Chapter II. of their generation and of their impor-

tance may be repeated of those of the mental plane,
8
114 THE ancie:nt wisdom
with here the additional responsibility on their cre- ators of the greater force and permanence belonging to those of this higher world. The elemental es- sence of the mental plane is formed by the Monad in the stage of its descent immediately preceding its entrance into the astral world, and it constitutes the second elemental kingdom, existing on the four lower subdivisions of the mental plane. The three higher subdivisions, the "formless," are occupied by the first elemental kingdom, the elemental essence there being thrown by thought into brilliant corus- cations, colored streams, and flashes of living fire, instead of into definite shapes, taking as it were its first lessons in combined action, but not yet assuming definite limitations of forms.
On the mental plane, in both its great divisions, exist numberless Intelligences, whose lowest bodies are formed of the luminous matter and elemental essence of the plane — Shining Ones who guide the processes of natural order, overlooking the hosts of lower entities before spoken of, and yielding sub- mission in their several hierarchies to their great overlords of the seven Elements.* They are, as may readily be imagined, beings of vast knowledge, of great power, and most splendid in appearance, radiant, flashing creatures, myriad-hued, like rain- bows of changing supernal colors, of stateliest im-
* These are the Arupa and Rupa Devas of the Hindus and the Buddhists, the "Lords of the heavenly and the earthly" of the Zoroastrians, the Archangels and Angels of the Christians and Mohammedans.
"invisible helpers" 115
perial mien, calm energy incarnate, embodiments of resistless strength. The description of the great Christian Seer leaps to the mind, when he wrote of a mighty angel : "A rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pil- lars of fire.'** ''As the sound of many waters" are their voices, as echoes from the music of the spheres. They guide natural order, and rule the vast compa- nies of the elementals of the astral world, so that their cohorts carry on ceaselessly the processes of Nature with undeviating regularity and accuracy.
On the lower mental plane are seen many clielas at work in their mental bodies,f freed for the time from their physical vestures. When the body is wrapped in deep sleep the true man, the Thinker, may escape from it, and work untrammelled by its weight in these higher regions. From here he can aid and comfort his fellow-men by acting directly on their minds, suggesting helpful thoughts, putting before them noble ideas, more effectively and speedily than he can do when encased in the body. He can see their needs more clearly and therefore can supply them more perfectly, and it is his highest privilege and joy thus to minister to his struggling brothers, without their knowledge of his service or any idea of theirs as to the strong arm that lifts their burden, or the soft voice that whispers solace in their pain. Unseen, unrecognized, he works,
* Revelation, x. 1.
t Usually called the Mayavi Rupa, or illusory body, when arranged for independent functioning in the mental world.
116 the: ancie:nt wisdom
serving his enemies as gladly and as freely as his friends, dispensing to individuals the stream of be- neficent forces that are poured down from the great Helpers in higher spheres. Here also are some- times seen the glorious figures of the Masters, though for the most part They reside on the highest level of the "formless" division of the mental plane; and other Great Ones may also sometimes come hither on some mission of compassion requiring such lower manifestation.
Communication between intelligences functioning consciously on this plane, whether human or non- human, whether in or out of the body, is practically instantaneous, for it is with *'the speed of thought." Barriers of space have here no power to divide, and any soul can come into touch with any one by merely directing his attention to him. Not only is com- munication thus swift, but it is also complete, if the souls are at about the same stage of evolution; no words fetter and obstruct the communion, but the whole thought flashes from the one to the other, or, perhaps more exactly, each sees the thought as con- ceived by the other. The real barriers between souls are the differences of evolution ; the less evolved can know only as much of the more highly evolved as he is able to respond to ; the limitation can ob- viously be felt only by the higher one, as the lesser has all that he can contain. The more evolved a soul, the more does he know of all around him, the nearer does he approach to realities ; but the mental plane has also its veils of illusion, it must be remem-
ALL WORLDS AR^ HE^R^ 117
bered, though they be far fewer and thinner than those of the astral and the physical worlds. Each soul has its own mental atmosphere, and, as all im- pressions must come through this atmosphere, they are all distorted and colored. The clearer and purer the atmosphere, and the less it is colored by the per- sonality, the fewer are the illusions that can befall it. The three highest subdivisions of the mental plane are the habitat of the Thinker himself, and he dwells on one or other of these, according to the stage of his evolution. The vast majority live on the lowest level, in various stages of evolution; a comparatively few of the highly intellectual dwell on the second level, the Thinker ascending thither — ^to use a phrase more suitable to the physical than to the mental plane — when the subtler matter of that region preponderates in him, and thus necessi- tates the change; there is, of course, no "ascend- ing," no change of place, but he receives the vibra- tions of that subtler matter, being able to respond to them, and he himself is able to send out forces that throw its rare particles into vibration. The student should familiarize himself with the fact that rising in the scale of evolution does not move him from place to place, but renders him more and more able to receive impressions. Every sphere is around us, the astral, the mental, the buddhic, the nirvanic, and worlds higher yet, the life of the supreme God; we need not stir to find them, for they are here; but our dull unreceptivity shuts them out more effec- tively than millions of miles of mere space. We are
118 THE ANCIKNT WISDOM
conscious only of that which affects us, which stirs us to responsive vibration, and as we become more and more receptive, as we draw into ourselves finer and finer matter, we come into contact with subtler and subtler worlds. Hence, rising from one level to another means that we are weaving our vestures of finer materials and can receive through them the contrasts of finer worlds; and it means further that in the Self within these vestures diviner powers are waking from latency into activity, and are sending out their subtler thrills of life.
At the stage now reached by the Thinker, he is fully conscious of his surroundings and is in posses- sion of the memory of his past. He knows the bod- ies he is wearing, through which he is contacting the lower planes, and he is able to influence and guide them to a great extent. He sees the difficul- ties, the obstacles, they are approaching — the results of past careless living — and he sets himself to pour into them energies by which they may be better equipped for their task. His direction is sometimes felt in the lower consciousness as an imperiously compelling force that will have its way, and that im- pels to a course of action for which all the reasons may not be clear to the dimmer vision caused by the mental and astral garments. Men who have done great deeds have occasionally left on record their consciousness of an inner uplifting and compelling power, which seemed to leave them no choice save to do as they had done. They were then acting as the real men; the Thinkers, that are the inner men.
"thk ide:a cam^" 119
were doing the work consciously through the bodies that then were fulfilling their proper functions as vehicles of the individual. To these high powers all will come as evolution proceeds.
On the third level of the upper region of the men- tal plane dwell the Egos of the Masters, and of the Initiates who are Their chelas, the Thinkers having here a preponderance of the matter of this region in their bodies. From this world of subtlest mental forces the Masters carry on Their beneficent work for humanity, raining down noble ideals, inspiring thoughts, devotional aspirations, streams of spiritual and intellectual help for men. Every force there generated rays out in myriad directions, and the noblest, purest souls catch most readily these help- ful influences. A discovery flashes into the mind of the patient searcher into Nature's secrets; a new melody entrances the ear of a great musician ; the answer to a long-studied problem illumines the in- tellect of a lofty philosopher; a new energy of hope and love suflFuses the heart of an unwearied phil- anthropist. Yet men think that they are left un- cared for, although the very phrases they use : ''the thought occurred to me," "the idea came to me," "the discovery flashed on me," unconsciously testify to the truth known to their inner selves though the outer eyes be blind.
Let us now turn to the study of the Thinker and his vesture as they are found in men on earth. The body of the consciousness, conditioning it in the four lower subdivisions of the mental plane — the mental
120 the; ancie:nt wisdom
body, as we term it — is formed of combinations of the matter of these subdivisions. The Thinker, the individual, the Human Soul — formed in the way de- scribed in the latter part of this chapter — when he is coming into incarnation, first radiates forth some of his energy in vibrations that attract around him, and clothe him in, matter drawn from the four lower subdivisions of his own plane. According to the nature of the vibrations are the kinds of matter they attract; the finer kinds answer the swifter vibrations and take form under their impulse ; the coarser kinds similarly answer the slower ones ; just as a wire will sympathetically sound out a note — i.e., a given number of vibrations — coming from a wire similar in weight and tension to itself, but will remain dumb amid a chorus of notes from wires dissimilar to itself in these respects, so do the different kinds of matter assort themselves in answer to different kinds of vi- brations. Exactly according to the vibrations sent out by the Thinker will be the nature of the mental body that he thus draws around him, and this men- tal body is what is called the lower mind, the lower Manas, because it is the Thinker clothed in the mat- ter of the lower subdivisions of the mental plane and conditioned by it in his further working. None of his energies which are too subtle to move this matter, too swift for its response, can express them- selves through it; he is therefore limited by it, con- ditioned by it, restricted by it in his expression of himself. It is the first of his prison-houses during his incarnate life, and while his energies are acting
MIND AND F^IJLING 121
within it he is largely shut off from his own higher world, for his attention is with the outgoing ener- gies and his life is thrown with them into the mental body, often spoken of as a- vesture, or sheath, or vehicle — any expression will serve which con- notes the idea that the Thinker is not the mental body, but formed it and uses it in order to express as much of himself as he can in the lower mental region. It must not be forgotten that his energies, still pulsing outwards, draw round him also the coarser matter of the astral plane as his astral body; and during his incarnate life the energies that ex- press themselves through the lower kinds of mental matter are so readily changed by it into the slower vibrations that are responded to by astral matter that the two bodies are continually vibrating to- gether, and become very closely interwoven; the coarser the kinds of matter built into the mental body, the more intimate becomes this union, so that the two bodies are sometimes classed together and even taken as one.* When we come to study Re- incarnation we shall find this fact assuming vital importance.
According to the stage of evolution reached by
* Thus the Theosophist will speak of Kama-Manas, meaning the mind as working in and with the desire-nature, affecting and affected by the animal nature. The Vedantin classes the two together, and speaks of the Self as working in the mano- mayakosha, the sheath composed of the lower mind, emotions, and passions. The European psychologist makes "feelings" one lection of his tripartite division of "mind," and includes under feelings both emotions and sensations.
122 the: ancient wisdom
the man will be the type of mental body he forms on his way to become again incarnate, and we may study, as we did with the astral body, the respective mental bodies of three types of men — (a) an un- developed man; (b) an average man; (c) a spirit- ually advanced man.
(a) In the undeveloped man the mental body is but little perceptible, a small amount of unorganized mental matter, chiefly from the lowest subdivision of the plane, being all that represents it. This is played on almost entirely from the lower bodies, being set vibrating feebly by the astral storms raised by the contacts with material objects through the sense-organs. Except when stimulated by these as- tral vibrations it remains almost quiescent, and even under their impulses its responses are sluggish. No definite activity is generated from within, these blows from the outer world being necessary to arouse any distinct response. The more violent the blows, the better for the progress of the man, for each re- sponsive vibration aids in the embryonic develop- ment of the mental body. Riotous pleasure, anger, rage, pain, terror, all these passions, causing whirl- winds in the astral body, awaken faint vibrations in the mental, and gradually these vibrations, stirring into commencing activity the mental consciousness, cause it to add something of its own to the impres- sions made on it from without. We have seen that the mental body is so closely mingled with the as- tral that they act as a single body, but the dawning mental faculties add to the astral passions a certain
SDNS^ AND MIND PICTUREIS 123
strength and quality not apparent in them when they work as purely animal qualities. The impres- sions made on the mental body are more permanent than those made on the astral, and they are con- sciously reproduced by it. Here memory and the organ of imagination begin, and the latter gradually moulds itself, the images from the outer world work- ing on the matter of the mental body and forming its materials into their own likeness. These images, born of the contacts of the senses, draw round them- selves the coarsest mental matter; the dawning pow- ers of consciousness reproduce these images, and thus accumulate a store of pictures that begin to stimulate action initiated from within, from the wish to experience again through the outer organs the vibrations that were found pleasant, and to avoid those productive of pain. The mental body then begins to stimulate the astral, and to arouse in it the desires that, in the animal, slumber until awakened by a physical stimulus ; hence we see in the unde- veloped man a persistent pursuit of sense-gratifica- tion never found in the lower animals, a lust, a cruelty, a calculation to which they are strangers. The dawning powers of the mind, yoked to the ser- vice of the senses, make of man a far more danger- ous and savage brute than any animal, and the stronger and more subtle forces inherent in the mental spirit-matter lend to the passion-nature an energy and a keenness that we do not find in the animal-world. But these very excesses lead to their own correction by the sufferings which they cause,
124 THE ancie;nt wisdom
and these resultant experiences play upon the con- sciousness and set up new images on which the im- agination works. These stimulate the consciousness to resist many of the vibrations that reach it by way of the astral body from the external world, and to exercise its volition in holding the passions back in- stead of giving them free rein. Such resistant vi- brations are set up in, and attract towards, the men- tal body, finer combinations of mind-stuff, and tend also to expel from it the coarser combinations that vibrate responsively to the passional notes set up in the astral body ; by this struggle between the vibra- tions set up by passion-images and the vibrations set up by the imaginative reproduction of past ex- periences, the mental body grows, begins to develop a definite organization, and to exercise more and more initiative as regards external activities. While the earth-life is spent in gathering experiences, the intermediate life is spent in assimilating them, as we shall see in detail in the following chapter, so that in each return to earth the Thinker has an in- creased stock of faculties to take shape as his mental body. Thus the undeveloped man, whose mind is the slave of his passions, grows into the average man, whose mind is a battle-ground in which pas- sions and mental powers wage war with varying success, about balanced in their forces, but who is gradually gaining the mastery over his lower nature. (b) In the average man, the mental body is much increased in size, shows a certain amount of organ- ization, and contains a fair proportion of matter
exercise: and disuse 125
drawn from the second, third, and fourth subdivi- sions of the mental plane. The general law which regulates all the building up and modifying of the mental body may here be fitly studied, though it is the same principle already seen working in the lower realms of the astral and physical worlds. Ex- ercise increases, disuse atrophies and finally de- stroys. Every vibration set up in the mental body causes a change in its constituents, throwing out of it, in the part affected, the matter that cannot vi- brate sympathetically, and replacing it by suitable materials drawn from the practically illimitable store around. The more a series of vibrations is repeated, the more does the part affected by them increase in development; hence, it may be noted in passing, the injury done to the mental body by over-special- ization of mental energies. Such mistaken direc- tion of these powers causes a lopsided development of the mental body; it becomes proportionately over- developed in the region in which these forces are continually playing and proportionately undeveloped in other parts, perhaps equally important. A har- monious and proportionate all-round development is the object to be sought, and for this are needed a calm self-analysis and a definite direction of means to ends. A knowledge of this law further explains certain familiar experiences, and affords a sure hope of progress. When a new study is commenced, or a change in favor of high morality is initiated, the early stages are found to be fraught with difficulties; sometimes the effort is even abandoned because the
126 TH^ ANCIENT WISDOM
obstacles in the way of its success appear to be in- surmountable. At the beginning of any new men- tal undertaking, the whole automatism of the mental body opposes it; the materials, habituated to vibrate in a particular way, cannot accommodate themselves to the new impulses, and the early stage consists chiefly of sending out thrills of force which are frus- trated, so far as setting up vibrations in the mental body are concerned, but which are the necessary preliminary to any such sympathetic vibrations, as they shake out of the body the old refractory mate- rials and draw into it the sympathetic kinds. Dur- ing this process, the man is not conscious of any progress ; he is conscious only of the frustration of his efforts and of the dull resistance he encounters. Presently, if he persists, as the newly attracted materials begin to function, he succeeds better in his attempts, and at last, when all the old materials are expelled and the new are working, he finds him- self succeeding without an effort, and his object is accomplished. The critical time is during the first stage ; but if he trust in the law, as sure in its work- ing as every other law in Nature, and persistently repeat his efforts, he must succeed ; and a knowledge of this fact may cheer him when otherwise he would be sinking in despair. In this way, then, the average man may work on, finding with joy that as he steadily resists the promptings of the lower nature he is conscious they are losing their power over him, for he is expelling from his mental body all the materials that are capable of being thrown by them
A ^DR^ECTED MlSNTAL BODY 127
into sympathetic vibrations. Thus the mental body gradually comes to be composed of the finer con- stituents of the four lower subdivisions of the men- tal plane, until it has become the radiant and ex- quisitely beautiful form which is the mental body of the
(c) Spiritually developed man. From this body all the coarser combinations have been eliminated, so that the objects of the senses no longer find in it, or in the astral body connected with it, materials that respond sympathetically to their vibrations. It contains only the finer combinations belonging to each of the four subdivisions of the lower mental world, and of these again the materials of the third and fourth subplanes very much predominate in its composition over the materials of the second and first, making it responsive to all the higher work- ings of the intellect, to the delicate contacts of the higher arts, to all the pure thrills of the loftier emo- tions. Such a body enables the Thinker who is clothed in it to express himself much more fully in the lower mental region and in the astral and physi- cal worlds; its materials are capable of a far wider range of responsive vibrations, and the impulses from a loftier realm mould it into nobler and subtler organization. Such a body is rapidly becoming ready to reproduce every impulse from the Thinker which is capable of expression on the lower sub- divisions of the mental plane; it is growing into a perfect instrument for activities in this lower men- tal world.
128 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
A clear understanding of the nature of the mental body would much modify modern education, and would make it far more serviceable to the Thinker than it is at present. The general characteristics of this body depend on the past lives of the Thinker on earth, as will be thoroughly understood when we have studied Reincarnation and Karma. The body is constituted on the mental plane, and its materials depend on the qualities that the Thinker has gar- nered within himself as the results of his past ex- periences. All that education can do is to provide such external stimuli as shall arouse and encourage the growth of the useful faculties he already pos- sesses, and stunt and help in the eradication of those that are undesirable. The drawing out of these in- born faculties, and not the cramming of the mind with facts, is the object of true education. Nor need memory be cultivated as a separate faculty, for memory depends on attention — that is, on the steady concentration of the mind on the subject studied — and on the natural affinity between the subject and the mind. If the subject be liked — that is, if the mind has a capacity for it — memory will not fail, provided due attention be paid. Therefore education should cultivate the habit of steady con- centration, of sustained attention, and should be directed according to the inborn faculties of the pupil.
Let us now pass into the "formless" divisions of the mental plane, the region which is man's true home during the cycle of his reincarnations, into
THE AURIC EGG 129
which he is born, a baby soul, an infant Ego, an embryonic individuality, when he begins his purely human evolution.*
The outline of this Ego, the Thinker, is oval in shape, and hence H. P. Blavatsky speaks of this body of Manas which endures throughout all his in- carnations as the Auric Egg. Formed of the matter of the three highest subdivisions of the mental plane, it is exquisitely fine, a film of rarest subtlety, even at its first inception; and, as it develops, it be- comes a radiant object of supernal glory and beauty, the shining One, as it has been aptly named.f What is this Thinker? He is the divine Self, as already said, limited, or individualized, by this subtle body drawn from the materials of the ^'formless" region of the mental plane.J This matter — drawn around a ray of the Self, a living beam of the one Light and Life of the universe — shuts off this ray from its Source, so far as the external world is con- cerned, encloses it within a filmy shell of itself, and so makes it "an individual." The life is the Life of the LoGos^ but all the powers of that Life are lying latent, concealed; everything is there potentially, germinally, as the tree is hidden within the tiny germ in the seed. This seed is dropped into the
* See Chapters VII. and VIII., on "Reincarnation." t This is the Augoiedes of the Neo-PIatonlsts, the "spiritual body" of S. Paul.
t The Self, working in the Vignyanamayakosha, the sheath of discriminative knowledge, according to the Vedantic classifi- cation.
9
130 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
soil of human life that its latent forces may be quickened into activity by the sun of joy and the rain pf tears, and be fed by the juices of the life-soil that we call experience, until the germ grows into a mighty tree, the image of its generating Sire. Hu- man evolution is the evolution of the Thinker; he takes on bodies on the lower mental, the astral, and the physical planes, wears them through earthly, astral, lower mental life, dropping them successively at the regular stages of this life-cycle as he passes from world to world, but ever storing up within himself the fruits he has gathered by their use on each plane. At first, as little conscious as a baby's earthly body, he almost slept through life after life, till the experiences playing on him from without awakened some of his latent forces into activity; but gradually he assumed more and more part in the direction of his life, until, with manhood reached, he took his life into his own hands, and an ever- increasing control over his future destiny.
The growth of the permanent body which, with the divine consciousness, forms the Thinker is ex- tremely slow. Its technical name is the causal body, because he gathers up within it the results of all ex- periences, and these act as causes, moulding future lives. It is the only permanent one among the bod- ies used during incarnation, the mental, astral and physical bodies being reconstituted for each fresh life; as each perishes in turn, it hands on its harvest to the one above it, and thus all the harvests are finally stored in the permanent body; when the
MATE:RIALS Olf TH^ CAUSAL BODY 131
Thinker returns to incarnation, he sends out his en- ergies, constituted of these harvests, on each succes- sive plane, and thus draws round him new body after body suitable to his past. The growth of the causal body itself, as said, is very slow, for it can vibrate only in answer to impulses that can be ex- pressed in the very subtle matter of which it is com- posed, thus weaving them into the texture of its being. Hence the passions, which play so large a