Theos-Talk Archives (March 1996 Message tl00071)

OCEAN7.TXT ~The Ocean of Theosophy~ - W.Q.Judge

CHAPTER VII

IN OUR ANALYSIS of man's nature we have so far considered only
the perishable elements which make up the lower man, and have
arrived at the fourth principle or plane, that of desire,
without having touched upon the question of Mind. But even so
far as we have gone it must be evident that there is a wide
difference between the ordinary ideas about Mind and those found
in Theosophy. Ordinarily the Mind is thought to be immaterial,
or to be merely the name for the action of the brain in evolving
thought, a process wholly unknown other than by inference, or
that if there be no brain there can be no mind. A good deal of
attention has been paid to cataloguing some mental functions and
attributes, but the terms are altogether absent from the
language to describe actual metaphysical and spiritual facts
about man. This confusion and poverty of words for these uses
are due almost entirely, first, to dogmatic religion, which has
asserted and enforced for many centuries dogmas and doctrines
which reason could not accept, and secondly to the natural war
which grew up between science and religion just as soon as the
fetters placed by religion upon science were removed and the
latter was permitted to deal with facts in nature. The reaction
against religion naturally prevented science from taking any but
a materialistic view of man and nature. So from neither of these
two have we yet gained the words needed for describing the
fifth, sixth, and seventh principles, those which make up the
Trinity, the real man, the immortal pilgrim.

The fifth principle is Manas, in the classification adopted by
Mr. Sinnett, and is usually translated Mind. Other names have
been given to it, but it is the knower, the perceiver, the
thinker. The sixth is Buddhi, or spiritual discernment; the
seventh is Atma, or Spirit, the ray from the Absolute Being. The
English language will suffice to describe in part what Manas is,
but not Buddhi, or Atma, and will leave many things relating to
Manas undescribed.

The course of evolution developed the lower principles and
produced at last the form of man with a brain of better and
deeper capacity than that of any other animal. But this man in
form was not man in mind, and needed the fifth principle, the
thinking, perceiving one, to differentiate him from the animal
kingdom and to confer the power of becoming self-conscious. The
monad was imprisoned in these forms, and that monad is composed
of Atma and Buddhi; for without the presence of the monad
evolution could not go forward. Going back for a moment to the
time when the races were devoid of mind, the question arises,
"who gave the mind, where did it come from, and what is it?" It
is the link between the Spirit of God above and the personal
below; it was given to the mindless monads by others who had
gone all through this process ages upon ages before in other
worlds and systems of worlds, and it therefore came from other
evolutionary periods which were carried out and completed long
before the solar system had begun. This is the theory, strange
and unacceptable today, but which must be stated if we are to
tell the truth about theosophy; and this is only handing on what
others have said before.

The manner in which this light of mind was given to the Mindless
Men can be understood from the illustration of one candle
lighting many. Given one lighted candle and numerous unlighted
ones, it follows that from one light the others may also be set
aflame. So in the case of Manas. It is the candle of flame. The
mindless men having four elementary principles of Body, Astral
Body, Life and Desire, are the unlighted candles that cannot
light themselves. The Sons of Wisdom, who are the Elder Brothers
of every family of men on any globe, have the light, derived by
them from others who reach back, and yet farther back, in
endless procession with no beginning or end. They set fire to
the combined lower principles and the Monad, thus lighting up
Manas in the new men and preparing another great race for final
initiation. This lighting up of the fire of Manas is symbolized
in all great religions and Freemasonry. In the east one priest
appears holding a candle lighted at the altar, and thousands of
others light their candles from this one. The Parsees also have
their sacred fire which is lighted from some other sacred flame.

Manas, or the Thinker, is the reincarnating being, the immortal
who carries the results and values of all the different lives
lived on earth or elsewhere. Its nature becomes dual as soon as
it is attached to a body. For the human brain is a superior
organism and Manas uses it to reason from premises to
conclusions. This also differentiates man from animal, for the
animal acts from automatic and so-called instinctual impulses,
whereas the man can use reason. This is the lower aspect of the
Thinker or Manas, and not, as some have supposed, the highest
and best gift belonging to man. Its other, and in theosophy
higher, aspect is the intuitional, which knows, and does not
depend on reason. The lower, and purely intellectual, is nearest
to the principle of Desire, and is thus distinguished from its
other side which has affinity for the spiritual principles
above. If the Thinker, then, becomes wholly intellectual, the
entire nature begins to tend downward; for intellect alone is
cold, heartless, selfish, because it is not lighted up by the
two other principles of Buddhi and Atma.

In Manas the thoughts of all lives are stored. That is to say:
in any one life, the sum total of thoughts underlying all the
acts of the lifetime will be of one character in general, but
may be placed in one or more classes. That is, the business man
of today is a single type; his entire life thoughts represent
but one single thread of thought. The artist is another. The man
who has engaged in business, but also thought much upon fame and
power which he never attained, is still another. The great mass
of self-sacrificing, courageous, and strong poor people who have
but little time to think, constitute another distinct class. In
all these the total quantity of life thoughts makes up the
stream or thread of a life's meditation, "that upon which the
heart was set", and is stored in Manas, to be brought out again
at any time in whatever life the brain and bodily environments
are similar to those used in engendering that class of thoughts.

It is Manas which sees the objects presented to it by the bodily
organs and the actual organs within. When the open eye receives
a picture on the retina, the whole scene is turned into
vibrations in the optic nerves which disappear into the brain,
where Manas is enabled to perceive them as idea. And so with
every other organ or sense. If the connection between Manas and
the brain be broken, intelligence will not be manifested unless
Manas has by training found out how to project the astral body
from the physical and thereby keep up communication with
fellowmen. That the organs and senses do not cognize objects,
hypnotism, mesmerism, and spiritualism have now proved. For, as
we see in mesmeric and hypnotic experiments, the object seen or
felt, and from which all the effects of solid objects may be
sensed, is often only an idea existing in the operator's brain.
In the same way Manas, using the astral body, has only to
impress an idea upon the other person to make the latter see the
idea and translate it into a visible body from which the usual
effects of density and weight seem to follow. And in hypnotism
there are many experiments, all of which go to show that so
called matter is not per se solid or dense; that sight does not
always depend on the eye and rays of light proceeding from an
object; that the intangible for one normal brain and organs may
be perfectly tangible for another; and that physical effects in
the body may be produced from an idea solely. The well-known
experiments of producing a blister by a simple piece of paper,
or preventing a real blistering plaster from making a blister,
by force of the idea conveyed to a subject, either that there
was to be or not to be a blister, conclusively prove the power
of effecting an impulse on matter by the use of that which is
called Manas. But all these phenomena are the exhibition of the
powers of lower Manas acting in the astral Body and the fourth
principle, Desire, using the physical body as the field for the
exhibition of the forces.

It is this lower Manas which retains all the impressions of a
lifetime and sometimes strangely exhibits them in trances or
dreams, delirium, induced states, here and there in normal
conditions, and very often at the time of physical death. But it
is so occupied with the brain, with memory and with sensation,
that it usually presents but few recollections out of the mass
of events that years have brought before it. It interferes with
the action of Higher Manas because just at the present point of
evolution, Desire and all corresponding powers, faculties, and
senses are the most highly developed, thus obscuring, as it
were, the white light of the spiritual side of Manas. It is
tinted by each object presented to it, whether it be a
thought-object or a material one. That is to say, Lower Manas
operating through the brain is at once altered into the shape
and other characteristics of any object, mental or otherwise.
This causes it to have four peculiarities. First, to naturally
fly off from any point, object, or subject; second, to fly to
some pleasant idea; third, to fly to an unpleasant idea; fourth,
to remain passive and considering naught. The first is due to
memory and the natural motion of Manas; the second and third are
due to memory alone; the fourth signifies sleep when not
abnormal, and when abnormal is going toward insanity. These
mental characteristics all belonging to Lower Manas, are those
which the Higher Manas, aided by Buddhi and Atma, has to fight
and conquer. Higher Manas, if able to act, becomes what we
sometimes call Genius; if completely master, then one may become
a god. But memory continually presents pictures to Lower Manas,
and the result is that the Higher is obscured. Sometimes,
however, along the pathway of life we do see here and there men
who are geniuses or great seers and prophets. In these the
Higher powers of Manas are active and the person illuminated.
Such were the great Sages of the past, men like Buddha, Jesus,
Confucius, Zoroaster, and others. Poets, too, such as Tennyson,
Longfellow, and others, are men in whom Higher Manas now and
then sheds a bright ray on the man below, to be soon obscured,
however, by the effect of dogmatic religious education which has
given memory certain pictures that always prevent Manas from
gaining full activity.

In this higher Trinity, we have the God above each one; this is
Atma, and may be called the Higher Self.

Next is the spiritual part of the soul called Buddhi; when
thoroughly united with Manas this may be called the Divine Ego.

The inner Ego, who reincarnates, taking on body after body,
storing up the impressions of life after life, gaining
experience and adding it to the divine Ego, suffering and
enjoying through an immense period of years, is the fifth
principle, Manas, not united to Buddhi. This is the permanent
individuality which gives to every man the feeling of being
himself and not some other; that which through all the changes
of the days and nights from youth to the end of life makes us
feel one identity through all the period; it bridges the gap
made by sleep; in like manner it bridges the gap made by the
sleep of death. It is this, and not our brain, that lifts us
above the animal. The depth and variety of the brain
convolutions in man are caused by the presence of Manas, and are
not the cause of mind. And when we either wholly or now and then
become consciously united with Buddhi, the Spiritual Soul, we
behold God, as it were. This is what the ancients all desired to
see, but what the moderns do not believe in, the latter
preferring rather to throw away their own right to be great in
nature, and to worship an imaginary god made up solely of their
own fancies and not very different from weak human nature.

This permanent individuality in the present race has therefore
been through every sort of experience, for Theosophy insists on
its permanence and in the necessity for its continuing to take
part in evolution. It has a duty to perform, consisting in
raising up to a higher state all the matter concerned in the
chain of globes to which the earth belongs. We have all lived
and taken part in civilization after civilization, race after
race, on earth, and will so continue throughout all the rounds
and races until the seventh is complete. At the same time it
should be remembered that the matter of this globe and that
connected with it has also been through every kind of form, with
possibly some exceptions in very low planes of mineral
formation. But in general all the matter visible, or held in
space still unprecipitated, has been molded at one time or
another into forms of all varieties, many of these being such as
we now have no idea of. The processes of evolution, therefore,
in some departments, now go forward with greater rapidity than
in former ages because both Manas and matter have acquired
facility of action. Especially is this so in regard to man, who
is the farthest ahead of all things or beings in this evolution.
He is now incarnated and projected into life more quickly than
in earlier periods when it consumed many years to obtain a "coat
of skin." This coming into life over and over again cannot be
avoided by the ordinary man because Lower Manas is still bound
by Desire, which is the preponderating principle at the present
period. Being so influenced by Desire Manas is continually
deluded while in the body, and being thus deluded is unable to
prevent the action upon it of the forces set up in the lifetime.
These forces are generated by Manas, that is, by the thinking of
the lifetime. Each thought makes a physical as well as mental
link with the desire in which it is rooted. All life is filled
with such thoughts, and when the period of rest after death is
ended Manas is bound by innumerable electrical magnetic threads
to earth by reason of the thoughts of the last life, and
therefore by desire, for it was desire that caused so many
thoughts and ignorance of the true nature of things. An
understanding of this doctrine of man being really a thinker and
made of thought will make clear all the rest in relation to
incarnation and reincarnation. The body of the inner man is made
of thought, and this being so it must follow that if the
thoughts have more affinity for earth-life than for life
elsewhere a return to life here is inevitable.

At the present day Manas is not fully active in the race, as
Desire still is uppermost. In the next cycle of the human period
Manas will be fully active and developed in the entire race.
Hence the people of the earth have not yet come to the point of
making a conscious choice as to the path they will take; but
when in the cycle referred to, Manas is active, all will then be
compelled to consciously make the choice to right or left, the
one leading to complete and conscious union with Atma, the other
to the annihilation of those beings who prefer that path.


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