Section 2

Many of the movements of objects that occur at such séances, and at other times, without visible con- tact, are due to the action of the etheric double, and the student can learn how to produce such phenomena at will. They are trivial enough: the mere putting out of the etheric hand is. no more important than the putting out of the dense counterpart, and neither more nor less. miraculous. . Some persons. produce such phenomena unconsciously, mere aimless overturnings of objects, making of noises, and so on: they have no control over their etheric double, and it just blunders about in their near neighbourhood, like a baby trying to walk. For the etheric double, like the dense body, has only a diffused consciousness- belonging to its parts, and has no mentality. Nor does-it- readily serve as a medium of mentality, when disjoined from the dense counterpart. -
This leads us to an interesting point.. The centres of sensation are located in the. fourth principle, which may be said to form the bridge between the physical organs and the mental. perceptions; impressions from the physical universe impinge.on the material molecules of the dense physical body, setting in vibration: the constituent cells of the organs of sensations, or our “senses.” These vibrations, in their turn, set in motion the finer material .molecules of the etheric
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double, in the corresponding sense organs of its finer matter. From these the vibrations pass to the astral body, or fourth principle, presently to be considered, wherein are the corresponding centres of sensation. From these vibrations are again propagated into the yet rarer matter of the lower mental plane, whence they are reflected back until, reaching the material molecules of the cerebral hemispheres, they become our “ brain- consciousness.” This correlated and unconscious suc- cession is necessary for the normal action of conscious- ness as we know it. In sleep and in trance, natural or induced, the first two and the last stages are generally omitted, and the impressions start from and return to the astral plane, and thus make no trace on the brain- memory; but the natural or trained psychic, the clair- voyant who does not need trance for the exercise of his powers, is able to transfer his consciousness from the physical to the astral plane without losing grip thereof, and can impress the brain-memory with knowledge gained on the astral plane, so retaining it for use.
Death means for the etheric double just what it means for the dense physical body, the breaking up of its constituent parts, the dissipation of its molecules. The vehicle of the vitality that animates the bodily organism as a whole, it oozes forth from the body when the death- hour comes, and is seen by the clairvoyant as a violet light, or violet form, hovering over the dying person, still attached to the physical body by the slender thread be- fore spoken of. When the thread snaps, the last breath has quivered outwards, and the bystanders whisper “ He is dead.”
The etheric double, being of physical matter, remains - in the neighbourhood of the corpse, and is the “ wraith,” or “apparition,” or “phantom,” sometimes seen at the
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moment of death and afterwards by persons near the place where the death has occurred. It disintegrates slowly pavi passu with its dense counterpart, and its remnants are seen by sensitives in cemeteries and churchyards as violet lights hovering over graves. Here is one of the reasons which render cremation preferable to burial as a mode of disposing of the physical envelopes of man; the fire dissipates in a few hours the molecules ~ which would otherwise be set free only in the slow course of gradual putrefaction, and thus quickly restores to their own plane the dense and etheric materials, ready for use once more in the building up of new forms.
PrincieLe Ii]. Prana, THE LIFE:
All universes, all worlds, all men, all brutes, all vege- tables, all minerals, all molecules and atoms, all that 7s, are plunged in a great ocean of life, life eternal, life infinite, life incapable of increase or of diminution. The universe is only life in manifestation, life made objective, life differentiated. Now each organism, whether minute as a molecule or vast as a universe, may be thought of as appropriating to itself somewhat of life, of embodying in itself as its own life some of this universal life. Figure a living sponge, stretching itself out in the water _ which bathes it, envelops it, permeates. it; there is water, still the ocean, circulating in every passage, filling every pore; but we may think of the ocean outside the sponge, or of the part of the ocean appropriated by the sponge, distinguishing them in thought if we want to make statements about each severally. So each organism is a sponge bathed in the ocean of life uni- versal, and containing within itself some of that ocean as its own breath of life, In Theosophy we distinguish this appropriated life under the name Prana, breath, and call it the third principle in man’s constitution.
To speak quite accurately, the ‘“ breath of life ”—that which the Hebrews termed Nephesch, or the breath of life breathed into the nostrils of Adam—is not Prana only, but Prana and the fourth principle conjoined. It is these two together that make the “vital spark”
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(Secret Doctrine, vol. i., p. 262), and that are the “breath of life in man, as in’ beast or insect, of physical, material life’ (¢b:d., note to p. 263). It 1s ** the breath of animal life in man—the breath of life in- stinctual in the animal” (cbid., diagram on p. 262). But just now we are concerned with Prana only, with vitality as the animating principle in all animal and human bodies. Of this life the etheric double is the vehicle, acting, so to say, as means of communication, as bridge, between Prana and the dense body.
Prana is explained in the Secvet Doctrine as having for its lowest subdivision the microbes of science; these are the “invisible lives’’ that build up the physical cells (see ante, pp. 8,9); these are the “countless myriads of lives” that build the “tabernacle of clay,” the physical bodies (Secret Doctrine, vol. i., p. 245). ‘ Science, dimly perceiving the truth, may find bacteria and other infinitesimals in the human body, and see in them only occasional and abnormal visitors to which diseases are attributed. Occultism—which discerns a life in every atom, and molecule, whether in a mineral or human body, in air, fire, or water—affirms that our whole body is built of such lives; the smallest bacterium under the microscope being to them in comparative size like an elephant to the tiniest infusoria” (¢bid., p. 245). The “fiery lives”’ are the controllers and directors of these microbes, these invisible lives, and ‘indirectly’ build, i.e. build by controlling and directing the microbes, the immediate builders, supplying the latter with what is necessary, acting as the life of these lives: the “ fiery lives,” the synthesis, the essence, of Prana, are the “vital constructive energy’ that enables the microbes to build the physical cells. One of the archaic com- mentaries sums up the matter in stately and luminous
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phrases: “The worlds, to the profane, are built up of the known elements. - To the conception of an Arhat, these elements are themselves collectively a divine life; distributively, on the plane of manifestations, the numberless and countless crores* of lives. Fire alone is ONE, on the plane of the One Reality; on that of manifested, hence illusive, being, its particles are fiery lives which live and have their being at the ex- pense of every other life that they consume. There- fore they are named the Devourers. . . . Every visible thing in this universe was built by such lives, from con- scious and divine primordial man, down to the uncon- scious agents that construct matter. . . . From the One Life, formless and uncreate, proceeds the universe of lives” (Secvet Doctrine, vol. 1., p. 269). As in the uni- verse, SO in man, and all these countless lives, all this constructive vitality, all this is summed up by the Theosophist as Prana.
* A crore is ten millions.
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Principle IV. THe Desire-Bopy.
In building up our man we have now reached the principle sometimes described as the animal soul, in Theosophical parlance Kama Rapa, or the desire-body. It belongs to in constitution, and functions on, the second or astral plane. It includes the whole body of appetites, passions, emotions, and desires which come under the head of instincts, sensations, feelings and emotions, in our Western psychological classification, and are dealt with as a subdivision of mind. In Western psychology mind is divided——by the modern school—into three main groups, feelings, will, intellect. Feelings are again divided into sensations and emotions, and these are divided and subdivided under numerous heads. Kama, or desire, includes the whole group of “feelings,” and . _ might be described as’ our passional and emotional
nature. All animal needs, such as hunger, thirst, sexual desire, come under it; all passions, such as love (in its lower sense), hatred, envy, jealousy. It is the desire for sentient existence, for experience of material joys—* the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life.” This principle is the most material in our nature, it is the one that binds us fast to earthly life. “It is not molecularly constituted matter, least of all the human body, Sthila Sharira, that is the grossest of all our ‘principles, but verily the middle principle, the real animal centre; whereas our body is but its shell, the
m= .
i,
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irresponsible factor and medium through which the beast in us acts all its life’ (Secret Doctrine, vol. 1., pp. 280, 281).
United to the lower part of Manas, the mind, as Kama-Manas, it becomes the normal human _ brain- intelligence, and that aspect of it will be dealt with presently. Considered by itself, it remains the brute in us, the ‘“‘ape and tiger” of Tennyson, the force which most avails to keep us bound to earth and to stifle in us all higher longings by the illusions of sense.
Kama joined to Prana is, as we have seen, the “ breath of life,’ the vital sentient principle spread over every particle of the body. It is, therefore, the seat of sen- sation, that which enables the organs of sensation to function. We have already noted that the physical organs of sense, the bodily instruments that come into immediate contact with the external world, are related to the organs of sensation in the etheric double. (ante, p. 14). But these organs would be incapable of function- ing did not Prana make them vibrant with activity, and their vibrations would remain vibrations only, motion on the material plane of the physical body, did not Kama, the principle of sensation, translate the vibration into feeling. Feeling, indeed, is consciousness on the kamic plane, and when a man is under the dominion of a sensa- tion or a passion, the Theosophist speaks of him as on the kamic plane, meaning thereby that his consciousness is functioning on that plane. For instance, a tree may reflect rays of light, that is, ethereal vibrations, and these vibrations striking on the outer eye will set up vibrations in the physical nerve-cells; these will be propagated as vibrations to the physical and on to the astral centres, but there is no sight of the tree until the seat of sensa- tion is reached, and Kama enables us to perceive.
Eg
Matter of the astral plane—including that called ele- mental essence—is the material of which the desire-body is composed, and it is the peculiar properties of this
-matter which enable it to serve as the sheath in which the Self can gain experience of sensation. (The consti- tution of the elemental essence would lead us too far from an elementary treatise.) The desire-body, or astral body, as it is often called, has the form of a mere cloudy mass during the earlier stages of evolution, and is incapable of serving as an independent vehicle of con- sciousness. During deep sleep it escapes from the physical body, but remains near it, and the mind within it is almost as much asleep as the body. It is, however, liable to be affected by forces of the astral plane akin to its own constitution, and gives rise to dreams of a sen- suous kind. In a man of average intellectual develop- ment the desire-body has become more highly organized, and when separated from the physical body is seen to resemble it in outline and features; even then, however, it is not conscious of its surroundings on the astral plane, but encloses the mind asa shell, within which the mind may actively function, while not yet able to use it as an independent vehicle of consciousness. Only in the highly evolved man does the desire-body become thoroughly organized and vitalized, as much the vehicle of conscious- ness on the astral plane as the physical body is on the physical plane.
After death, the higher part of man dwells for awhile in the desire-body, the length of its stay depending on the comparative grossness or delicacy of its constituents. When the man escapes from it, it persists for a time as a “shell,” and when the departed entity is of a low type, and during earth-life infused such mentality as it pos- sessed into the passional nature, some of this remains
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entangled with the shell. It then possesses conscious- ness of a very low order, has brute cunning, is without conscience—an altogether objectional entity, often spoken of as a “spook.” It strays about, attracted to all places in which animal desires are encouraged and satisfied, and is drawn into the currents of those whose animal passions are strong and unbridled. Mediums of low type inevit- ably attract these eminently undesirable visitors, whose fading vitality is reinforced in their séance-rooms, who catch astral reflections, and play the part of ‘disembodied spirits”” of a low order. Nor is this all: if at such a séance there be present some man or woman of corre- spondingly low development, the spook will be attracted to that person, and may attach itself.to him or to her, and thus may be set up currents between the desire- body of the living person and the dying desire-body of the dead person, generating results of the most deplor- able kind.
The longer or shorter persistence of the desire-body as a Shell or a spook depends on the greater or less de- velopment of the animal and passional nature in the dying personality. If during earth-life the animal nature was indulged and allowed to run riot, if the intellectual and spiritual parts of man were neglected or stifled, then, as the life-currents were set strongly in the direction of passion, the desire-body will persist for a long period after the body of the person is dead. Or again, if earth-life has been suddenly cut short by accident or by suicide, the link between Kama and Prana will not be easily broken, and the desire-body will be strongly vivified. If, on the other hand, desire has been conquered and _ bridled during - earth-life, if it has been purified and trained into sub- servience to man’s higher nature, then there is but little
ere remains one other ote terrible in its possi- which may befall the fourth principle, but it — a
be ee understood until the fifth principle — Ee
THE QUATERNARY, OR Four Lower PRINCIPLES.
LINGA SHARIRA
STHULA SHARIRA
Diagram of the Quaternary ; transitory and mortal ; sce Secret Doctrine, vol. 1., p. 262.*
We have thus studied man, as to his lower nature, and have reached the point in his path of evolution to which
* The etheric double is here named the Linga Sharira, a name now discarded in consequence of the confusion caused by employ- ing a well-known term of Hindu philosophy in an entirely new sense. Before her departure H. P. B. urged her pupils to reform the terminology, which had been too carelessly put together, and we are trying to carry out her wish.
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he is accompanied by the brute. The quaternary, re- garded alone, ere it is affected by contact with the mind, is merely a lower animal; it awaits the coming of the mind to make it man. Theosophy teaches that through past ages man was thus slowly builded up, stage by stage, principle by principle, until he stood as a qua- ternary, brooded over but not in contact with the Spirit, waiting for that mind which could alone enable him to progress farther, and to come into conscious union with the Spirit, so fulfilling the very object of his being. The ezonian evolution, in its slow progression, is hurried through in the personal evolution of each human being, each principle which was in the course of ages succes- sively evolved in man on earth, appearing as part of the constitution of each man at the point of evolution reached at any given time, the remaining principles being latent, awaiting their gradual manifestation. The evolution of the quaternary until it reached the point at which further progress was impossible without mind, is told in eloquent sentences in the archaic stanzas on which the Secret Doctrine of H. P. Blavatsky is based (breath is the Spirit, for which the human tabernacle is to be builded; the gross body is the dense physical body; the spirit of life is Prana; the mirror of its body is the etheric double; the vehicle of desives is Kama) :-—
“The Breath needed a form: the Fathers gave it. The Breath needed a gross body; the Earth moulded it. The Breath needed the Spirit of Life; the Solar Lhas breathed it into its form. The Breath needed a Mirror of its Body ; ‘We gave it our own,’ said the Dhyanis. The Breath needed a Vehicle of Desires; ‘It has it,’ said the Drainer of Waters. But Breath needs a Mind to embrace the Universe; ‘We cannot give that,’ said the Fathers. ‘I never had it,’ said the Spirit of the