CHAPTER VIII

THE MANASIC PLANE
AGAIN surrounding the astral world and in one sense above it, we have to realise that a vast con- centric region, still belonging to this globe and accompanying it in its revolutions around the sun, provides us with a theatre of life of a higher spiritual order than that provided by the astral world. This region has borne many names so far in the course of our early attempts to interpret super-physical nature. At one time it was gener- ally referred to as the " Devachanic Plane," exaggerated attention being then paid to one of its aspects to be fully described presently. Then, in view of the fact that the region in question is pre-eminently associated with the idea of intellectual development, some theosophical writers preferred to call it the " Mental Plane," a term still in very general use, and only to be objected to because it seems to disparage the opportunities for high mental development afforded on the superior levels of the astral world, and this is very undesirable from the point of view of attempts to interpret the varied planes of nature correctly. Then because of the supreme conditions of bliss attending life of all varieties on that exalted level, the region in question has sometimes been called the " Heaven World," a very appropriate designation except that it seems to involve us in the connotations of that word " heaven " derived from theological conceptions, which increasing knowledge leads us to modify. It is really better in deal- ing with the plane or vast concentric sphere now under consideration to adopt into our language an Eastern term with a sound etymological meaning, but one which at the same time for Western thinkers will remain free from
170
THE MAN ASIC PLANE 171
misleading suggestion. So let me adhere to one of the terms used from the beginning, and call the region I now propose to describe, as far as commonplace language will make that possible, as the Manasic Plane.
When describing it as the Devachanic Plane, we were concentrating attention on one of its aspects which by degrees we have come to recognise as the least important among those which we are to some extent enabled to comprehend. There are many human Egos among us entitled by their characteristics to a happy and beautiful period of spiritual rest between incarnations, who, at the same time, are hardly advanced intellectually to the extent of being able to function freely with advantage on the higher levels of the astral world. For them, para- doxically as it may seem at first glance, the mental world on its lowest levels, by reason of its essentially blissful characteristics, provides suitable conditions of temporary, though sometimes very protracted, existence. The idea may best be comprehended by considering definite though imaginary cases. Take that of a personality representing an Ego of no very great intellectual advancement; but of beautiful character and emotion — say the case of a loving mother, devoted during life to the welfare of her children, coupled with genuine love of a husband; but not much concerned during life with the cultivation of her higher mental potentialities. Nature must provide her with a happy and restful interlude between her last life and her next. By the hypothesis she is not in a position to revel in the acquisition of fresh knowledge. Her love nature needs no fresh stimulus, it simply craves gratification. One region of the Manasic Plane provides for this. She finds herself under conditions in which the love she has exhaled meets with overflowing response. She -finds herself sur-
172 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
rounded by all whom she cared for, each representing her own best ideals and bathed in that delicious dream, illusory in one sense, and yet for her more vivid in its reality than any life experience, she drifts deliciously through the ages until the karmic and evolutionary forces, operative on her as well as on the rest of humanity, provide for a return to earth life.
Now such a condition, quite erroneously by some writers in the early stages of theosophical study treated as a goal to which all should aspire, would be hopelessly repug- nant to the imagination of those who look forward to an after-life of conscious touch with the sublime realities of Nature. For such people it would be a grotesquely unsuitable variety of after-life, and in truth the Deva- chanic condition is merely appropriate to those capable of beautiful loving emotion and of very little beyond or out- side of this. And for them be it remembered that, although the Devachanic condition is illusory, it constitutes a dream that can never fade or conduce to disappointment. It lasts in full perfection until the spiritual forces engendered in the previous life on earth have ultimately worn them- selves out, and until a brief and practically unconscious passage to the higher levels of the Manasic World provide for a return to the earth life.
To fully understand the Devachanic condition from our point of view is exceedingly difficult. It must not be thought of as a mere mental picture; its dramatis persona? are all in vivid activity, and a thought must here be in- volved in our attempt to understand this condition which invests it, in spite of its illusory character, with influences that make for progress. Let some of the dramatis per- sonse in the case above imagined acquire during life or after life higher spiritual knowledge than they possessed
THE MANASIC PLANE 173
during the mother's earth life, and they may succeed in animating the mother's Devachanic vision of themselves with the higher consciousness to which in the interim they have ascended. And thus for the mother the Deva- chanic vision becomes something more than a beautiful illusion, it becomes a genuine reality to the extent sug- gested, conducive to her further interior evolution.
Without elaborating the whole explanation further, it may now be perceived that the Devachanic condition, while exactly fitting in with some of the emergencies that natural law has to deal with, need not for one moment disturb the apprehensions of those for whom the pursuit of truth, the attainment of improved conditions of con- sciousness, may be more attractive than the mere idea of luxurious emotional rest.
Now let us endeavour, so far as this is possible for a physically active brain, to contemplate the structure of the Manasic region in its vast entirety. Like the astral world beneath, it must be thought of to begin with as divided into a series, the usual seven great sub-divisions, or sub- planes, or sub-spheres. But once more plane is the most convenient expression to employ, though, of course, in- appropriate from the point of view of its simple mechani- cal meaning; and, again, inappropriate as we endeavour to keep in touch with the fundamental principle that loftier planes of spiritual consciousness interpenetrate those below so that the loftiest planes of the Manasic World may be actually around us here on the surface of the earth, although equally in regions of surrounding space elevated above . us to incredible distances. The last-mentioned conception is just as true as the other, and no correct mental picture of the whole world can be formed in the mind until we can realise it as a globe in regard to its
174 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
finer orders of matter some millions of miles in diameter. Now, without attempting a minute description of the Manasic sub-planes, we must, in order to have something like a fair comprehension of the subject, keep in touch with the idea that the lower levels differ from the higher in one more or less appreciable way. The lower levels may be described very unsatisfactorily as concerned with form, and the higher as concerned with formless aspects of consciousness. Most attempts to deal with this idea in theosophical literature so far have made use of two terms of Eastern origin — Rupa and Arupa Planes, those terms being the equivalent to form and formless. And though it is extremely desirable, wherever we can, to use words of Western etymology, in dealing with facts of nature just as closely related to ourselves here in Europe as to Eastern students, adopting the words just quoted as labels designat- ing regions of nature that we more or less understand, we may, I think, prefer to use the Eastern terms in preference to those which though perhaps more familiar, cannot but suggest more than they are intended to convey.
Of course, the Devachanic conditions are found on the lower Rupa levels, but in this sublimely attenuated spiritual constitution of the Manasic Plane, we must not think of any particular region as being ruled off or fenced off, so to speak. There is ample scope in the Rupa sub- plane for the active life of human entities, not to speak of their other inhabitants who are far above in spiritual and intellectual developments those who sink into the blissful indolence of the Devachanic condition. There are considerable numbers of the human family who actually pass in full consciousness from the higher levels of the astral world into the Rupa sub-levels of the Manasic. For them the region in question may be thought of, with-
THE MAN ASIC PLANE 175
out doing violence to language, as a Heaven World of reality, providing the most glorious imaginable oppor- tunities for an almost infinitely expanded appreciation of the sublime principles underlying the loftiest religious thinking. At a glance it will be obvious that only those among us who have already during the earth-life attained to a fairly dignified level of spiritual capacity could be qualified to appreciate the opportunities afforded by Manasic consciousness.
Transplant to Heaven a consciousness, a being, invested with no attributes transcending the best emotions of ordinary physical life, and Heaven does not for such persons contain more than the fruition of these emotions. You do not change an African savage's nature by bringing him over to a civilised country and planting him suddenly in the midst of art and science and literary culture. To use comparatively grovelling and familiar ideas in illustra- tion of the principle before us, the savage can merely select from the resources of civilisation, supposing them offered to him in all their abundance, the food and drink and physical comforts which his experience of life enables him to crave for. So with the imperfectly developed souls of common humanity. Heaven is only Heaven for them in so far as the growth of their minds enable them to avail themselves of its resources. That which it does for all who have it in them to attain its confines at all, is to assure them complete happiness along the lines that their spiritual development has followed.
By spiritual development in this sense, let me hasten to add, I do not mean, in any exclusive way at any rate, the development of the religious instinct. Where this instinct is very energetic that is undoubtedly one phase of spiritual development, but real unselfish love is no less
176 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
spiritual in its character and is equally capable of a glorified expansion on the heavenly or spiritual plane of conscious- ness, and the same may be said of pure eagerness for knowledge — by " pure " meaning free from any thought of personal profit to be gained by acquiring knowledge.
The artistic faculty, again, is deeply tinged with true spirituality and is thus capable of evoking a generous response from the spiritual plane whether it has to do with the beauty of form, colour, or sound. The resources of the spiritual plane are all but infinite, for thought is there becoming a creative power in a far higher degree than on the astral plane, and independently of this, con- sciousness is there in direct relation with the all but in- finite memory of Nature, which is preserved — how we cannot at present expect to understand exactly — with im- perishable perfection, in the all-embracing medium known to occult science as the " Akasa," or Memory ether.
This marvellous medium is discernible in some of its manifestations on the astral plane, but its clear and uncon- fused records belong especially to the higher plane of spiritual consciousness. It is a natural mirror of all events, which recalls them for those who have the power of reading in it, in their minutest details. As nothing can alter the past when its events are once accomplished, so nothing can obliterate them from the memory of Nature. Our own individual memories in physical life are imperfect readings of so much in its records as we have personally had to do with — of as much as is connected by mysterious affinities with our own brain cells; but to the emancipated spiritual faculties on the Manasic Plane the records are more easily accessible. We are in a position to remember everything that has ever occurred in the history of our world, and to remember it not in that dim shadowy way
THE MANASIC PLANE 177
which physical memory alone achieves, but in such a way that the past scene or chain of events on which we bend our attention re-enacts itself before us in vivid perfection of detail. Obviously it would not so unroll itself unless the attention is bent upon it with the set purpose of evoking its records.
Now, however, without attempting to elaborate these considerations further, let me endeavour to answer the question which will certainly arise in the reader's mind as to what variety of human development qualifies any given entity for participation in the free life of the Rupa Manasic Plane. The answer is very simple, though for those as yet unversed in the study of the methods by which individual human progress can be greatly exhilarated, as compared to the drift through the ages of the main multi- tude, a full comprehension of what I mean will best be appreciated after I shall have endeavoured to describe what is meant by occult initiation. Briefly, in advance of that fuller explanation, let it be understood in accordance with the earliest hints provided by theosophical teaching that it is possible by strenuous devotion to that purpose to attain in a relatively brief period (though relatively brief may still mean the course of many successive lives) a condition of spiritual growth transcending that which would be reached in the same time by those content to travel slowly along the main highway of evolution. In other words, some of us, sooner or later, enter on what we commonly speak of as the " Path " leading to the quicker spiritual evolution (to be more fully described later on), and broadly speaking, it is only those who are already on the path, though not necessarily far advanced along it, who are qualified for existence of the free kind on the lower levels of the Manasic world. Individual characteristics will in
178 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
all cases determine the question whether such entities should ascend to the Manasic region or find a more appro- priate sphere of activity on the higher levels of the astral. I have already, in speaking of those beautiful conditions, described them as still abundantly inhabited by the most splendid examples of eminence in science, literature, and art. Probably few of these would be otherwise than entitled, if they chose, to pass on into the Manasic condition. In- deed, they are so circumstanced that most of them can reach up, so to speak, to those conditions when they desire to do so for the amplification of the knowledge they are acquiring without finally severing their connection from the astral region. On that the character of the knowledge they are acquiring is better appropriate to later uses in succeeding earth-lives than perhaps the deeper spiritual knowledge accessible to them on lofty levels. These few words may suggest rather than adequately convey the idea they attempt to involve. It would claim rather a pro- tracted dissertation if kept on the abstract level. An imaginary illustration will best help to show what I mean. Take the case of an electrician bent upon trying to help the world of science to an improved comprehension of what electricity really is. That force is probably identi- fied with some ultra-refined manifestation on the Manasic Plane. The electrician, entitled by his own spiritual growth to ascend to the Manasic Plane, might gratify himself by coming there to understand the higher mani- festation of electricity, as yet quite incomprehensible, no matter how frank the teaching to an incarnate understand- ing. But on the astral plane, without diving into the Manasic mysteries of electricity, he would be able to get on a good deal further than during his previous life with the comprehension of the infinite mystery. That sort of
THE MAN ASIC PLANE 179
progress, once embodied in his own capacity to understand things, will be distinctly conducive to the success of his later work when he comes back to incarnation as a scientist of some future generation. So he is content with that achievement, in one sense makes a certain sacrifice in order to do the work that he conceives appointed for him better than if he refused the sacrifice. I do not pretend to think the sacrifice a very terrible one. I have no doubt that many men of science on the higher levels of the astral world will distinctly prefer to make progress in the way they are used to rather than leaping an almost impassable gulf to reach states of consciousness that cannot be brought back into any physical brain. But at all events, we have the alternatives before us in imagination, and we may feel fairly sure that those who actually avail themselves of their right to ascend to the Manasic world will do so because they can discern in that condition opportunities for serving the ultimate progress of science even better than by following the path more congenial to others.
Concerning the higher or Arupa sub-planes of the vast Manasic region, it may be possible to suggest some broad idea not entirely out of harmony with the truth, and yet the better one's own glimmering perception of natural truth lying beyond the limits normally set for the physical understanding of this period, the more one is daunted in reference to any attempt to portray such glimmering in familiar language. For those not alone on the Path, but considerably advanced along it, the higher regions of the Manasic world are undeniably accessible. But the states of consciousness available there are definitely beyond the reach of language designed merely to deal with lower planes of manifestation, I believe it is quite true that on some of those higher levels of the Manasic world vision
13*
i8o THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
adapted to its phenomena will perceive the more or less developed centres of spiritual consciousness appertaining to all the mighty host of the human family. No term that I can think of as appropriate can be assigned to those mysterious centres or vortices. By some writers they are spoken of as Causal bodies, a comfortless and misleading expression which anyhow denotes only a small minority of the subtle phenomena in question. The aggregate number of Egos constituting the whole human family has been estimated by those who know as approximating to 60,000 millions, including, not merely the 1,500 millions or so of incarnate human beings, but all those who exist for periods far more protracted than those of ordinary life, in Astral, Devachanic, and Manasic conditions. Now the vast majority are still on a stage of evolution which does not provide for the complete evolution of any vehicle of consciousness on the higher Manasic levels. Therefore what is perceptible in the way I have hinted at above on those levels is some mysterious germ of future Causal bodies which would be very inaccurately thought of as constituting any thing that may be described as a population on those lofty levels. Their actual population is assuredly to be recognised as consisting of beings already on a very high stage of abnormal progress. And yet such beings probably in most cases are actively engaged in deal- ing with the affairs of the world on our own levels of manifestation, though working on these levels in bodies invisible to the physical senses. But such complications may be somewhat better appreciated when we come to consider the meaning and purpose of initiation, and for the moment I prefer to leave this very imperfect sketch of the Manasic World in the shape I have already given. People who are used to thinking that the Heaven to
THE MANASIC PLANE 181
which they will pass after death is co-extensive with the universe, are inclined to be discontented on that account with the prospect actually before them, their discontent- ment can only be due to an imperfect understanding of the relations between their own present consciousness and infinity. The child that puts out its hand to grasp at the moon is a feeble illustration of that miscalculation of their own spiritual range, which leads some incarnate thinkers to imagine that nothing will satisfy them after death but all the spiritual potentialities the cosmos contains.
We have seen how on the astral plane itself, matter is already infinitely more plastic to the influence of thought and will than the grosser matter we have to deal with on the physical plane. It may seem somewhat strained language to speak of the matter of the astral plane, when it is wholly beyond the reach of our present senses nor capable, as far as we know, of affecting the most delicate instruments of the physical laboratory, but it is material, as truly as gold or iron are material, to the senses adapted to its perception. And on the Manasic plane again the thought of the Creator has taken manifestation in matter, though this, in its turn, will be beyond the range of the astral senses for those on the lower level. Nor, indeed, are the various phases of material nature entirely discon- nected the one from the other. They melt as it were, the one into the other like the colours of the spectrum. The molecule of physical matter is utterly beyond microscopic reach in the direction of the infinitely little and constitutes the finest manifestation of physical matter whose charac- teristics can be discerned by physical means. But our molecule of physical matter is a congeries of ultimate physical atoms, and the ultimate atom itself constitutes the ether of the physical plane and is still of the physical plane,
1 82 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
although already beyond the reach of any instrument of research designed up to the present time. That ultimate physical atom, however, is found to be itself a highly com- plicated structure, consisting of atoms of astral matter. The Manasic atoms in turn, we may feel sure, from reasoning and the analogies of nature, are themselves con- stituted of similar aggregations of matter. A great region of thought is opened out in connection with this branch of superphysical science, before we begin to get in touch with the nature of force on each plane. Force, it is some- times said, is matter, although the expression in that bald shape is not calculated to convey any acceptable idea to the mind, but the matter which it is, is in all cases the matter of a superior plane. Astral matter may become force on the physical plane, or to express the idea with greater precision, may become the vehicle of force on the physical plane, and Manasic matter in the same way may become the vehicle of a force on the astral plane.