VII. ON THE VARIOUS POST MORTEM STATES.

THE PHYSICAL AND THE SPIRITUAL MAN. ENQ. I am glad to hear you believe in the immortality of the Soul. THEO. Not of “the Soul,” but of the divine Spirit; or rather in the immortality of the reincarnating Ego. ENQ. What is the difference? THEO. A very great one in our philosophy, but this is too abstruse and difficult a question to touch lightly upon. We shall have to analyse them separately, and then in conjunction. We may begin with Spirit. We say that the Spirit (the “Father in secret” of Jesus), or _Atman_, is no individual property of any man, but is the Divine essence which has no body, no form, which is imponderable, invisible and indivisible, that which does not _exist_ and yet _is_, as the Buddhists say of Nirvana. It only overshadows the mortal; that which enters into him and pervades the whole body being only its omnipresent rays, or light, radiated through _Buddhi_, its vehicle and direct emanation. This is the secret meaning of the assertions of almost all the ancient philosophers, when they said that “the _rational_ part of man’s soul”[25] never entered wholly into the man, but only overshadowed him more or less through the _irrational_ spiritual Soul or Buddhi.[26] ENQ. I laboured under the impression that the “Animal Soul” alone was irrational, not the Divine. THEO. You have to learn the difference between that which is negatively, or _passively_ “irrational,” because undifferentiated, and that which is irrational because too _active_ and positive. Man is a correlation of spiritual powers, as well as a correlation of chemical and physical forces, brought into function by what we call “principles.” ENQ. I have read a good deal upon the subject, and it seems to me that the notions of the older philosophers differed a great deal from those of the mediæval Kabalists, though they do agree in some particulars. THEO. The most substantial difference between them and us is this. While we believe with the Neo-Platonists and the Eastern teachings that the spirit (Atma) never descends hypostatically into the living man, but only showers more or less its radiance on the _inner_ man (the psychic and spiritual compound of the _astral_ principles), the Kabalists maintain that the human Spirit, detaching itself from the ocean of light and Universal Spirit, enters man’s Soul, where it remains throughout life imprisoned in the astral capsule. All Christian Kabalists still maintain the same, as they are unable to break quite loose from their anthropomorphic and Biblical doctrines. ENQ. And what do you say? THEO. We say that we only allow the presence of the radiation of Spirit (or Atma) in the astral capsule, and so far only as that spiritual radiancy is concerned. We say that man and Soul have to conquer their immortality by ascending towards the unity with which, if successful, they will be finally linked and into which they are finally, so to speak, absorbed. The individualization of man after death depends on the spirit, not on his soul and body. Although the word “personality,” in the sense in which it is usually understood, is an absurdity if applied literally to our immortal essence, still the latter is, as our individual Ego, a distinct entity, immortal and eternal, _per se_. _It is only in the case of black magicians or of criminals beyond redemption, criminals who have been such during a long series of lives_—that the shining thread, which links the spirit to the _personal_ soul from the moment of the birth of the child, is violently snapped, and the disembodied entity becomes divorced from the personal soul, the latter being annihilated without leaving the smallest impression of itself on the former. If that union between the lower, or personal Manas, and the individual reincarnating Ego, has not been effected during life, then the former is left to share the fate of the lower animals, to gradually dissolve into ether, and have its personality annihilated. But even then the Ego remains a distinct being. It (the spiritual Ego) only loses one Devachanic state—after that special, and in that case indeed useless, life—as that idealized _Personality_, and is reincarnated, after enjoying for a short time its freedom as a planetary spirit, almost immediately. ENQ. It is stated in _Isis Unveiled_ that such planetary Spirits or Angels, “the gods of the Pagans or the Archangels of the Christians,” will never be men on our planet. THEO. Quite right. Not “_such_,” but _some_ classes of higher Planetary Spirits. They will never be men on this planet, because they are liberated Spirits from a previous, earlier world, and as such they cannot re-become men on this one. Yet all these will live again in the next and far higher Mahamanvantara, after this “great Age,” and “Brahma _pralaya_,” (a little period of 16 figures or so) is over. For you must have heard, of course, that Eastern philosophy teaches us that mankind consists of such “Spirits” imprisoned in human bodies? The difference between animals and men is this: the former are ensouled by the “principles” _potentially_, the latter _actually_.[27] Do you understand now the difference? ENQ. Yes; but this specialisation has been in all ages the stumbling-block of metaphysicians. THEO. It was. The whole esotericism of the Buddhistic philosophy is based on this mysterious teaching, understood by so few persons, and so totally misrepresented by many of the most learned modern scholars. Even metaphysicians are too inclined to confound the effect with the cause. An Ego who has won his immortal life as spirit will remain the same inner self throughout all his rebirths on earth; but this does not imply necessarily that he must either remain the Mr. Smith or Mr. Brown he was on earth, or lose his individuality. Therefore, the astral soul and the terrestrial body of man may, in the dark hereafter, be absorbed into the cosmical ocean of sublimated elements, and cease to feel his last _personal_ Ego (if it did not deserve to soar higher), and the _divine_ Ego still remain the same unchanged entity, though this terrestrial experience of his emanation may be totally obliterated at the instant of separation from the unworthy vehicle. ENQ. If the “Spirit,” or the divine portion of the soul, is pre-existent as a distinct being from all eternity, as Origen, Synesius, and other semi-Christians and semi-Platonic philosophers taught, and if it is the same, and nothing more than the metaphysically-objective soul, how can it be otherwise than eternal? And what matters it in such a case, whether man leads a pure life or an animal, if, do what he may, he can never lose his individuality? THEO. This doctrine, as you have stated it, is just as pernicious in its consequences as that of vicarious atonement. Had the latter dogma, in company with the false idea that we are all immortal, been demonstrated to the world in its true light, humanity would have been bettered by its propagation. Let me repeat to you again. Pythagoras, Plato, Timaeus of Locris, and the old Alexandrian School, derived the _Soul_ of man (or his higher “principles” and attributes) from the Universal World Soul, the latter being, according to their teachings, _Aether_ (Pater-Zeus). Therefore, neither of these “principles” can be _unalloyed_ essence of the Pythagorean Monas, or our _Atma-Buddhi_, because the _Anima Mundi_ is but the effect, the subjective emanation or rather radiation of the former. Both the _human_ Spirit (or the individuality), the reincarnating Spiritual Ego, and Buddhi, the Spiritual soul, are pre-existent. But, while the former exists as a distinct entity, an individualization, the soul exists as pre-existing breath, an unscient portion of an intelligent whole. Both were originally formed from the Eternal Ocean of light; but as the Fire-Philosophers, the mediæval Theosophists, expressed it, there is a visible as well as invisible spirit in fire. They made a difference between the _anima bruta_ and the _anima divina_. Empedocles firmly believed all men and animals to possess two souls; and in Aristotle we find that he calls one the reasoning soul, νους and the other, the animal soul, ψυχη. According to these philosophers, the reasoning soul comes from _within_ the universal soul, and the other from _without_. ENQ. Would you call the Soul, _i.e._, the human thinking Soul, or what you call the Ego—matter? THEO. Not matter, but substance assuredly; nor would the word “matter,” if prefixed with the adjective, _primordial_, be a word to avoid. That matter, we say, is co-eternal with Spirit, and is not our visible, tangible, and divisible matter, but its extreme sublimation. Pure Spirit is but one remove from the _no_-Spirit, or the absolute _all_. Unless you admit that man was evolved out of this primordial Spirit-matter, and represents a regular progressive scale of “principles” from _meta_-Spirit down to the grossest matter, how can we ever come to regard the _inner_ man as immortal, and at the same time as a spiritual Entity and a mortal man? ENQ. Then why should you not believe in God as such an Entity? THEO. Because that which is infinite and unconditioned can have no form, and cannot be a being, not in any Eastern philosophy worthy of the name, at any rate. An “entity” is immortal, but is so only in its ultimate essence, not in its individual form. When at the last point of its cycle, it is absorbed into its primordial nature; and it becomes spirit, when it loses its name of Entity. Its immortality as a form is limited only to its life-cycle or the _Mahamanvantara_; after which it is one and identical with the Universal Spirit, and no longer a separate Entity. As to the _personal_ Soul—by which we mean the spark of consciousness that preserves in the Spiritual Ego the idea of the personal “I” of the last incarnation—this lasts, as a separate distinct recollection, only throughout the Devachanic period; after which time it is added to the series of other innumerable incarnations of the Ego, like the remembrance in our memory of one of a series of days, at the end of a year. Will you bind the infinitude you claim for your God to finite conditions? That alone which is indissolubly cemented by _Atma_ (_i.e._, Buddhi-Manas) is immortal. The Soul of man (_i.e._, of the personality) _per se_ is neither immortal, eternal nor divine. Says the _Zohar_ (vol. iii., p. 616), “the soul, when sent to this earth, puts on an earthly garment, to preserve herself here, so she receives above a shining garment, in order to be able to look without injury into the mirror, whose light proceeds from the Lord of Light.” Moreover, the _Zohar_ teaches that the soul cannot reach the abode of bliss, unless she has received the “holy kiss,” or the reunion of the soul _with the substance from which she emanated_—spirit. All souls are dual, and, while the latter is a feminine principle, the spirit is masculine. While imprisoned in body, man is a trinity, unless his pollution is such as to have caused his divorce from the spirit. “Woe to the soul which prefers to her divine husband (spirit) the earthly wedlock with her terrestrial body,” records a text of the _Book of the Keys_, a Hermetic work. Woe indeed, for nothing will remain of that personality to be recorded on the imperishable tablets of the Ego’s memory. ENQ. How can that which, if not breathed by God into man, yet is on your own confession of an identical substance with the divine, fail to be immortal? THEO. Every atom and speck of matter, not of substance only, is _imperishable_ in its essence, but not in its _individual consciousness_. Immortality is but one’s unbroken consciousness; and the _personal_ consciousness can hardly last longer than the personality itself, can it? And such consciousness, as I already told you, survives only throughout Devachan, after which it is reabsorbed, first, in the _individual_, and then in the _universal_ consciousness. Better enquire of your theologians how it is that they have so sorely jumbled up the Jewish Scriptures. Read the Bible, if you would have a good proof that the writers of the _Pentateuch_, and _Genesis_ especially, never regarded _nephesh_, that which God breathes into Adam (Gen. ch. ii.), as the _immortal_ soul. Here are some instances:—“And God created ... every _nephesh_ (life) that moveth” (Gen i. 21), meaning animals; and (Gen. ii. 7) it is said: “And man became a _nephesh_” (living soul), which shows that the word _nephesh_ was indifferently applied to _immortal_ man and to _mortal_ beast. “And surely your blood of your _nepheshim_ (lives) will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man” (Gen. ix. 5), “Escape for _nephesh_” (escape for thy _life_, it is translated), (Gen. xix. 17). “Let us not kill him,” reads the English version (Gen. xxxvii. 21). “Let us not kill his _nephesh_” is the Hebrew text. “_Nephesh_ for _nephesh_,” says Leviticus (xvii. 8). “He that killeth any man shall surely be put to death,” literally “He that smiteth the _nephesh_ of a man” (Lev. xxiv. 17); and from verse 18 and following it reads: “And he that killeth a beast (_nephesh_) shall make it good ... Beast for beast,” whereas the original text has it “nephesh for nephesh.” How could man _kill_ that which is immortal? And this explains also why the Sadducees denied the immortality of the soul, as it also affords another proof that very probably the Mosaic Jews—the uninitiated at any rate—never believed in the soul’s survival at all. ON ETERNAL REWARD AND PUNISHMENT; AND ON NIRVANA. ENQ. It is hardly necessary, I suppose, to ask you whether you believe in the Christian dogmas of Paradise and Hell, or in future rewards and punishments as taught by the Orthodox churches? THEO. As described in your catechisms, we reject them absolutely; least of all would we accept their eternity. But we believe firmly in what we call the _Law of Retribution_, and in the absolute justice and wisdom guiding this Law, or Karma. Hence we positively refuse to accept the cruel and unphilosophical belief in eternal reward or eternal punishment. We say with Horace:— “Let rules be fixed that may our rage contain, And punish faults _with a proportion’d pain_; But do not flay him who deserves alone A whipping for the fault that he has done.” This is a rule for all men, and a just one. Have we to believe that God, of whom you make the embodiment of wisdom, love and mercy, is less entitled to these attributes than mortal man? ENQ. Have you any other reasons for rejecting this dogma? THEO. Our chief reason for it lies in the fact of re-incarnation. As already stated, we reject the idea of a new soul created for every newly-born babe. We believe that every human being is the bearer, or _Vehicle_, of an _Ego_ coeval with every other Ego; because all _Egos_ are _of the same essence_ and belong to the primeval emanation from one universal infinite _Ego_. Plato calls the latter the _logos_ (or the second manifested God); and we, the manifested divine principle, which is one with the universal mind or soul, not the anthropomorphic, extra-cosmic and _personal_ God in which so many Theists believe. Pray do not confuse. ENQ. But where is the difficulty, once you accept a manifested principle, in believing that the soul of every new mortal is _created_ by that Principle, as all the Souls before it have been so created? THEO. Because that which is _impersonal_ can hardly create, plan and think, at its own sweet will and pleasure. Being a universal _Law_, immutable in its periodical manifestations, those of radiating and manifesting its own essence at the beginning of every new cycle of life, IT is not supposed to create men, only to repent a few years later of having created them. If we have to believe in a divine principle at all, it must be in one which is as absolute harmony, logic, and justice, as it is absolute love, wisdom, and impartiality; and a God who would _create_ every soul for the space of _one brief span of life_, regardless of the fact whether it has to animate the body of a wealthy, happy man, or that of a poor suffering wretch, hapless from birth to death though he has done nothing to deserve his cruel fate—would be rather a senseless _fiend_ than a God. (_Vide infra_, “On the Punishment of the Ego.”) Why, even the Jewish philosophers, believers in the Mosaic Bible (esoterically, of course), have never entertained such an idea; and, moreover, they believed in re-incarnation, as we do. ENQ. Can you give me some instances as a proof of this? THEO. Most decidedly I can. Philo Judæus says (in “De Somniis,” p. 455): “The air is full of them (of souls); those which are nearest the earth, descending to be tied to mortal bodies, παλινδρομοῦσιν αὖθις _return to other bodies, being desirous to live in them_.” In the _Zohar_, the soul is made to plead her freedom before God: “Lord of the Universe! I am happy in this world, and do not wish to go into another world, where I shall be a handmaid, and be exposed to all kinds of pollutions.”[28] The doctrine of fatal necessity, the everlasting immutable law, is asserted in the answer of the Deity: “Against thy will thou becomest an embryo, and against thy will thou art born.”[29] Light would be incomprehensible without darkness to make it manifest by contrast; good would be no longer good without evil to show the priceless nature of the boon; and so personal virtue could claim no merit, unless it had passed through the furnace of temptation. Nothing is eternal and unchangeable, save the concealed Deity. Nothing that is finite—whether because it had a beginning, or must have an end—can remain stationary. It must either progress or recede; and a soul which thirsts after a reunion with its spirit, which alone confers upon it immortality, must purify itself through cyclic transmigrations onward toward the only land of bliss and eternal rest, called in the _Zohar_, “The Palace of Love,” היבל אחכה; in the Hindu religion, “Moksha”; among the Gnostics, “The Pleroma of Eternal Light”; and by the Buddhists, “Nirvana.” And all these states are temporary, not eternal. ENQ. Yet there is no re-incarnation spoken of in all this. THEO. A soul which pleads to be allowed to remain where she is, _must be pre-existent_, and not have been created for the occasion. In the _Zohar_ (vol. iii., p. 61), however, there is a still better proof. Speaking of the reincarnating _Egos_ (the _rational_ souls), those whose last personality has to fade out _entirely_, it is said: “All souls which have alienated themselves in heaven from the Holy One—blessed be His name—have thrown themselves into an abyss at their very existence, and have anticipated the time when they are to descend once more on earth.” “The Holy One” means here, esoterically, the Atman, or _Atma-Buddhi_. ENQ. Moreover, it is very strange to find _Nirvana_ spoken of as something synonymous with the Kingdom of Heaven, or the Paradise, since according to every Orientalist of note Nirvana is a synonym of annihilation! THEO. Taken literally, with regard to the personality and differentiated matter, not otherwise. These ideas on re-incarnation and the trinity of man were held by many of the early Christian Fathers. It is the jumble made by the translators of the New Testament and ancient philosophical treatises between soul and spirit, that has occasioned the many misunderstandings. It is also one of the many reasons why Buddha, Plotinus, and so many other Initiates are now accused of having longed for the total extinction of their souls: “absorption unto the Deity,” or “reunion with the universal soul,” meaning, according to modern ideas, annihilation. The personal soul must, of course, be disintegrated into its particles, before it is able to link its purer essence for ever with the immortal spirit. But the translators of both the _Acts_ and the _Epistles_, who laid the foundation of the _Kingdom of Heaven_, and the modern commentators on the Buddhist _Sutra of the Foundation of the Kingdom of Righteousness_, have muddled the sense of the great apostle of Christianity as of the great reformer of India. The former have smothered the word ψυχικος so that no reader imagines it to have any relation with _soul_; and with this confusion of _soul_ and _spirit_ together, _Bible_ readers get only a perverted sense of anything on the subject. On the other hand, the interpreters of Buddha have failed to understand the meaning and object of the Buddhist four degrees of Dhyâna. Ask the Pythagoreans, “Can that spirit, which gives life and motion and partakes of the nature of light, be reduced to nonentity?” “Can even that sensitive spirit in brutes which exercises memory, one of the rational faculties, die and become nothing?” observe the Occultists. In Buddhistic philosophy _annihilation_ means only a dispersion of matter, in whatever form or _semblance_ of form it may be, for everything that has form is temporary, and is, therefore, really an illusion. For in eternity the longest periods of time are as a wink of the eye. So with form. Before we have time to realize that we have seen it, it is gone like an instantaneous flash of lightning, and passed for ever. When the Spiritual _entity_ breaks loose for ever from every particle of matter, substance, or form, and re-becomes a Spiritual breath: then only does it enter upon the eternal and unchangeable _Nirvana_, lasting as long as the cycle of life has lasted—an eternity, truly. And then that Breath, existing _in Spirit_, is _nothing_ because it is _all_; as a form, a semblance, a shape, it is completely annihilated; as absolute Spirit it still is, for it has become _Be-ness_ itself. The very word used, “absorbed in the universal essence,” when spoken of the “Soul” as Spirit, means “_union with_.” It can never mean annihilation, as that would mean eternal separation. ENQ. Do you not lay yourself open to the accusation of preaching annihilation by the language you yourself use? You have just spoken of the Soul of man returning to its primordial elements. THEO. But you forget that I have given you the differences between the various meanings of the word “Soul,” and shown the loose way in which the term “Spirit” has been hitherto translated. We speak of an _animal_, a _human_, and a _spiritual_, Soul, and distinguish between them. Plato, for instance, calls “rational SOUL” that which we call _Buddhi_, adding to it the adjective of “spiritual,” however; but that which we call the reincarnating Ego, _Manas_, he calls Spirit, _Nous_, etc., whereas we apply the term _Spirit_, when standing alone and without any qualification, to Atma alone. Pythagoras repeats our archaic doctrine when stating that the _Ego_ (_Nous_) is eternal with Deity; that the soul only passed through various stages to arrive at divine excellence; while _thumos_ returned to the earth, and even the _phren_, the lower _Manas_, was eliminated. Again, Plato defines _Soul_ (Buddhi) as “the motion that is able to move itself.” “Soul,” he adds (Laws X.), “is the most ancient of all things, and the commencement of motion,” thus calling Atma-Buddhi “Soul,” and _Manas_ “Spirit,” which we do not. “Soul was generated prior to body, and body is posterior and secondary, as being according to nature, ruled over by the ruling soul.” “The soul which administers all things that are moved in every way, administers likewise the heavens.” “Soul then leads everything in heaven, and on earth, and in the sea, by its movements—the names of which are, to will, to consider, to take care of, to consult, to form opinions true and false, to be in a state of joy, sorrow, confidence, fear, hate, love, together with all such primary movements as are allied to these.... Being a goddess herself, she ever takes as an ally _Nous_, a god, and disciplines all things correctly and happily; but when with _Annoia_—not _nous_—it works out everything the contrary.” In this language, as in the Buddhist texts, the negative is treated as essential existence. _Annihilation_ comes under a similar exegesis. The positive state is essential being, but no manifestation as such. When the spirit, in Buddhistic parlance, enters _Nirvana_, it loses objective existence, but retains subjective being. To objective minds this is becoming absolute “nothing”; to subjective, NO-THING, nothing to be displayed to sense. Thus, their Nirvana means the certitude of individual immortality _in Spirit_, not in Soul, which, though “the most ancient of all things,” is still—along with all the other _Gods_—a finite emanation, in _forms_ and individuality, if not in substance. ENQ. I do not quite seize the idea yet, and would be thankful to have you explain this to me by some illustrations. THEO. No doubt it is very difficult to understand, especially to one brought up in the regular orthodox ideas of the Christian Church. Moreover, I must tell you one thing; and this is that unless you have studied thoroughly well the separate functions assigned to all the human “principles” and the state of all these _after death_, you will hardly realize our Eastern philosophy. ON THE VARIOUS “PRINCIPLES” IN MAN. ENQ. I have heard a good deal about this constitution of the “inner man” as you call it, but could never make “head or tail on’t” as Gabalis expresses it. THEO. Of course, it is most difficult, and, as you say, “puzzling” to understand correctly and distinguish between the various _aspects_, called by us, the “principles” of the real EGO. It is the more so as there exists a notable difference in the numbering of those principles by various Eastern schools, though at the bottom there is the same identical substratum of teaching. ENQ. Do you mean the Vedantins, as an instance? Don’t they divide your seven “principles” into five only? THEO. They do; but though I would not presume to dispute the point with a learned Vedantin, I may yet state as my private opinion that they have an obvious reason for it. With them it is only that compound spiritual aggregate which consists of various mental aspects that is called _Man_ at all, the physical body being in their view something beneath contempt, and merely an _illusion_. Nor is the Vedanta the only philosophy to reckon in this manner. Lao-Tze, in his _Tao-te-King_, mentions only five principles, because he, like the Vedantins, omits to include two principles, namely, the spirit (Atma) and the physical body, the latter of which, moreover, he calls “the cadaver.” Then there is the _Taraka Rajà Yogà_ School. Its teaching recognises only three “principles” in fact; but then, in reality, their _Sthulopadi_, or the physical body, in its waking conscious state, their _Sukshmopadhi_, the same body in _Svapna_, or the dreaming state, and their _Karanopadhi_ or “causal body,” or that which passes from one incarnation to another, are all dual in their aspects, and thus make six. Add to this Atma, the impersonal divine principle or the immortal element in Man, undistinguished from the Universal Spirit, and you have the same seven again.[30] They are welcome to hold to their division; we hold to ours. ENQ. Then it seems almost the same as the division made by the mystic Christians: body, soul and spirit? THEO. Just the same. We could easily make of the body the vehicle of the “vital Double”; of the latter the vehicle of Life or _Pranâ_; of _Kama-rupa_, or (animal) soul, the vehicle of the _higher_ and the _lower_ mind, and make of this six principles, crowning the whole with the one immortal spirit. In Occultism every qualificative change in the state of our consciousness gives to man a new aspect, and if it prevails and becomes part of the living and acting Ego, it must be (and is) given a special name, to distinguish the man in that particular state from the man he is when he places himself in another state. ENQ. It is just that which it is so difficult to understand. THEO. It seems to me very easy, on the contrary, once that you have seized the main idea, _i.e._, that man acts on this or another plane of consciousness, in strict accordance with his mental and spiritual condition. But such is the materialism of the age that the more we explain the less people seem capable of understanding what we say. Divide the terrestrial being called man into three chief aspects, if you like, and unless you make of him a pure animal you cannot do less. Take his objective _body_; the thinking principle in him—which is only a little higher than the _instinctual_ element in the animal—or the vital conscious soul; and that which places him so immeasurably beyond and higher than the animal—_i.e._, his _reasoning_ soul or “spirit.” Well, if we take these three groups or representative entities, and subdivide them, according to the occult teaching, what do we get? First of all, Spirit (in the sense of the Absolute, and therefore, indivisible ALL), or Atma. As this can neither be located nor limited in philosophy, being simply that which IS in Eternity, and which cannot be absent from even the tiniest geometrical or mathematical point of the universe of matter or substance, it ought not to be called, in truth, a “human” principle at all. Rather, and at best, it is in Metaphysics, that point in space which the human Monad and its vehicle man occupy for the period of every life. Now that point is as imaginary as man himself, and in reality is an illusion, a _maya_; but then for ourselves, as for other personal Egos, we are a reality during that fit of illusion called life, and we have to take ourselves into account, in our own fancy at any rate, if no one else does. To make it more conceivable to the human intellect, when first attempting the study of Occultism, and to solve the A B C of the mystery of man, Occultism calls this _seventh_ principle the synthesis of the sixth, and gives it for vehicle the _Spiritual_ Soul, _Buddhi_. Now the latter conceals a mystery, which is never given to any one, with the exception of irrevocably pledged _chelas_, or those, at any rate, who can be safely trusted. Of course, there would be less confusion, could it only be told; but, as this is directly concerned with the power of projecting one’s double consciously and at will, and as this gift, like the “ring of Gyges,” would prove very fatal to man at large and to the possessor of that faculty in particular, it is carefully guarded. But let us proceed with the “principles.” This divine soul, or Buddhi, then, is the vehicle of the Spirit. In conjunction, these two are one, impersonal and without any attributes (on this plane, of course), and make two spiritual “principles.” If we pass on to the _Human_ Soul, _Manas_ or _mens_, every one will agree that the intelligence of man is _dual_ to say the least: _e.g._, the high-minded man can hardly become low-minded; the very intellectual and spiritual-minded man is separated by an abyss from the obtuse, dull, and material, if not animal-minded man. ENQ. But why should not man be represented by two “principles” or two aspects, rather? THEO. Every man has these two principles in him, one more active than the other, and in rare cases, one of these is entirely stunted in its growth, so to say, or paralysed by the strength and predominance of the other _aspect_, in whatever direction. These, then, are what we call the two principles or aspects of _Manas_, the higher and the lower; the former, the higher Manas, or the thinking, conscious EGO gravitating toward the spiritual Soul (Buddhi); and the latter, or its instinctual principle, attracted to _Kama_, the seat of animal desires and passions in man. Thus, we have _four_ “principles” justified; the last three being (1) the “Double,” which we have agreed to call Protean, or Plastic Soul; the vehicle of (2) the life _principle_; and (3) the physical body. Of course no physiologist or biologist will accept these principles, nor can he make head or tail of them. And this is why, perhaps, none of them understand to this day either the functions of the spleen, the physical vehicle of the Protean Double, or those of a certain organ on the right side of man, the seat of the above-mentioned desires, nor yet does he know anything of the pineal gland, which he describes as a horny gland with a little sand in it, which gland is in truth the very seat of the highest and divinest consciousness in man, his omniscient, spiritual and all-embracing mind. And this shows to you still more plainly that we have neither invented these seven principles, nor are they new in the world of philosophy, as we can easily prove. ENQ. But what is it that reincarnates, in your belief? THEO. The Spiritual thinking Ego, the permanent principle in man, or that which is the seat of _Manas_. It is not Atma, or even Atma-Buddhi, regarded as the dual _Monad_, which is the _individual_, or _divine_ man, but Manas; for Atman is the Universal ALL, and becomes the HIGHER-SELF of man only in conjunction with _Buddhi_, its vehicle, which links IT to the individuality (or divine man). For it is the Buddhi-Manas which is called the _Causal body_, (the United 5th and 6th Principles) and which is _Consciousness_, that connects it with every personality it inhabits on earth. Therefore, Soul being a generic term, there are in men three _aspects_ of soul—the terrestrial, or animal; the Human Soul; and the Spiritual Soul; these, strictly speaking, are one Soul in its three aspects. Now of the first aspect, nothing remains after death; of the second (_nous_ or Manas) only its divine essence _if left unsoiled_ survives, while the third in addition to being immortal becomes _consciously_ divine, by the assimilation of the higher Manas. But to make it clear, we have to say a few words first of all about Re-incarnation. ENQ. You will do well, as it is against this doctrine that your enemies fight the most ferociously. THEO. You mean the Spiritualists? I know; and many are the absurd objections laboriously spun by them over the pages of _Light_. So obtuse and malicious are some of them, that they will stop at nothing. One of them found recently a contradiction, which he gravely discusses in a letter to that journal, in two statements picked out of Mr. Sinnett’s lectures. He discovers that grave contradiction in these two sentences: “Premature returns to earth-life in the cases when they occur may be due to Karmic complication ...”; and “there is no _accident_ in the supreme act of divine justice guiding evolution.” So profound a thinker would surely see a contradiction of the law of gravitation if a man stretched out his hand to stop a falling stone from crushing the head of a child! FOOTNOTES: [25] In its generic sense, the word “rational” meaning something emanating from the Eternal Wisdom. [26] _Irrational_ in the sense that as a _pure_ emanation of the Universal mind it can have no individual reason of its own on this plane of matter, but like the Moon, who borrows her light from the Sun and her life from the Earth, so _Buddhi_, receiving its light of Wisdom from Atma, gets its rational qualities from _Manas_. _Per se_, as something homogeneous, it is devoid of attributes. [27] _Vide_ “_Secret Doctrine_,” Vol. II., stanzas. [28] “_Zohar_,” Vol. II., p. 96. [29] “_Mishna_,” “Aboth,” Vol. IV., p. 29. [30] See “Secret Doctrine” for a clearer explanation. Vol. I., p. 157.