nature of Incar- 
 nation — Magnetism Imparted to Non-Magnetic Iron — The Conserver 
 of One Life's Experiences — Cycle of Conscious Life Terminates with 
 Devachan — Conflict of Manas with Kama — Loss of the Soul, etc 74
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Higher Manas. — The Thinking Principle — Nature of— Powers of— 
 Immortality of— Compassionate Mission of— Divine Potencies and Po- 
 tentialities — "Mind Born Sons" — Emanation or Fission a Process of 
 Generation upon all Planes of Nature, etc ^4 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 The Higher Triad — Atma, Buddhi, and Manas. — Metaphysical Dif- 
 ficulties in their Conception — Nature of Atma — "The Emanating Spark 
 of the Uncreated Ray" — Nature of Buddhi — Store House of Cosmic 
 Wisdom — Giver of True Immortality, etc 95 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 The Dreaming Self. — Nature and Importance of Dream — Key to Inner 
 Conditions afforded by— An Entity Who Dreams Each Dream, etc 104 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The Problems of Heredity.— Absurdity of Materialistic Hypotheses — 
 The Differing Streams of Heredity— Physical, Mental, and Spiritual- 
 All Inheritance Proceeds Under the Daw of Cause and Effect— Rela- 
 tion of the Unit, Man, to Humanity as a Whole, or Racial, National, 
 and Family Heredity— Man the Arbiter of his Own Destiny, etc 114
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 MAN, THE MICROCOSM. 
 
 IN THE days when religion, science, and philosophy were but 
 differing aspects of Theosophy, or "God-Wisdom," all united 
 in recognizing in man a compound, or complex, nature. Thus, 
 Brahmanism, or more correctly, the Vedantin schools of Brah- 
 manism, held, and still holds, that he has at least four or five Prin- 
 ciples, or vehicles of consciousness, entering into his composition. 
 Buddhism recognizes seven; Confucianism, five; Gnosticism, 
 seven; the Kabala, seven; and Christianity, three. The same 
 teaching can be very clearly verified in the old Egyptian symbol- 
 ogy, and in the earlier as well as the later Greek philosophy, 
 particularly in Neo-Platonism. While testimony can never have 
 the weight of evidence, still, where it assumes the universal char- 
 acter which this teaching has had in all ages of the world's history, 
 it really ceases to be merely testimony, and approximates very 
 closely to the standard of evidence. That man, because of his 
 complex yet divine nature, is the Microcosm of the Macrocosm, or 
 Cosmos, has been a semi-esoteric teaching for ages. It was implied 
 in the old Grecian exhortation, " Man, Know Thyself," meaning 
 that within his own being was to be found the key to the mys- 
 teries of the universe about him. Later, the same half-veiled truth 
 appears in the Hermetic and Rosicrucian maxim, " As above, so 
 below." It is now, and perhaps for the first time for ages, made 
 entirely exoteric, and explained to the whole world as one of the 
 chief of the philosophical concepts of Theosophy, under the popu-
 
 X INTRODUCTION. 
 
 lar as well as technical term, "The Seven Principles of Man."* 
 It must not be understood that man is now actually the Micro- 
 cosm of the Macrocosm. He is only potentially so. Within his 
 being reside, in potentia, all the potencies in the manifested uni- 
 verse about him; but not in actu, except as he shall, by his own 
 will, realize them. The importance, therefore, of the recognition 
 of this awe-inspiring fact becomes at once apparent, as well as the 
 potent factor the knowledge of it must prove in stimulating spirit- 
 ual development. 
 
 If man be, then, the Microcosm of the Macrocosm, what is the 
 nature of that Macrocosm? for the assertion of a comparison im- 
 plies and, indeed, necessitates at least partial sameness or equal- 
 ity, else there can be nothing to compare. Without attempting 
 to answer that which is unanswerable, or to deal with the Un- 
 knowable Source from which all finite being must have emanated, 
 the teaching of the Wisdom Religion in regard to this is, that all 
 the infinite diversity of the manifested universe arose out of, or 
 rather within, Absolute Unity, which thus assumes the relation to 
 the cosmos of a Causeless Cause — a Cause which, while it is of 
 necessity the basis of all manifested life, remains itself ever un- 
 manifested; untouched in its absolute essence by all the great 
 differentiation which arises within it, and which constitutes the 
 finite universe. At the primal appearance of finite manifestation, 
 there appear two great aspects of this Absolute Unity, termed 
 respectively Spirit and Matter; these two being in reality but 
 opposite poles, or modes of expression, of the One Unity. Thus, 
 behind all manifestation lies the ever-concealed Causeless Cause; 
 
 *These seven Principles will be fully discussed as we proceed, but for present use they 
 may be enumerated as : 
 
 Sanscrit Terms. English Equivalents (approximately). 
 
 Sthula Sharira The Body. 
 
 Linga Sharira Astral Body. 
 
 p rana Vitality . 
 
 Kama. .] Animal Soul (Desire). 
 
 Manas.'.".".'.".*.*.'.'.".*.".'.".".*.". . . . Human Soul (Thought). 
 
 Bu dhi .*.". '..'... Spiritual Soul (Intuition). 
 
 Atma or Jiva Spirit.
 
 INTRODUCTION. xi 
 
 and all that which we perceive and conceive as the manifested uni- 
 verse is simply the illusory — because the finite cannot measure 
 nor comprehend the infinite — aspects of this Causeless Cause, 
 projected in time and space like shadows from a magic-lantern, 
 and quite as unreal in that they are not themselves the real things 
 which they thus seem. But even shadows must have something 
 real to cause them, so that though the manifested universe, 
 owing to our finite capacities, must remain for us a shadow and a 
 type, it rests of necessity upon a real basis of Infinite Being. 
 
 Of these two Primal Aspects, then, one appears to us as spirit, 
 or consciousness; the other, as matter; and once the two pass 
 into finite manifestation their action and reaction reveal a third 
 great absolute aspect, which appears as motion, or force. It is 
 further taught that spirit and matter mutually limit each other — 
 that spirit, or one pole of this manifestation of the Causeless 
 Cause, becomes knowable to us by means of the limitations of 
 matter; while, on the other hand, matter also becomes knowable, 
 or manifested to us, by means of the action of spirit; the two 
 being, as we have seen, but aspects of the same Unknowable 
 Unity; that which appears to us as matter including in its essence 
 spirit; that which seems to us spirit including in its essence matter. 
 
 Tb.2 universe, then, may be said to be composed of matter and 
 of spirit, each causing the other to manifest in an infinite diver- 
 sity, and which manifested diversity constitutes the Macrocosm. 
 This, therefore, consists from its conscious aspect of infinite states 
 of consciousness; the entire universe thus being but embodied, 
 or matter-limited, consciousness. In other words, the spiritual 
 or conscious-aspect of nature, being limited by the material 
 aspect, causes the appearance of form; while form, assuming intelli- 
 gent adaptations to environment, betrays the indwelling spirit or 
 consciousness. The expression of higher, more perfect, and less 
 material forms, would seem to constitute the process of evolution, 
 as the consequent widening of the conscious area through such 
 experiences, until infinite consciousness is again reached, would 
 appear to be its motive.
 
 Xll INTRODUCTION. 
 
 It is evident, also, that a study of man as the Microcosm of the 
 great Macrocosm involves and implies the recognition within 
 him, and the examination, of all states of consciousness, from 
 those which are classed as the most grossly material to those of 
 the highest conceivable spirituality. A careful analysis, however, 
 reduces these infinite potencies and potentialities to seven great 
 divisions, which in man are classed as Principles, and, in the cos- 
 mos as Hierarchies. From the standpoint of consciousness, 
 these Principles become merely more or less material vehicles of 
 consciousness for its limiting to one or other of the great hier- 
 archical cosmic planes. For it cannot be too strongly iterated 
 that matter limits consciousness always, and that, for this reason, 
 though a Principle be a vehicle as regards a particular plane or 
 Hierarchy of cosmos, it is a hindrance or obstacle in regard to 
 all other states or planes. A human Principle must, therefore, 
 be regarded as limiting the human consciousness to a particular 
 plane, just as the human soul must be looked upon as a (poten- 
 tial) center of infinite consciousness, limited by material vehicles 
 which it is striving to overcome, one by one, as it journeys 
 through its evolutionary Cycle of Necessity back to its Source. 
 
 It seems necessary, then, in dealing with these vehicles of 
 consciousness in man, to approach their study from their material 
 aspect, because Principles, or states of consciousness, seem most 
 conceivable, or at least most easily explained, when looked at 
 through their limiting vehicles. By this method, too, if unable to 
 explain them, we at least state the problems involved in finite 
 terms. 
 
 The teaching is, then, that consciousness throughout the uni- 
 verse may be divided into seven great states; a teaching which 
 even modern material science corroborates in its recognition of 
 matter in seven differing conditions. These conditions or states 
 represent: I, the homogeneous; 2, the "radiant" matter of Pro- 
 fessor Crookes; 3, curd-like or nebulous matter, as manifested 
 in the nebulae in the heavens; 4, "atomic" matter, or the begin-
 
 INTRODUCTION. Xlll 
 
 ning of differentiation; 5, the germinal or fiery state, in which 
 the differing elements we now recognize under the aspects of 
 air, water, fire, and earth are beginning to assume their future 
 properties; 6, astral, or ethereal matter; and, 7, earthy, molecular 
 matter, or the present condition of the matter of this planet in its 
 cold, dead aspect of dependency upon the sun for life and vitality. 
 Recognizing that all forms of matter are caused by and asso- 
 ciated with corresponding states of consciousness, if these forms 
 of matter thus associated with our solar system be related to its 
 states of consciousness, the following correspondences are at least 
 permissible — premising that the correspondence only indicates 
 the action of a certain Hierarchy of cosmic consciousness as 
 limited by the material conditions of our own solar system, and 
 not* that this approaches the state of the same consciousness not 
 so inhibited, or limited. Matter in its homogeneous condition cor-^ 
 responds to Jiva, or Atma,* or Unmanifested life — a state too near 
 the infinite to be comprehensible by finite beings. The "radiant" 
 state of matter may be compared to Buddhicf consciousness, or 
 pure consciousness, which knows without reasoning. Nebulous 
 matter, again, is related to MahaticJ consciousness, or that of 
 thought. In the matter of the nebulae is the prophesy and 
 potency of the future worlds and their varied conscious beings, of 
 which the nebulae are thus the Mahatic, or prophetic, thought. 
 Atomic, or differentiated, matter corresponds to the Fohatic state 
 of consciousness, for Fohat§ is essentially "desire," and desire for 
 union in this atomic state results in the molecular aggregations 
 which make physical forms possible. Again, the germinal, or 
 fiery, condition of matter corresponds to Prana, or manifested 
 Life, as contrasted with the unmanifested, unknowable, or Jivic, 
 aspect of Life. Astral matter corresponds to all the mysterious 
 
 ♦The universal source of the Jiva, or Atman, of man's seventh Principle. 
 
 fBuddhi — the hierarchal source of the sixth human Principle. 
 
 JMahat — "the Great One." Hierarchal source of man's Thinking Principle — Manas. 
 The 'Over-SouT' (in one aspect). 
 
 §Fohat— cosmic electricity, or " nerve fluid," (in one aspect). The universal source of the 
 fourth Principle in man, Kama, or desire. Cosmic will-desire.
 
 xiv INTRODUCTION. 
 
 states of reflected consciousness, of which the phenomena of hyp- 
 notism, trance, clairvoyance, etc., arc illustrations. All such are 
 examples of consciousness not normal to any given plane, but 
 reflected from above or below. Earthy, or molecular, matter 
 corresponds to physical, or sense, consciousness, or that of time, 
 space, and form, as they arise in consciousness through the physi- 
 cal senses. 
 
 Thus, by means of these correspondences may be obtained a 
 glimpse, or faint idea, of the seven great hierarchal states of 
 consciousness, out of which arise man's seven Principles, or those 
 states of consciousness in the Microcosm which correspond to the 
 Seven Hierarchies in the Macrocosm. All differing conditions 
 of matter appear to arise through differing rates of vibration, and 
 Prof. Crookes, in his "Genesis of the Elements," has pictured a 
 way in which it is possible, through changes of vibration, for mat- 
 ter to assume infinitely differing properties, and thus become a 
 vehicle for infinitely differing states of consciousness. To illus- 
 trate : 
 
 Let us suppose a nebulous mass, or fire-mist, occupying an im- 
 mense area in space, and having a certain definite vibration. 
 The slightest change in this vibration would cause matter to ap- 
 pear, within the original fire-mist matter, with entirely new prop- 
 erties, and bring the whole mass more definitely under the 
 action of "gravitation" (molecular attraction, wrongly termed 
 " molar " by scientists). Tending towards a common " laya," or 
 neutral center, it would constantly assume differing qualities, 
 and take on differing and continually lower vibrations, through 
 all the stages of a condensing, by an apparently mechanical pro- 
 cess, into a world. And as each downward change involves an 
 increasing limitation of consciousness, it is easy to see how in- 
 creasingly " material" human, as well as a nature, Principles arise. 
 It is also easy to see that the whole process may be a deliberate 
 and voluntary descent, or changing of spiritual into material con- 
 ditions, by beings seeking widening consciousness through pass-
 
 INTRODUCTION. XV 
 
 ing from pole to pole of the spiritual and material aspects of 
 the Absolute — these being the necessary horizons of all finite 
 Intelligences, however high or holy. This descent would repre- 
 sent the involution arc of the great cycle of Being, while the 
 ascent out of material conditions would constitute that which 
 modern science partially recognizes in its incomplete theory of 
 evolution. 
 
 But, aside from metaphysical generalizations, Prof. Crookes 
 has shown the important part which simple changes of vibration 
 in the same substance must play ; and he has constructed a most 
 ingenious diagram to illustrate the action of time, space, and tem- 
 perature in producing new " elements" by these agents, through 
 the modifications of the old. The point of interest in relation to 
 the septenary cosmos and Microcosm is that he supposes a 
 series of fourteen elements to have been produced by cycles of 
 electrical currents, thus exactly duplicating the Brahmanical four- 
 teen Lokas, or two aspects (divine and terrestrial) of each of the 
 seven Hierarchies. He then makes among these groupings seven 
 "dominant atomicities," again unconsciously following Occultism 
 in his methods. His diagram of a lemniscate figure also shows 
 how much the ancients knew in regard to those things of which 
 we conceive them to have been so ignorant, for it is almost a re- 
 plica of one of the oldest symbols known — the Greek Caduceus. 
 This consists of two serpents twined about a common staff, cross- 
 ing each other in the manner of a lemniscate. He supposes a 
 series of differing elements, arising through the pressure of mat- 
 ter in a centripetal direction in the condensation of the original 
 fire-mist, and from these at differing cycles of that condensation 
 would be produced a new series of elements. That is to say, 
 that the ripple of vibration in the fire-mist form of matter would, 
 as it tends centripetally during a certain cycle, produce a certain 
 series of elements. Another electrical cycle, temperature having 
 changed, would produce a series of elements nearly, but not 
 exactly, like the first.
 
 Xvi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 In his illustration Prof. Crookes shows that, supposing the 
 first great cycle to have produced fourteen elements, then, in re- 
 peating that cycle with a lower temperature, at each point at 
 which an original element was generated one corresponding in 
 all its original attributes would be produced. Thus, the first four- 
 teen elements being lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, 
 oxvgen, fluorine, sodium, magnesium, aluminum, silicon, phos- 
 phorus, sulphur and chlorine, the first of the second cycle would 
 be potassium, which is the "lineal descendant " of lithium, and so 
 on, down through a series which comprises seven of these "lineal 
 descendants," for each of the original fourteen elements. 
 
 From the mechanical aspect of manifestation, the universe is 
 produced solely by modifications in the eternal motion resulting 
 from the action of spirit upon matter — a theory which, in the 
 East, is beautifully and poetically symbolized in the " Great 
 Breath" of Vedantin philosophy. These modifications are orderly, 
 as they must needs be in a law-governed cosmos, and, while cov- 
 ering vast and unrealizable abysses of time, have yet been made 
 the subject of mathematical speculation. 
 
 The time in which a key-note or dominant mode of vibration 
 maintains itself throughout a planetary mass is denominated, in 
 theosophical nomenclature, a " Round." During this period the 
 " matter" of the planet, even to the most ethereal of its seven 
 " Globes,"* or planes of matter and states of consciousness, assumes 
 characteristics determined by the dominant vibration; and while 
 it persists the Ego, or soul, has to undergo and assimilate all 
 experiences possible under these conditions. Then the dominant 
 vibration will change, new forms of matter and new material 
 experiences being thus provided to permit of an ever widening of 
 the conscious area of the Ego, passing through its complete cycle 
 of evolution. In the downward arc, or involution into material 
 
 *The earth has likewise its seven Principles, corresponding to those of man. The states of 
 matter, force, and con>ciousness which collectively form each of these Principles is technically 
 termed a "globe," while a "round" is the time required for the soul to pass through each 
 of the entire seven. For a full explanation of " globes" and "rounds," see the Secret Doc- 
 trine, and other theosophical works.
 
 INTRODUCTION. XVli 
 
 states, each successive cycle of vibration becomes more material — 
 that is to say, the substance-aspect of the Unknowable pre- 
 ponderates more and more in proportion. But a limit must 
 eventually be reached, because this is a finite process, and The- 
 osophy teaches that this limit has been reached in the present 
 Fourth, or molecular, Round of this earth, and that when the 
 next hour shall strike, and the dominant vibration change, entities 
 upon the earth will retrace the process of their involution into 
 matter, and regain their former astral consciousness, with self- 
 consciousness added thereto. Indeed, this process is already 
 under way, and even the earth itself has been becoming less 
 "material" since the midway point of this Round was reached 
 some millions of years since. 
 
 This earth, therefore, is now in a condition of molecular vibra- 
 tion, and in its fourth, or kamic, or desire, Round, which Round 
 will last so long as the " life" wave or impulse has its activity in 
 molecular matter; for the monadic or Dhyan-Chohanic impulse 
 which constitutes this life-wave passes from globe to globe, arous- 
 ing each to activity and leaving it comparatively dead, or in its 
 " pralaya," much as a circling rainstorm might pass from point to 
 point over a sea, arousing and churning into a furious but tran- 
 sient activity each successive portion over which it passes, and 
 leaving it cc mparatively in statu quo until it returns. But the 
 duration of each dominant mode of vibration covers an immense 
 cycle of time, and, in Brahmanical literature, is called a Day of 
 Brahma, and is a period involving some 4,320 millions of years. 
 This is the astronomical period required for all the planets of our 
 system to be in conjunction ; an event which may well produce even 
 physical causes sufficient to terminate or entirely change the condi-\ 
 tion of physical existence on one or more planets. This cycle 
 will comprise the duration of this world in its present state, before 
 it goes into pralaya, or changes the present for another rate of 
 vibration, which will constitute another Round. 
 
 The Theosophic classification of men into seven great Races
 
 XV111 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 during each of the seven Rounds, or differing material states of 
 the earth, is another recognition of the fact that, in our present 
 universe, the number seven is the dominant one for its entire 
 duration. It must not be understood that during any particular 
 Round only one mode of vibration is present. At least those of 
 each of the Seven creative Hierarchies are all in activity, for these 
 constitute or cause the (in Theosophical teachings) seven com- 
 panion "globes" of each planet, of which our earth and all earths visi- 
 ble to us is the Fourth. These, by their combinations and cor- 
 relations, produce the "forty-nine fires" of Eastern occultism. 
 But one of these Hierarchies is dominant during any particular 
 Round, and to appreciate or reach to the consciousness of the 
 others requires special and, in a sense, abnormal development. 
 Yet, during certain portions of each Round each of the seven 
 human Principles is brought into special relations with the domi- 
 nant vibration, or mode of consciousness, and from this arises the 
 characteristics which distinguish and constitute each Race. 
 
 To illustrate: Our world is, as stated, in the fourth Round, 
 and the fourth, a kamic, Hierarchy is dominant throughout its 
 entire duration. But it is also in its fifth subdivision of that 
 Round, and therefore, under the cyclic law, is specially related to 
 the fifth, or manasic, Principle, which thus becomes subdominant, 
 or the chief undertone during the race cycle. For this reason 
 we appear to have intellectuality dominant, but it is only in ap- 
 pearance. In reality desire — the characteristic of the entire 
 fourth Round — is utilizing mind to increase the pleasures of 
 sensuous perception in the great mass of the race, and mankind 
 is, therefore, said to be in the kama-manasic state. Now, in the 
 next Round, the vibration of thought, or manas, will be dominant 
 throughout the Round ; but when we get to the fourth division of 
 that great cycle and enter its fourth Race the present relation 
 of desire and thought will be reversed, and we shall be in a con- 
 dition of manas-kamic instead of kama-manasic, as at present. 
 Manas, or thought, will be the ruling Principle, and Kama will
 
 INTRODUCTION. XIX 
 
 be a subtone, and be in a similar condition of servitude to 
 thought that thought now sustains towards desire. At present 
 .desire is master of thought. Then thought will be the master 
 of desire. And similarly for all the Rounds. Each of the seven 
 Principles will be specially and regularly related to the conscious- 
 ness of the Ego because of these subdominant cycles of each 
 Creative Hierarchy included in the great cycle, Round, or Day of 
 Brahma, and in this manner constitute the seven natural divisions 
 termed Races. 
 
 But how are man's Principles directly derived? That is to say, 
 what is the immediate relation between the human Principles and 
 the great cosmic Hierarchies? All cosmic Principles are divine 
 and pure, of necessity. That which we term desire, and which 
 we are taught to " kill out," is, in its essence, a purely divine state 
 of consciousness. An attempt at an explanation is this: 
 
 A human soul is a center of consciousness, arising we know 
 not how. It roots in the Unknowable. It passes through all of 
 the lower kingdoms of nature, widening its consciousness all the 
 while, until, in unthinkable periods of time, it at last reaches a 
 condition of self-consciousness, or a state in which it recognizes 
 that it is conscious, and examines and reasons upon its own con- 
 scious states. We might trace an evolutionary pathway, which 
 would have at least the warrant of analogy, thus:* A center of 
 consciousness differentiating within the Absolute unites itself with 
 pure primordial matter, acquires the experiences of this associa- 
 tion, which might be distinguished as atomic, and passes onward 
 to enter molecular matter, in which state it synthesizes two or 
 more atoms, already the seat of a more primal form of conscious- 
 ness, into form as its new body. And so on, step by step, until 
 at length it reaches the self-conscious state, and synthesizes for 
 itself a body already occupied by hosts of lower entities. The 
 consciousness of these lower entities, in man's body as well as in 
 
 *For a fuller statement of this hypothesis see Author's work, "Reincarnation," chapter 
 . on " Individualization of the Soul."
 
 \/ 
 
 XX INTRODUCTION. 
 
 nature, is derived from high creative beings, termed, in the East, 
 Dhyan Chohans. These great and divine entities clothe them- 
 selves in lower states of matter in a manner analogous to 
 that by which the human Ego incarnates in its body, and 
 impart to this matter their consciousness, and give to it that im- 
 pulse which takes it up through all the lower evolutionary steps. 
 And the added consciousness which the entities ensouling this 
 matter thus obtain by emanation from these High Beings is pure 
 and unmarred by reason — an instance of which is seen in that 
 consciousness by means of which chemical atoms seek unerringly 
 their affinities. Similarly, the center of consciousness of man, in 
 its evolutionary course upward, arrives at a state where it clothes 
 itself with " matter" ensouled by entities having this lower yet 
 divine consciousness. Thus, in this Round man is clothed almost 
 entirely by entities whose normal consciousness is pure desire. 
 This consciousness is divine and natural; it is a step in that 
 divine sequence which constitutes evolution. The human Ego, 
 incarnating here for the purpose of gaining experience, is brought 
 into relation with these desire-entities that it may experience this 
 consciousness. But the human Ego, being inexperienced and 
 ignorant, allows its own divine, reasoning nature to be swayed by 
 that desire which, while perfectly normal in these entities which 
 constitute its body, is abnormal and unnatural for itself. By 
 incarnating in these desire-swayed animal bodies, the Ego thus 
 obtains the opportunity to view the play of passion, from its divine 
 and reasoning attitude. But the part of spectator does not sat- 
 isfy. So close is the union produced by incarnation that the 
 ray of Manas which intellectualizes the human-animal brain falls 
 under the illusion that itself and its body are identical, and rages 
 and fights with all the fury of one whom the struggle concerns. 
 This illusion is caused by the dominance of the kamic Principle 
 during the fourth Round. But the fifth, or manasic subcycle 
 of this Round being now in progress, that Principle is being 
 immensely strengthened by the influx from its Hierarchy; so that,
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXI 
 
 as this is the turning or lowest point of the evolutionary arc, 
 the fight for supremacy between Thought and Desire is taking place 
 now, and for many human souls is being settled for this Manvan- 
 tara, or man-completing cycle. 
 
 The relation of Principle to Hierarchy, then, is that of attri- 
 bute to its source; and, in the case of the Manasic Hierarchy, of 
 parent to child. Each of the seven states of consciousness which 
 constitute man's Principles is derived from a different Hierarchy, 
 or Host; the lower Principles coming from the diffused Dhyan 
 Chohanic impulse upon matter. When this impulse has pushed 
 the evolutionary process sufficiently high, then other and higher 
 entities incarnate in man, and bestow upon him his Thinking 
 Principle, thus lifting his consciousness to a higher plane. 
 
 In this manner, then, is man shown to be the Microcosm of the 
 Macrocosm. If we find in him these Principles of Desire, or 
 Thought, or, still higher, of Divine Intuition, we must postulate 
 and accept a source for them. Theosophy does not assume cre- 
 ation out of nothing. The presence in man of the ability to 
 think, the force of desire, the power of intuition, or any of 
 the things which make up his being, necessitates postulating a ' 
 source for each. It is, also, unphilosophic to suppose that a 
 stream can rise higher than its source, to use a physical illustra- 
 tion. Therefore, so far from accepting, with materialism, that con- 
 sciousness is the result of molecular vibration, Theosophy postu-. 
 lates as the source of man's conscious Principles divine Principles 
 almost infinitely higher than their lesser reflections in him. 
 Every effect must have its cause. The power to think must have 
 origin somewhere. Shall we accept the absurdity of something 
 arising out of nothing? or the theosophical teaching that these 
 Principles are derived from great cosmic or hierarchal states of 
 consciousness? The latter must appeal to any reasoning being. 
 
 A further proof that man is the Microcosm of the Macrocosm 
 is found in the fact that, in his physical body he synthesizes all 
 the known forces in nature. All systems of levers, all possible
 
 r. 
 
 xxii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 physical motion, is there exemplified. All states of consciousness 
 in nature are also in his body. The consciousness which is in the 
 stone is found in his bones; that of vegetable life, in the hairs of 
 his head; the consciousness of all stages of animal life is found 
 in the differing cells and organs of his body; so that man is the 
 Microcosm of all nature about us of which we can conceive. It 
 is, therefore, reasonable to suppose that he is likewise the 
 Microcosm of the inconceivable side of nature. 
 
 Man's Seven Principles, then, are: The Body, which limits his 
 consciousness to perceptions of form, time, and space by means of 
 the senses. Prana, which gives rise to, and is the consciousness 
 of, life. The Linga Sharira, which relates him to astral or reflected 
 consciousness. Kama, which relates him to the consciousness of 
 desire. Manas, which relates him to consciousness of conscious- 
 ness, or self-consciousness. Buddhi, which relates him to intuitional 
 consciousness; consciousness above thought — in which no thought 
 is necessary. And, finally, Atma, wherein all consciousness, and 
 all states of consciousness, are synthesized. ] 
 
 We will err, however, in our further study if we consider man 
 as the product of evolution, as this term is commonly understood. 
 There is no evolution, in the scientific use of the word. There is 
 a great becoming, which, as already partially explained, proceeds 
 somewhat in this manner: There streams out from the Absolute 
 the Seven great Rays, Breaths, or Hierarchies, of creative being, 
 before referred to. Without pausing to analyze their combinations 
 and differentiations, let us suppose that each of these great 
 Hierarchies ensouls a portion of cosmic Substance. Within 
 the limits of each Hierarchy, an evolution is possible from a 
 lower to a more intense degree of the particular consciousness 
 of the Hierarchy. But for a being ensouled by, let us say, kamic 
 to reach the manasic or thought consciousness by evolving up 
 to and into it out of the kamic, is as impossible as it is absurd. 
 Not all the forces of the kamic plane can produce one single rational 
 thought. There must come entities, having the power of thought.
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXlH 
 
 and bestow this power by emanation, ere thought can be born. 
 Therefore, it is idle to say that man evolves up and through the 
 animal kingdom as man. As a Microcosm of the Macrocosm, 
 as a potential center of consciousness upon every plane of the 
 Cosmos by virtue of his being sprung from and a portion of the 
 Absolute itself, the center of consciousness in man has experi- 
 enced all these states; but it was not as man while so doing-. 
 Not until he was touched by the flame of thought did man become — 
 a thinker and a man. 
 
 When, therefore, a center of consciousness is in a certain " king- 
 dom" it is helpless to win its way up and out of that kingdom. 
 For it, " evolution" is a meaningless word. If it be locked in the — 
 stony embrace of the mineral kingdom, there it must remain until 
 help from above enables it to pass out of this state. If it be a 
 vegetable or an animal, it is equally helpless. Caught in that 
 part of the cycle of necessity where Kama* holds sway, it can only 
 experience and make kamic feeling its own. But when it reaches 
 the very fulness of this, it has also reached a point where thought 
 is able to weld or fusje-i^self to the kamically heated mass, and a - 
 thinking soul is born. 
 
 As a pilgrim through all these hierarchies of consciousness, 
 man may be said to evolve ; but the cause of his evolution is an 
 emanation from above, not a pushing up from below. And the 
 true man really never was an animal, nor a lower being of any 
 sort. Birth, as man, occurs when that Hierarchy is reached and 
 its emanation becomes possible; but did not self-conscious beings 
 descend or incarnate in the animal bodies not all the evolutionary 
 forces acting throughout all the eternities could produce a man. 
 Life may be received from one Hierarchy, form from another, 
 and desire may be born from the emanation of a third; but the 
 entity is still not a man until Manas, or Thought, stoops and claims 
 him for its own. 
 
 And this is not the work of an instant, as we mark time, but 
 
 *Kama — Desire, uninfluenced by thought or reason.
 
 XXIV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 occupies untold ages in its birth-throes. For Thought must reach 
 down and lay hold of the purely kamic entity, and struggle sore 
 and long ere the new being is sure of his foothold among the gods. 
 
 This, then, constitutes man the Microcosm of the Macrocosm: 
 that he holds within his being all potentialities of that Macrocosm, 
 and that he has received from the great Creative Hierarchies their 
 creative emanations, and, with the impress of Manas, or Thought, 
 upon his brow, is winning his way back toward the Source from 
 whence he came, fl/us the self-consciousness bestowed by Thought. 
 Equally with man, however, may every atom in the Universe be 
 said to be the Microcosm, for each holds all the potentialities of 
 the Great Whole. Man is but the pure, virgin gold, passing 
 through the hand of many hierarchies of workmen, and receiving 
 the impress of each. But each can bestow but its own nature, 
 and so man is not man until he reaches a point where Mind- 
 Dhyanas take him in hand, and bestow their last, best, yet oft- 
 times fatal gift. In the ebbing and flowing of consciousness 
 within the seas of lower hierarchies the centers of consciousness 
 may fuse and blend, flow upward and recede, for all is below the 
 plane of self-conscious thought. Only at the very farthest borders 
 of Kama has the ripple of differentiation reached that degree at 
 which it becomes possible for a new and distinct entity to be 
 born. Below this, the rising and falling of conscious life can 
 scarcely be called evolution, nor can the entities so engaged be 
 said to be either advancing or retrograding. 
 
 All entities in Nature, then, are in the throes of a great becom- 
 ing, which might be called evolution, if the proper methods by 
 which this becoming is accomplished were understood. Within 
 each Hierarchy there is an ebbing and flowing of consciousness, 
 and this process may be said to be evolution, in, perhaps, the sci- 
 entific sense of the term. But from Hierarchy to Hierarchy no 
 evolution is possible. The lifting is done by the direct bestow- 
 ing of the essence of the higher upon the lower entity. This great 
 fact must be kept distinctly in mind in all the study of Man and
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXV 
 
 his Principles which will be had in this volume. By it can be 
 understood the relation of the true Thinking Man to his lower 
 reflection. By it may be seen how, and why, and where, the 
 struggle of Mind with Passion takes place, and a ray of philo- 
 sophical light thus thrown across the darkly-passionate pages of 
 human existence.
 
 SEPTENARY MAN 
 
 OR 
 
 THE MICROCOSM OF THE MACROCOSM. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE BODY. 
 
 rfjlfHE BODY, or the tabernacle of the clay in which man's soul 
 ^-^ dwells, is the first or the seventh, accordingly as numbered, 
 of the seven Principles or aspects of consciousness into which 
 Theosophy divides the human constitution. Pes office is to relate 
 man's center of consciousness or soul to matter in a condition of 
 molecular activity, or to that rate of vibration which constitutes 
 the fourth Round. Upon this earth, or Globe "D" of theosophic 
 nomenclature, this molecular Round represents the very apotheo- 
 sis of impermanency of states of consciousness as well as of form. 
 During its cycle, change follows upon change with an almost infi- 
 nite rapidity; integration and disintegration succeed each other 
 with the swiftness of thought, and effect treads upon the heels of 
 cause with a celerity impossible upon higher planes of being and 
 in more stable states of matter. Consequently, the soul has 
 here its greatest opportunities for setting up causes, either good 
 or evil, and for quickly experiencing their effects, and hence of 
 rapidly acquiring knowledge and wisdom. Therefore, this molec- 
 ular plane has been rightly termed the great schoolhouse of the 
 soul. 
 
 As we shall see in the proper connection, the true soul of man 
 is out of all harmonic relation with molecular consciousness. In 
 order, then, that it may reach this, it becomes necessary for it to 
 approach it by utilizing specially prepared molecular avenues. It
 
 2 3 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 therefore constructs for itself a body composed of molecules capa- 
 ble of receiving the impressions caused by the contact of other 
 molecules and the molecular forces having here their normal field 
 of activity, and in this manner assimilates molecular consciousness. 
 This is the sole office of the body as such— to bring the soul 
 within the area of molecular activities ; to cause it to become sen- 
 sitive to, or conscious of, molecular vibrations. It is not the seat 
 
 /t/ of sensation understanding by sensation the impressions that the 
 
 soul receives from the senses, or the experience it gets through 
 hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, and touching or contact. None 
 of these are located in the physical body, but in an inner or 
 astral one, which will be the subject of the next chapter. 
 
 That the senses are not seated in the body, is capable of demon- 
 stration in many ways, chief among which are the phenomena of 
 hypnotism. In this state it is possible for the will of the hypno- 
 tizer to interpose between the subject and his senses, and to 
 inhibit the hearing, seeing, tasting, feeling, or smelling of the latter 
 at will. Thus one, yielding to the hypnotic trance, can be made 
 to taste water as vinegar, vinegar as water, quinine as sugar, and 
 vice versa; or, in the case of sight, made to see, or prevented from 
 seeing, anything the hypnotizer wills. For example: If forbid- 
 den to see a certain person while permitted to see his hat, the 
 result is that the hat is seen floating about in the air, while the sub- 
 ject is quite unconscious of the fact that there is a man wearing it. 
 If the senses were in the body this phenomenon would be impossi- 
 ble, for after the impact of the vibrations of light they would be 
 transferred along the molecules of the optic nerve and impinge 
 upon and set up motion in the molecules of the physical brain, 
 and the will of another — or even of one's self— could not prevent, 
 once it formed upon the retina, the picture of the complete man, 
 hat and all, being transmitted to the brain and there recorded as 
 a conscious experience, if the senses really were in the physical 
 molecules of the brain. A physical sequence of a physical eye, a 
 physical optic nerve, and physical molecules of the brain, cannot 
 be interrupted except by physical means. Therefore, when an 
 outside will interposes between the power of sight, hearing, or 
 either of the senses, and their objects, it is evident that the centers
 
 THE BODY. 29 
 
 of sensation are not in the mftlecules of man's physical brain, but 
 must lie more deeply within his being. It will be seen, also, that 
 herein is one of the proofs of the existence of the soul. 
 
 The human body, then, is built up of countless hosts of mol- 
 ecules synthesized into cells by units of consciousness having their 
 normal existence upon the molecular plane. These latter derive 
 their energy and vitality from those which the " Secret Doctrine" 
 terms " fiery lives" — that is to say, from the almost homogeneous, 
 electrical " world stuff" which represents the dawn of cosmic dif- 
 ferentiation, and whose center of energy is the sun. The infi- 
 nitely active energies of these fiery lives, radiating as that which 
 we recognize as light, heat, electricity, vital force, etc., are inter- 
 cepted and directed or synthesized in order to construct molec- 
 ular bodies by units of consciousness descending to the mo- 
 lecular plane. The action is similar to that of the millwright who 
 takes advantage of the flowing stream of water to direct it through 
 his turbine wheels to move his machinery. Or it may be, rather, 
 more like the action of the farmer who takes advantage of the 
 generative forces of springtime to sow the seed for his future 
 crops. Force so intercepted and utilized becomes the so-called 
 " latent" energies. All latent energy is but the restricting of the 
 original fire-mist rate of vibration within molecular limits. In 
 the mineral kingdom, this latency may persist for an entire globe- 
 Round,* and in the vegetable kingdom, even, during those enor- 
 mous periods represented in such examples as the giant sequoia of 
 California, which botanists assert were living in the (supposed) 
 days of Solomon. But in the animal and human-animal kingdoms 
 the life cycles of entities are shorter; and, while the force of the 
 downward cycle of a reembodying entity is sufficient to control 
 into an orderly sequence the action of the fiery lives, yet, when 
 that cycle begins to wane, the force relaxes, and, from being " build- 
 ers," these now become "destroyers"; and their energies, no longer 
 controlled by the" elemental"! which synthesizes the human body, 
 
 *Globe-Round— the duration of evolutionary activity upon any one of earth's seven globes. 
 One-seventh of a Round. 
 
 fThe lower entity which synthesizes the body viewed as a merely animal form. All ani- 
 mals have similar " elemental souls," or centers of consciousness. See later on.
 
 30 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 are seized upon by the numberless parasites, or " microbes," 
 which infest it, and utilized to finally break up the form which 
 the same energies originally constructed. Except for this action, 
 nature would be but one vast cemetery of "dead" forms, await- 
 ing the termination of the Round. 
 
 The fact that man is the microcosm of the macrocosm is illus- 
 trated in the progressive steps of his reembodiment. These show 
 that there are within his being, either actually or potentially, all 
 states of consciousness, all modes of motion, and all the conditions 
 of matter in the universe about him. As the pranic vibration of 
 the fiery lives descends to successive planes, innumerable entities 
 which have been associated with man in past lives awaken to re- 
 newed activity and life. It is the enforced attendance of these 
 entities which constitutes man the microcosm of the macrocosm, 
 and his cycles of objective and subjective life are their relative 
 manvantaras* and pralayas. For, just as a world comes into being 
 out of fire-mist, and descends through all the differing states of 
 matter until it reaches its lowest point in the rocks, and then re- 
 ascends the evolutionary cycle until it loses all form at the cul- 
 mination of the spiritual portion of its arc, carrying in both its up- 
 ward and downward sweep hosts of entities synthesized by its 
 great Rector, so is the body of man formed by, and the incarna- 
 tion of, associated entities, with whose evolution he is also 
 especially connected as their chief, or Rector. As the energy of 
 these fiery lives passes downward through ethereal and astral into 
 molecular matter, at each plane the awakened entities clothe them- 
 selves with its "matter," until at length they reach the physical, 
 and their reincarnation is accomplished. Chief of these, and syn- 
 thesizer of each human body, is that which is known as a " human" 
 elemental. The return of this elemental to incarnation necessi- 
 tates and involves the construction of the outer, physical form in 
 its entirety, as it is the chief Rector of the body as such, and stands 
 in relation to the true man, or reincarnating ego, much as does 
 the Rector of the earth to the Rectors of the "divine" planets. 
 For, as the " Secret Doctrine" states, " The Lha which turns the 
 
 *Manvantara— a man-perfecting cycle or evolutionary period. Pralaya— an equal period 
 .. of "rest," or subjective as opposed to objective existence.
 
 THE BODY. 31 
 
 Fourth is servant to the Lhas of the Seven." And although un- 
 doubtedly the next manvantaric step forward of the process of 
 evolution will bring this entity upon the human plane, at present 
 it is but a single step in advance of other and similar elementals 
 which synthesize the bodies of the animals in the next kingdom 
 below. Some of the higher of these would appear to be at present 
 more fitted to step upward to the human-elemental plane than 
 are those in human form fitted to pass on into completed human 
 beings — so greatly have we failed in our duty of controlling and 
 spiritualizing these our turbulent associates. 
 
 Thus, at each step in the process of reincarnating, the human 
 soul is related successively to more and more material "bodies," 
 until these culminate in the grossly physical encasement in which 
 it dwells while in molecular environments. Nature eternally re- 
 peats her processes; and so man, in reincarnating, returns with the 
 " matter," similar to that of Globe D of the first Round as his 
 first " body "; for in each Round all bodies must correspond to 
 and be composed of the "matter" of each particular globe of that 
 Round. Thus his bodies, during the entire first Round, were 
 " fiery" — built up of the very essence of these fiery lives; — and, 
 although these descended through four globes, or increasingly 
 material states, yet Globe " D" only represented the shadowy pro- 
 totype of its gross materiality in this Round; so that man's body 
 may be fairly classed as " fiery" throughout, so much did this ele- 
 ment predominate. During the next Round it was, let us say, ethe- 
 real, and in the next astral, while in this it is molecular or physi- 
 cal. Each of these Rounds lasts, as we have seen, for almost 
 unthinkable periods; and, as the story of man's physical evolution 
 is completely repeated in his intra-uterine life, so is the entire his- 
 tory of his conscious evolution throughout all Rounds repeated 
 swiftly at each incarnation during this Round. In the descend- 
 ing arc, or the first half of the manvantara of seven Rounds, man 
 is simply entangled in matter. The vibration which changes at 
 the end of each of these, under the will of great creative Dhyan 
 Chohans, necessitates his change of vestment independent of his 
 own volition. But in the ascending arc he will have — must 
 have — rewon his divinity, and must take a conscious part in the
 
 32 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 controlling and molding of not only his physical habitation but his 
 physical environments — his planet. Similarly, at present his re- 
 incarnating takes place without his self-conscious volition, but the 
 time must speedily come when he must choose. His devachanic* 
 body, then, corresponds to that of the first Round, and as he 
 descends to earth for another life the body of each succeeding 
 Round will be reconstructed and reoccupied, however briefly, until 
 at his completed reincarnation he finds himself in his present 
 physical habitation. 
 
 The correspondence of man's cycles of objective and (relatively) 
 subjective life to manvantarasf and pralayas will now be apparent. 
 When " death" occurs, it disembodies all the hosts of entities 
 incarnated in his physical body, and brings upon them an enforced 
 pralaya, or rest. With certain of these, the pralaya must persist 
 until he reincarnates again, for they are karmically bound to one 
 microcosm alone. Others of a lower order seek other bodies at 
 once, even though they may be reattracted to the same ego at a 
 subsequent incarnation. At any rate, the so-called " death" pro- 
 cess sweeps inward until the hour strikes for each entity associ- 
 ated with any microcosm, or body. When the time comes for 
 reincarnation, the ego sweeps downward, awakening from this 
 their pralaya all the numberless hierarchies of lower entities which 
 are to ensoul the " matter" of his body. Descending from fiery 
 matter, these, as we have seen, build for themselves, utilizing the 
 energy of the fiery lives, the ethereal and then the astral forms of 
 former Rounds, and at length reach the physical plane. Here 
 certain entities incarnate as molecules, and, of these, entities a 
 little higher construct cells. Each cell of the human body is a 
 distinct entity, as even science admits. Entities, still higher, syn- 
 thesize these cells into organs; and finally the human-elemental — 
 the highest of all, and the next to reach the human stage — syn- 
 thesizes the whole of the body into an avenue fit for the soul to 
 use in its approach to this world. Man's body, physically, differs 
 in no wise from those of the animals. Each of these has its dis- 
 
 * Devachan — the subjective existence between two earth lives. A state rather than a place, 
 although the latter is a necessity to any entity having form. 
 t See note page 30.
 
 THE BODY. 33 
 
 tinct center of consciousness; and this center, or " soul" of the 
 animal, synthesizes in many instances a body just as complex as 
 is the body of man, and which is, in certain directions, more per- 
 fect than his. The great distinction is that in the animal body 
 is an animal " elemental," or one an entire manvantara* behind 
 the human, while in the human body is a " human-elemental," 
 progressed a manvantara farther. The animal elemental — with 
 the exception of certain apes — will not be ready to pass into the 
 human stage for two manvantaras; the human elemental can do 
 so in the next. 
 
 The consciousness of the body is _b_elow the plane of self-con- 
 sciousness. As self-consciousness marks the impress of a human 
 soul, and as the consciousness of the body is composed of these 
 innumerable elemental centers of synthesizing consciousness not 
 yet having reached the human stage, it must therefore be below 
 the self-conscious plane. This is the true reason why we are not 
 conscious of the functions of digestion, of waste and repair, growth, 
 and such things. All are done under the supervision of the ele- 
 mentals in our bodies, and we know nothing of them unless they 
 become abnormal in their action, and even then our conscious- 
 ness of them is faint and often quite absent. But it is perfectly 
 possible, as the microcosm of the macrocosm, for man to transfer 
 his consciousness to these cells; and instances of his doing so, 
 and thus controlling them, are to be found in those Indian Yogis 
 who pierce their flesh with knife-thrusts which immediately heal, 
 etc. Likewise, Christian Scientists at times cure diseases by cen- 
 tering, and — as most Theosophists believe — degrading, the higher, 
 divine consciousness into the performance of purely physical 
 functions which are the normal duties of entities far below the 
 human plane. Disease can often be cured when the will is suffi- 
 ciently developed by thus transferring the divine, creative con- 
 sciousness to the physical plane; but the process is in the highest 
 degree abnormal, and must react injuriously in this or succeeding 
 incarnations. 
 
 The process of so-called death may be more specifically 
 
 * Man-perfecting cycle .
 
 34 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 described thus: When the "hour" strikes, death begins with the 
 body, and as the soul casts off" its successive vestments, it may be 
 said to pass through several. The first of these frees it from the 
 physical cells and the lowest astral body, or Linga Sharira. It 
 now clothes itself for a more or less extended period with a 
 higher astral form, known as the Body of Desires, or Kama Rupa. 
 This after a time it abandons, and remains clothed with its deva- 
 chanic body until the time comes for it to reincarnate. Another 
 death consists in its reincarnation, or birth here into material ex- 
 istence. These successive deaths are referred to in many scrip- 
 tures. Even in the Christian Bible we are taught to beware of 
 the "second death," meaning death upon the astral plane. It 
 refers to the possibility of the loss of the human soul through get- 
 ting enmeshed in the lower Principles, or Quaternary, which nor- 
 mally perish after the death of the body (to be discussed later on). 
 The dissolution of the body is brought about by other and for- 
 eign "lives," or "microbes," when the " fiery lives" abandon it. 
 Our bodies, in common with those of all organized beings, are in- 
 fested with parasites, both within and without, which are capable 
 of destroying, and will destroy it, after the fiery lives, and with 
 them its "vitality," have departed. But this destruction is the 
 work of parasites. It has been stated in theosophical writings 
 that man is built up of" microbes." Here we must avoid confus- 
 ing the general use of the word "microbe," from micro (small), 
 and bios (life), with its technical use in biology and other sciences. 
 In the " Secret Doctrine" it is used in its general sense of "little 
 lives," and we are specially warned against the very confusion 
 which has arisen by the statement that the smallest microbe 
 known to science is as an elephant to a flea compared with these. 
 The microbes of science are all parasites, and abnormal occupants 
 of the human body. This is built up of cells, and cells are not 
 microbes in the scientific use of the term. The success of em- 
 balming and preserving mummies depends upon the destruction of 
 these parasites which infest the human body. Their thorough 
 destruction after death will preserve it through countless ages. 
 There was, some time since, the body of an elephant washed out 
 of an ice floe in Russia, which must have been there since the gla-
 
 THE BODY. 35 
 
 cial period, and yet the flesh was found untouched by decomposi- 
 tion. Mummies, buried from three to five thousand years since, 
 have portions of the body just as well preserved as though they 
 had been buried only yesterday. Mummification really consists 
 in the destruction of the numerous parasites which infest the hu- 
 man body, and its protection from subsequent invasion by others. 
 Even in life, when the vitality is lowered, these parasites begin to 
 attack the tissues, and multiply at such a rate that they soon trans- 
 form certain portions of the body into a mass of disease, in which 
 the microbes (parasites) run riot, and cause the dissolution of the 
 whole body unless they are controlled. The death of the body, then, 
 is brought about by the withdrawal from it of the "fiery lives," and 
 its disintegration — quite another thing — through the agency of 
 the microbes which live upon us, and whose attacks we resist dur- 
 ing life, because the vitality of the cells, resulting from the presence 
 of the fiery lives, keeps them at bay. 
 
 Whence come our bodies physically? Up and through the ani- 
 mal kingdom, undoubtedly, but not from the present animals nor 
 from a common ancestor, even. It is evident that, as the " Secret 
 Doctrine" states, physical man leads the animal kingdom in this 
 Round, for if animals preceded him they ought to be further pro- 
 gressed in evolution than he. The fact that he is farther advanced 
 plainly shows that he came upon this world first, allowing, as we 
 must, common and mutual evolutionary forces afterwards. The 
 «' Secret Doctrine," indeed, teaches that he descended from an ape- 
 like ancestor; but that ancestor was an astral one, and belonged 
 to the third Round, or that which preceded this.* The centers 
 of consciousness of our physical bodies, known as Lunar Pitris, 
 arrived at the "human-elemental" stage, upon the moon, and 
 came to the earth and* constructed for themselves fiery bodies 
 during the first Round. Descending to the ethereal, or second 
 Round, these bodies assumed its qualities, and were formed of 
 ethereal substance. Coming to the astral, or third Round, they 
 built for themselves huge, ape-like bodies of astral matter, which 
 astral bodies, repeated briefly in the third race of this Round, con- 
 
 *As all evolution is an eternal repetition of the past before a further forward step is taken, 
 so this "ape-like" form was repeated in the third race of this Round.
 
 36 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 stitute all the ape-like ancestor man has ever had. During the 
 third Round, his form, being built on subconscious planes and of 
 astral matter, became a kind of huge prototype of that which it 
 afterwards assumed when it descended into the molecular matter 
 of this, the fourth Round. The human-elementals, or Lunar 
 Pitris, which synthesized these forms, came over from the moon 
 when that planet passed into pralaya, and in this manner during- 
 the first three and one-half Rounds slowly built up our human 
 bodies into their present shape. At the fourth Round only, these 
 human-animal bodies became capable of receiving and responding 
 to impressions from the Higher Ego, or thinking Soul, and thus 
 enabled the true man to come upon the earth. For man is not 
 the human-elemental, associated with him as the constructor and 
 synthesizer of his body, but the Ray of Manas from the divine 
 Higher Ego, as the result of this incarnation. 
 
 The physical cells of which the human body is constructed are 
 the seat of purely physical heredity. The impression of this 
 heredity upon them causes the resemblance to parents. The cells 
 from each parent meet and blend in a most intimate fusion, and 
 their different sources bestow upon them a certain power of vari- 
 ation which causes the child to evolve in the direction of one or 
 the other, and thus affords opportunity for this, which is a neces- 
 sary portion of evolution. If man came from one parent, he would 
 resemble that parent quite accurately, and each child would be an 
 almost exact reproduction of its parent. But when the origin is 
 from two parents, variation is necessary and is thus provided for. 
 It is, then, along this, the line of physical heredity, that all these 
 resemblances in form and feature, and even in psychic traits, 
 reaches man. The physical is one of the three streams of hered- 
 ity flowing into man. The other two will be discussed when their 
 sources are being studied. 
 
 If man be the microcosm of the macrocosm, there ought to be 
 exhibited, in his physical organism, evidences of a septenary law, 
 and this is found to be true. His tissues are of seven kinds, 
 pointing to seven distinct hierarchies of entities in its construction. 
 Each of these hierarchies may again be subdivided, making thus 
 forty-nine variants upon the primary seven. These seven tissues
 
 THE BODY. 37 
 
 are: the neuroglic, connective, areolar, white fibrous, elastic, gela- 
 tinous, adenoid, and adipose. The body has seven forms of epi- 
 thelium: the squamous, spheroid, columnar, transitional, endo- 
 thelial, and special. There are seven great systems which enter 
 into its construction: the osseous, muscular, nervous, circula- 
 tory, reproductive, glandular (including the digestive), and integu- 
 mentary ( including the respiratory). There are jseven layers of 
 the skin: epidermis (cuticle), rete mucosum (pigment), papillae, 
 corium, fat cells, fibrous, and areolar layers. There are seven 
 functions of the skin: limiting, common sensation, heat, cold, 
 pressure, cooling ( perspiration), and protective (hair). There 
 are seven divisions of the eye: cornea, aqueous humor, iris, cili- 
 ary ligament, lens, vitreous humor, and retina. There are seven 
 layers of the retina: columnar (Jacob's membrane), granular (com- 
 posed of three distinct layers), nervous layer ( consisting of two), 
 and membrana limitans. There are seven divisions of the brain: 
 the medulla oblongata, pons Varolii, crura cerebri, corpora quad- 
 rigemina, optic thalami, cerebellum, and cerebrum. There are 
 seven functions of the nervous system: the olfactory, optic, audi- 
 tory, gustatory, common sensation, and correlating or vegetative. 
 There are seven divisions of the ear : the auditory canal, tym- 
 panum, ossicles, semicircular canals, vestibule, cochlea, membran- 
 ous labyrinth. The blood goes through seven distinct processes 
 in clotting, and in numerous other ways man's physical construction 
 indicates its septenary source. As he is yet in the active process 
 of evolution, there are also very often divisions of five, especially 
 in the chemistry of his body. In fact, such divisions are very 
 numerous throughout man's organism, instances of which are the 
 five senses, five nerves of special sense, five layers of the cornea, etc. 
 The great lesson to be learned from a study of the body as a 
 Principle, however, is that it inhibits or prevents the conscious 
 functioning of the soul. On its own divine plane — to put it only 
 from a merely mechanical standpoint — the soul uses modes of 
 motion which enable -it to record conscious sensations, due to 
 etheric vibrations thousands of times more rapid than those it 
 uses here. In molecular matter, it can see only so many things 
 in a moment. If they pass too rapidly, they are blurred. If it
 
 38 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 retreat inward, towards its own proper habitation, the vibrations 
 may be almost infinitely more rapid, and it will record them every 
 one, and life, therefore, becomes proportionately fuller and grander. 
 How puerile, then, and how weak is consciousness upon this plane, 
 compared to that of the true home of the soul! How the body 
 limits our senses, and cripples our wings! As we descend from 
 these diviner planes, each new state of matter draws a still heavier 
 veil, so to say, over the eyes of the soul, and it becomes more 
 and more blinded until it reaches the very acme of dullness, and 
 fancies this the only plane of existence, and imagines itself separ- 
 ated from all other human beings. Yet, if it lay off but one of its 
 veils, or "Principles," as in dream, it can pass through experiences 
 in a few moments which would take years in the waking condi- 
 tion. If one could leave his body but for a few minutes, instead 
 of passing into a condition of nothingness, or of losing that which 
 we term life, he would enter upon a life indescribably more vivid. 
 So far from anything having been destroyed or lost, the soul 
 would realize that it had passed into a higher, more perfect state — 
 was functioning upon planes much more subtle — approaching much 
 nearer to the real source of life and being. If this be the result 
 of the change from the molecular to the astral state of matter, 
 how much more will consciousness expand as the soul approaches 
 the center of conscious existence, where consciousness and life are* 
 real ! 
 
 Let us, then, remember that each of our fellow-men is a divine 
 soul, whose consciousness is limited, whose senses are dulled, 
 whose diviner characteristics are almost destroyed by the gross 
 body it thus temporarily occupies, and we shall then see the rea- 
 son and the necessity for the exercise towards each other of human 
 sympathy and charity. The character which seems to us so vile 
 is not that of the true soul, but is caused by the body with which 
 it is associated. The qualities which so offend us are but the 
 " qualities" of Matter, in the coils of which the true soul is strug- 
 gling. These desires arise because they are derived from a plane 
 of existence in which desire is normal — a state whose conscious 
 entities are naturally filled with desire. Man synthesizes these 
 entities into his body, and they transmit their own desires to him; 
 and he, mistaking them for his own, yields to them.
 
 THE BODY. 39 
 
 There is a beautiful story told in one of Charles Reade's novels 
 of a prisoner confined in a dungeon, where there was such a per- 
 fect exclusion of light that it was impossible for him to have any 
 conception of the passage of time. One could fancy that in a few 
 minutes an hour, or even a' day, had passed. So great was the 
 suffering that many came out of it insane. When this prisoner 
 was confined in this dark cell, the chaplain of the prison, knowing 
 the awful effect that such confinement had upon the mind and 
 reason, went to it and rapped upon the outside, in order to let the 
 poor occupant know that on the other side of the walls was a sym- 
 pathizing, compassionate, human soul. And he tells how the 
 sense of this compassion enabled the prisoner to preserve his rea- 
 son, and also to pass his period of confinement without suffering. 
 This is similar to the condition of the human soul in these bodies. 
 Therefore, each one of us should constitute himself a compassion- 
 ate sentinel, standing upon the outside, tapping upon the thick 
 walls of human hearts, letting each know that they have human 
 sympathy, and so feel the hope and trust springing from this. If 
 we remember that each human soul is a divine prisoner, these 
 things which so offend us now will fade away. We will realize 
 that it is not the true person who is doing evil, but only one who 
 has lost control of the passionate body with which he is associated, 
 and our task will be to teach that person to regain his self-control, 
 and thus help to make the whole of humanity happier, nobler, and 
 more divine.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE LINGA SHARIRA. 
 
 UfHE Second human Principle is called in Sanscrit the Linga 
 ^-^ Sharira, or Design Body. It is so called because it is upon 
 or within it, as upon a model, that the physical body is construct- 
 ed. It stands in the relation to the latter that the astral world of 
 the Third Round, or great World Period, stands to this the 
 Molecular Round, or Fourth World Period, and can be best un- 
 derstood by remembering this correspondence or analogy. In 
 those wonderfully deep and comprehensive generalizations of 
 evolution which constitute a portion of the teachings of the Wis- 
 dom Religion, the formation of a world is carried backward to 
 points in time compared with which modern geologic figures seem 
 trifling; and it is to the third of these periods, as concerned with 
 the birth and growth of this world, that the "matter" of the Linga 
 Sharira is referred. That is to say, that this world, as has been 
 pointed out in a previous chapter, has passed through an immense 
 period of time in which it was fiery in its constitution, after which, 
 by a change in the rate of the vibration of its " matter " it cooled 
 down into an ethereal state ; thence, by means of a still slower rate, 
 its matter became that which we term astral; and, finally, by still 
 another change of vibration, it assumed the coarse, molecular con- 
 dition of the present great world period, or, as it is technically 
 known in theosophical literature, the Fourth Round. With each 
 of these great world periods, the forms of the entities upon the 
 earth, including man, have of necessity to correspond with the 
 matter of the Round — their bodies being built out of it. The 
 matter of the Third great World Period was astral — that is, its 
 rate of vibration, molecular constitution, and electric, magnetic, 
 and other properties, were such that it assumed this state. Dur- 
 ing the immense period involved in a "Day of Brahma," a Round, 
 or, scientifically, the length of time in which any particular rate of 
 vibration remains the keynote or dominating motion in the mat-
 
 THE LINGA SHARIRA. 4 1 
 
 ter of a world, this astral world was occupied by all the hosts of 
 entities which we now find upon the earth, but of course in a very 
 much less progressed state. 
 
 Like glazier's putty, "matter" becomes more pliable, more 
 responsive to thought, the more it is used; and so this astral mat- 
 ter has, by its long use during an entire Round, become so plas- 
 tic that thought-forms are instantly constructed of it, as is experi- 
 enced every night in dreams. For the forms and scenes perceived 
 in dreams are actual and real; are constructed by the ideative force 
 of the imagination out of this same plastic astral matter; and, lor 
 the brief period during which man's feeble will holds them intact, 
 are as real and as stable as any material forms within the Cosmos. 
 The very changes which are observed in fleeting or panoramic 
 dreams are possible because of, and due to, this ability of astral 
 matter to respond to the vagaries of even the dreaming imagina- 
 tion, though this be quite uncontrolled by the higher mind. 
 
 But with the change of vibration at the close of the Third great 
 World Period, appeared molecular matter as we perceive it to-day ; 
 just as a change of temperature — which is but a change of vibra- 
 tion — in a saline solution will cause solid crystals to appear in 
 that which was before transparent. Such crystals represent the 
 exact vibratory change which has taken place in the entire fluid ; 
 or, to resort to scientific terms again, the amount of heat which 
 has become "latent" in the process. For it must not be under- 
 stood that all the substance of the earth changes its rate of vibra- 
 tion at the end of each great evolutionary period, or that all the 
 energies concerned in its construction become "latent," except 
 those comparatively feeble molecular forces with which we are 
 familiar. Only a small portion, compared with the entire mass of 
 matter, does so, and only a very minute portion of the forces 
 involved pass into molecular activities. Thus, the earth still has 
 the fiery, ethereal, and astral globes of preceding world periods ; 
 each globe being the mother liquid, so to speak, out of which the 
 lower one has crystallized. All these states interpenetrate, or are 
 in a condition, as again expressed in terms of science, of co-aduni- 
 tion, and constitute the seven globes of our earth chain. 
 
 The origin of the Linga Sharira of Man may now, perhaps, be
 
 "N 
 
 42 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 better understood. ihe changes of vibration which constitute 
 and determine these great world periods, or Rounds, are due, we 
 are taught, to that which is termed Monadic impulse, or to the 
 almost, if not quite, direct action of that eternal Motion which is 
 described in Eastern philosophy as the " Great Breath." In its 
 origin and essence, it is alike unknowable; as finite beings we are 
 limited entirely to studies of its finite modes of motion. But of 
 itself this Monadic motion is incapable of producing form, and 
 must be understood as that of the Universal or Absolute Monad ; 
 that Unknowable base upon which all the so-called properties of 
 matter as well as the infinite states of consciousness within the 
 Universe alike rest, for Spirit and Matter are but aspects of the 
 One Absolute, Causeless Cause, and, as such aspects, are both con- 
 ditioned and finite. That portion of the Absolute which is at the 
 base of a human soul is called the human monad; and this monad, 
 having descended into the sphere of finite or conditioned exist- 
 ence, in, let us say the fire-mist stage of evolution, finds itself 
 incapable of constructing a form. To quote the "Secret Doctrine":* 
 " For the Monad, or Jiva, per se, can not even be called spirit. 
 It is a Ray, a breath of the Absolute, or the Absoluteness, rather; 
 and the Absolute Homogeneity, having no relations with the con- 
 ditioned and relative finiteness, is unconscious on our plane. 
 Therefore, besides the material which will be needed for its future 
 human form, the monad requires (a) a spiritual model or proto- 
 type for that material to shape itself into, and (b) an intelligent 
 consciousness to guide its evolution and progress, neither of which 
 is possessed by the homogeneous monad or by senseless though 
 living matter." 
 
 It is at this point that Eastern Wisdom solves our perplexity 
 by its theory of emanations. At each great change in the vibra- 
 tion of matter, advantage of the change is taken by high creative 
 beings to clothe themselves with the matter which has thus taken 
 on new qualities, both because of such change of vibration and 
 because of these creative beings having bestowed upon the enti- 
 ties which ensoul it a portion of their own essence by emanation. 
 Such creative Beings are the source of all forms in the so-called 
 " lower" kingdoms, as they are, indeed, in all nature. 
 
 *Vol. I, p. 247.
 
 THE LINGA SHARIRA. 43 
 
 The form of Man, then, during all the Rounds preceding this 
 was given by high or low creative beings who have the power to 
 cause the " matter" of each Period or Round to assume definite 
 designs. This is the key to the numerous Pitris or "fathers," 
 which we find accredited to Man in such apparently confusing 
 and profuse perplexity in the "Secret Doctrine." Each appropri- 
 ate Hierarchy gave to his Monad the form it occupied during 
 that particular World Period; and in doing so imparted, just as ^ 
 the magnet imparts its own magnetism to non-mag netic iron, a 
 portion of their own essence. This imparted essence, again, is 
 a key to a portion of the still more confusing array of " Principles," 
 which seem to be a part, and still not a part, of man's complex 
 being. It is, however, this complexity entering into his consti- 
 tution which makes Man the microcosm of the macrocosm ; for as 
 every entity in the universe either " is, was, or prepares to become 
 a man," so do all the creative intelligences, all the so-called 
 "forces" of nature, aid and conspire to make Man what he now 
 is and what he may become, by a long evolutionary association 
 with (thus bestowing their own essence upon) him. 
 
 In the Third great World Period certain entities, whom we may 
 term "human elementals," and whom, we are told, had arrived 
 at this stage during the course of an evolution upon the moon, 
 associated themselves with the still unconscious human monad, 
 and constructed for it, out of astral matter, an astral body — the 
 prototype of the present Linga Sharira as well as the model said 
 to be needed by the " too spiritual" monad. They remained 
 associated with the human monad, and constituted Man's chief 
 principle during the entire Third Round, and are still so associ- 
 ated with him. But their office of modeling for him a body of 
 even astral matter has ceased. His molecular body is, as we 
 >have seen, built up of " pranic lives," and by the " Spirits of the 
 Earth," we are further told. Another and very much higher class 
 of entities — our own Higher Egos — have taken charge of the duty 
 of furnishing a new Linga Sharira at each birth, and the office of 
 the " Lunar Pitris" has become, at best, only mechanical. They 
 are now the servitors of the real Man, and must follow the designs 
 laid down by the true Man, the Higher Ego.
 
 44 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 The design body, the Linga Sharira, then, is a " thought body" 
 of the Higher Ego, the true man, impressed first, and before the 
 physical body is formed, upon the plastic astral matter of the 
 Third Round. The Higher Ego, can not so quickly impress 
 physical matter, for this is yet too new, hard, and unyielding. But 
 the changes which follow, in the human form and features, upon 
 a radical change of thought give a promise and prophesy of those 
 powers which it is slowly acquiring, and of which we shall see the 
 completed fruition at the close of this Manvantara, when the 
 whole earth will be but the reflection of perfected human Thought. 
 Meantime, astral matter is utilized because of its plasticity, and 
 into the model so furnished the senseless — upon this plane — "lower 
 lives" build Man's form. 
 
 What is the modus operandum of the actual construction of 
 the Linga Sharira? The Higher Ego can not be said to con- 
 struct it consciously — or, at least, not self-consciously. It is 
 certainly a creative act upon the part of the soul returning to 
 incarnation, but one not exercised as yet self-consciously by 
 the vast majority of the human race. For the exact copying of 
 purely physical tendencies as to size and shape, or of low psychic 
 tricks of gesture, etc., show that there are other forces at work 
 besides the pure, creative energy of the Soul. The ordinary child 
 is almost an exact copy of its physical parents, showing that 
 these, too, have had their undoubtedly subconscious influence in 
 determining the new form, and that this influence has been a 
 most potent one. The explanation lies in the fact of physical 
 heredity: that there are in our bodies to-day, as Weissmann de- 
 clares, cells which have never died since the world began. These 
 cells are impressed, are, indeed, the very record of man's physical 
 past, and carry in their essence an almost irresistible tendency to 
 exactly repeat the old physical structure, as is seen in those lowly 
 forms where physical heredity is almost the sole modifying agency. 
 Nature opposes this tendency upon the higher planes of her king- 
 doms by interposing cells from two differing parents, thus pro- 
 viding a physical basis for that necessary variation which evo- 
 lutionary progress demands — and which necessity is the true 
 reason for the evolutionary separation into sexes; — and, secondly,
 
 THE LINGA SHAKIKA. 45 
 
 the further modifying influence of the ideation of the returning 
 soul and of its physical parents upon the mental plane. It is 
 along this line of unstable equilibrium that all evolutionary prog- 
 ress takes place, and man's wonderfully complex nature affords it 
 its highest field of activity. Thus, the initiative force — that of the 
 returning soul — calls into activity the "fiery lives," and the first 
 or ideal thought-form upon their plane is constructed. But as 
 this tends to repeat itself upon lower and lower planes of Man's 
 being, as his Ego descends to more and more material planes in 
 the successive steps of its reincarnation, more and more modify- 
 ing and obstructive energies are encountered. The subconscious 
 thought of the parents is one source of these; then come the 
 Skandhas — sleeping or " latent" entities representing man's pas- 
 sional and emotional nature as expressed or evolved in past lives, 
 which demand modifications that shall better express their quali- 
 ties. All these are at work on the plastic astral model ; and when 
 this finally encounters the lower cell lives, carrying the impress of 
 the experience and " habits" of myriads of ages, the Linga Sharira 
 succumbs: the divine consciousness of the soul has sunk too deeply 
 into matter to make its energies a potent factor; and the imper- 
 fect human form, largely the repetition of its physical ancestry, 
 is the result. The astral model, also, is the reason for the per- 
 petuation of species throughout all nature. In the lower kingdoms 
 it, having been, so to speak, permanently molded by the ideation 
 of the Creative Entities for the Round, tends, as we have seen, to 
 an almost exact repetition of the same form. As evolution, how- 
 ever, pushes the entity upward in the scale of being, the complex 
 factors, which we have pointed out as modifying influences upon 
 the human Linga Sharira, slowly come into play; sex differentiation 
 occurs, and, one by one, all the various modifying evolutionary 
 forces exert their activites. There is no possible reason why two 
 cells almost identical in form should differentiate, the one into the 
 form of a delicate fern, and the other into that of a giant sequoia, 
 except that this ideal astral form persists, and is an actual model 
 into which, just as in the human instance, the forms of all the 
 entities of the lower kingdoms of nature are built. 
 
 In studying the nature and functions of the Linga Sharira more
 
 46 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 specifically, we are taught that it dissipates, step by step, with 
 the matter of the body. This is because of the withdrawal after 
 death from it, as well as from the physical body, of the " fiery 
 lives," which gave both their vitality. This vitality, from one — a 
 purely mechanical — standpoint, is supplied by the " fiery lives" 
 becoming latent, or changing the rate of their vibration. It is anal- 
 ogous to the disappearance of heat by crystallization, etc., upon 
 lower planes. But in this case the latency is enforced by the 
 unconsciously exercised will of the reincarnating entity. Its 
 tanha, or desire for physical existence, causes the " fiery lives" to 
 yield to it, and it synthesizes the force so derived into the con- 
 struction and preservation of its body. During life the Linga 
 Sharira is said to be the vehicle of Prana, or the Life Principle ; 
 but its connection with this will be best studied when we take up 
 the latter Principle. It. is capable of passing out of the body 
 during life, and in such case has the peculiar power of attracting 
 to itself physical atoms from the surrounding atmosphere in such 
 quantities as to reproduce a replica of the human form. In cer- 
 tain instances this projection is, no doubt, the seat of the soul 
 itself In any case, the real physical body appears languid and 
 apathetic during the absence of this its astral counterpart. This 
 power of attracting to itself physical atoms resident in the atmos- 
 phere is the cause of the Linga Sharira being so often seen by 
 people who are not clairvoyant. Given a death in which the 
 dying person has intently thought of some distant dear one, and 
 the Linga Sharira has often been known to go, under the impulse 
 of this thought force, to that person or distant place, and actually 
 appear as a more or less faint duplicate or image of the dying 
 person. It is often noticed as a vague violet light, or violet mist, 
 over the graves of the recently dead, and also in these cases is 
 seen by non-clairvoyants, and must of course be composed of.mat- 
 ter capable of being seen by the physical eye. Such visible mat- 
 ter is, in the opinion of the writer, an attempt at reincarnation, by 
 reclothing itself, temporarily and faintly, with physical atoms float- 
 ing in the atmosphere, and is the result of the force of habit due 
 to its life-long association with a physical body. 
 
 This power, or innate tendency, rather, to surround itself with
 
 THE LINGA SHARIRA. 47 
 
 physical or molecular matter is no doubt at the basis of most of 
 the " materializations" which take place at spiritualistic" seances." 
 The Linga Sharira of the medium leaves, or oozes out of, the 
 body ; the very capacity for doing which constitutes one a " medium." 
 Once outside the body, under the strong, impelling desire of the 
 medium, or of some of the sitters, the Linga Sharira becomes 
 molded into the form of some departed person, and then attracts 
 to itself a sufficient amount of physical atoms to appear as solid 
 flesh. It has, in fact, become a solid, though temporary, thought- 
 form of some person present among the sitters, and is possessed 
 of the limited intelligence which such thought-forms are capable of 
 exhibiting. So powerful may be the so-called " materialization," 
 so deceiving the electric and magnetic forces involved, that such 
 " spooks" have all the appearances of a solid physical body; have 
 actual weight, though this has been known to vary by many 
 pounds within a very few moments in the same " spook," upon 
 being weighed. But this change in weight is doubtless due 
 more to an interference with the laws of attraction and repulsion, 
 of which gravity is a phase, than with any real accession or de- 
 parture of actual physical molecules. Many of these physical 
 molecules are drawn from the sitters present, as the exhaustion 
 of those who are at all mediumistic, after such a seance, amply 
 testifies. The decomposition at the close of the seance of mol- 
 ecules thus withdrawn from the bodies of sitters is the cause of 
 that peculiarly offensive " grave odor" which is always perceived 
 when a genuine materialization has taken place. Of course, the 
 Linga Sharira will not explain all the phenomena of materializa- 
 tions; it is only its part in this process that now concerns us. A 
 Linga Sharira thus extruded and materialized is capable of being 
 injured by blows or violence of any sort, in which case, upon its 
 returning to the body, the marks of injuries thus inflicted upon it 
 will be repeated upon the medium's body, and reappear as actual 
 fleshly injuries. This is because, being the model of the physical 
 form, the real supporter of the physical cells, when it, the model, 
 is altered the tendency of the physical cells to flow into the new 
 design is almost irresistible, and in this manner actually causes 
 the repetition of injuries upon the physical body. This fact is
 
 48 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 known in spiritualistic parlance as " repercussion," and the rela- 
 tion of the Linga Sharira to the physical form fully explains 
 this otherwise inexplicable phenomenon. The capacity to thus 
 project the Linga Sharira is possessed in a greater or lesser degree 
 by mediums and seers, and, Mr. Wm. Q. Judge declares, by the 
 hysterical, cataleptic and scrofulous.* 
 
 The organs of sense, the real centers for seeing, hearing, tasting, 
 and smelling, are located in the Linga Sharira, the proof of which 
 was pointed out in the lecture upon the physical body. Yet, 
 although man has thus the capacity for seeing, hearing, tast- 
 ing, and smelling, or, in other words, of exercising all his senses 
 upon the astral plane, his capacity for so doing is almost nil 
 while in the physical body, and is exceedingly limited even when 
 disconnected from this by death. The exercise of the astral 
 senses during life constitutes a low form of clairvoyance and 
 clairaudience, which is much sought after by those ignorant of 
 their own nature, and to whom such glimpses into the unseen are 
 taken for communications from some "heavenly" sphere. There 
 is, no doubt, something which corresponds to sense-organs in as- 
 tral bodies much higher than the Linga Sharira; but as man's 
 soul recedes inward these become less and less capable of convey- 
 ing to him external impressions, because of their not yet being 
 sufficiently perfected by use. It will, no doubt, be a portion of his 
 evolution to perfect these interior sense-organs during future 
 World Periods — to become self-conscious, and to exteriorise these 
 now subjective planes in a manner exactly similar to that in which 
 he objectivises his present physical environment. Such sense- 
 organs and astral bodies, composed of finer grades of matter than 
 is the Linga Sharira, correspond to the great hiatus in vibration 
 which lies between the waves of sound, or those which affect man's 
 sense of hearing, and those of light, which appeal to his organs of 
 vision. Thus, sound-waves travel at the rate of about thirteen 
 hundred feet a minute, and are of variable length, while waves 
 of light travel at the rate of 184,000 miles a second, and have a 
 wave length of about 1-52,000 of an inch. Between the sense of 
 sound, said to be the result of molecular motion, and that of sight,, 
 
 *Ocean of Theosophy.
 
 THE LINGA SHARIRA. 49 
 
 attributed to "ethereal" vibrations, there Is evidently an Immense 
 gulf of hidden sense potentialities. In the vibrations of light, 
 also, there is evidently an unbroken continuity of successively 
 more rapid vibrations above the violet ray, as proven by the 
 chemical changes produced, and below the red ray, with which 
 man's color perception ceases in this direction. So of all his 
 senses. There are sounds which he can not hear; there are sub- 
 stances which have for him no taste. Into such realms of nature 
 interior senses, located in finer, more ethereal astral bodies, must 
 some time project him. Thus we are told, in the " Secret Doctrine," • 
 that ether, now so hypothetical and unreal, will become visible in 
 the air towards the end of this globe Round or World Period. 
 This does not mean that ether is not in the atmosphere now, but 
 that we are unable to perceive it; and prophesies, not the condens- 
 ation of the ether, but the evolution of finer qualities of percep- 
 tion in our sense-organs. 
 
 The condition of human consciousness at death can also be best 
 understood, perhaps, by an examination of the correspondence be- 
 tween the separation of the lower human Principles and the 
 changes of vibration which limit and define a World Period. 
 Thus, at the death of the body, a period which corresponds to the 
 termination of this Fourth Round, or molecular World Period, the 
 life Principle retreats inward, and the body is left to decay, pre- 
 cisely as a dead world in space decays when its higher Principles 
 are also withdrawn, as we see in the case of the dead moon, and 
 of those recently dissipated intra-Mercurial planets which science 
 suspects, but of which it so vainly seeks evidence. The soul then 
 becomes six-principled for a brief period — has for its outermost 
 clothing the Linga Sharira. But it soon detaches itself from 
 this vehicle, for the Linga Sharira as well as the body is molec- 
 ular. Then the Ego clothes itself with an astral form of finer 
 matter; or of that of a higher rate of vibration, and becomes a 
 five-principled being. That is to say, that all the "lives" with 
 which it was associated upon the material plane pass into Pralaya, 
 or latency, and no longer disturb the soul by their activities. 
 Prana also disappears — which will be more fully explained when 
 dealing with that Principle. So long as there is the faintest con-
 
 50 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 nection between the soul and the Linga Sharira so long is the lat- 
 ter capable of disturbing, to a degree at least, the repose cf the 
 soul. This is one reason for cremation, aside from other purely 
 sanitary reasons. 
 
 Like all states of matter, the astral plane of substance has its 
 seven grades, the lowest of which passes directly into the physical, 
 or visible, molecular condition, while its higher States grade up- 
 ward into vibrations capable of affording all those vestments of 
 the soul which constitute its many "Astral Bodies." There is — 
 there can be — no abrupt break between the vibrations of one 
 state and that of another. They are as continuous as life itself. 
 Our sense-organs may and do mark them off into distinct planes, 
 as when the sense of sight records one rate of vibration as red, 
 and one, but slightly higher, as orange; but there is no point at 
 which we can say that here, precisely, the red ceases and the 
 orange begins. So with the after-death states and the vestments 
 of the soul — a portion of the Linga Sharira remains entangled 
 within the cells of the body, and dissipates pari passu with it. 
 Another portion oozes out of the body, forming a wraith or dupli- 
 cate of this, and also affording a very transient vestment for the 
 soul. This, after being abandoned by the Ego, is, no doubt, re- 
 attraoted to the latter, and also dissipates, step by step, with it. 
 Still another portion is used by the kama-manasic, or lower, mind, 
 or Principle, to clothe itself with a thought-form, which afterwards 
 fades, with the cessation of the activities of this, into the "spook," 
 the abode of the kama-rupa, or that human elemental which is the 
 synthesizer of man's purely animal body, as it continues, for a 
 more prolonged period, its existence as an independent entity in 
 kama-loka. The successive abandonment of these vestments, or 
 their vibrations, ceasing to possess the power to command the 
 soul's attention, constitute the key to the after-death states of con- 
 sciousness. While in the Linga Sharira proper, the state of the 
 soul is that of calm. Stupefied by the great change in its environ- 
 ment as to vibration, would, perhaps, better express its condition. 
 But as it recovers from this shock, as it gathers itself together, so 
 to speak, and particularly after, by its own mental effort, it con- 
 structs for itself a body of astral matter containing the impress,
 
 THE LINGA SHARIRA. 5 I 
 
 habits, and desires of the life it has just quitted.it is itself again. 
 It is in kama-loka — in that uncanny region where it is still under 
 the influence of earth desires, thrust upon its consciousness by 
 the vigorous vibrations of this which has been well termed the 
 "body of desire." For it is the seat of desire during life, and still 
 more so after the death of the body. But, let us suppose that 
 these earth-tending desires are not fed or renewed vicariously by 
 any foolish medium, to her own and the soul's hurt ; then they 
 slowly cease, and the soul falls asleep to all vibration except that 
 of its own proper "thought body," in which "to will is to create, 
 and to think is to see." This is its "heaven," its Devachan, its 
 rest; a state, from the standpoint of vibration alone, caused and 
 made possible by the cessation of all the activities or vibrations of 
 the lower bodies which it has cast off, or to which it has become 
 indifferent. No vibrations reach it now but the very highest and 
 most spiritual of its past life — those unselfish, altruistic, and spirit- 
 ual enough to make an impress upon and be recorded within the 
 tablets of the true soul. The hierarchies of turbulent, passionate 
 lives with which he was associated while in the physical body, 
 and whose imperious voices he so ignorantly mistook for the 
 demands of his own soul, have been hushed; he is again at the 
 fountain source of his true being, drinking again of the waters of 
 everlasting life. In Devachan — 
 
 "The sin and shame, the woe and misery 
 
 Will all have faded. Memory's drifting ships 
 Will cast the gall and wormwood in the sea, 
 
 And bring sweet wines alone into our longing lips." 
 
 Here the soul remains, enjoying all the felicities of its own div- 
 inity, until the impulse of its spiritual nature is exhausted, when it 
 again bows to the law of its own evolution; again yields to the 
 sway of the " fiery lives" as they force it once more into the 
 realms of sensuous existence; constructs for itself a new Linga 
 Sharira, into and upon which a new physical body is builded, 
 and — takes up its old-life tasks again.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 PRANA. 
 
 I 
 
 [TiiLE a portion of man's Principles are derived from, or are 
 the very essence of, beings higher than he, there are others 
 which are not so derived, but which seem to root in the very- 
 Absolute itself. They are as direct aspects of the Absolute 
 in man (the microcosm) as they are in the Universe (or macrocosm). 
 Such are Atma, man's seventh; Buddhi, his second; and Prana, 
 the third Principle. Viewed from a purely physical standpoint, 
 all life upon the earth is derived, primarily or secondarily, from 
 the sun, which seems to be a great storehouse for all forms of 
 force, or modes of motion. Heat, light, electricity, magnetism, 
 "vital" force — all radiate apparently from this great center of Cos- 
 mic energy. Blot the sun out of the heavens, and this earth would, 
 in a very few days at the most, float aimlessly in space, a huge, 
 frozen, lifeless corpse. 
 
 There are, of course, other, and very greatly modifying, con- 
 ditions which affect, favorably or unfavorably, the continuance of 
 life here, such as the inclination of the earth's axis to the sun, 
 the percentage of moisture in the atmosphere, etc.; but as these 
 are but secondary causes, at best, whose primaries depend upon 
 the sun for their modifying influence, the latter may be said to be 
 truly the giver of physical life to the earth. This life seems 
 to be the result of, or due to, motion or vibration, which latter 
 is transmitted to the earth by means of a medium which science 
 conjectures to be its " ether," and reaches the earth in the form 
 of vibrations. It is interesting to note how exactly the conclusions 
 of science, as to the manner in which these vibrations reach and 
 react upon the molecular matter of the earth, repeat uncon- 
 sciously the occult formula as to the mode in which Prana, or the 
 Life Principle, is related to the human body. Just as the vibra- 
 tions from the sun are transmitted by an intermediary agent — 
 the ether, — so does Occultism declare that Prana reaches the body
 
 PRANA. 
 
 53 
 
 through and by means of an astral or ethereal body — the Linga 
 Sharira. 
 
 But one must not fall into the error of confusing these vibrations 
 in the ether with Prana, or the Life Principle itself. That would 
 be to say that the vibrations set up in the Linga Sharira by 
 Prana constituted the essence of Prana itself, and would land one 
 in the purely materialistic theory of the mechanical origin of all 
 life. ! Prana roots in Absolute Motion — in the force or will-aspect 
 of the Causeless Cause. The Sun is the active agent in its stor- 
 ing, and the " ether" or some intermediary substance in its trans- 
 mission to the earth, but the Life Essence itself is something 
 quite apart from the mechanical vibrations which transmit it, or 
 exhibit its presence 
 
 It is but the effects of Prana acting in the atoms of astral or 
 ethereal matter that science is vainly striving to materialize in its 
 hypothesis of the ether. In its real essence or nature, Prana is, 
 of course, undiscoverable; for that which Occultists classify as 
 Prana is but the phenomenal manifestation of the universal Life 
 Principle acting upon the plane of molecular substance. This 
 universal Life Principle may be said to be one of three hypostases 
 of the Absolute ; which hypostases appear to our perception as 
 Motion, Substance, and Consciousness. Into one or other of 
 these infinite aspects of the Absolute, or Causeless Cause, every 
 finite phenomenon finally resolves itself. They are the Absolute 
 as this is reflected in Time and Space. They are, as we have 
 
 seen, never dissociated under manifested conditions the onlv 
 
 ones which finite minds are capable of comprehending; can not 
 
 even be thought of separately. Consciousness, often spoken of 
 as Spirit, is at the base of all ideation, perception, and sensation. 
 Substance furnishes the material substratum for all form, and is 
 the medium in which Motion (will or force) is clothed, as well as the 
 vehicle for the manifestation of Consciousness. Motion divested 
 of all other attributes represents the Universal Life Principle in 
 the Universe— is Life, in its very essence, it would seem; for if 
 motion ceases upon any plane, so-called death upon that plane 
 occurs at once, and the entity which was clothed in the substance 
 in which motion has thus ceased must retreat or follow the life
 
 54 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 vibration to other and inner planes. If we look upon the human 
 monad as a ray from the Absolute, and as therefore containing 
 potentially the three aspects or hypostases of this, then its con- 
 scious aspect may be thought of, or distinguished, as Atma; its 
 Substance aspect as Buddhi, or the Akasa, or " mulaprakriti," of 
 Eastern philosophy; and its active or life aspect as Jiva. Indeed, 
 this seems to be the sense in which these two Sanscrit words, 
 "Jiva" and "Atma," are used in much theosophic literature. 
 It is only when Jiva, or the manifested aspect of Absolute Life 
 or motion, reaches the molecular plane of the Universe that it 
 is termed Prana, and is then classed as the third human Principle. 
 It is evident that it is no more a Principle in man than it is in 
 the rock, the vegetable, the animal, or in any form composed 
 of molecules. It is simply the aspect of Jiva, the universal life 
 Principle, upon this, the molecular plane of the universe. Life is 
 everywhere; in every conceivable point in space it is potentially, 
 if not actually, present. Being the motion or will-aspect of the 
 unknowable Causeless Cause, it must pervade every possible 
 region in all the inconceivable abysses of space. Therefore, when 
 Prana, that aspect of the universal life Principle acting in molecu- 
 lar substance, passes from form to form of such matter, it simply 
 abandons one, at the so-called I' death" of this, to associate itself 
 with another; assuming during the brief interval (if, indeed, there 
 really be an interval) its jivic or universal life-aspect again. For 
 Prana of itself is unable to construct a molecular form, or even to 
 maintain or preserve one beyond the cycle of the entity which has 
 synthesized it and so made a molecular form possible. Just as 
 we have seen in our study of the Linga Sharira that the human 
 monad is unable to create (synthesize) for itself a form, but that 
 conscious entities have to do this for it, so also this Pranic aspect 
 of the universal life Principle is guided in its workings in lower 
 forms by entities who synthesize or construct such lower " lives" into 
 forms, and control and direct the forces of Prana so long as this asso- 
 ciation continues. Thus, Prana, from another point of view, may be 
 described as the force of the "fiery lives" — the first and "fiery" differ- 
 entiations of the homogeneous substance of planes above the molec- 
 ular, and even the atomic — which, synthesized ancT coordinated in
 
 PR ANA. 55 
 
 a manner to be described, builds into the form of cells the lower 
 Pranic molecular " lives." These cells, again, are synthesized into 
 an appropriate form by the entity thus swinging into the objective 
 arc of its life cycle, and Jiva now becomes Prana, because its energy 
 is directed to and acts within the molecular plane of substance. 
 But the action of the " fiery lives," thus sweeping downwards, or 
 (to coin a term) molecular-wards, would be chaotic, as we have 
 seen, and quite unintelligent as regards this plane, were not this 
 action directed to the production of a particular form by the molds 
 or models cut and shaped in astral matter (which matter we have 
 also seen when dealing with the Linga Sharira to have the quality 
 of responding instantaneously to thought) by the action of idea- 
 tion. The endeavor was made, in the chapter referred to, to point 
 out the source of and the various modifying influences acting upon 
 the Linga Sharira, or the model for the human form. This guid- 
 ing influence thus exerted upon the action of the "fiery lives" again 
 illustrates how complex is the origin of man's form even, and how 
 all his Principles act and react upon and within each other in com- 
 pleting his many-sided nature. The withdrawing of the Higher 
 Ego does not release the synthesis of Prana necessary to the main- 
 tenance of the human form; it only leaves man an intellectual ani- 
 mal; but the withdrawal of the "Animal Soul" of the older classi- 
 fications, or of that (human) elemental which synthesizes the action 
 of Prana in the human form, exactly as lower elementals do in the 
 animal and vegetable kingdoms, means the surrender of the human 
 form to the uncontrolled action of the lower lives, who soon tear 
 and rend it asunder. Then Prana as a human Principle disappears, 
 which is to say that the coordinated action of the "fiery lives" dis- 
 appears. Prana does not disappear; its activity is now greater 
 than before; but, being no longer synthesized and coordinated, 
 causes the so-called death and disintegration of the body. It is 
 thus evident that, as thought has the power to cause substance to 
 take form, so have all centers of consciousness, from atom-soul to 
 god, the power to receive from, or to assimilate out of, the unknow- 
 able Fount of Life enough of Jiva or Prana, as the case may be, 
 to bestow vitality — using Western and highly inaccurate phraseol- 
 ogy — upon, or, according to Eastern philosophy, to synthesize it
 
 56 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 vj in, their respective bodies, and that when they abandon these mate- 
 rial forms they withdraw this synthesizing influence or power. 
 But such abandoned forms have still within them the Prana or Life 
 Principle appropriate to a lower plane of consciousness. 
 
 This power to thus assimilate, or, as Mr. Judge* puts it, to 
 *' secrete," Prana out of the great ocean of Jiva, which every con- 
 scious entity from atom to god possesses, is one derived, no doubt, 
 from the very Absolute itself; results, indeed, because life (or 
 motion) substance and consciousness are always associated — are 
 but aspects of the one indivisible, omnipresent Absolute. Life 
 and force, or motion, are indissolubly associated; and when the 
 force of modern science becomes "latent" it only means that the 
 eternal motion has changed its rate of vibration — has passed into 
 a lower plane of substance as well as of consciousness. Life is 
 thus seen to be one, indestructible and continuous, and death but 
 a change in the conditions of its manifestation. The third human 
 principle is shown to be a universal one; and is called Prana 
 merely to distinguish one field of the operation of this universal 
 Principle. 
 
 Let us now look for a moment at the question of Life from its 
 purely physical aspect. Materialists have in vain sought for its 
 mysterious origin in the " matter" which constitutes their god. 
 For many years spontaneous generation, or abiogenesis, as it is 
 scientifically termed, was universally believed in, and was an 
 immense support to the materialistic hypothesis. If it were, 
 indeed, possible for blindly working forces to push inorganic or 
 lifeless matter up out of the mineral into the vegetable and animal 
 kingdoms, then the origin of life and consciousness might, with 
 some show of reason, be attributed to certain properties of mat- 
 ter — which is the materialistic claim. But later and still more 
 "scientific" researches, by Pasteur and others, have completely 
 disproven the spontaneous-generation theory, so that one of the 
 most important of the strongholds of materialism has been demol- 
 ished to its very foundations. Science has now to loo.< beyond 
 the mere properties of matter if it would find even a working 
 
 *Ocean of Theosophy.
 
 PRANA. 57 
 
 hypothesis to explain the origin of life. And this, indeed, it is 
 beginning to do. Many of its greatest exponents, including 
 such devoted adherents as Huxley and Haeckel, admit the impos- 
 sibility of abiogenesis at present, but claim that in distant periods 
 of the world's evolution there was a time when the magnetic, 
 electric, temperature, and other conditions prevailing upon the 
 earth were such that that which has since become impossible 
 was possible then; that then matter did respond to force, and 
 the organic appear out of the inorganic — using these terms, of 
 course, in the older scientific sense. Such scientists are very 
 nearly in accord with the theosophic theory of evolution. For 
 Theosophy teaches that the door for monadic ingress was closed 
 at the middle of this Round; which, put in scientific terms, 
 means that at that period spontaneous generation ceased, be- 
 cause of the earth having reached its lowest condition of mate- 
 riality — one so low, indeed, that spirit or thought is unable to 
 act upon it directly, but must approach it through the medium 
 of the finer, more plastic astral matter, of the preceding Round 
 or World Period. But as to the nature of the force causing their 
 so-called spontaneous generation, these thinkers are as far from 
 the theosophic conception as are the poles asunder. For with 
 them the appearance of form is, after all, but blind force taking the 
 direction of the least resistance; while for Theosophists astral forms 
 followed by molecular ones is the action of force representing the 
 will of conscious thinking entities, which entities are the real cre- 
 ators of all form. Blind force taking the direction of either the 
 least or greatest resistance never has produced nor never can pro- 
 duce form. So deeply philosophical is the theosophic concep- 
 tion of the origin of life that it is recognized that even the Spirit- 
 ual Monad, after its differentiation within the Absolute and its 
 start downward through its cycle of manifested existence, is still 
 unable, as we have seen, to construct for itself a form, but needs 
 the assistance of thinking entities, farther differentiated and so 
 relatively lower than itself, to accomplish this. Theosophists, 
 indeed, recognize that there was a time when spontaneous gener- 
 ation (but not that of the scientists) was a universal fact and factor 
 throughout nature. This period is represented by the Third Round, 
 
 T^
 
 58 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 when the earth was composed of the astral matter previously 
 described, and the first half of this, or the Fourth Round. 
 
 The type of all life upon the earth is the cell, and it is from cells 
 that all the wilderness of forms which we see in nature about us 
 are built up. The earth itself represents, as do all earths and suns, 
 but an immense cell made up of an infinite number of lesser cells, 
 and stars and planets, even in their fcrm, conform to the cellular 
 or spherical model. 
 
 Abiogenesis, or the spontaneous generation of the scientists, 
 having been disproved, and Occultism declaring that the door for 
 monadic ingress closed at the middle of the Fourth Round, it 
 remains, then, to examine the nature of the real physical basis of 
 life, or the means by which physical forms are transmitted from 
 parent to offspring. The theory most in accord with the occult 
 teaching, and one, indeed, which explains purely physical hered- 
 ity correctly, is that of Weissmann. He declares that there is one 
 cell, formed by the union of the male and female plasm, from 
 divisions and modifications of which the entire human form is built 
 up. That is to say, that every cell in the human body has a 
 minute portion of this original cell, and that by means of the pres- 
 ence of the matter of this primordial cell in every cell of the body 
 physical heredity is carried forward. These primordial cells repre- 
 sent the completed type of life on their plane, for they are seven- 
 fold in their constitution They have a germinal spot, a nucleolus, 
 a nucleus, a membrane limiting the nucleus, a cell plasm, and an 
 inner and outer membrane of the cell proper. Such perfect cells, 
 then, are capable of being used, through various modifications of 
 them, in order to build up the multiform tissues of the body; and 
 it is the various subdivisions of these germinal cells with which 
 the hierarchies of elementals clothe themselves in building up 
 the human form. Thus, each living being, of whatever degree, now 
 clothed in flesh has within it certain cells which have never died 
 since the time that the primordial " matter" of this earth yielded to 
 the primordial impress of "spirit," or the modifying associations of 
 spiritual entities seeking re-embodiment. Such cells are, as Weiss- 
 mann points out, relatively eternal; and are handed down from par- 
 ent to offspring, and with them comes all the modifying influences
 
 TRANA. 59 
 
 of past associations as to form and physical functions. There is 
 little if any doubt but that any entity now upon the earth has 
 been here many, many times before, clothed in a similar material 
 form to that which it now occupies, and which it only very slowly 
 modifies under the stress of its necessity for developing new ave- 
 nues for consciousness. The real entity, however, is concealed, 
 and its presence only revealed by the material form it occupies, 
 and which is but the outward expression of such an inner presence. 
 
 The physical basis of life, then, is these non-dying cells, handed 
 down from parent to offspring, and bringing with them the impress 
 of the entire physical characteristics of both parents, which meet 
 and blend in the new form so provided. The spiritual plasm or 
 force is that synthesized by the reincarnating entity, whose func- - 
 tion it is, as we have seen, to control the action of Prana in the 
 lower hierarchial "lives," so that this form can be constructed and 
 maintained. 
 
 The maintenance of the integrity of the physical form is effected 
 by a constant synthesizing effort upon the part of the inner entity. * 
 It is the expression of its will to live; the sum of its desires for 
 sensuous existence. The force, which is but a phase of will-power, 
 is exerted subconsciously in all instances. Thought can and does 
 modify this force; but few among mortals know how to direct it. 
 Sickness is thus due to failure on the part of the entity to control 
 or synthesize the action of Prana in its organism. The natural 
 action of the "fiery lives" is always at war with this synthesizing . 
 effort, and unless the man has cultivated his will strongly in this 
 direction very little suffices to turn the balance. When one has 
 cultivated or strengthened his will to live in past lives, in this one 
 he will be said to be full of "vitality," — in other words, Prana will - 
 be under his control, — while the ordinary man will be threatened 
 by foes, both within and without. Any violation of the laws of 
 nature, any infection or injury — the thousand pitfalls which sur- 
 round man's footsteps — disturbs the balance of Prana, and shortens 
 his life. So universally is life shortened by our ignorance and will- 
 fulness that its span, which, we are taught, ought to cover some 
 four hundred years, does not average a tenth of this period. 
 
 One of the chief foes to the proper acton of Prana is to be
 
 60 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 found in the parasites, or "microbes," which have their normal 
 habitation in and upon man's tissues, as they also have in and 
 upon those of every entity, however minute. These are the act- 
 ive agents in the final disintegration of the body when death 
 occurs — as was stated in the chapter upon the body. But these 
 microbes, as we have also seen, must not be confused with the 
 «' lives" from which the human body is constructed. The microbes <T 
 of science are true parasites, and are never built into the tissues 
 of the body as constructive material. The microbes spoken of in 
 the " Secret Doctrine" are the minute "lives" of which the tissues 
 of the body are built up, and are classified in the " Secret Doctrine" 
 as belonging to " the first and lowest subdivision — that of material 
 Prana, or Life." When we consider that there are well-known 
 and well-studied bacteria which it requires a microscope with a 
 magnifying power of several hundred of diameters to disclose, the 
 excessive minuteness of these molecularly clad lives can begin to 
 be appreciated. Every entity with a form independently con- 
 structed has these its natural enemies, and the human form is no 
 exception. All diseases which have been and are being traced to 
 germs — a large and constantly increasing class — are due to the 
 restraining action of the entity, working through the "fiery lives," 
 being inhibited. All diseases of any kind are due, as has been 
 pointed out, to the same cause; and all true remedies either act 
 as germicides upon the microbes, or as centers of modifying vibra- 
 tion in organs in which the action of Prana is so disturbed. The 
 selective action not only of remedies, but also of the tissues them- 
 selves in taking their proper nutriment out of a common and highly 
 heterogeneous stock of food, is due to an unison or chord between 
 the Pranic vibration of such remedy or food and the normal or 
 abnormal vibration, as the case may be, in the healthy or diseased 
 tissues, which they thus help in the one case to build up or in the 
 other to restore to the normal function. 
 
 The "fiery lives" through which the Pranic energy is transmitted 
 give of their own essence to the lower molecular lives, which they 
 thus build up by merging, as it were, into these lower lives for the 
 time being. The process would seem to be similar to that which 
 takes place when heat becomes latent, or a modification of vibra-
 
 PRANA. 
 
 6l 
 
 tion. Changes in the vibratory action of its molecules will cause 
 the vapor of water, for instance, to pass by successive steps into 
 the liquid and then into the solid state. So the Pranic vibrations 
 of the "fiery lives," or of those entities constituting the ultimate 
 division of matter within the Cosmos, pass by a similar modifi- 
 cation of vibration into these molecular lives or states. But this 
 action of the "fiery lives" is also subject to the universal law of 
 -A cycles, and it is this cycHc action which sets a limit to life upon 
 the molecular plane, despite the will of the Ego to live. Thus the 
 body of even an Adept would yield to this law of periodicity when 
 the downward sweep of the "fiery lives" came to its normal close. 
 This fact alone negatives such theories of prolonged life as are set 
 forth,, for example, in Bulwer Lytton's " Zanoni." While the nor- 
 mal length of life is stated to be very much longer than that of 
 the ordinary individual, still, there is a limit to continuance in a 
 physical body, and this limit is determined by the action of Prana 
 itself, as manifested in these "fiery lives." 
 
 Without, then, attempting to solve the ultimate origin or nature 
 of life, which loses itself in the abysses of the Unknowable, we 
 can, in a mechanical sort of way, trace the action and understand 
 the nature of Prana in its working in our bodies, as well as in 
 nature about us. Never losing sight of the fact that motion - 
 (force), substance, and consciousness are always associated upon 
 this plane of manifestation, we can peceive that the coming into 
 being of the "fiery lives" is the result — in one aspect, and that 
 grossly materialistic — of a change in the rate of vibration in inner, 
 or to us subjective, or spiritual spheres. It is the descent of 
 " spirit" into " matter," for by this change of vibration that aspect 
 of the Absolute which appears to us as matter becomes ascendant. 
 Thus, the "fiery lives" will represent the first ripple upon the 
 ocean of manifestation, from our point of view. They may seem 
 as gross as the granite rock to beings higher than we. And, 
 mechanically again, they represent the higher, spiritual vibrations 
 becoming latent, or potential only, upon this almost homogeneous 
 plane. But the vibrations of these "fiery lives," thus limited and 
 bound by differentiation are almost of infinite rapidity, compared 
 with those which they assume when they again descend into the
 
 62 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 still lower material latency of the "lives" and "matter" out of 
 which our bodies are constructed. 
 
 The universe is thus seen to be one vast laboratory of life, 
 wherein this mysterious essence is working in infinite variations, 
 through infinitely different, yet harmonious, modes of manifesta- 
 tion. We are ourselves but as drops in this infinite ocean of 
 existence; our very bodies composed of innumerable lower lives, 
 in the one universe of Being. As we act in relation to these 
 lower lives, so will they react upon us in our next association with 
 them, for there is but small doubt that we are associated for almost 
 an infinite length of time with the same Pranic lives, which, again 
 and again, build bodies similar to those in which we now find our- 
 selves. Therefore, the lesson to be learned from the study of so 
 abstract a Principle as Prana even, is the necessity for an upright 
 life, for brotherliness towards each other; a life of purity, of moral- 
 ity, aud of altruism.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 FOURTH PRINCIPLE — KAMA, OR DESIRE. 
 
 'H^'HE state of consciousness which constitutes the fourth human 
 ^-^ Principle, according to the theosophical classification, is a 
 most difficult one to understand. It will be easier to do so if we 
 remember that consciousness is, at its base, Unity, and that all 
 of the human Principles are but aspects, or hypostases, of this 
 basic, or monadic, Unity. When the centers of consciousness 
 differentiate within the Absolute, and, thus proceeding directly 
 out of the Unknowable, start on their cycle of evolution from 
 atom-soul to God, they arrive at a point in this Cycle of Necessity 
 where the homogeneous, monadic consciousness, through material 
 limitations following one upon another in a continuous descent 
 into deeper and deeper phases of materiality, becomes embodied 
 desire. It must be understood that all consciousness, in manifes- 
 tation, is embodied — that is to say, it must not be inferred that, 
 except in the abysses of the unmanifested, there is any general 
 consciousness which may be classified as desire, and in which, as 
 a common source, the passions of entities in this state of conscious- 
 ness root. All thought-consciousness in the manifested universe 
 is contained in, or manifested by, thinking entities; similarly 
 rajasic, or desire, consciousness is likewise manifested and con- 
 tained in entities to whom this aspect or differentation of conscious- 
 ness is normal. It is when entities, which start as an atom and 
 complete their cycle of manifested existence as a god, have passed 
 through all the lower kingdoms, have added conscious state to 
 conscious state until they have arrived at a point where sensuous 
 consciousness rules in them, that they are said to be in the kamic 
 state — to be swayed and governed by Kama, the Principle, or 
 vehicle, of Desire. For Desire must be sharply distinguished 
 from Thought. Kama is desire — desire in all its infinitely varying 
 aspects, as Manas is thought or ideation in all its infinite states.
 
 64 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 The kamic state is that in which the desires, together with the 
 passions and emotions, govern the entity; one in which there is 
 no light thrown upon their activities by reason. In fact, there 
 is no reason in desire; and when a human soul yields itself to the 
 dominion of this Principle, reason is set aside, and the one so 
 dominated becomes but an irrational, unreasoning animal. 
 
 It must not be understood from the above that Kama, or Desire, 
 is always unreasonable and irrational in its nature; but, when 
 pure and uncolored by any higher Principle, it does represent 
 desire, and desire only. Yet desire, and especially compassion- 
 desire, may be and is one of the highest and holiest attributes of 
 Being. It is compassion-desire, arising within the bosom of the 
 Absolute itself, we are taught, which causes the manifestation of 
 the Universe; thus permitting, and indeed assisting, entities 
 # whose consciousness is benumbed and latent during the intermina- 
 ble periods of pralaya to again take up their evolutionary progress 
 towards self-consciousness and freedom from limitation. Yet 
 this deeper desire is not usually spoken of as kamic. Just as the 
 Universal Life Principle is distinguished as Jiva, while that man- 
 ifestation of it which has its activity upon the molecular or sen- 
 suous plane of the Universe is known as Prana, so Cosmic desire, 
 and particularly when this passes into action, may be thought of 
 as Fohat, while that manifestation of it which has its field of act- 
 ivity upon the molecular plane of the Universe is more properly 
 known as Kama. Kama, then, as the fourth human Principle, 
 represents all the passions and emotions of man's nature. It has 
 its activities in anger, pride, lust, envy, greed, and a host of sim- 
 ilar modifications. It is a Principle, or state of consciousness, 
 which we share in common with the animals of the kingdom next 
 below us in the scale of evolutionary becoming. In that kingdom 
 we see its activities dominant, and almost uncolored by reason. 
 .It is true that animal desires are directed by instinct, and, there- 
 fore, are more unerring in tending to bring about certain neces- 
 sary evolutionary results than the desires of man, which are just 
 beginning to pass under the sway of reason. Instinct in the ani- 
 mal kingdom is the wisdom attained through the stored experi- 
 ence of the elemental soul of the animal in past embodiments, and
 
 FOURTH PRINCIPLE — KAMA; OR DESIRE. 65 
 
 corresponds accurately to intuition upon its higher plane of con - 
 scio usne ss in man, for intuition arises out of the wisdom likewise 
 resulting from stored experiences upon the mental plane of bein g. 
 Instinct is stored up and assimilated sensuous experiences; intui- 
 tion is stored up and assimilated mental experiences. From the 
 one, the animal draws unconsciously ; from the other, the man 
 receives light, but recognizes that it comes from the very highest 
 of the aspects of his being. For, to the elemental soul, destitute of 
 Manas, the monadic consciousness of Buddhi, or the buddhic con- 
 sciousness of its Monad, rather, assumes to it the same relation 
 that the Higher Ego does to the lower thinking Principle in man — 
 it stores the results of sensuous or conscious experiences in its 
 unconscious memory. Conscious memory pertains to the self- 
 conscious Principle, but none the less is there preserved a record, 
 equivalent to memory, of every conscious experience of the 
 Monad in all the kingdoms through which it passes. Such dif- 
 fused and general consciousness as that of the mineral kingdom 
 could only be preserved upon universal tablets such as Buddhi; 
 b ut in t he animals it is already being stored around a permanent 
 center, thus slowly causing that differentiation and individualization 
 which renders possible the assimilation of Manas. Such*storing 
 about or upon a permanent Buddhic center is the source of all 
 instinct, as a similar storing about a Manasic center is that of all 
 intuition. 
 
 Kama, then, must be studied in the animal kingdom, in order 
 to know what this Principle is in its purity. In man it is impossi- 
 ble, or next to impossible, to so study it, for here Kama is always 
 rationalized by the presence of the thinking Principle. 
 
 Kama as a human Principle necessitates and implies the pres- 
 ence of entities in the kamic stage of consciousness among those 
 hierarchies which make up man's body. For it cannot be too 
 sharply borne in mind that Kama and Manas* have nothing in 
 common as Principles except the power of each to color, change, 
 and react upon the other. They are as distinct as are silver and 
 gold, which may, nevertheless, be welded into one coherent mass. 
 
 * " Kam 1" and " Manas" may be read " Desire" and " Thought," if this aids the student 
 to a clearer comprehension.
 
 66 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 Therefore, when we see in the animal kingdom an almost infinite 
 number of entities, ruled by the kamic or Desire Principle, yet 
 wholly destitute of the true Manas, or the thinking, reasoning 
 Principle, we must recognize the fact that as Kama and Manas 
 have nothing in common except the Absolute Consciousness in 
 which both have their origin, there is also in man a kamic entity, 
 synthesizing, perhaps, hosts of lower kamic entities into that won- 
 derful, complex system of sense-organs which relate him to his 
 material environment For, as has been pointed out, the Higher 
 Ego of man may abandon the body and yet this retain its full 
 vigor and vitality. But the withdrawing of this synthesizing, 
 kamic elemental means the inevitable death of man's body, as it 
 does that, also, of all animals. In a Universe composed of an infi- 
 nite number of entities at equally infinitely varying stages of their 
 evolutionary becoming, we must recognize centers of conscious- 
 ness, or entities, preparing to pass upward into manhood, just as 
 man himself is preparing to pass upward into godhood ; so that the 
 recognition of a kamic elemental as the Chief and ruler of the 
 lower Quaternary in man 'is one warranted by, and even the inev- 
 itable outcome of, a comparison of the body and purely animal 
 functions of man with those of the animals. Except in the all- 
 important difference that man has a Manasic, or Thinking, Prin- 
 ciple, he in no wise differs from his dumb brethren in the kingdom 
 just below him. The same sense-organs which he uses to relate 
 himself to nature they use ; and, in many instances, such sense- 
 organs in the animals are far more acutely developed than are the 
 corresponding ones in man. Indeed, as has been often said, with- 
 out his reasoning power man would be but the most helpless of 
 animals. His body is composed of the same molecular constitu- 
 ents as those of the animals The very gray matter of his brain — 
 the materialistic god — finds its counterpart in similar matter in 
 the brains of animals, far beneath him in mental development. He 
 is born as they are; he lives upon the same nutriment that they 
 do; he dies, and his body decays in a precisely similar manner. 
 No other hypothesis except this which recognizes that man is an 
 animal, plus a living soul within his animal body, can satisfy the 
 almost innumerable phenomena which bind him so completely and
 
 FOURTH PRINCIPLE — KAMA, OR DESIRE. 67 
 
 closely to the animal forms beneath him. If there are so many 
 conscious phenomena in man which have their plain equivalents 
 and counterparts among the animals, there is small wonder that 
 science, following the ex parte, inductive method of Aristotle, has 
 come to the conclusion that the whole of man's conscious being is 
 but the evolutionary perfection of these same conscious phenom- 
 ena exhibited in lower evolutionary stages. That this opinion, 
 held by scientists, is erroneous — very erroneous — can be easily 
 shown. But such proof falls without the purview of the present 
 subject. The fact that there are phenomena in which animals 
 exhibit a consciousness identical with that possessed by man, and 
 which often exceeds his in acuteness of perception, is that with 
 which we have at present to deal. For scientists may, indeed, 
 justly claim that, if man has a soul, then the animals also have 
 souls, at a lower grade of evolutionary development; which asser- 
 tion is true, and in strict accord with the theosophic conception of 
 evolutionary processes. Animals have kamic, elemental souls; 
 man also has a kamic, elemental soul, which is the chief Rector of 
 that counterpart of the earth — his body. In the consciousness of 
 this human elemental resides Kama. It knows no other conscious- 
 ness, until Manas, the thinking soul, incarnates, and thus emanates 
 upon it the light of reason, together with the possibilities of both 
 the memory of past sensuous delights and the anticipation of those 
 yet to come. Even thus illumined, this kamic elemental is still 
 the same reasonless being it was before, but with its power for 
 enjoying sensuous delights a thousand-Told increased, and its desire 
 for such enjoyment a thousand times intensified. 
 
 As to the manner in which the thinking soul welds itself to 
 and becomes tainted with Kama, thus constituting the Kama- 
 Manasic, or brain mind, which rules in man to-day — that will be 
 the subject for our consideration when we come to the study of 
 the Manasic, or thinking Principle, and for the present we pass 
 it by. 
 
 It is the intense desires of this kamic synthesizer of the human 
 body which largely modifies the formation of the human Linga 
 Sharira, when this is projected by the subconscious ideation of 
 the incarnating Ego. It is again the desire to live raging in this
 
 6S SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 entity, as well as desires in the hosts of lower entities whose 
 kamic consciousness it also synthesizes, which modifies the action 
 of the pranic lives, at work in the construction of the human 
 frame; while it itself is at the same time vivified and ensouled, as 
 it were, by the action of Prana in bestowing life upon the form 
 with which it and they are thus associated. It is the synthesizing 
 action of this kamic elemental, no doubt, which causes the forma- 
 tion of the Kama Rupa upon the death of the body. The long 
 association during life with the human form causes it, after death, 
 to again surround itself with a low form of astral matter, which 
 assumes the shape of its late physical body. And after the human 
 soul has withdrawn from the body at death, it still remains associ- 
 ated with, and its progress towards Devachan is hindered and, 
 indeed, rendered impossible for the time being by, the clamors 
 and demands arising in this kamic elemental. For this, as well as 
 many, if not all elemental souls in animals, has a limited period 
 of normal, subjective existence after the death of its body. 
 There is no doubt that animals dream, and this ability to maintain, 
 or experience, a dreaming consciousness proves that they, also, 
 have the power to maintain a subjective existence, for a longer or 
 shorter period, quite independently of their physical organisms. 
 And in the case of one in whom the kamic desires have been 
 dominant in its association with Manas, then this kamic elemental 
 has become so intellectualized by this perversion of the true func- 
 tion of Manas that this capacity for subjective existence is very 
 greatly prolonged; and, so long as this entity can set up vibra- 
 tions upon its own plane of desire, so long will the true Ego be 
 unable to enter the peace and tranquillity of the truly subjective 
 state of Devachan. 
 
 It is most fortunate, perhaps, for the true Ego, or human soul, 
 that the natural life cycle of this kamic elemental is shorter than 
 is its own. Thus, when one lives out one's normal life, even when 
 this is shortened by ignorance of nature's laws by at least three 
 parts of the time it ought occupy, still old age, when this occurs at 
 only seventy or eighty years, finds the kamic elemental with its 
 passionate life cycle already exhausted, and ready and eager to 
 pass into the latency of its subjective existence. This shorter
 
 FOURTH PRINCIPLE — KAMA, OR DESIRE. 69 
 
 objective cycle of the kamic elemental seems to be the true rea- 
 son for the natural disappearance of desires, appetites, and passions, 
 as old age approaches. But the case is far different when acci- 
 dent or suicide tears the human soul, together with its kamic asso- 
 ciate, out of the body while the latter is in the very height of its 
 sensuous desires. In this event it will clothe itself v/ith a strong 
 and powerful Kama Rupa; and it will be totally impossible for the 
 soul of such an one to even approach the devachanic portals, for 
 the clamors of Kama, the passionate vibrations of desire, will drag 
 the ego earthward, whether it will or no. Such a soul, thus 
 caught within the grasp of desire, and with its own will-power 
 entirely in abeyance because it has never evolved the power of 
 self-consciousness upon these inner planes of Being, will find itself 
 in a most pitiable and deplorable condition; one of the most acute 
 suffering; one which, in normal states of consciousness, is only 
 comparable to that known as "nightmare." Just as the one who 
 is the subject of this terrible oppression knows himself the victim 
 of unreal terrors and vainly struggles to awaken, so will the soul 
 of the suicide, realizing that he is dead, and yet, strange to say, 
 that he is not dead, struggle with all the agony of his terror to 
 return to the life which he has abandoned through his own act. 
 A similar state of consciousness will also attend upon accidental 
 deaths, or those occurring in war. For if the person who is killed 
 either in war or accidentally is of a low moral character, then his 
 condition is very similar to that of the suicide. He will likewise 
 clothe himself with a strong Kama Rupa, and will be similarly 
 tempted to haunt all possible sources which afford him avenues 
 whereby to return to a vicarious sensuous existence. If, however, 
 the person who dies an accidental death is of even average mor- 
 ality and goodness, then the teaching is that he will fall into a 
 kind of a dreaming continuation of his life on earth, which will 
 last until the normal period for the conclusion of that life is reached, 
 after which he will pass peacefully into Devachan. For the sui- 
 cide, also, Devachan becomes possible at the close of that which 
 would have been his own normal life cycle. But the suicide has 
 deliberately, of his own will, interfered with his own karma. He 
 has cowardly abandoned life because the circumstances surround-
 
 yo SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 ing it, and which were entirely of his own creating, have seemed 
 to contain more of evil than he was able to bear. Therefore, 
 between the suicide and the victim of accidental death there is 
 a wide moral chasm. The suicide must experience greater pun- 
 ishment because of his deliberate act; the accidentally slain, the 
 lesser, because he has not violently and by his own free will inter- 
 fered with his existence upon earth. Karmic justice thus demands 
 only the inevitable effects following upon each cause; and if he 
 who dies by accidental death suffers more than he would have 
 done had he lived out his life cycle, it is because of his moral 
 unworth, and not because of the accidental separation from his 
 body. The motive which causes the suicide, in full possession of 
 all his faculties, to deliberately end that which he supposes to be 
 his existence upon earth, must always weigh heavily in the kar- 
 mic balances; while he who perishes accidentally is only entitled 
 to, and only receives, the punishment brought about by his moral 
 unworth, and which is thus untowardly precipitated upon him. 
 
 It will at once be apparent that in these truly named " earth- 
 bound" souls is to be found the source of most of so called "spirit- 
 ual phenomena." Especially will the suicide and the depraved 
 victim of accident haunt mediumistic circles, for such circles pro- 
 vide them with willing victims for the vicarious gratification of 
 their sensous desires; while such victims, in submitting to their 
 obsession, fancy they are yielding to " angel guides" from some 
 celestial sphere. And even after the soul has passed into Deva- 
 chan and has abandoned the Kama Rupa, which now remains an 
 astral corpse, to slowly dissipate upon the astral plane, such an 
 astral shell may still be revivified by the magnetic force, uncon- 
 sciously bestowed through the medium or the sitters, into a false 
 imitation of the former personality. It has been pointed out that 
 through its long association with the body, the Kama Rupa has 
 formed numerous habits, both psychic and of a low mental order; 
 and these, when it is thus temporarily revivified, it tends to repeat 
 automatically, without the slightest aid from that higher mind 
 which originated consciously these habits which the Kama Rupa 
 repeats automatically and unconsciously. Such a shell may also 
 be made a kind of psychic mirror, which, equally automatically,
 
 FOURTH PRINCIPLE — KAMA, OR DESIRE. 7 I 
 
 reflects the thought-images of those present, and thus gives back 
 to the sitters facts which they already well know, but which seem 
 strange and miraculous when coming from the lips of an appar- 
 ently dead person. These reflected mental images are the source 
 of many of the boasted " tests" of spiritualistic circles. And the 
 automatic repeating of its own habits of thought, tricks of speech, 
 and so on, by a shell thus temporarily galvanized into a transient 
 but false existence, is the undoubted origin of the information 
 sometimes apparently given by spirits of good and pure people 
 who have passed away, and which information was not known to 
 the sitters present. In such cases the true ego is in Devachan, 
 and undisturbed by any of the mummery going on upon earth; 
 but its abandoned shell, if it happen to drift into the aura of such 
 a spiritualistic circle, may take on a false semblance of life, and 
 repeat, quite automatically, yet still accurately, enough of the 
 incidents of its past life to convince those present that the soul 
 of such a one has really returned to earth. The proof that it is 
 not the true ego lies in the fact that such communications always 
 refer to the past; they never give new facts of their supposed 
 spiritual habitation ; they never advance any philosophical explana- 
 tion of life; they add nothing to the sum of human knowledge; 
 they are but the faded echo of former earth experiences. When 
 spiritual communications take the form of philosophical discussion, 
 or the descriptions of " summerland," or similar things, the source 
 of such intelligence is again different, and will be explained when 
 we come to deal with a higher state of consciousness than the 
 kamic, which concerns us now. 
 
 All Kama Rupas have their local habitation in what is known 
 as Kama Loka, and which is but a duplicate of this earth in finer 
 astral matter — its Linga Sharira, in fact. And not only do human 
 Kama Rupas live, pass into latency, and fade away here, but also 
 the astral forms of the lower orders of life, and especially the 
 Kama Rupas of all members of the animal kingdom which have 
 reached a sufficiently intense kamic plane to clothe themselves 
 with such forms at death. Therefore, he who, by means of a very 
 low and dangerous kind of clairvoyance, forces his consciousness 
 upon this the lowest of all astral planes, will find himself in con-
 
 72 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 tact with not only Kama Rupas and shells of dead men, but also 
 with the counterparts of dead animals. And there is little doubt 
 that there have been cases where such kama-rupic forms of animals 
 have become sufficiently materialized to be visible to the non- 
 clairvoyant eye, just as the Linga Sharira, or even the Kama Rupa 
 of human beings, is also capable of clothing itself transiently with 
 molecular matter, and also of becoming temporary visible to the 
 ordinary vision. This low clairvoyance, which seems so desirable 
 to those who are curiosity-seekers rather than real students of the 
 philosophy of life, is the result of resorting to practises which for a 
 brief interval free the soul from its material vehicles. There are 
 many such ways. Crystal-gazing and other forms of self-hypno- 
 tism are examples. And unless one has become morally pure 
 when he separates his consciousness from his body, he will find 
 himself upon a plane appropriate to his unclean consciousness. 
 But if he be a pure and holy person, with altruistic desires — one 
 whose passions are all in abeyance — he need have no fear of find- 
 ing himself in Kama Loka when he abandons his material body 
 from any cause. If, however, as is the case with the majority of 
 mankind, passion dominates and desires rend him, he will surely 
 land himself in this most undesirable of all conscious states and 
 localities. He will be as nearly in "hell," perhaps, as is possible 
 for the human soul. He will have as his companions the sense- 
 less, passionate, ghoul-like inhabitants of this horrible realm; and 
 if he do not become himself, even while in the body, morally 
 depraved, or mentally unsound, he is setting up attractions and 
 creating causes which will certainly place him in this loka at 
 death, and render his stay under such terrible associations pro- 
 portionately long. For the declaration in the Bhagavad Gita, 
 that "those who worship the dead go to the dead," or, in other 
 words, that the attractions and beliefs which we cultivate during 
 life guide and determine our post-mortem states or the intervals 
 between two lives, is both true philosophically and warranted 
 under the law of Karma. Thus, one who has longed for inter- 
 course with the dead, who has accepted the gibberish poured out 
 by these senseless shells as the summitm bonum of all good that 
 could come into his life, will most assuredly be drawn into the
 
 FOURTH PRINCIPLE — KAMA, OR DESIRE. 73 
 
 kama-lokic region at death; and, just as he has set up during life 
 so many causes which bind him to this plane, his stay here will be 
 proportionately long. On the contrary, if one has lived a truly 
 spiritual life — meaning by spirituality the cultivation of one's 
 highest and noblest faculties and unselfish work for the elevation 
 of humanity and the study of the laws which obtain in spiritual 
 matter — Kama Loka will scarcely detain him a moment. He 
 will pass swiftly through this horrible, moral graveyard of putre- 
 fying astral corpses, and at once enter upon the peace and safety 
 of Devachan.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 LOWER MANAS. 
 
 <^N THE study of the human Principles progress is comparatively 
 (§Jr easy so long as we have to deal with the lower quaternary alone. 
 For the four Principles — the Body, the Linga Sharira, Prana, and 
 Kama — are all upon planes either material or sufficiently near the 
 material to be readily analyzed, classified and understood. But 
 when the plane of mentality is reached one of the hardest prob- 
 lems in human consciousness presents itself. For there are in 
 every human breast two forces struggling for mastery — the one 
 trying to drag an indefinable something downward, and to iden- 
 tify this something with itself as the u I am myself"; the other as 
 strenuously endeavoring to elevate this same indefinable center of 
 consciousness, and merge it with itself as an "I am myself" upon 
 an infinitely higher plane. It is as though the human soul stood 
 entirely apart from both of these, the lower being our animal 
 nature, and the higher the voice of the divine Inner Ego, or our 
 conscience, as it is ordinarily termed. And yet it is extremely 
 difficult to disentangle the soul from its association with the lower 
 nature upon the one hand, or from the voice of conscience upon 
 the other. Therefore it is that we have just spoken of it as an 
 indefinable something which yielded now to the one and again 
 yearned toward the other. This thinking Principle in its dual 
 aspect is recognized by theosophic philosophy as one of the human 
 Principles in its septenary classification. We have principally to 
 deal with the lower of its aspects in this chapter, and yet this 
 cannot intelligently be done without a brief examination, at least, 
 of certain phases of the higher. 
 
 Man's Higher Ego, so the Wisdom-Religion teaches, is a spir- 
 itual entity, which has attained in former world-periods an almost 
 infinite amount of wisdom upon other worlds of the Kosmos, or, 
 at least, under other material conditions. It now descends to 
 this earth for the double purpose of imparting its own divine
 
 LOWER MANAS. 75 
 
 essence and nature to lower entities struggling in the bonds of 
 matter here, and that itself may learn, if but vicariously, by incar- 
 nating in these human-animal bodies, additional wisdom through 
 observing and being associated under the law of cause and effect 
 with the play of passions raging upon this molecular plane of the 
 Universe. To understand, then, the nature of the aspect with 
 which we are dealing— Lower Manas — it is necessary to bear in 
 mind what man would be without the incarnation of his Higher 
 Ego, and what the effect of that incarnation has upon the animal 
 nature. Without a Higher Ego, man would be only a talking 
 animal; if, indeed, capable of this. As an animal, he is a bundle 
 of instincts, passions, appetites, and desires, in no way different 
 from the animals of the kingdom beneath him except in the longer 
 period, and hence greater perfection, of the evolutionary processes 
 he has experienced. The feeble intelligence observed in the 
 lower animal is carried to a higher degree in him as an animal, 
 but it is the same intelligence in kind. There is no exhibition of 
 emotion, instinct, nor even of reason, in man which does not find 
 its analogue or counterpart in the lower animals. Certain of these, 
 as reason for instance, are only faintly seen; but others, as in 
 many of the instincts and senses, are even more sharply developed 
 than in man. The Higher Ego, then, descends to earth and 
 incarnates or associates itself with the most perfect animal upon 
 that earth, but which was before that incarnation but a perfected 
 animal. By this association or incarnation is bestowed a portion 
 of the essence of the Higher Ego upon or in this animal's brain. 
 This, which before was reasonless, blazes up under the flame of the 
 presence of the reasoning Higher Ego into a false semblance of a 
 truly rational center of consciousness. The process seems to be 
 almost entirely analogous to that which occurs when magnetism 
 is bestowed upon non-magnetic iron through contact with a true 
 magnet. The magnet has lost none of its own magnetism, and yet 
 there appears to have emanated from it a portion of itself. Sim- 
 ilarly, the Higher Ego, without sacrificing any of its own divine 
 nature, bestows a portion of its own reasoning and thinking power 
 upon the human-animal with which it is thus associated. There 
 springs up, then, because of this emanation, an illusory entity
 
 76 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 having the feeling of "I am myself," entirely because of its bor- 
 rowed glory from the Higher Ego. It is the result of the tempor- 
 ary fusing of this emanation of Manas with the human elemental 
 synthesizing the human form. Without this emanation, the ele- 
 mental would have no feeling of " I am I"; yet, as a center of 
 desires, instincts, and passions, it is so powerful as to almost com- 
 pletely merge this ray of Manas into its own passionate nature, 
 and to cause it to lose all memory of, or relation to, its divine 
 source, and to identify itself almost wholly with its "body," and 
 the desires and sensuous delights apparently connected with that 
 body entirely, and which to it seem the sum of existence. This 
 elemental, then, blazes up into a false semblance of a thinking, 
 reasoning entity during the time of this association. But this can 
 only be temporary, for the elemental itself has not evolved to the 
 plane where this feeling is normal and permanent by many eons 
 of years. Withdraw the emanation or ray of Manas, and its bor- 
 rowed glory soon fades. It splutters and flickers for a few brief 
 years in Kama Loka, and then enters upon its cycle of latency 
 until again fanned into a flame by the reincarnating Higher Ego 
 descending to earth in another body, which this same elemental, 
 by virtue of past karmic association, must again synthesize — these 
 successive incarnations constituting its manvantarasand pralayas.* 
 This blazing up of an illusive " I am myself," which is not the 
 human elemental alone, nor yet Lower Manas, is the chief mys- 
 tery of human existence. For here the process of incarnation 
 takes place. Here is the mysterious weld joining body to soul. 
 For the ray from Manas — the emanation of its own essence — 
 which causes the flaming up of the animal faculties in man, is capa- 
 ble of being withdrawn into the essence of the Higher Manas; and, 
 indeed, its normal destiny is to be so withdrawn after each incar- 
 nation, carrying thence the fruitage or results of its experiences 
 while in the body. It has become — this ray, or Lower Manas — 
 an almost independent entity during its long association with the 
 body. It has identified itself so closely with the desires and inter- 
 
 *Manvant;iras and Pralayas — alternating periods of activity and repose. Such alternating 
 cycles obtain in manifestation absolutely without exxeption ; and, being universal (although 
 varying infinitely in their duration), must be regarded as an aspect of the Absoluts, or an 
 Absolute law.
 
 LOWER MANAS. 77 
 
 ests of that body, it has become so colored by its association with 
 and experiencing of the purely animal desires, so changed from 
 its state of original purity, that it, as we have seen, no longer rec- 
 ognizes its source. And if it identify itself too entirely with that 
 animal nature, then is it incapable of being withdrawn by its par- 
 ent, or of returning to its source. In this case, righting with the 
 force of its lower will, it deliberately chooses to remain associated 
 with the animal entity synthesizing its body; believing itself to be 
 that entity through the loss of its discriminating power because 
 of this association. Then, upon the death of the body, it becomes 
 truly a "lost soul." 
 
 The complex nature of our personality is thus readily perceived. 
 It is also perceived that that indefinable something which listens to 
 the voices from both above and below, and which inclines now to 
 one and again to the other, is not the true individuality or Higher 
 Ego, but is its reflection in matter — is truly the Lower Manas of our 
 present study. This Lower Manas, then, is an emanation from 
 Higher Manas,* welded to the animal elemental within us, by in- 
 carnating in the physical body of that elemental. It remains 
 entirely distinct from this elemental, however. The two are dis- 
 parate, and the ray, or emanation, does not actually unite or 
 fuse into its associate, as is shown by the fact that the desires of 
 the latter are distinctly recognized as coming from a source 
 beneath itself. There are thus two entities in every human breast,, 
 which remain for ever separate, although each reacts so intimately 
 upon the other. But the intimacy is brought about through both 
 these occupying the same tenement, as it were — to use a very 
 crude simile. The better illustration might be that of the mul- 
 tiple tubes attached to a phonograph. The same tunes or noises 
 are then heard by all who apply any of the different tubes to 
 their ears. Thus, the Lower Manas receives over the telegraphic 
 service of the nervous system the same sense-impressions from 
 the material world that are conveyed to the human-elemental, 
 
 * Higher Es;o and Higher Manas are synonyms as to the entity to which they refer, which 
 is the true soul, but represents two aspects of that entity. "Higher Manas" accentuates 
 the thought-creating power of the sou', or, rather, the fact that thought is an essential attri- 
 bute; " Higher Ego" accentuates the " I am I," or feeling of egoity which arises in the soul — 
 the " Ahamkara" of Eastern metaphysics.
 
 78 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 which comes ofits being incarnated in, or magnetically united to, 
 every portion of that animal-elemental's brain and body. But, to 
 make this simile more complete, it must be understood that the 
 lower elemental selects and plays the tunes upon the phonograph, 
 at first exclusively. Lower Manas is but the interested spectator 
 and enjoyer of the performance, which thus consists in the play of 
 the normal passions of the lower nature. But as it grows fond of 
 these animal passions and appetites, rendered in siren music, as 
 it associates, and by its awakened desires identifies itself with 
 the stormy, passionate nature of the lower elemental, it soon takes 
 upon itself the office of suggesting new delights, as well as of 
 reveling in the memory of those which have gone, and in an acute 
 anticipation of those which are to come. By thus adding the 
 light of reason, memory, and anticipation to the non-intellectualized 
 sensuous delights of the elemental in whose body it has incarnated, 
 it increases the intensity of these a thousand-fold, and makes the 
 task of subduing them a thousand times more difficult. And as 
 it thus identifies itself more and more completely with its lower 
 companion there grows up, as the result of the association, a strange, 
 illusionary, unreal entity, whose life is truly limited by the horizons 
 of the cradle and the grave, and which fleeting entity is our ordi- 
 nary selves. For it is the production arising out of the intellectual- 
 ization, during the period of the incarnation of Lower Manas, of 
 the desires of that animal entity with which Lower Manas itself 
 thus unconsciously coalesces. But the union which is so intimate 
 during life that it is impossible to see where the one- begins and 
 the other leaves off is, nevertheless, destroyed at death. The 
 animal-entity passes again into its old condition of a merely human- 
 animal elemental; Higher Manas is entirely withdrawn, and the 
 intellectualization of the lower faculties ceases. Through force of 
 habit and through long association, the intellectual power of this 
 human-elemental persists for some time after death; and this it 
 is which constitutes the state or condition of consciousness called 
 Kama Loka. But just as a dog, or horse, no matter how highly 
 trained its faculties may be, soon relapses into its former state of 
 wildness when no longer subjected to human influence, so does 
 this human-elemental slowly lose the intellectualization it has gained
 
 LOWER MANAS. 79 
 
 by its life association with Lower Manas in the body. It is this 
 separation of Lower Manas and its elemental associate that is 
 meant when we are told that Higher Manas " withdraws its ray." 
 The process, indeed, is unavoidable; for the physical body of the 
 lower entity, being dead and dispersed, and that entity being 
 able to maintain but a brief cycle of subjective mental activity, it 
 can no longer afford a vehicle for the incarnation of the ray of 
 Manas, and the latter of necessity withdraws to the devachanic 
 plane of consciousness; just as the elemental of necessity passes 
 into the condition of latency which overtakes all centers of con- 
 sciousness when they fall below the plane of self-consciousness. 
 The time required for this separation, or the withdrawing of the 
 ray of Manas, is subject to the greatest variation. For if the 
 lower, animal faculties have been intensely intellectualized, if the 
 Lower Manas have leaned toward and lived in and upon these 
 sense-gratifications, then it takes a correspondingly longer period 
 for the animal-entity to pass into latency; and, on the contrary, 
 if the personality has learned to control its lower associate, if the 
 man has during life lived in his higher nature, and has taken little 
 or no delight in the sensuous things of life, then will that elemen- 
 tal pass into latency almost immediately. The withdrawal of the 
 ray of Manas in such a case is almost instantaneous, and Devachan 
 is at once experienced. Happy is the man whose Kama Loka 
 existence is thus brief! 
 
 It will also be seen that, if the Lower Manas entirely identi- 
 fies itself with this kamic elemental, or with Kama as it is ordina- 
 rily stated, there is a possibility of its being unable to separate 
 itself from its association with this elemental at death. Then a 
 dreadful thing occurs; for if the normal line of union does not, or 
 indeed cannot, yield, then must a separation upon a higher plane 
 take place. In this case the division occurs between Higher 
 Manas and its ray, and a "lost soul" is the result. Then the 
 human elemental, thus intellectualized, — thus shining by the bor- 
 rowed glory of the ray of Manas which it has succeeded in appro- 
 priating, — is enabled to live a brief life-cycle as an entirely inde- 
 pendent entity. It is neither the human elemental nor the ray of 
 Manas, but truly a compound of both of these. Having been
 
 8o SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 throughout its whole life, or, it may be, throughout a series of 
 past lives, attracted entirely earthward by these sensuous desires, 
 which it not only failed to control but which it increased and strength- 
 ened by its own will, this "lost soul" is irresistibly attracted earthward 
 upon the death of its body. It haunts mediums, and seeH every 
 other possible avenue by which it can vicariously experience 
 again the old sensuous delights. It may prolong this uncanny 
 life for a long period; or its raging desires earthward may cause 
 its reincarnation as a human moral monster, such as a Deeming 
 or a Jessie Pomeroy. It will thus go on incarnating until all the 
 borrowed light of Manas is extinguished, when it will have to 
 pass into a condition about which it is useless to speculate. This 
 much is evident, that, as has been pointed out, the association of 
 personality to individuality being relatively permanent, and the 
 same individual slowly and by almost numberless successive incar- 
 nations elevating the personality to its own divine plane of self- 
 consciousness, the severing of this association is a most serious and 
 dreadful event. It is an association begun, no doubt, with the 
 very beginning of humanity upon this globe. The "Secret Doc- 
 trine" states that each Higher Ego selected its "vehicle" during the 
 middle of the Third Race of this Round, more than eighteen mill- 
 ions of years ago. Since that time the association of the Higher 
 Ego and lower personality has been uninterrupted, evidently. 
 If, now, this association is violently broken off, the human ele- 
 mental cannot go back to the condition in which it was so many 
 millions of years since, but must remain without a hope of further 
 progress upward, during unthinkable periods of time. For it 
 there is no Higher Ego; and what will befall it after entering into 
 the mysterious " eighth sphere" of the earlier teachings, it is 
 impossible to conceive. As there can be nothing stationary in 
 all this great Cosmos of immutable activity, and as such an entity 
 has thrown itself outside of all possibility of progressing harmoni- 
 ously under the " breath" of that Absolute Motion which is the 
 cause of all evolution, the inference is justifiable, at least, that this 
 Absolute Motion, which is constructive in the normal course of 
 nature, becomes destructive in these instances, and that such enti- 
 tities will be slowly but inevitably forced downwards from plane
 
 LOWER MANAS. 8 I 
 
 to plane of the Cosmos, reversing all the work of their up-building, 
 until they at last become practically annihilated, or reduced to a 
 condition so near annihilation that upward progress again becomes 
 possible. And every step in all this must be accompanied by 
 more or less acute suffering. For all suffering is due to violation 
 of, and opposition to, nature's laws; and this state of inharmony 
 and opposition to nature must be the position of such an entity 
 during the entire cycle of its almost infinite descent. 
 
 But let us cease to look upon this gloomy possibility, and turn 
 instead to that harmonic progression of the human soul, in which 
 Lower Manas plays so important a part. It will be seen that as 
 we are permanently associated with our personalities, as we are 
 utterly unable to separate ourselves from them except by the 
 dreadful process of losing them, and thus abandoning them to a fate 
 too dreadful to contemplate, and that as every personality repre- 
 sents the sum total of all preceding personalities, how important a 
 recognition of this relation of Higher Ego to lower personality 
 becomes in our study of human destiny! Each man upon the earth 
 to-day is the result of an almost infinite past. His character is 
 exactly what he himself has created. If he builds for himself a 
 debased, wretched, vicious and wicked body in this life, he must 
 return to a body having these same characteristics in the next, 
 because he has never been and can not be separated from the char- 
 acter which he has engrafted upon his personality. The Lower 
 Manas may, indeed, be withdrawn into its Parent and pass a cycle 
 of comparative happiness and peace in Devachan, but upon it re- 
 emerging from that cycle the old association must be renewed. 
 There is no escape. We waken to life the same elementals with 
 which we were formerly associated, and which, in a condition of 
 latency, have been awaiting our return. We are bound to them by 
 ties a thousand times stronger than the supposed force of gravita- 
 tion which holds the earth within its orbit about the sun. So, upon 
 the other hand, every good, moral and pure trait of character 
 which we create in this or any life will follow us into our next as 
 surely as the earth follows the sun through the heavens. The 
 enemies we slay now will not return to fight us then, says the 
 "Voice of the Silence," and a more encouraging and at the same 
 
 -V 
 
 4-
 
 -H 
 
 82 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 time a more profoundly philosophical statement cannot be found 
 in any Holy Writ. The "I am I," of each personality is an 
 emanation from the Higher Ego of each. It is a " mind-born son" 
 of the Higher Ego, yet the travails of its birth extend over the 
 eons of years which go to make a manvantara. This mystery of 
 mind-birth is exemplified each year at certain festivals in India, 
 where, it is stated, thousands of pilgrims with unlighted torches 
 crowd about the temple door, awaiting the appearance of the sacred 
 fire. When it appears those nearest light their torches at its 
 flame, and these, in turn, light those of others, and these, others, 
 until at last every torch in all the great throng is blazing in a sea 
 of flame, Yet the original holy flame is undimmed and undimin- 
 ished. So with the mind-born. At the birth-throes of this physi- 
 cal race, we are told that many " received but a spark," and of 
 these we are. With what care, then, ought we to guard this pre- 
 cious spark which shall one day expand into the shining flame of 
 a perfected human soul! For " becoming one with our Higher 
 Egos" means — can but mean — expanding and growing in spiritu- 
 ality until we are one in spiritual nature as we are now one in 
 essence. So that the toils of human life do not mean the merg- 
 ing of the human soul into some glorious source which shall end 
 its existence as well as its suffering, but the coming into spiritual 
 manhood of a new spiritual being^the mind-born pilgrim of the 
 ages ! 
 
 This is the true relation which the Lower Manas, as it seems to 
 the writer, bears to its human-animal body. Without pretending 
 that this explanation is faultless, or that it is capable of explain- 
 ing all the mysteries of life, it is submitted as a working and 
 highly ethical hypothesis for our present environments. All 
 finite problems must of necessity impinge upon that Infinite of 
 which they constitute a portion. And that there are mysteries in 
 human consciousness which no hypothesis is capable of solving, 
 the writer freely admits. But it is claimed that this view does 
 explain many of the mysteries of human existence; that it is in full 
 accord with the doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation ; and that 
 it furnishes a most philosophical and wholesome basis for ethics. 
 By it is seen, if but dimly, why and how that we sow in one life
 
 LOWER MANAS. 83 
 
 returns to us in our next. The relation of the individuality to 
 the personality is shown to be not the transitory condition which 
 the ordinary view takes of it. And, once the fact dawns upon the 
 human mind that this association of Higher Manas with the lower 
 personality is permanent and durable, then will the very highest 
 incentive towards the elevation and purification of that lower 
 nature to which we are thus united be afforded. If we must live 
 life after life upon this earth limited by a certain and inevitable 
 association here, and if it is in our power to make this association 
 either pleasant or unpleasant, then is it the height of folly not to 
 take the necessary steps; to "take up arms against a sea of 
 troubles and by opposing end then" by subduing all the sources 
 of our misery and unhappiness — our passionate, lower self. Rec- 
 ognizing this great fact, we shall engage in the battle of life with 
 renewed hope ; we shall face a future fraught with the grandest 
 prophecies, for when we shall have united our lower nature to our 
 Higher Divine being, if we but reach up to this Divinity, out of 
 that union shall we then be enabled truly to pass into that Para- 
 dise where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are 
 at rest.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE REINCARNATING EGO. 
 
 IffHE Reincarnating Ego, known also as the Higher Ego, Higher 
 ^-^ Manas, etc., has to be next studied. It is unnecessary to 
 state that almost insuperable difficulties attend its attempted 
 examination. Being at the very base of man's existence, it can 
 not be approached by any ordinary methods of analysis, either 
 deductive or inductive. Its origin is lost in the mists of eternal 
 duration; and its activities upon this plane of conscious existence 
 are clouded by the material darkness which enwraps it as with a 
 benumbing, stifling shroud. So paralyzed are its natural functions, 
 so concealed its true nature, that it is small wonder that almost a 
 third of the inhabitants of the world do not suspect its existence; 
 while of the remainder, although recognizing it philosophically, 
 few have but the faintest conception of its real nature or attributes. 
 That there is an inner, or buried, ego very greatly superior to 
 that of our ordinary, waking, conscious life is easily susceptible 
 of scientific proofs. Chief among these stand the phenomena of 
 hypnotism, trance, prophecy, clairvoyance, and allied states. As 
 has been pointed out elsewhere,* the effect of hypnotism, most 
 disastrous to the waking will, is to apparently remove layer after 
 layer of these fleshly garments which hinder the free functioning 
 of the soul, so that a very ordinary or even stupid person becomes 
 profound, philosophical, possessed of deeper, and even of techni- 
 cal, knowledge of which he has no waking consciousness. 
 Clairvoyance, prophetic dreams, somnambulic trance, together 
 with thousands of phenomena whose profound bearing upon the 
 existence and native functions of the soul have hitherto been 
 overlooked by psychologists, afford ample evidence not only of 
 the presence of a soul, but of the farther and most important fact 
 that instead of aiding, widening or of almost creating it, which is 
 the popular conception, the body limits the normal consciousness 
 
 *See the Author's work on Reincarnation, p. 145, et seq.
 
 THE REINCARNATING EGO. 85 
 
 of this soul to a degree little suspected by even philosophic minds. 
 
 While the Higher Ego has its base in spirit, or consciousness, 
 it itself appears to represent and to be the very essence of that 
 condition of consciousness known as Thought. What thought is 
 in its ultimate essence can not be self-cognized. Therefore, it 
 must ever remain a mystery to self-conscious beings, until they 
 shall have passed above and beyond it — a state which quite tran- 
 scends our present power of conception. Viewed from the stand- 
 point of the phenomenal universe, it appears to be the active 
 agent in creation, for there is no fact nor phenomenon which is 
 not plainly its result. From world to atom, from sun to man, 
 there is absolutely nothing which is not due to its creative activity. 
 Yet Thought requires a Thinker; it is not self-born. Unlike 
 consciousness, its very presence is the eternal witness of differen- 
 tiation; it first proclaims the dawn of another period of manifesta- 
 tion; it testifies to the outward flowing of the Great Breath of the 
 Ocean of Being. Before its appearing even "Universal Mind 
 was not, for there were no Ah-hi to contain it," declares the sub- 
 lime stanzas of Dzyan. It is the universal creator; yet the con- 
 ception of creation throughout the Western world must be care- 
 fully eliminated before one begins an analysis of its phenomena. 
 
 For Thought creates by entering into and becoming its creations. 
 There is no use for extraneous matter in the sense of a potter 
 using clay, of which he fashions a vessel entirely distinct and apart 4 
 from himself, which represents the Western idea of the creative 
 act — except that this further supposes the Creator of the Universe 
 to first create the clay, of which he fashions his creations, out of 
 absolutely nothing. The Occult teaching is, as said, that Thought 4= 
 becomes its own creations. Thus, let suppose that it is the duty 
 of one of the Ah-hi to create a solar system, such as ours. His 
 thought would infuse itself into and energise a vast " Body" of 
 "primordial" matter — the latter itself already the seat of innumer- 
 able latent, or subjectively conscious, entities. With every 
 atom of all this mass of matter the Ah-hi consciously identifies him- 
 self, just as man identifies himself with the matter of his body, and 
 every atom thrills with the thought of the worlds to be. In this 
 manner are impressed those primal laws, and that apparently blind
 
 86 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 purpose in nature which cause it to struggle upward along the 
 hard and devious paths of evolution. 
 
 Let us suppose primordial matter to differentiate into " fire- 
 mist," this into ethereal, this into astral, and this into molecular 
 matter, and a nebula to be thus born in apparently empty space. 
 All the future course of the newly created system is graven in the 
 records of the physical heavens, and he who runs may read. The 
 mechanical agent has been change in vibration, modifications in 
 the ceaseless motion of the "Great Breath," as the Hindus so 
 poetically term the action of "That which Is, Was, and Will Be"; 
 but the directing, guiding force has been Thought, using as its 
 agent " Fohat," or Cosmic will. 
 
 This is the macrocosmic process, and as its details are studied 
 it is seen why man is said to be the microcosm, or little copy, of 
 that macrocosm. There is within him a creative center of con- 
 sciousness, associated, as was seen in our study of the body, with 
 almost innumerable hierarchies of conscious, but — note well — not 
 self-conscious entities. To become self-conscious is to use crea- 
 tive force; to guide differentiation; to furnish a center wheiein the 
 creative ray of Mahat may be focused upon a lower plane. Such 
 a Mahatic center our Higher Egos are. As unity in essence per- 
 vades the entire manifested universe, so it becomes possible, and 
 indeed the law, that Thought thus associating itself with entities 
 below the Manasic plane bestows upon them a portion of its own 
 power. In other words, it "emanates" itself, and its emanations 
 become, in turn, "like unto their Father." This would not be pos- 
 sible if all things were not one in essence, and it shows that in 
 every atom of the Universe there are all the potentialities of the 
 highest god. That which has the potentialities of flame can be 
 quickened into flame by the application of flame, which seems to 
 be the compassionate law capable of reuniting and rebinding all 
 the wayfarers and pilgrims, lost in the illusive cycle of differenti- 
 ation, to their one source and origin, the Absolute. When high, 
 creative Dhyan Choans "thought" this world into mayavic* exist- 
 ence, the idea of man was impressed upon its every atom, and 
 
 *Mava — illusion, or non-reality, in the sense of impermanency, and of concealing the reality 
 hidden behind it.
 
 THE REINCARNATING EGO. 87 
 
 this is, as has been shown, the true reason for all nature pointing 
 towards and culminating in man. This primal impress is also the 
 cau. c e for nature's blind groping after manhood — for the creation 
 of those " men-monsters, terrible and bad,"* which were produced 
 by entities without the "fire" of Mind, yet still unconsciously 
 responding to the primal impulse which demanded " men" for this 
 earth. 
 
 Such mindless creators could not bestow that which they did 
 not have. They could give to man passion, emotion, the desire 
 for sentient existence — in short, could produce an animal; but a 
 man was an unrealizable dream to them. The oneness in essence 
 of all that is, and, because of this oneness, the capability of 
 bestowing their own nature upon other differentiations in the one 
 essence, upon the one hand, and of receiving this impress, upon 
 the other, is the key which will unlock the source of whatever of 
 Manas or Thought man has within his being. All things are born 
 by emanation, except the " Primordial Seven,"f who are said, to 
 " radiate" directly from the Absolute. The production of the 
 humble unicellular animal or vegetable by fission is as truly an 
 emanation of its own essence, upon its lowly plane, as is the crea- 
 tion of a thinking entity by emitting the spark of manasic fire, 
 upon a higher. The parent which has produced another being by 
 dividing itself is as whole and perfect as before, and a thousand 
 brains can be set successively throbbing with thought by our 
 Higher Egos without lessening their divinity or making them one 
 whit less perfect than before. 
 
 This is one of the functions of the Higher Ego — to bestow its 
 own power of thought upon those animal elementals whose outer 
 vestments are our bodies, and thus to render them capable of start- 
 ing on the long and perilous journey towards godhood. For in 
 an eternity of endless progression, when man shall be done 
 with matter, other entities must step into the place vacated by 
 him, and, when their turn comes, scale the heights and sound the 
 depths of self-conscious existence. By all the laws of correspond- 
 ence and analogy, these ought to be those elemental beings most 
 
 *Stanzas of Dzyan, Secret Doctrine. 
 tSecret Doctrine.
 
 88 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 closely associated with man, which are not the animals, as might 
 be supposed, but those human elementals which synthesize our 
 human-animal bodies. 
 
 And the question is an open one, at least, whether that " Ray" 
 of Manas which incarnates in each human body is not a true 
 division — a begetting upon the plane of mentality of another 
 " mind born Son." If it be but a ray, — a vague and unsatisfactory 
 explanation of its relation to the Higher Ego, — then must the 
 human elemental become the mind-born son. 
 
 The real entity at the base of man's conscious existence is 
 declared to be the Higher Ego. Its horizons of life are bounded 
 by the vast eons comprised in a Maha-manvantara, with the pos- 
 sibility of eternal existence if it assimilate itself to Buddhi, or the 
 Substance-Aspect of the Absolute. Standing behind the veil of 
 mutable matter in which its various successive personalities are 
 clothed, itself robed in imperishable cosmic substance, it knows not 
 birth nor death; the dread gulfs which mark the boundaries of sen- 
 suous life for it do not exist. Its home is on the plane of thought ; 
 and from this divine view-point it approaches sensuous life only 
 by the avenues its emanations cause to arise in the human- 
 animal brain. It bestows upon the brain of the animal man in 
 whom it incarnates its own feeling of "I-am-ness." This borrowed 
 feeling of egohood is the "I am I" of our ordinary waking life. 
 Its horizon of existence is bounded by the farther shores of Deva- 
 chan, as the life of the human elemental is limited by those of 
 Kama Loka. This " I am I," as we have seen, is a compound of 
 the ray of Manas colored by the sensuous experiences of Kama.* 
 And yet, although its life seems thus limited, it is only self- 
 consciously so limited. There is no doubt that the same person- 
 ality attends the Higher Ego throughout all its incarnations. It 
 is differently colored by different lines of physical heredity; but the 
 inner entities of which the personality is composed must be the 
 same, to a very large degree, if not wholly, else karmaf would not 
 be satisfied. Certainly, the human elemental is the same through- 
 out all normal incarnations. It must be borne in mind that, in 
 incarnating, it is entities with which the soul or ego is associated, 
 
 *Desire. t Karma — the law of cause and effect.
 
 THE REINCARNATING EGO. 89 
 
 not abstractions. And these entities are its microcosm; constitute 
 the "little world" upon which it is trying its 'prentice hand at gov- 
 erning before being assigned larger opportunities. They are 
 its microcosm, its little cosmos; and it is as impossible for them to 
 become dissociated from the soul to which they are karmically 
 bound as it is for the granite mountains of this earth to suddenly 
 rise in the air and float away to Venus; for so close is the tie 
 which binds man to his microcosm. The rocks and mountains, 
 the seas and oceans of this earth, are indissolubly connected with 
 its Regent; and, although these are ensouled by an almost infinite 
 number of lower entities, they are the vestments of his personality 
 while he is on the earth, and cannot be discarded even upon the 
 re-embodiment of the earth as a new planet, for we are distinctly 
 told that the "vital principles" of a planet merely transfer them- 
 selves to a new point in space upon the death of an old, worn-out 
 world. And what are vital Principles but the whole hosts of con- 
 scious or subconscious entities who have been clothed with the 
 matter of the old world ? Let us avoid loose reasoning, and always 
 remember that we are dealing with consciousness, and that in 
 all the finite Universe there is not a particle of matter which is not 
 the clothing and expression of a conscious entity; nor no thought 
 which is not the direct action of a thinking entity. So shall we 
 avoid vagueness and generalities. It is far better to confess 
 when we reach the point where our knowledge fails than to attempt 
 to conceal our ignorance behind an array of meaningless generali- 
 ties. So that the reincarnation of a world means the reincarnat- 
 ing of the entities which made up that world, and the reincarnat- 
 ing of the Higher Ego means the re-association of that ego with 
 its old microcosm of entities. All that is new is the very outer- 
 most and coarsest molecules, made up of lives so near the mate- 
 rial aspect of the Absolute that they can be used by almost any 
 entity as its clothing, whether that entity be an animal, a vegeta- 
 ble, or even those fused into a rock. 
 
 But all this has been shown in former chapters. It is restated 
 here to emphasize the relation which the Higher Ego bears to its 
 humble body, and the importance of a connection which is thus 
 karmic and almost interminable, and the character of which can
 
 9 o 
 
 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 only be changed by thought. The importance of this relation 
 can not be overestimated. We can not separate ourselves from 
 our bodies — or, rather, from the entities which compose those 
 bodies — until we have so changed them by our thought that they 
 become capable of taking up for themselves the struggle of self- 
 conscious existence. Their consciousness is daily and hourly 
 being molded by our thought, as Manas toils at his kingly, crea- 
 tive function among these the lower lives of our bodies. For 
 Thought means creation, — is creation, — and to be a thinker is to 
 be a creator. Above the planes of Thought we can faintly con- 
 ceive of a sea of absolute consciousness, rest, and bliss; but when 
 we descend below this there is the clamor and toil of ceaseless 
 activity, for all the immeasurable universes are in the throes of 
 its active, creative effort. This activity proceeds in cycles, which 
 afford to entities a temporary respite; but it is only temporary — 
 a brief period of comparative inactivity and rest before they again 
 respond to the blows of the Hammer of Thor in the resounding 
 workshops of creation. 
 
 We must recognize the Higher Ego as a kingly Creator, and 
 these entities clothed in the material molecules of this plane as 
 the plastic matter which, heated to redness by the flame of his 
 presence, he is slowly forging into diviner shapes, if we would ever 
 gain an insight into the seemingly mysterious relation between 
 Soul and Body — between Higher Ego and lower Personality. 
 Thought, under one of its seven modes of activity, is constantly 
 active within us; not a moment passes that has not to some 
 degree changed our relation to. the entire Universe. The reaction 
 of that Universe because of this change is one of the seven 
 phases of karma.* The voice of conscience is that of our Higher 
 Ego upon its own divine plane; for action and reaction are appar- 
 ent, and it creates with. knowledge of and in harmony with Uni- 
 versal Law. But upon the plane of Lower Manas it is not yet 
 fully conscious, because the latter is still in the coils of Kama.f 
 Therefore, it can only lift its voice in solemn warning when the 
 lower self, yielding to sensuous delights, sows the wind which 
 shall, cause the reaping of the whirlwind. Happy, indeed, is the 
 
 *Karma — the law of cause and effect, t Kama— desire.
 
 THE REINCARNATING EGO. 9 1 
 
 man in whom this kingly creation of thought is under the direct 
 guidance of this Divine Monitor! 
 
 For the " I am I" of the ordinary man is, as we have seen, the 
 product of the illusion of " I-am-ness" set up in the human brain 
 as a consequence of the incarnation of the Higher Ego. It has 
 no real existence, and fades forever, even as a seeming entity, 
 when the last devachanic dream ceases and the Higher Ego again 
 takes up its active creative efforts. It is well that this is so. No 
 enlightened man would wish to carry into eternity the "I" of his 
 earthly appetites, passions, vanities, ignorance, and selfishness. 
 Even the Christian recognizes this, and believes that in some 
 mysterious manner he will be "changed in the twinkling of an 
 eye," although all nature is proclaiming by every act that su:h 
 is not, never was, and never will be, her methods. 
 
 Yet this reflection of Manas, this emanation from the Divine 
 Thinker, is of the same essence as its parent, and affords a stair- 
 way by which the latter may descend, and, still more important 
 to us, a means whereby we may ascend to our divine parent. 
 For its Ray, the Lower Manas, is, indeed, ourselves — our very 
 selves, in truth, — and if kept pure andundefiled may be indrawn 
 into the Higher Ego to share, and be, its immortality. 
 
 But such is not its ordinary fate. The thought of Manas has 
 as yet scarcely begun to impress itself upon and to mold its asso- 
 ciated microcosm into its own divine designs. The effect of its 
 incarnations thus far have been, in the vast majority of men, to 
 fan into a fiercer flame the passionate and reasonless sense- 
 consciousness by rationalizing these lower passions which before 
 were reasonless. Its divine labor, to spiritualize by infusing its 
 own divine essence into every atom of the body, lies yet very 
 largely in the future — a task to try even its kingly powers. And 
 this spiritualization — strangest mystery of all! — we its sons have 
 the power to hasten, retard, or even prevent entirely. By dwelling 
 in and living for the things of the flesh alone, we can so change 
 and color the pure emanation of Manas, which constitutes our real 
 selves, that it becomes wholly of the earth, earthy. For Manas 
 is pure thought ; it knows naught of emotion or sense-consciousness 
 except as these afford it food for thought. And its thought must
 
 92 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 be pure. No flash of impurity, even, can be thrown across its 
 divine nature. For it, all the delights of impure sensuous exist- 
 ence are meaningless; it views them as one might the movements 
 of a panorama of which he positively knew nothing. It knows, 
 indeed, that they are sinful and wicked; and, if the lower self is 
 not too debased, raises its warning voice, but no record of the act 
 itself can be imprinted upon its own pure nature. Therefore, the 
 Higher Ego is not — can not be — soiled with the crimes or vices 
 of its lower reflection, although it may and does suffer because of 
 these. But its suffering is not personal. It is the woe for others' 
 sake, the voicing of that old plaint, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 
 how often would I have gathered ye under my wings even as a 
 hen gathereth her chickens, and ye would not!" 
 
 Therefore, the effort is mutual on the part of the lower and 
 Higher Selves, when the former is not too blinded by sensuous 
 delight to attempt union with its Parent. For if the mission of 
 the Lower Ego is to ascend, that of the Higher is equally to 
 descend. It has to conquer self-consciousness upon this stormy 
 plane of molecular sense life, and it can only do this by raising its 
 passion-tossed entities to a state where they respond instantly to 
 its creative touch. It can never know this earth until it has con- 
 quered it, and so it seems that, although the trend of material evo- 
 lution appears to be, and is, so decidedly upward, this is but 
 half the process, and is met by an equally imperious descent of 
 the spiritual or Thought side of nature. Our Higher Egos are 
 ascending out of matter only in the sense of overcoming it; in the 
 struggle they are ever grasping firmer and closer holds upon it. 
 Yet when Thought really descends into matter it dissipates its 
 illusions, so that in conquering the world it shall dissipate its illu- 
 sions and change even its very forms. 
 
 Man is thus the microcosm of the Macrocosm, and he repeats the 
 history of his association with its matter with every new life. As 
 the Higher Ego returns to incarnation, it molds almost instantly 
 the matter of the Astral Round, which it conquered and made 
 plastic to its thought during that world period, into the astral 
 shape of its future form. This constitutes the Linga Sharira, 
 which has been already fully described. Into it, as we have
 
 THE REINCARNATING EGO. 93 
 
 seen, the molecules of this too solid flesh flow, making man's body- 
 thus but a kind of petrified or carnified astral form. But the 
 Thought of the Higher Ego can and does, in the case of the 
 trained Adept consciously, and of the ordinary individual uncon- 
 sciously, produce other astral forms. These have well been 
 called Thought forms, for there is no form which is not a Thought 
 form. Yet in their conscious production we but see another evi- 
 dence of the kingly nature of the Higher Ego, and of the real hold, 
 through it, the soul has upon Divinity. For however feebly the 
 voice of the Higher Ego may be heard, however vague and unreal 
 its presence may seem, yet it is present in every thinking man, 
 constituting him one with that mighty power which brought stars 
 and worlds into being. His body is not himself; its desires, pas- 
 sions, emotions, caprices, vanities, and all the puerile things which 
 now occupy his divine but degraded thinking Principle, are not 
 his desires, but those of beings far, far below him, and with which 
 he is associated to conquer and lead to a higher existence. His 
 thoughts are alone himself, and he is master of their divinely crea- 
 tive potencies, if he but wills it. There is no power in nature 
 which is not his rightful heritage, if he but claims it. And the 
 one requisite is to recognize himself as a thinking soul, hampered, 
 restricted, and manacled by a body, instead of imagining himself 
 a body full of false desires, false needs, and false ideals, which the 
 equally false theologies of the West have taught him to regard as 
 in some vague and unreal way to be possessed of a soul. And 
 whatever his soul may be on planes above Thought, with such he 
 has small present concern. In the Cycle of Necessity, in the 
 onward rush of manifested life in which he now finds himself, he 
 is a center of pure creative thought, taking an active, responsible 
 part in fashioning not only the microcosm with which he is more 
 closely associated, but also in molding the world which is his pres- 
 ent home, and changing to some degree at least the very Uni- 
 verse in which he has his being. Recognizing this, he will guard 
 his thoughts as a miser his gold, and will never permit himself to 
 think a vile or wicked one after he realizes that thus he has given 
 birth to a vile and wicked form. For the fact that all are of one 
 essence makes it possible, and indeed almost necessary, that his
 
 94 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 thought should affect others. Under the illusion that thought is 
 harmless, the thinker who revels in thoughts of lust, hatred, or 
 crime, which some weaker man takes up and carries into action 
 without knowing why, has the greater share in the real responsi- 
 bility. For each thought, by the mysterious action of karma, 
 molds his being, and carries with it the certainty of its own 
 punishment. 
 
 We are thus gods, and the sons of God. Let us, therefore, claim 
 our birthright and exercise our kingly function in a kingly man- 
 ner. Let us endeavor to feel ourselves one with that throbbing 
 heart of nature which is ever pressing onward to higher and nobler 
 ends. Let us no longer exercise the divine power of thought upon 
 the clamor of the senses; but, stilling these, hearken to the voice 
 of our inner god; creep closer to the heart of nature, and reveren- 
 tially listen. So may we find that there is meaning in the appar- 
 ent chaos of existence; so may the breath from the wings of the 
 Swan of Life fan our cheeks; so may we re-enter the Paradise we 
 have lost, for we will have recreated it by the irresistible power 
 of purified, holy, compassionate Thought, and will have reunited 
 ourselves to and rebecome our own Higher Selves!
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE HIGHER TRIAD— ATMA, BUDDHI, MANAS. 
 
 ^ffHE stud}' of the Higher Triad, including as it necessarily does 
 ^sb that of the Higher Self, is also attended with much difficulty. 
 For the higher, diviner portion of man's being, the true soul, can, 
 as we have seen, hardly be the subject of intellectual analysis by 
 its lower reflection incarnated in these animal bodies. The Higher 
 Ego, also, constitutes a portion of the Triad, and must receive 
 some attention in this relation, so that metaphysical difficulties 
 beset us on every hand. 
 
 Perhaps it would be well to preface the subject proper by defin- 
 ing these differing aspects of the One Life as it appears differenti- 
 ated by the differing vehicles of human consciousness. The "I 
 am myself" of each human being is a Ray, or emanation, from 
 Manas, or is that lower thinking Principle which is caused to 
 appear in the human brain by the incarnation of the Higher Ego. 
 The Higher Ego is, as we have seen, the true man. It represents 
 a center of creative thought in the Cosmos, emanating from 
 Mahat, or the Third Cosmic Principle in downward differentiation. 
 Viewed as a distinct center of pure Thought, it is called the 
 Higher Manas, the Reincarnating Ego, etc. But it has the poten- 
 tiality of union with Buddhic consciousness, and if so conjoined is 
 then known as the Spiritual Ego.* The Higher Self is Atman, 
 and is above all differentiation, and hence is the Higher Self not 
 only of man, but of the Universe and every entity within it. 
 Atman is defined as "the emanating spark from the Uncreated 
 Ray."f It belong to the Unknowable, and all speculation upon it 
 is perhaps unprofitable. Going as deeply as we may , however, into 
 metaphysical analysis, it seems possible to dimly conceive of con- 
 sciousness which is pure and undifferentiated; which contains in 
 itself the Knower, the thing known, and the act of knowing. All 
 
 *Key to Theosophy. tSecret Doctrine.
 
 96 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 attempts to define it are futile ; we but dwarf it by our conceptions. 
 Like the Absolute, the Higher Self can only be defined by what 
 it is not; and yet, as it must be the All, even this method fails us. 
 This ocean of undifferentiated consciousness, before it can even 
 approach the differentiated states of lower realms, has of necessity 
 to have a vehicle; and this vehicle is the first metaphysical con- 
 ception of differentiation within Absolute Being. At the door of 
 life stand the dual attributes of the Absolute, Spirit and Matter, 
 or Consciousness and its metaphysically material vehicle known 
 as Buddhi, the Soul of the Cosmos as of man. The conscious- 
 ness of Atman, thus ensouled by Buddhi, is universal, undifferen- 
 tiated, divine, containing in itself all potentialities of all planes 
 below. It is eternal and unchangeable; and, if not the Infinite or 
 Absolute, is at least the appearance which the Absolute presents 
 when viewed from the finite standpoint of differentiated conscious- 
 ness. Therefore, being in its nature and essence eternal and 
 unchangeable, if the Higher Ego, even, is to win its immortality, 
 it has to do this by assimilating itself to the nature of this divine 
 Atma-Buddhic consciousness. This consciousness of the Higher 
 Self is One Great Whole; it can not be thought of as differenti- 
 ated. It appears to be differentiated upon lower planes, as the 
 light of a flame, seen through differently colored glasses, may 
 appear red, blue, green, or an almost infinite variety of differing 
 shades of color. As in the case of Atman, we identify these with 
 the light itself, forgetting that behind them all shines the one 
 white flame. Similarly, Atman is the source of consciousness, 
 and, as we have said, the Higher Self, not only of man but of the 
 Universe. How, then, is this, which appears to be an aspect of 
 the Absolute, related to lower things? Atman is the base and 
 origin of all the human principles; is also the base and origin 
 of all that is within the great manifested universe, the source 
 alike of the atom and of the human soul, of the daisy and of the 
 sun. Herein lies the greatest mystery concerned with manifest- 
 ation, over which the very highest intellects have pondered in 
 vain, and which seems utterly incapable of explanation. In order 
 to understand it, it would be necessary for the finite to be able 
 to comprehend the Infinite. But, in some manner, this which
 
 THE HIGHER TRIAD — ATMA, BUDDHI, MANAS. 97 
 
 is Infinite in its totality passes into infinite variation. The only 
 possible method, as has been stated, by which Infinity can mani- 
 fest finitely would seem to be for it to take on infinite variation. 
 This variation is said by the deepest thinkers to be an illusion. 
 It may be. When analyzed, almost everything concerned with 
 human consciousness is found to be illusive. Yet this illusion is 
 a very, very real one to man. and he has to patiently and care- 
 fully study it if he would thread his way through the labyrinths 
 of this ocean of manifested life. 
 
 Atman, then, is the basis of all manifestation. It is that which 
 sustains and upholds manifestation — that which renders it possible ; 
 and still, built not only upon, but out of this stable something is 
 found the unstable. Yet, as there can be in the Cosmos but one 
 Source of things, whether finite or Infinite, then out of this Infi- 
 nite must come the finite. Therefore, Atman is the basis of all 
 that is, and is the cause of all that is. It is the Eternal, Immuta- 
 ble Unity, underlying all possible differentiation and manifestation ; 
 and, at the same time (mystery of mysteries!) it is Itself those 
 differentiations and manifestations. This was recognized and 
 pointed out ages ago. Plato speaks of it when he declares that 
 this world was formed of " the Same and the Other." Such 
 words fall almost meaningless upon the ear, yet out of the "same" 
 (the Absolute) the "other" (the manifested universe) must have 
 arisen. 
 
 Compared with the Macrocosm, Atman represents, in man, the 
 microcosm, the Unmanifested Logos, the Creative Aspect of the 
 Causeless Cause. It is the Unmanifested Verbum.or Word. It 
 represents the conception, to use words which are almost mean- 
 ingless, within the Infinite mind of those finite phases of itself 
 which are to be enacted upon the stage of the phenomenal Uni- 
 verse. For all phenomena are phases of Deity, and must be 
 philosophically so recognized. From God the Infinite is born God 
 the finite. The one must remain for ever untouched, unapproach- 
 able, and inconceivable — an Absolute Causeless Cause. The 
 other is this same Infinite Mind, or Causeless Cause, exhibiting 
 itself in the Infinite Diversity of phenomenal states of conscious- 
 ness, which Infinite Diversity, as we have seen, represents the only
 
 gS SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 manner in which it would seem possible for an Infinite Power to 
 manifest itself finitely. It is the strange commingling of these two 
 aspects of the divine in the Universe which makes Christianity , and 
 indeed all theistic religions, so unphilosophical. Within Jehovah, 
 for example, are blended in the most impossible and inconsistent 
 manner both finite and infinite attributes. 
 
 But this is a digression. At any rate, Atman represents in the 
 microcosm the Unmanifested Logos; is in man the first ripple of 
 differentiation within the monadic Ray from the Absolute, which 
 constitutes the base of all human souls. And just as all the phe- 
 nomena of the Universe are but the finite aspects of the Infinite, 
 so in Atman are held potentially all of the other Principles, which 
 are, indeed, but differentiations of this, as has been pointed out. 
 It represents the Spirit, or the father, as Buddhi does the matter, 
 or the mother, or as Manas does the differentiated Universe, or 
 Son. These three are as absolutely indissoluble in Man, the 
 microcosm, as they are in the great Macrocosm, or Universe. 
 It is only for purposes of analysis and study that they are meta- 
 physically divided. But this division is metaphysical, and not real. 
 
 Buddhi represents the Substance Aspect of the human soul, being 
 both the vehicle of Atma upon the one hand, and the conserver 
 and preserver of the energies of Manas, or the thinking Principle, 
 upon the other. It is as uncreate as is Atman, and we shall 
 blindly err if we associate with it any of the ideas of substance or 
 matter which we gain from contact with the material universe 
 about us. The universe, indeed, is but embodied consciousness; 
 and in the Cosmic Principle of Buddhi is recorded and stored the 
 infinite wisdom resulting from infinite experiences in the past. 
 Similarly, in the human Principle, Buddhi, is stored all the wisdom 
 and power arising from past experiences of the thinking Principle 
 with matter. For it would seem that, after the first and primal 
 differentiation of the Absolute into Spirit and Matter, and the 
 further appearance, or differentiation within these two, or from 
 these two, of a thinking Principle, the further office of this think- 
 ing Principle was to associate itself with all the infinite states of 
 finite consciousness, and to store the results of this experience in 
 this material, passive, cosmic aspect, or Buddhi. How, then, has
 
 THE HIGHER TRIAD — ATMA, BUDDIII, MANAS.' 99 
 
 the unstable arisen out of the stable? Ordinarily, the answer 
 from Theosophists, as well as scientists, would be, " By evolution." 
 This is not true, if by evolution is understood the ordinary mean- 
 ing given to the word. For the process is that of a great bestow- 
 ing — not a pushing up of monads or centers of consciousness by 
 some unconscious power behind or beneath them. It is a bestow- 
 ing of their own essence by higher entities upon lower entities; 
 and this constitutes the fact and the process of all so-called evo- 
 lution. All consciousness within the manifested universe is the 
 result and the product of conscious entities. Alone, Atman may 
 be termed a sea of consciousness, as it is the very veil between 
 differentiation and the non-differentiated. The manifested uni- 
 verse lies to the hither side, and in that manifested universe there 
 is no consciousness which is not bestowed by a conscious entity, 
 as there is no thought which is not the result of a thinking entity, 
 ,and no passion which is not the expression of a passionate entity. 
 Man has seven principles; and, in seeking their origin, Theoso- 
 phy declares that each of these principles was bestowed upon him 
 by an entity higher than he. There is no postulating the stream 
 as rising higher than its source. His passionate nature he gets 
 • by association with entities full of passion, out of which are con- 
 structed hisbody ; and he, mistaking that passionate consciousness 
 for his pwn, identifies himself with it Destroy the body, and 
 the passionate consciousness 'after a time ceases, although the 
 ^thinkingrentity.does, not peris-h; .showing at once the illusion of 
 such an assertion. His thinking principle, again, is the result of 
 _the bestowing of a, portion of their own thinking essence upon 
 him by higher beings; and. so on, throughout; all,h)s principle?. 
 Similarly, the earth is bufcthe clothing of a great, divine, conscious 
 entity, who assumes its matter as his vestments. That matter is 
 full of countless millions of, lower .entities, upon every one of 
 whom the higher entity bestows by emanation .a portion of his 
 own consciousness, and. so lifts it a little, in the scale of universal 
 life. Alter having experienced the consciousness of the mineral 
 kingdom, for example, for untold ages, the individualizing monads 
 in that kingdom assimilate its consciousness, and are fitted for the 
 reception of a higher. At the next Round there, is bestowed upon
 
 IOO SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 them the consciousness of the vegetable kingdom, and they 
 assume all the great wilderness of form, design, and beauty of 
 that kingdom. 
 
 They then pass on into the animal kingdom, and finally into 
 the human; each successive step having been due to a bestowing 
 of its own essence by a divine progenitor. Last of all come our 
 Higher Egos to perfected animal bodies'bestowing upon each mind; 
 for the bestowing, at first diffuse and general, has at every stage 
 of the process become more definite and specific, until it ends by 
 the specific incarnation of each Higher Ego in a separate animal 
 body. But in all this there is no upward pushing. The law of 
 compassion roots at the very basis of nature; and if the ascent 
 through matter seems a blind pushing, the descent of spirit is a 
 divine, intelligent compassion. Our minds are so warped by 
 materialistic teachings, have become so accustomed to its mental 
 formula, that we unconsciously think in these channels, and so 
 speak of a blind force pushing up life almost as ignorantly as our 
 materialistic opponents. There can be no such thing. It is a 
 divinely compassionate bestowing, and there is no break in this 
 law of compassionate help, from the lowest form of life to the 
 highest god, or Dhyani. Each receives from some entity higher 
 than itself. As far as we can think, as wide as our imaginations 
 can expand, the process reaches, until the mind itself reels and 
 lets the burden fall. 
 
 Buddhic consciousness may, perhaps, be spoken of a little more 
 definitely; although, as stated, its conception must be largely meta- 
 physical. Man is unable to analyze it from his present stand- 
 point because it is so greatly higher than himself. And yet this, 
 which is at the basis of all manifestation upon the material side of 
 nature, which is the vehicle of the Divine Atman, or Universal 
 Consciousness, can be thought of with less effort, it seems, than 
 can Atman. It is the soul of the universe, the physical basis of 
 the entire Cosmos. But it must not be thought of as substance; 
 although it is the basis of substance. It is, rather, divine con- 
 sciousness, taking substantial form. It corresponds very nearly 
 with the human brain in many of its aspects. Upon the physical 
 molecules of the brain is written the physical history of man's
 
 THE HIGHER TRIAD — ATMA, BUDDHI, MANAS. IOI 
 
 entire life. There is no thought which has ever entered the 
 mind; there is no sensation which has ever penetrated any of the 
 avenues of the senses; no vision, however minute; no fancy, how- 
 ever trivial, which is not registered upon these substance cells, 
 and which is not capable of being recalled and brought again 
 within the consciousness at any time before the brain cells are 
 finally destroyed. So, upon an infinitely higher plane, this which 
 represents the material aspect of the Cosmos becomes the brain 
 of that Cosmos. Upon its divine tablets is recorded the history 
 of all that has ever transpired; not, perhaps, in all its minute 
 detail, but the effects of all that has ever taken place within this 
 Cosmos is here conserved. Buddhi, or, as it is termed in some 
 schools, "Mulaprakriti," changes as the worlds and universes 
 change. Just as a man may modify his brain by his thought, so 
 this Great Oversoul of the universe is hourly modified by the 
 thought of all differentiated entities within it, and is ever ready to 
 respond to this eternal modification; for force cannot be annihilated, 
 energy is ever conserved, and this which lies at the very base of 
 all energy must give back that which it receives. 
 
 It is said that a Ray from this great sea of consciousness and 
 substance constitutes the human monad, because it is at the base 
 of every human soul. But this must not be taken too literally, 
 because, as pointed out in the beginning, this is undifferentiated 
 consciousness — is impossible of differentiation. That which seems 
 to differentiate it, which causes it to appear as though it were sep- 
 arate, is the Thinking Princip'e; and the soul will perceive, as the 
 lower nature is overcome, and it penetrates by its purified sight 
 into those higher realms, the real Unity underlying all that is. 
 It is this Unity which makes possible the emanation, or the eman- 
 ating, of its own substance or essence by a higher entity upon a 
 lower. It is this Unity which makes it possible for all men to 
 become gods; because each man has at the base of his being that 
 divine substance and that, if possible, still diviner consciousness; 
 and it is in the power of each one to unite himself to this univer- 
 sal, eternal, monadic consciousness by maintaining a firm hold 
 upon the truly spiritual portion of his nature, the Higher Ego, 
 and assimilating this consciousness which stands back of and is
 
 102 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 himself. So shall he, if he succeeds in doing this, some time in 
 the eons to come, firmly establish his own divine being upon these 
 divine, immortal planes, and he will indeed find that that which' 
 is at the basis of his seemingly mortal nature is the Creator, the 
 Preserver, and Regenerator, of this great Divine Universe. It is- 
 our own efforts in assimilating this higher consciousness which 
 enable us to pass, step by step, higher in the process of universal 
 becoming; and which becoming, though now it may seem to be 
 the process of a blind "evolution," will some day be found to' 
 have been divine compassion deliberately lifting lower entities to' 
 higher planes. 
 
 But the subject, as stated, passes human comprehension. It 
 leads us into the very abysses of metaphysical speculation, and 
 perhaps conjecture. We can not be sure of our footsteps. Of 
 only one thing we may be certain, and that is that as it is possi- 
 ble (and we can prove this every day of our lives) to lift this lower, 
 passionate, striving, sinning, consciousness to higher planes, and 
 thus secure as our own more divine states of consciousness in the 
 scale of being, so it seems reasonable and logical that it is possi- 
 ble for us, step by step, by overcoming all that is low and passion- 
 ate, to slowly but surely win our way to the land of the gods, 
 from whence we came and to which we must return. Because 
 the process of the human monad (to speak in terms which mean 
 almost nothing) seems a beginning at the very lowest rung 
 of the ladder of evolution. In some mysterious way, life from 
 the great Fount of Life descends to the differentiated aspect of 
 existence, and begins as a center of differentiated, but pure, con- 
 sciousness. It is lifted up to a certain point by a great Mani- 
 fested Hierarchy bestowing upon it their own essence; and so, 
 step by step, it returrrs to the great Source from which it eman- 
 ated. But in this journey, which has been termed the Cycle of 
 Necessity, something wonderful, grand, and divinely beautiful has 
 been accomplished. That which descended conscious from the 
 great sea of consciousness and unreasoning bliss reascends self- 
 conscious; and this it is the mission of all human souls to accom- 
 plish, and is the object of this journey of the Soul through the 
 Cycle of Necessity bound upon the Wheel of Rebirth. For as
 
 THE HIGHER TRIAD — ATMA, BUDDHI, MANAS. 103 
 
 near as mortal may understand the Infinite, this seems to be the 
 object of existence — the winning of self-consciousness. Con- 
 sciousness is infinite. It is at the basis of all that we can possi- 
 bly conceive, and yet there seems to be an added bliss to know 
 that we are conscious, to realize that we are divinely conscious 
 beings. So that it would seem that the object of all this trouble 
 and travail in these lower states of material environments was to 
 hammer out of that Divine Spark which illumines all of us the 
 spark of self-consciousness; that, having indeed descended, 
 conscious, we will reascend with all the glories of self-consciousness, 
 and be able to act a divinely self-conscious part in the great har- 
 mony which is rehearsed throughout nature during its inconceiv- 
 able eternities. We are creating unconsciously now, but then we 
 shall do so consciously; we shall change and modify the globe 
 that we live upon into a divinely glorious habitation. At that 
 time we will take a conscious part in all that creation which we 
 now attribute to the highest gods. We, by virtue of having this 
 Divine Ray from the Absolute at the basis of our natures, have 
 within us this divine potentiality, because there is no force within 
 the Cosmos which may not be raised to its divine potency; and 
 the fact that we have these aspirations shows that they are poten- 
 tialities, and that we may realize them if we will. The question is, 
 Shall we accomplish this or not? Shall we make the fight and 
 win for ourselves this our divine heritage or shall we go through 
 almost countless ages of misery, and perhaps lose our souls 
 in the end? 
 
 The way is plain. We have to control and govern the con- 
 sciousness which is in our passion-tossed bodies, and when that 
 is done we are ready to take another step higher, and so, step by 
 step, win our way back to the immortal mansions of the gods.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE DREAMING SELF. 
 
 C%N THE ordinary human life, one-third of the interval between 
 & the cradle and the grave -is spent in sleep. Since, then, so 
 large a portion of our existence upon earth is passed in this 
 intensely subjective condition, it is well, as Du Prel points out, to 
 carefully consider its relation to the problems of human conscious- 
 ness. Sleep has been said to be the prototype and twin sister 
 of death; yet few realize how close is the resemblance between 
 the two states of consciousness. To the ordinary person deep 
 sleep is simply death to all sensuous existence. It is a tempor- 
 ary and fleeting return to the subjective side of existence, in 
 which the permanent part of our being roots. There is no doubt 
 that the center of consciousness which constitutes the real base of 
 our soul cannot be annihilated, and that it has no lapses of con- 
 sciousness, even though sleep and other subjective states would 
 seem to point to the latter fact. The apparent lapse is produced 
 by two causes. One is the complete disconnection of the environ- 
 ing conditions, vibratory and otherwise, of the two states, and the 
 consequent inability of the lower material vehicle to register and 
 record the finer, inner, spiritual experiences; the other lies in the 
 fact that the soul, transported rapidly from one plane of conscious- 
 ness to another — or, to put it mathematically, from sensations which 
 are conveyed to it by vibrations having a certain ratio with which 
 it has become familiar, to those with which it is utterly unfamiliar — 
 is unable to at once recognize, classify, and translate into terms of 
 consciousness the new conditions and differing vibrations with 
 which it has to deal. During the intervals of sleep the center of 
 consciousness is, of course, not annihilated, but retires of necessity 
 to deep interior states of which the memory, owing to vibratory 
 changes in its vehicle, is lost long before the material plane 
 is even approached. Therefore, sleep in its relation to appar- 
 ently dreamless states will not be the principal subject of this
 
 THE DREAMING SELF. 105 
 
 study, but rather the dreaming planes with which almost the 
 whole of mankind is familiar. 
 
 What is it that causes the wonderful phenomenon of sleep ? 
 Science declares that it is due to the exhaustion of nerve-centers 
 within the brain and body. This is no doubt true as explaining 
 one effect by another effect, but it is no answer for the real cause 
 of sleep. Suppose that the nerve-centers do become exhausted 
 by long-continued exercise — why should the result be unconscious- 
 ness instead of merely fatigue, as is the case when muscular fibre 
 is wearied ? Why should not rest from thought restore the equi- 
 librium in the nerve-centers without this mysterious retiring of 
 the consciousness to subjective planes taking place? To all these 
 questions science offers no logical solution. Animals sleep, yet 
 the nerve-waste of many of those which even sleep the longest — 
 as the hibernating family — is so small that the nerve-exhaustion 
 theory completely breaks down. 
 
 It is obvious that in the question of sleep we are dealing with 
 a problem of cycles of existence upon objective and subjective 
 planes of being; this law of cycles being one proceeding out of 
 the very abysses of the unknowable, of which sleeping and wak- 
 ing are but examples of its immutable action. One may oppose 
 his will for a brief period to this law of nature, but must sooner or 
 later succumb, or else madness will ensue. Occultism declares 
 that the modus operandi in the occurrence of sleep is that the life- 
 currents become too powerful during the waking hours to be longer 
 resisted, and that, therefore, the soul is periodically driven to seek 
 subjective safety upon interior planes — a phenomenon whose-anal- 
 ogies may give a faint clue to the action of the life Principle upon 
 all planes of Cosmos, and consequently to the alternating cycles 
 of manvantaras and pralayas, or the objective and subjective 
 existence of universes and worlds. 
 
 Let us take as a preliminary study the lowest form of dream — 
 that which may be classified as physiological, or dependent upon 
 the lower brain-mind and the animal functions of the body, 
 entirely. These, no doubt, often arise, as physiology claims, 
 through reflex impulses transmitted to the brain, and caused by 
 indigestion, uneasy postures, and a multitude of other similar
 
 106 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 stimuli. They may also arise out of a sort of mechanical action of 
 the brain, which, temporarily aroused into activity in some portion' 
 of its mass, converts the slight stimulus into a kind of text upon 
 which it builds a whole panorama of after pictures. Thus, in one. 
 instance, a drop of water falling upon the face of a sleeper, whom 
 it seemed instantly to awaken, caused him to dream a long sequence 
 of thunder-storm, shipwreck, etc., during the fraction of a second 
 which elapsed between the impact of the drop and his awakening. 
 But the important point in even these low and sensuous 
 dreams is nearly if not quite overlooked by the ordinary material- 
 istic psychologist. This lies in the fact that, however absurd, illog- 
 ical, or vicious even, is the dream, there is of necessity an entity 
 who dreams that dream. The ordinary view is that such dreams 
 are purely mechanical actions due to automatism upon the part 
 of the brain, and that the Ego, upon awakening, perceives them as 
 he might a picture upon the wall of his chamber, painted during 
 his slumber. But this is an entirely erroneous view. These pic- 
 tures, however distorted or unreasonable, however disconnected 
 with each other, are the creations of an entity possessed of crea- 
 tive imagination, even though this be only temporarily and by 
 reflection from a higher source. It would be just as easy for the 
 picture to paint itself upon the wall of the chamber, upon the one 
 hand, as it would be for the reflected picture to cast itself upon 
 the brain, upon the other hand — which it must do, unless it be 
 the creative act of some entity. The one is no more unreason- 
 able than the other. Every picture seen in a dream is the crea- 
 tion of the will-desire of some entity or other. Since the entire 
 absence of both conscience and reason from these low sense- 
 dreams negatives the presence of the rational, conscience-guided 
 soul, or Higher Ego, what is the nature of the entity whose crea- 
 tions they are, who perceives them, and who is delighted or hor- 
 rified by them, as the case may be ? Since animals dream, 
 and since animals have synthesizing centers of consciousness, and, 
 further, since animals in no wise differ physically from man, except 
 that man is an animal plus a reasoning soul within, correspondence 
 and analogy point plainly and definitely to the fact that a human 
 elemental, an entity which synthesizes man's animal form as a
 
 THE DREAMING SELF. IO£ 
 
 lower one does that of the animals, is the dreaming entity and 
 center of consciousness in these cases. All these dreams arc the 
 thoughts of that entity. No longer illumined by the manasic Ray 
 from the Higher Ego, or the true soul having almost wholly with- 
 drawn its influence over it, this kamic elemental thinks and imag- 
 ines after its own senseless manner. Having no reasoning pow- 
 ers, its jumble of thoughts are not recognized as unreasonable; 
 and, not being guided by the warning voice of conscience, or the 
 Higher Ego, it will commit in its imagination the most silly as 
 well as the most heinous acts or crimes, without remorse or even 
 a recognition of their ethical bearing. Just in proportion as the 
 dream is reasonable is the influence of the ray of Manas apparent. 
 That there is an entity actively thinking out these dreams the 
 writer chanced to discover upon one occasion by actual experi- 
 ence. After closely observing the dreaming state for many 
 months, it chanced that in the process of awakening at one time, 
 for a brief instant, he stood apart and saw the working of the 
 dreaming imagination within the recesses of his own dreaming 
 brain. The latter was then engaged in reveling in one of these 
 sense dreams, and he perceived, or in some indescribable manner 
 recognized, the presence of the entity who was actively employed 
 in thinking the thoughts which, upon the brain, appeared like pic- 
 tures thrown upon the wall by means of a magic-lantern. The 
 relation of the observer, the observed, and the thought-creations, 
 was clear and distinct long enough for him to recognize that these 
 idle dreams and fantasies to which he had attached little or no 
 importance, and for which he had thought himself almost wholly 
 irresponsible, were not a passive, drifting panorama over which 
 there was no control from any source, but were the active thoughts 
 and created images of an entity who, in that brief interval of time, 
 stood disclosed as not only deliberately thinking these things, but 
 also as doing them, for his own gratification, as certainly and as 
 truly as the writer himself ever indulged in a "day dream" for a 
 similar purpose. A life lesson was thus learned in a brief moment, 
 and a light thrown upon the relation which the soul bears to its 
 human-animal body before the "I am myself " of the writer fused 
 in some incomprehensible manner into that of the dreaming entity
 
 108 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 and the thing dreamed, as both faded from view in awakening. 
 For, in returning to his body from the mysterious realms of dream- 
 land, the writer had caught, as it were, his lower self in the act of 
 dreaming, and was enabled to intelligently view and understand 
 the process. 
 
 Since, then, our ordinary sense-dreams are the imagination and 
 thought-creations of a reasonless entity with whom we are karmic- 
 ally bound by incarnating in these human-animal bodies, it fol- 
 lows that by closely observing one's dreams there will be found 
 the key to one's average mental life. For this entity is upon the 
 animal plane, and is very far from having the power to create of 
 its own volition the things which it dreams. It can only rum- 
 mage for these among the pictures and impressions stored in the 
 brain during the waking hours of the true man, or those in which 
 reason is active. It must, then, faithfully reflect the mental con- 
 dition of the man. The general tone of one's every-day thoughts, 
 therefore, will reappear even in his most senseless dreams. Idle 
 fancies, idle words, the usual things seen or perceived by any of 
 the senses during the day — all these constitute the stock from 
 which this lower dreaming entity draws when temporarily aroused 
 to independent activity in the manner pointed out when speaking 
 of the mechanical causes of dreams. The man, it is true, is not 
 responsible for the lack of sequence and reasonless vagaries of 
 this dreaming entity, but he is responsible, as the writer fully 
 believes, for the substance and general tenor of that which is 
 dreamed. Thus, a fit of unreasoning anger in a waking moment, 
 which is dramatized at night into a murder willfully committed, is 
 not, in the opinion of the writer, a mere added sequence of the 
 thought in the waking state; murder was in the heart, and may 
 have been, in our subconscious thought, actually enacted in the 
 daytime. Or the murderous thought may have arisen into percep- 
 tion as a suggestion coming from this lower consciousless animal, 
 but which the voice of conscience and of reason instantly cast out, 
 and yet of which the lower entity retained the memory and which 
 it carried into execution when opportunity offered in sleep. It 
 is just these lowest thoughts, having their origin entirely in our ani- 
 mal nature, which are the food, so to say, of the animal within us;
 
 THE DREAMING SELF. I0£ 
 
 and if they are absolutely prevented from arising in the mind, 
 then such dreams will surely cease. Remember, all dreams are 
 the result of thought. In these low dreams they are the effect of 
 reflected thought, to be sure — of a power borrowed temporarily by 
 this elemental from the Lower Manas, or brain mind — but they 
 are none the less thought-creations. Therefore is it true that our 
 dreams are really reflections of our ordinary mental states, and to 
 change our life is to change our dreams. 
 
 More than this: By the karmic bond between our souls and our 
 bodies, it becomes our sacred duty to humanize and rationalize, 
 so far as the laws of evolution permit, this lower human elemen- 
 tal with which we are thus karmically associated. For it will 
 return to us from life to life as the animal substratum of each suc- 
 ceeding personality. It is not a question of the mere tempor- 
 ary association of one's soul with passionate, willful, murderous, 
 obstinate, thieving, proud, or other undesirable attributes which 
 we find in our lower nature; the bond is of almost eternal duration. 
 Death by no means frees us from the bundle of sins, passions,, 
 appetites, and desires which are but the normal states of the con- 
 scious entity with which we are thus associated. It plainly fol- 
 lows us into Kama Loka, and by its clamorings and ragings earth- 
 ward prevents for a time our entrance into the rest of Devachan,. 
 as was pointed out when dealing with the Kama Rupa. It passes 
 into its condition of latency at the close of its kamalokic stage, to- 
 re-emerge upon the physical plane clothed in a new physical body 
 when the true thinker returns to incarnation. Thus, the warfare 
 between our higher and lower natures goes on eternally, until one 
 or the other gains the victory. 
 
 In this fact is to be found the explanation of the teachings in> 
 the "Voice of the Silence," that the enemies we slay in this life 
 will not return to fight us in the next. And he who makes no- 
 effort to control this unruly animal within him, or he who allows 
 himself to be subjugated by it, will return to earth accompanied 
 by the same deplorable faults of personality with which he left. 
 The fight must be made; the victory must be gained ; and there 
 is no greater mistake than that of Christians or Theosophists 
 when they fancy that the throwing-aside at death of the lower
 
 IIO SEPTENARY MAN./ 
 
 nature, hard to control, or undesirable to be associated with, ends 
 that association. It does not. "As a man sows so shall he reap," 
 and as he builds in one life so he must occupy in the next; and 
 his personality will not be a new one, however fair and innocent 
 the babe which represents that personality may appear. Within 
 it, as it grows older, will reappear the old traits of character, and 
 the old contest will have to be renewed, the old sufferings again 
 undergone, until at last the lesson is learned that the lower nature 
 must be subdued. 
 
 The relation which dreams bear to the proofs of the existence 
 of the soul can only be briefly hinted at. That hint has already 
 been given in the statement that a whole sequence of thunder- 
 storm, shipwreck, etc., was dramatized and experienced in the brief 
 fraction of a second which occurred between the contact of the 
 drop of water and the transmission of the sense-impression to the 
 brain of the sleeper. The rapidity with which sense-impressions 
 can be recorded by the brain is subject to accurate measurement 
 as to duration. Only so many thoughts can be visualized, only 
 so many things seen, during a given time. If the spokes of a 
 •wheel revolve too rapidly they pass into a blur. If the train 
 •moves too fast we are utterly unable to count objects, such as 
 . fence posts, along the track. In fact, our lives are measured by our 
 states of consciousness. We can live only at such a rate. We 
 
 • can experience only just so rapidly. If, now, we find that the 
 ■ dreaming consciousness can register conscious states a million 
 
 • times more rapidly than can the waking consciousness, it follows 
 : that that consciousness is not responding to the fame rate of 
 
 vibration, is not functioning through molecular vehicles, and that, 
 rirrerefore, the human* soul is independent of its body, and not a 
 
 • mere property of matter, as materialism insists. Let each one 
 - think this out for himself. 
 
 The key of the kamalokic state after death is also furnished by 
 dreams. The condition of consciousness is, of course, not the 
 
 • same, but it is undoubtedly analogous. The man who dreams 
 ' vague, chaotic dreams during life, who thereby gives evidence 
 
 that his is but a vague, undisciplined, chaotic mind, can but 
 i expect similar chaotic dreams after death. And he will be fortu-
 
 THE DREAMING SELF. HI 
 
 nate, indeed, if they are merely chaotic. For if he has failed to 
 subdue this animal within during life, if he has been governed by 
 his lower nature, then his dreams will take a criminal or other 
 horrible tendency. He will fluctuate between the commission of 
 crime and its detection and punishment. For after death, in the 
 kamalokic condition, we shall re-enact our old passionate life and 
 live amid the same unhappy surroundings, just as surely as that 
 in Devachan we shall experience and enjoy our highest ideals. 
 And this lower condition renders this kamalokic entity peculiarly 
 liable to be earth-bound and to haunt mediums, in order to 
 re-experience the old sensuous delights. But this is a subject 
 which has been dealt with elsewhere. 
 
 Passing now to a higher dreaming state, and remembering that 
 all dreams are the result of stimuli from some source, it is evident 
 that stimuli from the higher nature reach the dreaming conscious- 
 ness as well as those from a lower, sensuous source. In this lies 
 the explanation of dreams which have more or less signification. 
 A high thought coming from above may not be translated with 
 all the purity of its source; but just as the drop of water may 
 cause a sequence of a sensuous nature, so the impulse arising from 
 a thought coming from the diviner portion of our nature may give 
 
 ■ rise to a sequence or dream which, more or less faithfully, follows 
 -the line of that thought or impulse. The tendency, of course, is 
 -for it to become materialized and perverted, and this is why so 
 
 few dreams are really reasonable and helpful. The divine Inner 
 
 ■Ego may strive to impress some coming event upon the lower 
 
 brain mind, and this may be received clearly and yet dramatized 
 
 ■ into a panorama of apparently non-sequential pictures, from which 
 the dreamer, upon awakening, is able to gather nothing. And this 
 brings into view the fact that it is only a kind of transitional con- 
 sciousness between the waking and objective condition here and 
 the equally waking and objective consciousness upon the plane of 
 the Higher Ego, that can be truly classed as dream. For it must 
 be remembered that upon its own plane the Universe is projected 
 objectively a thousand times more clearly, perhaps, than is the 
 
 ■ molecular universe projected by the lower Ego upon this the 
 sensuous plane. It has been said that the condition of conscious-
 
 U2 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 ness at either pole seems like dream to the same consciousness at 
 the other pole. Thus, our earth-life must appear as a chaotic and 
 more or less unpleasant dream to the consciousness of our Higher 
 Ego; while its consciousness, upon the other hand, appears to be 
 the most unreal of dreams to our ordinary waking selves. There- 
 fore, it is only in the fleeting moments of passing into slumber 
 and of awakening out of it that our real dreams occur. In deep 
 sleep there is no dream in its true sense, for then the Ego retires 
 to its own plane of real being, and its consciousness there can- 
 not be said to be in any sense that of dream. Happy, indeed, 
 should we be could we unite our lower to our higher natures suf- 
 ficiently to pass consciously from one state to the other, and bring 
 back those precious experiences of the soul in so-called deep sleep, 
 to comfort us in this illusory waking consciousness ! But this can 
 only be accomplished by the union of our higher and lower 
 natures. It requires the entire subjugation and transmuting of 
 our lower principles, and this conquering of the lower nature is 
 what constitutes the Adept; and the Adept, it is said, never 
 dreams. For they simply paralyze their bodies, and pass con- 
 sciously and intelligently to that blissful, inner plane where their 
 thoughts become actualities. And happy, if in a lower degree, is 
 he who has so strengthened his will and so controlled his lower 
 nature as to also be able to control his dreams, even though he 
 be not able to fully preserve his waking consciousness upon the 
 dreaming plane. 
 
 Thus, even out of dreams, unreal and fantastic though we may 
 regard them, is to be learned many of the most important lessons 
 of life. Perhaps the most important of these, aside from the 
 necessity shown us through dreams, of thoroughly conquering and 
 subduing our lower nature, is the avenue they afford of contacting 
 the divinity within us. So long as we are unable, with the Adept, 
 to paralyze the body at will, and so rise to the diviner planes of 
 our being, so long are we dependent upon the sleeping state for 
 our transitory returns to that blissful consciousness. And in the 
 cultivation of the power to control dreams exists one of the first 
 steps towards the attaining of self-consciousness upon these mys- 
 terious, subjective planes of sleep and death. We are only awake ,
 
 THE DREAMING SELF. I 13 
 
 as we have seen, at the two poles of our being; the intermediate 
 states are truly subjective and dreaming ones. We have, in the 
 eons of the past, attained to self-consciousness upon this sensu- 
 ous, objective plane; it is evidently directly in the line of our evo- 
 lution, in eons to come, to conquer self-consciousness upon these 
 inner, astral planes, and the time for this may not be so very dis- 
 tant. Who has not dreamed that he was dreaming? Who has 
 not recognized that the pictures before him were the unreal vaga- 
 ries of his own creative imagination ? The recognition of illusion 
 is the first step towards its overcoming. And in the normal state 
 of consciousness afforded us by the dreaming condition we find a 
 safe avenue whereby to seek conscious union with our higher 
 natures. Yogis and mediums bring about an unnatural transfer- 
 ring of their centers of consciousness to inner planes, through 
 trance states induced by their own will or that of another, and all 
 such practices are full of the gravest perils. But in dreams one 
 may hearken to the voice of the God within him by means which 
 nature herself has provided. Therefore, it is not the foolish waste 
 of time our materialistic philosophy would have us believe to pay 
 some intelligent attention to our dreaming states, and to attempt 
 to exercise at least a moral control over dreams by the stern dis- 
 cipline of our lower nature, and the rigorous cultivation of our 
 highest spiritual faculties, by a devoted attention to the "Voice of 
 the Silence," which is that of our own conscience during the 
 dream which we fancy is our waking life.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE PROBLEMS OF HEREDITY. 
 
 gjj|AVlNG pointed out at some length the complex nature of man, 
 q| or the many streams which unite to form the microcosm of 
 which he is Regent or Rector, it becomes pertinent to inquire 
 more particularly into the relations which these differing streams, 
 or Principles, bear to each other and to man from the view-point 
 of heredity. To what extent is man indebted for his mental, 
 moral, psychic, or physical traits or qualities to his parents, his 
 general ancestry, his nation, and his race? And these inquiries 
 may even broaden out into the relation between the soul and this 
 molecular plane of matter — the influence which matter, per se, 
 exerts; the amount of free will or choice of action which remains 
 to the soul once it incarnates among the passionate entities of 
 this molecular plane. 
 
 The " Secret Doctrine" points out there are three distinct hered- 
 itary streams flowing into man — a statement which even a super- 
 ficial examination must verify. For the evidence of purely phys- 
 ical heredity, or that of parent to offspring, is plainly apparent; 
 it is susceptible of the "proof" which materialism demands when 
 dealing with psychic or mental problems — it may be weighed and 
 measured. It is equally plain, though not susceptible of the same 
 class of proof, that each soul conserves and carries forward that 
 modification of character which is the net result of its conscious 
 experiences. This constitutes mental heredity — the assimilated 
 results of personal conscious experiences, which is as impossible 
 to be carried forward in any manner except by the personal 
 experiencer as it is for one to digest another's dinner. In any 
 one life may be plainly seen this conscious conservation, and it is 
 equally plain that it is carried forward life after life, and is the 
 basis for differences in so-called "natural" capacities. The third 
 stream of heredity is purely spiritual, or "monadic," and with it 
 we have no present concern. It represents that necessary immu-
 
 THE TROBLEMS OF HEREDITY. I I 5 
 
 table base upon which, in common with all manifested life, the 
 human soul must rest. 
 
 The influence of nation, or race, or that exerted by the entities 
 ensouling the "matter" of the bodies of any particular people, is 
 tremendous, and but little appreciated by the ordinary man. Let 
 us suppose an extreme, yet possible, instance — that of an Adept 
 incarnating in an Navajo, or other Indian body, in order to get 
 into closer touch with these souls the more effectually to aid them. 
 There is but small doubt that he would at once lose all his Adept 
 powers — would become an Indian to all outward and inner appear- 
 ance. He would be a great-hearted, compassionate Indian — one 
 who would make a lasting impress for good upon his people; but 
 still an Indian! And having voluntarily and consciously bound 
 himself karmically by the ties which he must perforce set up, it 
 might be many weary lives before he could, under the law of 
 cause and effect, win his way back to his old state of Adeptship. 
 So powerfully do race, nation, and country modify, that the Jews, 
 the most exclusive and race-proud people upon the earth, perhaps, 
 quickly respond to these influences. The German, the Polish, 
 the French, the English Jew we all know; the number of differ- 
 ing types are only limited by the number of different races they 
 dwell among. Therefore, the strongest soul must yield, to a large 
 extent, to the influence of race and nation. In the case of the 
 Indian, he would be shut out from booklore, for instance, and 
 each nation would present differing limitations, which of necessity 
 must modify his conscious experiences, and, to a degree, his 
 character. 
 
 Let us enter upon the study of the problems of heredity with a 
 clear conception of the fact that, like all other phenomena, they 
 must fall under the action of the law of cause and effect; and, fur- 
 ther, that every change in the evolutionary progress of any entity 
 is due to thought. All heredity is due to thought — is the conser- 
 vation of its energies. But not all heredity is due to the thought 
 of the individual soul; much comes from foreign sources, and is 
 the result of the karmic action and interaction between man, the 
 unit, and collective humanity. To this latter class may be largely 
 assigned purely physical heredity, for here the karmic relation the
 
 1,6 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 unit bears to parents, nation, and race is adjusted. The type of 
 nation, race, and family is imposed upon the individual unit from 
 these respective sources. 
 
 We have seen that the plastic matter of the Linga Sharira 
 yields to the stronger impress, whether this is self-generated or 
 comes from without. We have also seen the conflict which takes 
 place between the different elements entering into man's nature 
 before the final karmic adjustment is arrived at, and the soul is 
 placed in the prison house of the body. A careful study of these 
 differing elements will make most, if not all, the puzzling problems 
 which confront the student plain. For with each new element 
 there enter new hereditary influences; each element brings from 
 its own past that conservation of its energy which is the immuta- 
 ble law throughout the Cosmos. And Theosophy does not segre- 
 gate one factor in the Cosmos, and declare that this alone is con- 
 served — which is the attitude of materialism towards force; but 
 declares that consciousness as well as force falls under this law, 
 and that the indestructibility of matter is but another mode of 
 stating the same truth. 
 
 These differing elements, which bring over from their past that 
 conservation of energy which is recognized as heredity, range 
 from the divine Higher Ego, upon the one hand, to the humblest 
 "lives" which go to build up the cells of the body, upon the other. 
 Beginning with the lowest phase of purely physical heredity, we 
 have to take into account the influence of the original cell, formed 
 by the union of the sperm and ovum of the two parents, and 
 which, according to Professor Weissmann,* "determines, alone 
 and unaided, by means of a constant segmentation and multiplica- 
 tion, the correct image of the future man (or animal) in his phys- 
 ical, mental, and psychic characteristics." This curious and 
 partially correct theory further supposes that such " germinal cells 
 do not have their genesis at all in the body of the individual, but 
 proceed directly from the ancestral germinal cell passed from 
 father to son through long generations." It breaks hopelessly 
 down in failing to account for the first appearance of this everlast- 
 ing cell, and in ignoring the necessary fusing of two "everlasting 
 
 *Beitrage zur Descendenzlehre . Quoted in Secret Doctrine.
 
 THE PROBLEMS OF HEREDITY. 11/ 
 
 cells" at each conception — unless one accepts the Mohammedan 
 view, that man alone is immortal while woman is not. 
 
 Without, however, digressing further, the fact remains that the 
 multiplication by fission of this germinal cell is the method by 
 which the entire body is built up, as far as its outward, molecular 
 clothing is concerned. The "embryonic tissue" theory of cancer, 
 advocated by able medical scientists, is founded upon a recogni- 
 tion of this genesis by fission. One can easily see the excessively 
 minute portion of the original plasm that would be found in any 
 one cell after millions of subdivisions, yet it is to the presence and 
 influence of this infinitesimal element that much of physical hered- 
 ity can be plainly traced. 
 
 Prominent among these is that peculiar tendency of the cells of 
 the body to yield to certain diseases. Very few diseases are 
 transmitted from parent to offspring in the matter of the germinal 
 cell, and these show themselves at or even before birth. But that 
 impress which causes the body to yield to the invasion of a micro- 
 bic disease (consumption, for example), and especially at about the 
 period of life at which the parent was affected, comes from the 
 taint of weakness stamped upon the cells by the presence in 
 every one of an infinitesimal portion of the germinal cell. Can- 
 cer, heart disease — in fact all those diseases which have been 
 wrongly attributed to direct transmission — arise in this way; for it 
 is not the disease itself which is passed over, but the tendency to 
 yield, the inability to withstand attack, which is transmitted 
 undoubtedly, and the only physical avenue for which is that 
 unbroken sequence of molecular matter handed down from par- 
 ents to offspring, and which is really " everlasting" in that it rep- 
 resents an uninterrupted physical sequence of life since humanity 
 first clothed itself with "coats of skin" upon this planet. 
 Through this avenue, also, are transmitted race and family traits; 
 the dark or light skin, the Caucasian or the Negro features, and 
 all of those physical peculiarities which seem so fixed that they can 
 only be modified or changed by the introduction of the blood of 
 another race. This germinal stamp, repeated generation after 
 generation, molds the body into the general type of race and 
 nation, and is largely concerned with such abnormalities as six
 
 I IS SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 fingers or toes, etc., although even here the influence of thought 
 may often be plainly traced. It becomes of greater importance 
 as we descend into the kingdoms below the human, and is the 
 cause of that repetition of form and function which obtains here, 
 and which becomes an almost absolute law in the lowest orders 
 because mind is absent, and the entity is blindly obeying the 
 general evolutionary impulse, or that from creative Dhyan Chohans 
 having in charge this particular portion of the countless work- 
 shops of nature. 
 
 The moment, however, that we pass above or beyond the influ- 
 ence of this " everlasting" matter, we have to deal with re-embodied 
 or reincarnated entities, or those which constitute man's micro- 
 cosm. All of these are mindless, and many even senseless. 
 Therefore, they yield to the stronger impress coming from above, 
 whether this be racial, family, personal, or individual. Here may 
 be classed all those qualities and traits belonging to the person- 
 ality which seem to be inherited, or passed on from parent to 
 offspring. The same passions, appetites, and desires, the same 
 tendency to repeat similar crimes or vices which have brought 
 the descendants of criminals into such deserved ill-repute, and 
 which criminal taint has been clearly identified with inherited 
 mental or physical unsoundness from parents — all these are to 
 be plainly accounted for under the law of cause and effect govern- 
 ing the re-embodiment of these, (man's microcosmic) associates; and 
 chief among which is that passionate human elemental, with its 
 desires and appetites flaming up under the light of intellectualiza- 
 tion. But while these lower associates seem to yield to the 
 thought of the parents in reproducing undesirable mental traits or 
 physical peculiarities, it is not a real yielding. The tendency to 
 evil is in them — brought over from their own past, — and the par- 
 ents only give the bent to its physical expression, or mark out 
 the particular direction in which the muddy current shall flow for 
 the one life. That even upon this low plane the personality 
 inherits from its own past, is plainly proven by the innumerable 
 instances where the same parents have given birth to both good 
 and evil offspring. 
 
 In considering these lower qualities, as well as many of the
 
 THE PROBLEMS OF HEREDITY. II9 
 
 higher, there enters an important factor in imitation. Children 
 are adepts in this faculty, as indeed the plastic conditon of their 
 minds makes a necessity. Many a psychic trick or mental habit 
 which would seem at the first blush to have been surely inherited 
 arises in imitation, and is confirmed by habit. And this plastic, 
 imitative condition of childhood can and ought to be taken advan- 
 tage of to establish habits and instill principles, if even almost 
 mechanically, which shall aid the soul in overcoming evil tenden- 
 cies it has permitted to take root in its lower associates during 
 some past life. Herein is the necessity and the justification for 
 the State taking charge of the education of the young, and provid- 
 ing wise and virtuous teachers. This is one of the many duties 
 which collective humanity owes to each of its units. 
 
 In this struggle of the soul and its personality with its physical 
 parents it must often happen that the latter prove the weaker, and 
 a particularly strong personality will thus succeed in impressing 
 its own characteristics upon the new body. This fully accounts 
 for the continual appearance of children who resemble neither 
 parent, as well as for that hopeless riddle of materialism — its so- 
 called " atavism," or the skipping of direct ancestors and revert- 
 ing to an older type. Reversion to an original type in the lower 
 kingdoms, however, is but the throwing off of an artificially estab- 
 lished peculiarity or variation, which was at its best highly unsta- 
 ble and outside the domain of the true evolutionary processes. 
 
 Most important of all hereditary influences, and constituting the 
 reproach of science and the despair of materialism, are those men- 
 tal traits and powers which the soul inherits from its own almost 
 infinite past. Overwhelmingly in evidence, constituting incontro- 
 vertible proof of the existence, nature, and powers of the soul, 
 this record, not graven in matter, and soaring above all taint of its 
 influence, is ignored, and the appearance of the genius, — the 
 philosopher, the poet, the inventor, and so on, — is sought to be 
 accounted for in some unknown, unreliable, mysterious "prop- 
 erty" of matter, which acts in defiance of the universal law of the 
 conservation of energy; or else is attempted to be explained along 
 mental lines by prenatal influence! The genius of Napoleon, 
 according to these wise men of the West, arose from the fact that
 
 120 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 his mother was a camp-follower and his father a common soldier — 
 conditions which have obtained since wars began, but which failed 
 in all the innumerable instances except this one ! Yet such 
 philosophers would scorn the idea of this not being a law-governed 
 Cosmos, but they must admit that this "law" acts in a very devi- 
 ous, uncertain manner. Genius defies the efforts of materialists to 
 account for it by any appeal to paternal transmission, as it 
 equally defies those of Idealists to explain it in the same way. 
 The straits to which science is reduced is well exemplified in the 
 admissions of Professor Proctor. He writes: * 
 
 "At present all that can be claimed is that some mental quali- 
 ties and some artistic aptitudes have unquestionably in certain 
 instances been transmitted, and that, on the whole, men of great 
 distinction in philosophy, literature, science, and art are rather 
 more likely than others to have among their relations (more or 
 less remote) persons above the average in mental or artistic qual- 
 ities. But it is not altogether certain that this superiority is even 
 quite so great as it might be expected to be if hereditary trans- 
 mission played no part in the matter at all." Forgetting on both 
 sides of questions of which they in reality know nothing, the sci- 
 entists are certainly to be commended ! 
 
 There is no theory or hypothesis which will explain the differ- 
 ences in mental traits and qualities, to say nothing of other differ- 
 ences in character, between individuals (even twins) having the 
 same parentage and other environments, except this which recog- 
 nizes that the soul is a conscious, thinking entity, superior to and 
 independent of its body (only as this is necessary to relate it to 
 molecular or physical matter), and that it returns to earth again 
 and again to complete its evolutionary tasks here. What these 
 tasks are has already been shown, and the nature of the soul, the 
 place of the weld between it and the body, fully gone into. It 
 only remains to point out that here, in the conservation of the 
 conscious experiences of the thinking ego, or soul, is to be found 
 the complete solution of the vexing (without this solution) prob- 
 lems of heredity. It is but a shallow philosophy which fancies 
 that a portion of the Cosmos is governed by unvarying law, 
 
 * Hereditary Traits.
 
 THE PROBLEMS OF HEREDITY. 12 1 
 
 while another portion is under the sway of mutable, chance-acting, 
 or even of directly opposite laws or forces. All law, of whatever 
 nature, is the result of some force — is its expression or mode of 
 manifestation; and therefore mental force falls under the univer- 
 sal law of force conservation. There is no escape from this propo- 
 sition, for that mental energies give rise to and are directly corol- 
 lated with physical dynamics is easily susceptible of the most 
 direct proof. Arouse emotion by thought, and, with a sufficiently 
 delicate instrument attached to the superficies of the head, the 
 amount of force generated may be instantly read off in units of 
 heat. That heat, light, and electricity may be mutually trans- 
 muted into each other has long been known, and here is the evi- 
 dence that mental energy uses at least similar modes of motion 
 for its physical manifestation. Therefore, we are brought face to 
 face with the fact that, as these other forms of energy are undoubt- 
 edly conserved, mental energy must fall under the same law and 
 be also conserved. That it is conserved in one life is evidenced 
 by the mental growth of the individual during that life; that it is 
 conserved life after life is equally proven by the phenomena of 
 genius, or of its antipodes, imbecility. For if ex nihil nihilo fit, 
 it is equally certain that " nothing can not come out of some- 
 thing," either, which would have to be the case if idiocy were 
 attributable to the physical parentage through heredity. 
 
 Mental energies are conserved, and brought over life after life, 
 by the reincarnating of the Higher Ego and its accompanying 
 microcosm. The most important stream of heredity, then, is that 
 which each soul inherits from its own past. Under the law of 
 cause and effect, which is but stating in other terms the law of 
 the eternal conservation of energy, we reap exactly that which we 
 have sown, and so return to earth with that character, whether lovely 
 or unlovely, which we have created, and which is but the conserv- 
 ation of the conscious energies of our past. National, racial, and 
 family heredity are but the karmic relation between us and our 
 past, and, as has been pointed out, only direct the current of our 
 conserved energies into appropriate channels; but have no part in 
 the creation of those energies. Therefore, the character, the abil- 
 ities — the imbecility, the mediocrity, or the genius, — which we 
 
 V
 
 122 SEPTENARY MAN. 
 
 possess we have inherited from ourselves, and from ourselves 
 alone. No other theory can reconcile the circumstances of life 
 which surround us with our outraged sense of justice. The babe 
 born with a transmitted tendency to a disease which cripples and 
 maims its mentality, which leads to insanity or imbecility, does 
 not depend for such an evil fate upon chance, nor upon the acci- 
 dent of birth. The inherited disease which cuts off a young life 
 in the glory of its highest promise has been earned in the past — 
 is but the conservation of the energies of that past, and is not, 
 can not be, in a law-governed, orderly Cosmos, the result of acci- 
 dent, of blind fate, or of the caprice of some changeful or venge- 
 ful god. Under the inviolable law of cause and effect, the soul 
 returns with its powers crippled or expanded by its own actions 
 alone. The race, and the parents even, are those with whom it 
 has set up karmic ties in other lives, and it must share in the herit- 
 age of limitations of all kinds which the matter of their physical 
 cells demands. The very forces of love or of hatred are conserved 
 and bind the soul to the same family or persons for whom it has 
 felt these emotions as surely as the lower forces of attraction and 
 repulsion upon the molecular plane bind the planets in their orbits 
 about the sun. There is no accident of birth, there is not one 
 atom acting by chance in all this great Cosmos, but with unerr- 
 ing certainty each cause is bound up with its effect; the two are 
 but aspects of the same thing, and can not be separated in real- 
 ity, however much so they may seem to be by time. So that 
 man can, under the theosophic view of heredity, set about build- 
 ing his future with the absolute certainty that no effort will be 
 lost, that each step he wins upon the eternal stairway of the gods 
 will not have to be taken again; but that he, and he alone, will 
 inherit his past, be that past evil or good.
 
 <$An Epitome of (ph^osopl?^. 
 
 Theosophy, the Wisdom-Religion, has existed from immemorial time. It offers us a 
 theory of nature and of life which is lounded upon knowledge acquired by the Sages of the 
 past, more especially those of the East; and its higher students claim that this knowledge is 
 not something imagined or inferred, but that it is seen and known by those who are willing 
 to comply with the conditions. Some of its fundamental propositions are: 
 I. — That the spirit in man is the only real and permanent part of his being; the rest of his 
 nature being variously compounded, and, decay being incident to all composite things, 
 everything in man but his spirit is impermanent. 
 
 Further, that the universe being one thing and not diverse, and everything within 
 it being connected with the whole and with every other — of which upon the upper 
 plane, above referred to, there is a perfect knowledge — no act or thought occurs with- 
 out each portion of the great whole perceiving and noting it. Hence all are inseparably 
 bound together by the tie of Brotherhood. 
 2.— That below the spirit and above the intellect is a plane of consciousness in which experi- 
 ences are noted, commonly called man's "spiritual nature" ; this is as susceptible of 
 culture as his body or his int llect. 
 3. — That this spiritml culture is only attainable as the grosser interests, passions, and demands 
 of the flesh are subordinated to the interests, aspirations, and needs of the higher 
 nature; and that this is a matter of both system and established law. 
 4.— That men thus systematically trained attain to clear insight into the immateria', spiritual 
 world, their interior faculties apprehending Truth as immediately and readily as physi- 
 cal faculties grasp the things of sense, or mental faculties those of reason; and hence 
 that their testimony to such Truth is as trustworthy as is that of scientists or philoso- 
 phers to truth in their respective fields. 
 
 5. That in the course of this spiritual training such men acquire perception of and control 
 
 over various forces in Nature unknown to others, and thus are able to perform works 
 usually called " miraculous," though really but the result of larger knowledge of natura 
 law. 
 6.— That their testimony as to super-sensuous truth, verified by their possession of such pow- 
 ers, challenges candid examination from every religious mind. 
 Turning now to the system expounded by these Sages, we find as its main points: 
 ! _An account of cosmogony, the past and future of this earth and other planets; the evolu. 
 
 tion of life through mineral, vegetable, animal and human forms. 
 
 2.— That the affairs of this world and its people are subject to cyclic laws, and that during any 
 
 one cycle the rate or quality of progress appertaining to a different cycle is not possible. 
 
 3, — The existence of a universally diffused and highly ethereal medium, called the " Astral 
 
 Light" or "Akasa," which is the repository of all past, present and future events, and 
 
 which records the effects of spiritual causes and of all acts and thoughts from the 
 
 direction of either spirit or matter. It may be called the Book of the Recording Angel. 
 
 4. — The origin, history, development and destiny of mankind. 
 
 Upon the subject of Man it teaches: 
 I. — That each spirit is a manifestation of the One Spirit, and thus a part of all. It passes 
 through a series of experiences on incarnation, and is destined to ultimate re-union with 
 the Divine.
 
 2. — That this Incarnation is not single but repeated, each individuality becoming re-embodied 
 during numerous existences in successive races and planets, and accumulating the ex. 
 periences of each incarnation towards its perfection. 
 
 -3. — That between adjacent incarnations, after grosser elements are first puiged away, comes 
 a period of comparative rest and refreshment, the spirit being therein prepared for its 
 next advent into material life . 
 
 4. — That the nature of each incarnation depends upon the merit and demerit of the previous 
 life or lives, upon the way in which the man has lived and thought; and that this law is 
 inflexible and wholly just. 
 
 5. — That " Karma" — a term signifying two things, the law of ethical causation (Whatsoever 
 a man soweth, that shall he also reap), and the balance or excess of merit or demerit in 
 any individual — determines also the main experiences of joy and sorrow in each incarna- 
 tion, so that what men call "luck" is in reality "desert", desert acquired in past 
 existence. 
 
 ■0. — That the process of evolution up to re-union with the Divine contemplates successive ele- 
 vations from rank to rank of power and usefulness, the most exalted beings still in the 
 flesh being known as Sages, Rishees, Brothers, Masters, their great function being 
 the preservation at all times — and, when cyclic laws permit, the extension — of spiritual 
 knowledge and influence among humanity. 
 
 ■7. — That when union with the Divine is effected, all the events and experiences of each incar- 
 nation are known. 
 As to the process of spiritual development it teaches: 
 
 1. — That the essence of the process lies in the securing of supremacy to the highest, the spir- 
 itual, element of man's nature. 
 
 2. — That this is attained along four lines, among others — 
 
 (a) The eradication of selfishness in all forms, and the cultivation of broad, generous 
 sympathy in and effort for the good of others. 
 (£) The cultivation of the inner, spiritual man by meditation, communion with the Divine, 
 and exercise . 
 
 (c) The control of fleshly appetites and desires; all lower, material interests being deliber- 
 ately subordinated to the behests of the spirit. 
 
 (d) The careful performance of every duty belonging to one's station in life, without desire 
 for reward, leaving results to Divine law. 
 
 o. — That while the above is incumbent on and practicable by all religiously-disposed men, a 
 yet higher plane of spiritual attainment is conditioned upon a specific course of training, 
 physical, intellectual and spiritual, by which the internal faculties are first aroused and 
 then developed. 
 
 4. — That an extension of this process is reached in Adeptship, an exalted stage attained by 
 laborious self-discipline and hardship, protracted through possibly many incarnations, 
 and with many degrees of initiation and preferment, beyond which are yet other stages 
 ever approaching the Divine. 
 As to the rationale of spiritual development it asserts: 
 
 z That the process is entirely within the individual himself, the motive, the effort, the 
 
 result being distinctly personal. 
 
 2< — That, however personal and interior, this process is not unaided, being possible, in fact, 
 only through close communion with the Supreme Source of all strength. 
 As to the degree of advancement in incarnations it holds: 
 
 I# That even a mere intellectual acquaintance with Theosophic truth has great value in fit- 
 ting the individual for stepping upwards in his next earth-life, as it gives an impulse in 
 that direction. 
 
 2. — That still more is gained by a career of duty, piety and beneficence. 
 
 o That a still greater advance is attained by the attentive and devoted use of the means to 
 
 spiritual culture heretofore stated.
 
 It may be added that Tfaeosophy is me mxij system of religion and philosophy which gives 
 a satisfactory explanation of such problems as these: 
 i.— The object, use, and inhabitation of other planets than this earth. 
 
 2 —The geological cataclysms of earth; the frequent absence of intermediate types in its 
 
 fauna; the occurrence of architectural and other relics of races now lost, and as to 
 which ordinary sci.nce has nothing but vain conjecture; the nature of extinct civiliza- 
 tions and the causes of their extinction ; the persistence of savagery and the uivqual 
 development of existing civilization; the differences, physical and internal, between the 
 various races of men; the line of future development. 
 
 3 —The contrasts and unisons of the worlds faiths, and the common foundation underlying 
 
 them all. 
 4.— The existence of evil, of suffering, and of sorrow— a hopeless puzzle to the mere philan- 
 thropist or theologian. 
 5.— The inequalities in social condition and privilege; the sharp contrasts between wealth and 
 poverty, intelligence and stupidity, culture and ignorance, virtue and vileness; the 
 appearance of men of genius in families destitute of it, as well as other facts in conflict 
 with the law of heredity ; the frequent cases of unfitness of environment around indi- 
 viduals, so sore as to embitter disposition, hamper aspiration and paralyze endeavor; 
 the violent antithesis between character and condition; the occurrence of accident, mis- 
 fortune, and untimely death— all of them problems solvable only by either the conven- 
 tional theory of Divine caprice orthe Theosophic doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation. 
 6.— The possession by individuals of psychic powers— clairvoyance, clairaudience, etc., as 
 
 well as the phenomena of psychometry and statuvolism. 
 7.— The true nature of genuine phenomena in spiritualism, and the proper antidote to super- 
 stition and to exaggerated expectation. 
 8.— The failure of conventional religions to greatly extend their areas, reform abuses, re- 
 organize society, expand the idea of brotherhood, abate discontent, diminish crime, and 
 elevate humanity, and an apparent inadequacy to realize in individual lives the ideal 
 they professedly uphold. 
 As to the extension of its philosophy, it offers: 
 1.— That of intellectual inquiry— to be met by works in Public Libraries, etc. 
 2.— That of desire for personal culture— to be met partly by the books prepared for that spe- 
 cific end, partly by the periodical Magazines expounding Theosophy. 
 3. — That of personal identification with the Theosophical Society, an association formed in 1875 
 with three aims— to be the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood; to promote the study 
 of Aryan and other Eastern literatures, religions and sciences; to investigate unex- 
 plained laws of nature and the psychical powers latent in man. Adhesion to the first 
 only is a prerequisite to membership, the others being optional. The Society repre- 
 sents no particular creed, is entirely unsectarian, and includes professors of all faiths, 
 only exacting from each member that toleration of the beliefs of others which he desires 
 them to exhibit towards his own . 
 Membership in the Theosophical Society may be either "at large" or in a local Branch. 
 Applications for membership in a Branch should be addressed to the local President or Secre- 
 tary; those "at large" to any Branch President or to the General Secretary, Wm. Q. Judge, 
 i44 Madison Ave., New York, and the latter should inclose $2.00 for entrance fee and 50 
 cents for diploma, and $1.00 yearly dues. Information as to organization and other points 
 may also be obtained from Secretary Pacific Coast Corporation, Mercantile Library Build- 
 ing, San Francisco. 
 
 There are now, 1895, one hundred Branches in the United States, including all the princi- 
 pal cities, among which may be noted New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, San 
 Francisco, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Washington, Cincinnati, Boston, Omaha, San Diego, 
 Denver, Salt Lake, New Orleans, etc.
 
 LIST OF THEOSOPEICAL AID KIUDEED WORKS. 
 
 - ••- - 
 Which may be obtained, post-paid, from 
 
 The Pacific Coast Committee, 
 530 Golden Gate Ave., San Francisco, Cal. 
 
 Adventure among the Rosicrucians, paper, 
 
 50c; cloth $ .75 
 
 Animal Magnetism — Binet and Fere 1.50 
 
 Astral Light— Nizida 75 
 
 Atlantis — Donnelly 2.00 
 
 Bhagavad-Gita — Judge, red leather, 75c; 
 
 morrocco 1.00 
 
 Bhagavad-GitaMohini's translation and 
 
 notes 
 
 Bcehme, Jacob, Life and Doctrines of . . . . 
 
 Buddha, Life of — Lillie 
 
 Buddha, Life of the— Rockhill 
 
 Buddhist Catechism — Olcott 
 
 Buried Alive — Hartman cloth 
 
 Christos — Buck ' 
 
 Clothed with the Sun, paper, 50; cloth. . . . 
 
 Coming Race — Lytton paper 
 
 Compendium, Raja-Yoga Philosophy. . . 
 
 Death and After? — Besant 
 
 Discourses on the Bhagavad-' ita 
 
 Dreams and Dream-Stories — Kingsford, 
 
 paper, 50c; cloth 
 
 Dreams of the Dead — Stanton, paper, 50c; 
 
 cloth 
 
 Echoes from the Orient — Judge 
 
 Elixir of Life— By a Chela paper 
 
 Esoteric Buddhism — Sinnett, paper, 50c; 
 
 cloth, 
 
 Esoteric Basis of Christianity, part 1 
 
 " '*■ " " part 2 
 
 Evolution according to Theosop.iy 
 
 Five Years of Theosophy cloth 
 
 From the Caves and Jungles of Hindustan 
 
 — Blavatsky 
 
 Gems from the E 1st — Blavatsky 
 
 Geomancy, Principles of Astrological. 
 Geometric Psychology — -Betts and Cook . . 
 
 Glossary, Theosophi cal — H. P. B 
 
 Golden Stairs, Tales from the Wonder 
 
 World— Waite 
 
 Guide to Theosophv (printed in India) . . . 
 Hints on Esoteiic Theosophy and Idyll of 
 
 White Lotus .paper, 50c ; cloth 
 
 Idea of Ne. Birth — Arundale 
 
 Imitation of Buddha, The 
 
 Incidents in Life of Mme. Blavatsky. 
 
 Indianapolis Letters on Theosophy 
 
 In the Pronaos of the Temple of Wisdom 
 
 — Hartman 
 
 Isis Unveiled — Blavatsky 
 
 Jeho.sua, Life of — Hartmann 
 
 Kabbalah Unveiled — Mather 
 
 Karma — Sinnett cloth 
 
 Key to Theosophy — Blavatsky 
 
 Letters That Have Helped Me 
 
 Light of Asia paper, 25c; cloth 
 
 Light on the Path— M. C vellum 
 
 " " with comments from 
 
 Lucifer, pocket edition cloth 
 
 same, with comments paper 
 
 Magic, White and Black — Hartmann, 
 
 paper 50c; cloth 
 
 Man, Fragments on Forgotten History. . . . 
 Memorial Articles of H. P. Blavatsky. . . . 
 Modern Theosophy — Wright, paper, 50c; 
 
 .' cloth, 
 
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 Nature's Finer Forces — Rama Prasad ... 
 
 Neila Sen paper 50c; cloth 
 
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 Occult World — Sinnett, paper, 50c: cloth 
 
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 red leather, 75c; morocco 
 
 Pearls of Faith — Edwin Arnold 
 
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 Philosophy of Mysticism ... ... .2 vols. 
 
 Posthumous Humanity — D Assier 
 
 Problems of the Hidden Life — Pilgrim... 
 
 Psychometry and Thought Transference 
 paper, 
 
 Purpose of Theosophy — Mrs. Sinnett 
 paper 15c; cloth .... 
 
 Rationale of Mesmerism — Sinnett 
 
 Reincarnation — Anderson, paper 50c; 
 cloth 
 
 Reincarnation — Besant 
 
 Reminiscences of H. P. B. and the Secret 
 Doctrine — Countess Wachtmeister, 
 , . paper, 50c; cloth 
 
 Rosicrucians, History of the — Waite 
 
 Sankhya Karika (with commentary) 
 
 Secret Doctrine — Blavatsky 
 
 Secret of Death — Edwin Arnold 
 
 Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians 
 
 Seven Principles of Man — Besant 
 
 Simon Magus paper, 1.75; cloth 
 
 Song Celestial— Bhagavad Gita, verse 
 
 Songs of the Lotus Circle 
 
 Soui of Things — Denton 3 vols. 
 
 Sound and Music — Nahm 
 
 Source of Measures — Skinner 
 
 Strange Story, A— Lytton paper 
 
 Study of Man— Buck 
 
 Theosophy or Psychological Religion 
 
 Theosophy, Religion, Occult Science .... 
 
 Theosophy and its Evidences— Besant . . . . 
 
 Things Common to Christianity and The- 
 osophy 
 
 Three Sevens— Phelons 
 
 Through the Gates of Gold— M. C 
 
 Topics in Karma— Fullerton 
 
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 Transactions Blavatsky Lodge, No. 1 . . . . 
 No. 2 
 
 Unknown Life of Jesus Christ 
 
 Voice of the Silence-.-Blavatsky, red 
 leather 75c; morrocco 
 
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 LIST OF THEOSOPHICAL PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 The Path. 
 
 A Magazine devoted to the Brotherhood of 
 Humanity, Theosophy in America, and the 
 Study of Occult Science, Philosophy and Aryan 
 Literature. Edited by William Q. Judge. A 
 special feature of The Path consists in articles 
 giving the experiences of students in Occultism. 
 Subscriptions, 8j\ per annum, post free. New 
 York: 144 Madison Avenue. 
 
 The Irish Theosophist. 
 
 The third volume began October, 1894, and 
 contains articles by Jasper Niemand, William 
 Q. Judge, Mrs. Annie Besant, Che-Yew-Tsang 
 and others. Publishing office, 3 Upper Ely 
 Place, Dublin, Ireland. Subscriptions may be 
 sent to the Path. Price, $1.00 per year. 
 Members of the T. S. will soon find it indis- 
 pensable. 
 
 Echoes from the Orient. 
 
 A broad outline of Theosophical Doctrines. 
 By William Q. Judge. Attractively bound 
 in light cloth with colored side-stamp. 50 cents. 
 
 The Bhagavad Gita. 
 
 Fifth American Edition, revised by William 
 Q. Judge. Printed on wood-cut paper, bound 
 in flexible morocco with gilt edges and round 
 corners, $1.00. Flexible red leather, round 
 corners and red edges, 75 cents. 
 
 Letters that have Helped Me. 
 
 Compiled by Jasper Niemand. Printed on 
 handsome super-calendered paper, same size 
 page as the Ocean of Theosophy. Light cloth 
 with olive-green side stamp. 50 cents. 
 
 Patanjali's Yoga Aphorisms. 
 
 An interpretation by William Q. Judge. Print- 
 ed on woodcut paper, uniform in size with 
 Bhagavad-Gita. In flexible morocco, gilt 
 edges and round corners, $1.00. Flexible red 
 leather, round corners and red edges, 75 cents. 
 
 The Voice of the Silence. 
 
 A new edition from new plates, on wood-cut 
 paper, uniform in size with Bhagavad-Gita and 
 Patanjali's Yoga Aphorisms. In this edition 
 the notes are printed on the page with the text 
 to which reference is made. It also includes 
 the Stanzas of Dzyan, on which the Secret 
 Doctrine is based, and contains a fine half-tone 
 portrait of H. P. Blavatsky. Inflexible moroc- 
 co round corners and gilt edges, $1.00. Flexi- 
 ble red leather, round corners and red edges, 
 75 cents. • 
 
 Twelve Principal Upanishads. 
 
 Translated into English with notes from the 
 Commentaries of Sankaracharya and the 
 Gloss of AnAndagiri. 7iopages, cloth, $3.00 
 
 Occult Science in Medicine. 
 
 Bv Franz Hartmann, M. D. Contents: Intro- 
 duction. Chapter I, The Constitution of Man ; 
 Chapter II, The Four Pillars of Medicine; 
 Chapter III, The Five Causes of Disease; 
 
 Chapter IV, The Five Classes of Physicians; 
 Chapter V, The Medicine of the Future. 
 Cloth, $1.25. 
 
 Photographs of W. Q. Judge. 
 
 Bv Sarony, of New York. Cabinet, 50 cents. 
 Cabinet, (bromide) 75 cents. Life-size, (bro- 
 mide) $6.00.' Sent by mail or express, charges 
 paid, on receipt of price. All orders to be 
 sent to Dr. T. P. Hyatt, 147 Hancock Street, 
 Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 
 A Study of Man 
 
 And the way to Health. By J. D. Buck, M. D. 
 Contains chapters on Matter and Force, •The 
 Phenomenal World, Life, Polarity, Living 
 Forms, Pianes of Life, The Nervous System, 
 Consciousness, Health and Disease, Sanity and 
 Insanity, Involution and Evolution of Man, 
 etc. pp. xxii, and 302. Half Russia $2.50. 
 
 Nature's Finer Forces. 
 
 The Science of Rreath and Philosophy of 
 the Tattvas. By Rama Prasad, M. A. Con- 
 tents: The Tattvas; Evolution; The Mutual 
 Relation of the Tattvas and of the Principles; 
 Prana; The Mind; The Cosmic Picture Gal- 
 lery; The Manifestations of Psychic Force; 
 Yoga--The Soul; The Spirit; The Science of 
 Breath; Glossary. Second and revised edition 
 Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 An Outline of the Principles 
 
 of Modern Theosophy. By Claude Falls 
 Wright. Willi an introduction by William Q. 
 Judge, pp. ix and 188. Chapter I, The Ar- 
 cane Philosophy; Chapter II, Cosmological ; 
 Chapter III.The Planetary World; Chapter IV, 
 Anthropological; Chapter V, Masters of Wis- 
 dom; Chapter VI, The Theo^phical Society; 
 Chapter VII, Conclusion." Appendix I, The 
 osophy and Modern Science. Appendix II, 
 Bibliography of Tneosophy. Paper, 50 cents; 
 Cloth, $1.00. 
 
 Things Common to 
 
 Christianity and Theosophy. Papers read 
 before the Aryan T. S., New York, Jan. 9th, 
 1894, by Alexander Fullerton, H. S. Budd, J. 
 H. Fussell, Leon Landsberg, and William Q. 
 Judge. Price 10 cents. 
 
 The Philosophy of Mysticism. 
 
 By Carl Du Prel, Dr. Phil. Translated from 
 the German by C. C. Massey. Two volumes, 
 octavo, cloth, $7.50. 
 
 The Source of Measures. 
 
 Key to the Hebrew- Egyptian Mystery. By J. 
 Ralston Skinner. Second edition with supple- 
 ment. Octavo, cloth, $500. 
 
 Songs of the Lotus Circle, 
 
 With Music. Arranged by Tregina. Fools- 
 cap, bound in limp linen cloth, 50 cents. 
 
 Drifting* in Dreamland, 
 
 Poems, by Jerome A. Anderson. Neatly 
 bound in cloth, $1.00.' Address the author, 
 1170 Market Street, San Francisco. 
 
 For sale by the Pacific Coast Committee, 530 Golden Gate Avenue, 
 
 San Francisco, California. 
 
 lUir Any of the above works sent by mail or express, charges prepaid, to 
 any part of the world, on receipt of price.
 
 HE INCARNATION. 
 
 -A- 
 
 STUDY*OF*THE. HUMAN .SOUL 
 
 In its Relation to Re-Birth, Evolution, Post-Mortem States, 
 the Compound Nature of Man, Hypnotism, Etc. 
 
 BY JEROME A. ANDERSON, M. D., F. T. S. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. The Nature and Origin of the Soul.— The three Absolute Hypostases— 
 
 Consciousness, Substance, Force CHAPTER I. — The Physiological Evidence of the Existence 
 
 of the Soul. — No Physiological Basis for the Unitv of Consciousness — Memory — Feeling, Etc. — Me- 
 chanical Motion Cannot Originate Sensation. . . //. — The Psychological Evidence of the Existence 
 of the Soul. — The Nature of Dream — Trance — Clairvoyance — Thought Transference, Etc . . III. — 
 The Evolution of the Soul. — The Unit of Consciousness— from Atom to God by the Widening of the 
 Conscious Area Through Experience, Etc. . . .IV. — The Individualization of the Soul. — Centers of 
 Consciousness Freed by Pralayas — The Cycle of Necessity. . . . V. — Reincarnation — Philosophic and 
 Logical Evidence. — Failure of One Birth Theories — Life only to be Explained Philosophically by 
 Reincarnation. . . . VI. — Reincarnation — The Scientific Evidence. — Bulbs — Seeds — Metamorphosis 
 of Insects — Genius — Idiocy — Prodigies, Etc. . . . VII. — The Composite Nature of the Soul. — The 
 Seven Aspects of the One Center of Consciousness. . . . VIII. — The Reincarnating Ego. — The Nature 
 and Functions of the Higher Ego ...IX. — The Personality. — The Animal Man — How Related to 
 the Divine Man.... A'. — Post-Mortem States of Consciousness. — Devachan — Kama Loca and Nir- 
 vana — Nature of . . . . XI. — Hypnotism and the Human Soul. — Hypnotic Processes and States of 
 Consciousness. .. .XII. — Objections to Reincarnation. — Loss of Memory Explained — Other Objec- 
 tions Answered. . . XIII. — Karma. — The law of Cause and Effect on all Planes. . . XIV. — Ethical 
 Conclusions . .APPENDIX A. — Reincarnation as Applied to the Sex Problem.. 'APPENDIX B. 
 Embryology and Reincarnation. — The Nutrition of the Eetus. 
 
 — THE — 
 
 *©ClEA]Sr €>3F THEOSOPHYli 
 
 — BY — 
 
 Wm. q. judge, f. t. s. 
 
 This work is designed to give the general reader some knowledge of the most important Theo- 
 sophical Doctrines, and at the same time it will be of great value to students in the Theosophical So- 
 ciety. It contains 17 chapters and gives a clear idea of the fundamental principles of the Wisdom- 
 Religion. The following is a brief synopsis of the book : 
 
 Chapter I deals with the general aspects of Theosophy, and that ever-interesting subject, the 
 Masters. . . .Chap. II — Is a concise presentation of Evolution and its records in ancient chronolo- 
 gies. . . Chap. Ill — Deals with our Earth more particularly — shows its septenary nature, and its re. 
 lation to other planets of our plane. . .Chap. IV — Applies this septenary division to man, and dealr 
 
 with his " Principles" in a general way. . .Chap. V — Takes up the Body and Astral Body Chap. 
 
 VI — Examines the natureof Kama. . . .Chap. VII — Of Manas, or the Thinking Principle; all togeth- 
 er, forming, perhaps, the clearest explanation yet written of the nature and functions of these Prin- 
 ciples. .. .Chaps. VIII, IX and X deal with Reincarnation and its evidences Chap. XI — With 
 
 Karma Chaps. XII and XIII— With Post-Mortem Existence Chap. XIV— With Cycles 
 
 Chap. XV — With the Derivation of Man, the Apes, etc Chaps. XVI and XVII— With Psychic 
 
 Force, " Spiritualism," and allied topics. 
 
 Cloth, $1.00 ; paper, 50c. 
 
 Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of price. 
 
 THE PHTH, 
 
 144 Madison Avenue, New York. 
 
 Or, THE P. C. COMMITTEE, 530 Golden Gate Avenue, Mercantile Library Building. 
 The above work, containing 250 pages, handsomely bound, sent post paid on receipt of price: 
 
 Cloth, (Blue and Gold,) $1.00. 
 
 Same in Paper Covers , -50. 
 
 Address the Author, JEROME A. ANDERSON, M. D., 
 
 1170 Market St., San Francisco, California.
 
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