Section 6

e.
of our second category.” (Lucifer, November, 18go, po) 2 +:
The reader will now be in a position to grasp the difference between the workings of the higher Ego and of its rays. Genius, which sees instead of arguing, is of the higher Ego; true intuition is one of its faculties. Reason, the weighing and balancing quality which arranges the facts gathered by observation, balances them one against the other, argues from them, draws conclusions from them—this is the exercise of the lower Manas through the brain apparatus; its instrument is ratiocination ; by induction it ascends from the known to the unknown, building up a hypothesis: by deduction it descends again to the known, verifying its hypothesis by fresh experiment.
Intuition, as we see by its derivation, is simply insight —-a process as direct and swift as bodily vision. It is the exercise of the eyes of the intelligence, the unerring recognition of a truth presented on the mental plane. It sees with certainty, its vision is unclouded, its report unfaltering. No proof can be had to the certitude of its recognition, for it is beyond and above the reason. Often our instincts, blinded and confused by passions and desires, are miscalled intuitions, and a mere kAamic im- pulse is accepted as the sublime voice of the higher Manas. Careful and prolonged self-training is necessary ere that voice can be recognised with certainty, but of one thing we may feel very sure: so long as we are in the vortex of the personality, so long as the storms of desires and appetites howl around us, so long as the waves of emotion toss us to and fro, so long the voice of, the higher Manas cannot reach our ears. Not in the fire or the whirlwind, not in the thunderclap or the storm, comes the mandate of the higher Ego: -only
2)3)
when there has fallen the stillness of a silence that can be felt, only when the very air is motionless and the calm is profound, only when the man wraps his face in a mantle which closes his ears even to the silence that is of earth, then only sounds the voice that. is stiller than the silence, the voice of his true Self.
On this H. P. Blavatsky has written in Isis Unveiled : « Allied to the physical half of man’s nature is reason, which enables him to maintain his supremacy over the lower animals, and to subjugate nature to his uses. Allied to his spiritual part is his conscience, which will serve as his unerring guide through the besetment of the senses: for conscience is that instantaneous perception between right and wrong which can only be exercised by the spirit, which, being a portion of the divine wisdom and purity, is absolutely pure and wise. Its promptings are independent of reason, and it. can only manifest itself clearly when unhampered by the baser attractions of our dual nature. Reason being a faculty of our physical brain, one which is justly defined as that of deducing inferences from premisses, and being wholly dependent on the evidence of other senses, cannot be a quality pertaining directly to our divine spirit. The latter knows —hence all reasoning, which implies discussion and argument, would be useless. So an entity which, if it must be considered as a direct emanation from the eter- nal Spirit of Wisdom, has to be viewed as possessed of the same attributes as the essence or the whole of which it is part. Therefore it is with a certain degree of logic that the ancient Theurgists maintained that the rational part of man’s soul (spirit) never entered wholly into the man’s body, but only overshadowed him more or less through the irrational or astral soul, which serves as an intermediatory agent, or a medium between spirit and
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body. The man who has conquered matter sufficiently to receive the direct light from his shining Augoeides, feels truth intuitionally ; he could not err in his judg- ment, notwithstanding all the sophisms suggested by cold reason, for he is «Jluwminated. Hence, prophecy, vaticination, and the so-called divine inspiration, are simply the effects of this illumination from above by our own immortal spirit” (vol. 1., pp. 305, 306).
This Augoeides, according to the belief of the Neo- Platonists, as according to the Theosophical teachings, “sheds more or less its radiance on the inner man, the astral soul” (zbid., p. 315), 7.¢., in the now accepted ter- minology, on the kama-manasic personality or lower Ego. (In reading Isis Unvetled, the student has to bear in mind the fact that when the book was written, the terminology was by no means even as fixed as it is now; in Isis Unveiled is the first modern attempt to translate into Western language the complicated Eastern ideas, and further experience has shown that many of the terms used to cover two or three conceptions may with advantage be restricted to one and thus rendered precise. Thus the “astral soul”? must be understood in the sense given above.) Only as this lower Ego be- comes pure from all breath of passion, as the lower Manas frees itself from Kama, can the “shining one” impress it; H. P. Blavatsky tells us how Initiates meet this higher Ego face to face. Having spoken of the trinity in man, Atma-Buddhi-Manas, she goes on: “ It is. when this trinity, in anticipation of the final triumphant reunion beyond the gates of corporeal death, became for a few seconds a unity, that the candidate is allowed, at the | moment of the initiation, to behold his future self. Thus we read in the Persian Desatiy of the ‘resplendent one’; in the Greek philosopher-initiates of the Augoeides
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—the self-shining ‘blessed vision resident in the pure light’; in Porphyry, that Plotinus was united to his ‘god’ six times during his life-time, and so on.” (Jsvs Unveiled, vol. ii., pp. 114, 115)
This trinity made into unity, again, is the “ Christ” ot all mystics. When, in the final initiation, the candidate has been outstretched on the floor or altarstone and has thus typified the crucifixion of the flesh, or lower nature, and when from this “death” he has “risen again” as the triumphant conqueror over sin and death, he then, in the supreme moment, sees before him the glorious presence and becomes “one with Christ,” is himself the Christ. henceforth he may live in the body, but it has become his obedient instrument; he is united with his true Self, Manas made one with Atma-Buddhi, and through the personality which he inhabits he wields his full powers as an immortal spiritual intelligence. While he was still struggling in the toils of the lower nature, Christ, the spiritual Ego, was daily crucified in him; but in the full Adept the Christ has arisen triumphant, lord of himself and of nature. The long pilgrimage of Manas is over, the cycle of necessity is trodden, the wheel of rebirth ceases to turn, the Son of Man has been made perfect by suffering.
So long as this point has not been reached, ‘“ the Christ” is the object of aspiration. The ray is ever struggling to return to its source, the lower Manas ever aspiring to rebecome one with the higher. While this duality persists the continual yearning towards reunion felt by the noblest and purest natures is one of the most salient facts of the inner life, and it is this which clothes itself as prayer, as inspiration, as “ seeking after God,” as the longing for union with the divine. “My soul is athirst for God, for the living God,” cries the eager Christian,
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and to tell him that this intense longing is a fancy and is futile is to make him turn aside from you as one who can- not understand, but whose insensibility does not alter the fact. The Occultist recognises in this cry the inextinguish- able impulse upwards of the lower Self to the higher from which it is separated, but the attraction of which it vividly feels. Whether the person pray to the Buddha, to Vishnu, to Christ, to the Virgin, to the Father, it matters not at all; these are questions of mere dialect, not of essential fact. In all the Manas united to Atma- Buddhi is the real object, veiled under what name the changing time or race may give; at once the ideal humanity and the “personal God,” the “ God-Man” found in all religions, “God incarnate,” the “‘ Word made flesh,” the Christ who must “be born in” each, with whom the believer must be made one.
And this leads us on to the last planes with which we are concerned, the planes of Spirit, using that much abused word merely as the opposite pole to matter; here only very general ideas can be grasped by us, but it is necessary none the less to try to grasp these ideas if we are to complete, however poorly, our conception of man.
Principces VI.anp VII. AtMA-BuDDHI, THE “SPIRIT.”
As the completion of the thought of the last section, we will look at Atma-Buddhi first in its connection with Manas, and will then proceed to a somewhat more general view of it as the “ Monad.” The clearest and best de- scription of the human trinity, Atma-Buddhi- Manas, will be found in the Key to Theosophy, in which H. P. Blavatsky gives the following definitions :—
Atmd, the inseparable ray of the Universal and ONE SELF. It is the God above, more than within us. Happy the man who suc- ceeds in saturating his inner Ego with it.
“THE HIGHER SELF is
the spiritual soul, or Buddhi, in close union
‘THE SPIRITUAL | with Manas, the mind-principle, without
divine Eco is | which it is no Eco at all, but only the | Atmic vehicle.
Manas, the fifth principle, so called, in- dependently of Buddhi. The mind-prin- ‘““THE INNER or ciple is only the Spiritual Ego when HIGHER EGo is merged into one with Buddhi . . . Itis | the permanent individuality or the re-
_ incarnating Ego” (pp. 175, 176).
Atma must then be regarded as the most abstract part of man’s nature, the “breath” which needs a body for its manifestation. It is the one reality, that which manifests on all planes, the essence of which all our
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principles are but aspects. The one Eternal Exist- ence, wherefrom are all things, which embodies one of Its aspects in the universe, that which we speak of as the One Life—this Eternal Existence rays forth as_ Atma, the very Self alike of the universe and of man;
their innermost core, their very heart, that in which all things inhere. In Itself incapable of direct manifestation on lower planes, yet That without which no lower planes could come into existence, It clothes itself in Buddhi, as Its vehicle, or medium of further manifestation. “ Buddhi is the faculty of cognizing, the channel through which divine knowledge reaches the Ego, the discernment of good and evil, also divine conscience, and the spiritual Soul, which is the vehicle of Atma.” (Secret Doctrine, vol. i., p. 2.) It is often spoken of as the principle of spiritual discernment. But Atma-Buddhi, a universal principle, needs individualizing ere experience can be gathered and self-consciousness attained. So the mind-
principle is united to Atma-Buddhi, and the human trinity is complete. Manas becomes the sfivitual Ego only when merged in Buddhi; Buddhi becomes the spiritual Ego only when united to Manas; in the union of the two lies the evolution of the Spirit, self- conscious on all planes. Hence Manas strives upward to Atma- Buddhi, as the lower Manas strives upward to the higher, and hence, in relation to the higher Manas, Atma-Buddhi- or Atma, is often spoken of as “the Father in Heaven,’ as the higher Manas is itself thus described in relation to the lower (see ante, p. 40). The lower Manas gathers experience to carry it back to its source; the higher Manas accumulates the stores through-
out the cycle of reincarnation ; Buddhi becomes assimi- lated with the higher Manas ; and these, permeated with the Atmic light, one with that True Self, the trinity
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becomes a unity, the Spirit is self-conscious on all planes, and the object of the manifested universe is attained.
' But no words of mine can avail to explain or to describe that which is beyond explanation and beyond description. Words can but blunder along on such a theme, dwarfing and distorting it. Only by long and patient meditation can the student hope vaguely to sense something greater than himself, yet something which stirs at the innermost core of his being. As to the steady gaze directed at the pale evening sky, there appears after awhile, faintly and far away, the soft glimmer of a star, so to the patient gaze of the inner vision there may come the tender beam of the spiritual star, if but as a mere suggestion of a far- off world. Only to a patient and persevering purity will that light arise, and blessed beyond all earthly blessed- ness is he who sees but the palest shimmer of that transcendent radiance.
With such ideas as to “ Spirit,” the horror with which Theosophists shrink from ascribing the trivial phenomena of the séance-room to “spirits” will be readily understood. Playing on musical-boxes, talking through trumpets, tap- ping people on the head, carrying accordions round the room —these things may be all very well for astrals, spooks, and elementals, but who can assign them to “spirits,” who has any conception of Spirit worthy of the name? Such vulgarization and degradation of the most sublime conceptions as yet evolved by man are surely subjects for the keenest regret, and it may well be hoped that ere long these phenomena will be put in their true place, as evidence that the materialistic views of the universe are inadequate, instead of being exalted to a place they cannot fill as proofs of Spirit. No physical, no intellectual phenomena are proofs of the existence of Spirit. Only to the spirit can Spirit be demonstrated.
E,
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You cannot prove a proposition in Euclid to a dog; you cannot prove Atm&-Buddhi to Kama and the lower Manas. As we climb, our view will widen, and when we stand on the summit of the Holy Mount the planes of Spirit shall lhe before our opened vision.
Tue Monap IN EVoLurTIoNn.
Perhaps a slightly more definite conception of Atma- Buddhi may be obtained by the student, if, he considers its work in evolution as the Monad. Now Atma-Buddhi is identical with the universal Over-soul, “itself an aspect of the Unknown Root,” the One Existence. When manifestation begins the Monad is “thrown downwards into matter,” to propel forwards and force evolution (see Secret Doctrine, vol. ii., p. 115); it is the mainspring, so to speak, of all evolution, the impelling force at the root of all things. All the principles we have been studying are mere “variously differentiated as- pects” of Atma, the One Reality manifesting in our universe ; it is in every atom, “the root of every atom individually and of every form collectively,” and all the principles are fundamentally Atma on different planes. The stages of its evolution are very clearly laid down in Five Years of Theosophy, pp. 273 et seg. There we are shown how it passes through the stages termed elemental, “nascent centres of forces,’ and reaches the mineral stage; from this it passes up through vegetable, animal, to man, vivifying every form. As we are taught in the Secret Doctrine: “The well-known Kabbalistic aphorism runs: ‘A stone becomes a plant; a plant, a beast; the beast, a man; a man, a spirit; and the spirit, a god.’ The ‘spark’ animates all the kingdoms in turn before it enters into and informs divine man, between whom and
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his predecessor, animal man, there is all the difference in the worlde = . 6 The Monad .. . . is, first of all, shot down by the law of evolution into the lowest form of matter—the mineral. After a sevenfold gyration incased in the stone, or that which will become mineral and stone in the Fourth Round, it creeps out of it, say asa lichen. Passing thence, through all the forms of vege- table matter, into what is termed animal matter, it has now reached the point in which it has become the germ, so to speak, of the animal, that will become the physical man” (vol.i., pp. 266, 267).
It is the Monad, Atma- Padene that thus vivifies every part and kingdom of nature, making all instinct with life and consciousness, one throbbing whole. “ Occult- ism does not accept anything inorganic in the Kosmos. The expression employed by science, ‘inorganic sub- stance, means simply that the latent life, slumbering in the molecules of so-called ‘inert matter,’ is incognizable. All is life and every atom of even mineral dust is a life, though beyond our comprehension and perception, be- cause it is outside the range of the laws known to those who reject Occultism.” (Secret Doctrine, vol. i., pp. 268, 269) And again : “ Everything in the universe, ‘through. out all its kingdoms, is conscious, 7.e., ated wits a consciousness of its own kind and on its own plane of perception. We men must remember that simply because we do not perceive any signs of consciousness which we can recognise, say in stones, we have no right to say that no consciousness exists there. There is no such thing as either ‘dead’ or ‘blind’ matter, as there is no ‘blind’ or ‘unconscious’ law” (p. 295). ;
How many of the great poets, with the sublime in- tuition of genius, have sensed this great truth! To them all nature pulses with life; they see life and loye every-