III. _Manas_,[37] the derivation or product in a reflected form of

_Ahamkara_, “the conception of I,” or EGO-SHIP. It is,
therefore, when inseparably united to the first two, called
the SPIRITUAL EGO, and _Taijasi_ (the radiant).

This is the real Individuality, or the divine man. It is this Ego
which—having originally incarnated in the _senseless_ human form
animated by, but unconscious (since it had no consciousness) of,
the presence in itself of the dual monad—made of that human-like
form _a real man_. It is that Ego, that “Causal Body,” which
overshadows every personality Karma forces it to incarnate into;
and this Ego which is held responsible for all the sins committed
through, and in, every new body or personality—the evanescent
masks which hide the true Individual through the long series of
rebirths.

ENQ. But is this just? Why should this EGO receive punishment as the
result of deeds which it has forgotten?

THEO. It has not forgotten them; it knows and remembers its misdeeds as
well as you remember what you have done yesterday. Is it because
the memory of that bundle of physical compounds called “body” does
not recollect what its predecessor (the personality _that was_)
did, that you imagine that the real Ego has forgotten them? As
well say it is unjust that the new boots on the feet of a boy, who
is flogged for stealing apples, should be punished for that which
they know nothing of.

ENQ. But are there no modes of communication between the Spiritual and
human consciousness or memory?

THEO. Of course there are; but they have never been recognised by your
scientific modern psychologists. To what do you attribute
intuition, the “voice of the conscience,” premonitions,
vague undefined reminiscences, etc., etc., if not to such
communications? Would that the majority of educated men, at least,
had the fine spiritual perceptions of Coleridge, who shows how
intuitional he is in some of his comments. Hear what he says with
respect to the probability that “all thoughts are in themselves
imperishable.” “If the intelligent faculty (sudden ‘revivals’
of memory) should be rendered more comprehensive, it would
require only a different and appropriate organization, the _body
celestial_ instead of the _body terrestrial_, to bring before
every human soul _the collective experience of its whole past
existence_ (_existences_, rather).” And this _body celestial_ is
our Manasic EGO.


ON THE REWARD AND PUNISHMENT OF THE EGO.

ENQ. I have heard you say that the _Ego_, whatever the life of the
person he incarnated in may have been on Earth, is never visited
with _post-mortem_ punishment.

THEO. Never, save in very exceptional and rare cases of which we will
not speak here, as the nature of the “punishment” in no way
approaches any of your theological conceptions of damnation.

ENQ. But if it is punished in this life for the misdeeds committed in a
previous one, then it is this Ego that ought to be rewarded also,
whether here, or when disincarnated.

THEO. And so it is. If we do not admit of any punishment outside of
this earth, it is because the only state the Spiritual Self knows
of, hereafter, is that of unalloyed bliss.

ENQ. What do you mean?

THEO. Simply this: _crimes and sins committed on a plane of objectivity
and in a world of matter, cannot receive punishment in a world
of pure subjectivity_. We believe in no hell or paradise as
localities; in no objective hell-fires and worms that never die,
nor in any Jerusalems with streets paved with sapphires and
diamonds. What we believe in is a _post-mortem state_ or mental
condition, such as we are in during a vivid dream. We believe
in an immutable law of absolute Love, Justice, and Mercy. And
believing in it, we say: “Whatever the sin and dire results of the
original Karmic transgression of the now incarnated Egos[38] no
man (or the outer material and periodical form of the Spiritual
Entity) can be held, with any degree of justice, responsible for
the consequences of his birth. He does not ask to be born, nor can
he choose the parents that will give him life. In every respect he
is a victim to his environment, the child of circumstances over
which he has no control; and if each of his transgressions were
impartially investigated, there would be found nine out of every
ten cases when he was the one sinned against, rather than the
sinner. Life is at best a heartless play, a stormy sea to cross,
and a heavy burden often too difficult to bear. The greatest
philosophers have tried in vain to fathom and find out its _raison
d’être_, and have all failed except those who had the key to it,
namely, the Eastern sages. Life is, as Shakespeare describes it:—

... but a walking shadow—a poor player, That struts and frets his
hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told
by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing....”

Nothing in its separate parts, yet of the greatest importance in
its collectivity or series of lives. At any rate, almost every
individual life is, in its full development, a sorrow. And are we
to believe that poor, helpless men, after being tossed about like
a piece of rotten timber on the angry billows of life, is, if he
proves too weak to resist them, to be punished by a _sempiternity_
of damnation, or even a temporary punishment? Never! Whether a
great or an average sinner, good or bad, guilty or innocent, once
delivered of the burden of physical life, the tired and worn-out
_Manu_ (“thinking Ego”) has won the right to a period of absolute
rest and bliss. The same unerringly wise and just rather than
merciful Law, which inflicts upon the incarnated Ego the Karmic
punishment for every sin committed during the preceding life on
Earth, provided for the now disembodied Entity a long lease of
mental rest, _i.e._, the entire oblivion of every sad event, aye,
to the smallest painful thought, that took place in its last life
as a personality, leaving in the soul-memory but the reminiscence
of that which was bliss, or led to happiness. Plotinus, who said
that our body was the true river of Lethe, for “souls plunged into
it forget all,” meant more than he said. For, as our terrestrial
body is like Lethe, so is our _celestial body_ in Devachan, and
much more.

ENQ. Then am I to understand that the murderer, the transgressor of law
divine and human in every shape, is allowed to go unpunished?

THEO. Who ever said that? Our philosophy has a doctrine of punishment
as stern as that of the most rigid Calvinist, only far more
philosophical and consistent with absolute justice. No deed,
not even a sinful thought, will go unpunished; the latter more
severely even than the former, as a thought is far more potential
in creating evil results than even a deed.[39] We believe in an
unerring law of Retribution, called KARMA, which asserts itself in
a natural concatenation of causes and their unavoidable results.

ENQ. And how, or where, does it act?

THEO. Every labourer is worthy of his hire, saith Wisdom in the Gospel;
every action, good or bad, is a prolific parent, saith the Wisdom
of the Ages. Put the two together, and you will find the “why.”
After allowing the Soul, escaped from the pangs of personal life,
a sufficient, aye, a hundredfold compensation, Karma, with its
army of Skandhas, waits at the threshold of Devachan, whence the
_Ego_ re-emerges to assume a new incarnation. It is at this moment
that the future destiny of the now-rested Ego trembles in the
scales of just Retribution, as _it_ now falls once again under the
sway of active Karmic law. It is in this re-birth which is ready
for _it_, a re-birth selected and prepared by this mysterious,
inexorable, but in the equity and wisdom of its decrees infallible
LAW, that the sins of the previous life of the Ego are punished.
Only it is into no imaginary Hell, with theatrical flames and
ridiculous tailed and horned devils, that the Ego is cast, but
verily on to this earth, the plane and region of his sins, where
he will have to atone for every bad thought and deed. As he
has sown, so will he reap. Re-incarnation will gather around
him all those other Egos who have suffered, whether directly
or indirectly, at the hands, or even through the unconscious
instrumentality, of the past _personality_. They will be thrown
by Nemesis in the way of the _new_ man, concealing the _old_, the
eternal EGO, and ...

ENQ. But where is the equity you speak of, since these _new_
“personalities” are not aware of having sinned or been sinned
against?

THEO. Has the coat torn to shreds from the back of the man who stole
it, by another man who was robbed of it and recognises his
property, to be regarded as fairly dealt with? The new
“personality” is no better than a fresh suit of clothes with its
specific characteristics, colour, form and qualities; but the
_real_ man who wears it is the same culprit as of old. It is the
_individuality_ who suffers through his “personality.” And it is
this, and this alone, that can account for the terrible, still
only _apparent_, injustice in the distribution of lots in life
to man. When your modern philosophers will have succeeded in
showing to us a good reason, why so many apparently innocent and
good men are born only to suffer during a whole lifetime; why so
many are born poor unto starvation in the slums of great cities,
abandoned by fate and men; why, while these are born in the
gutter, others open their eyes to light in palaces; while a noble
birth and fortune seem often given to the worst of men and only
rarely to the worthy; while there are beggars whose _inner_ selves
are peers to the highest and noblest of men; when this, and much
more, is satisfactorily explained by either your philosophers or
theologians, then only, but not till then, you will have the right
to reject the theory of re-incarnation. The highest and grandest
of poets have dimly perceived this truth of truths. Shelley
believed in it, Shakespeare must have thought of it when writing
on the worthlessness of Birth. Remember his words:

“Why should my birth keep down my mounting spirit?
Are not all creatures subject unto time?
There’s legions now of beggars on the earth,
That their original did spring from Kings,
And many monarchs now, whose fathers were
The riff-raff of their age....”

Alter the word “fathers” into “Egos”—and you will have the truth.

FOOTNOTES:

[31] “The phantasy,” says Olympiodorus (in Platonis Phæd.) “is an
impediment to our intellectual conceptions; and hence, when we are
agitated by the inspiring influence of the Divinity, if the phantasy
intervenes, the enthusiastic energy ceases: for enthusiasm and the
ecstasy are contrary to each other. Should it be asked whether the soul
is able to energise without the phantasy, we reply, that its perception
of universals proves that it is able. It has perceptions, therefore,
independent of the phantasy; at the same time, however, the phantasy
attends in its energies, just as a storm pursues him who sails on the
sea.”

[32] Namely, the body, life, passional and animal instincts, and the
astral eidolon of every man (whether perceived in thought or our
mind’s eye, or objectively and separate from the physical body), which
principles we call _Sthula sarira_, _Pranâ_, _Kama rupa_, and _Linga
sarira_ (_vide supra_).

[33] There are five _Skandhas_ or attributes in the Buddhist teachings:
“_Rupa_ (form or body), material qualities; _Vedana_, sensation;
_Sanna_, abstract ideas; _Samkhara_, tendencies of mind; _Vinnana_,
mental powers. Of these we are formed; by them we are conscious of
existence; and through them communicate with the world about us.”

[34] By H. S. Olcott, President and Founder of the Theosophical
Society. The accuracy of the teaching is sanctioned by the Rev. H.
Sumangala, High Priest of the Sripada and Galle, and Principal of the
_Widyodaya Parivena_ (College) at Colombo, as being in agreement with
the Canon of the Southern Buddhist Church.

[35] Or the _Spiritual_, in contradistinction to the personal _Self_.
The student must not confuse this Spiritual Ego with the “HIGHER SELF”
which is _Atma_, the God within us, and inseparable from the Universal
Spirit.

[36] Even in his _Buddhist Cathechism_, Col. Olcott, forced to it by
the logic of Esoteric philosophy, found himself obliged to correct
the mistakes of previous Orientalists who made no such distinction,
and gives the reader his reason for it. Thus he says: “The successive
appearances upon the earth, or ‘descents into generation,’ of the
_tanhaically_ coherent parts (Skandhas) of a certain being are a
succession of personalities. In each birth the PERSONALITY differs
from that of a previous or next succeeding birth. Karma, the DEUS
EX MACHINA, masks (or shall we say reflects?) itself now in the
personality of a sage, again as an artisan, and so on throughout the
string of births. But though personalities ever shift, the one line of
life along which they are strung, like beads, runs unbroken; it is ever
that _particular line_, never any other. It is therefore individual, an
individual vital undulation, which began in Nirvana, or the subjective
side of nature, as the light or heat undulation through æther began
at its dynamic source; is careering through the objective side of
nature under the impulse of Karma and the creative direction of _Tanha_
(the unsatisfied desire for existence); and leads through many cyclic
changes back to Nirvana. Mr. Rhys-Davids calls that which passes from
personality to personality along the individual chain ‘character,’ or
‘doing.’ Since ‘character’ is not a mere metaphysical abstraction, but
the sum of one’s mental qualities and moral propensities, would it not
help to dispel what Mr. Rhys-Davids calls ‘the desperate expedient of
a mystery’ (_Buddhism_, p. 101) if we regarded the life-undulation as
individuality, and each of its series of natal manifestations as a
separate personality? The perfect individual, Buddhistically speaking,
is a Buddha, I should say; for Buddha is but the rare flower of
humanity, without the least supernatural admixture. And as countless
generations (‘four _asankheyyas_ and a hundred thousand cycles,’
Fausboll and Rhys-Davids’ BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES, p. 13) are required
to develop a _man_ into a Buddha, and _the iron will to become one_
runs throughout all the successive births, what shall we call that
which thus wills and perseveres? Character? One’s individuality: an
individuality but partly manifested in any one birth, but built up of
fragments from all the births?” (_Bud. Cat., Appendix_ A. 137.)

[37] MAHAT or the “Universal Mind” is the source of Manas. The latter
is Mahat, _i.e._, mind, in man. Manas is also called _Kshetrajna_,
“embodied Spirit,” because it is, according to our philosophy, the
_Manasa-putras_, or “Sons of the Universal Mind,” who _created_, or
rather produced, the _thinking_ man, “_manu_,” by incarnating in the
_third Race_ mankind in our Round. It is Manas, therefore, which is the
real incarnating and permanent _Spiritual Ego_, the INDIVIDUALITY, and
our various and numberless personalities only its external masks.

[38] It is on this transgression that the cruel and illogical dogma of
the Fallen Angels has been built. It is explained in Vol. II. of the
_Secret Doctrine_. All our “Egos” are thinking and rational entities
(_Manasa-putras_) who had lived, whether under human or other forms,
in the precedent _life-cycle_ (Manvantara), and whose Karma it was to
incarnate in the _man_ of this one. It was taught in the MYSTERIES
that, having delayed to comply with this law (or having “refused to
create” as Hinduism says of the _Kumaras_ and Christian legend of the
Archangel Michael), _i.e._, having failed to incarnate in due time, the
bodies predestined for them got defiled (Vide Stanzas VIII. and IX.
in the “Slokas of Dzyan,” Vol. II. Secret Doctrine, pp. 19 and 20),
hence the original sin of the senseless forms and the punishment of
the _Egos_. That which is meant by the rebellious angels being hurled
down into Hell is simply explained by these pure Spirits or Egos being
imprisoned in bodies of unclean matter, flesh.

[39] “Verily, I say unto you, that whosoever looketh at a woman to lust
after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.”
(Matt. v., 28.)