Theos-Talk Archives (October 2002 Message tt00194)

Oct 25 2002

As I read and study in Theosophy, it teaches that each spirit/soul is
an immortal and reincarnates.

There is no teaching, or ethical possibility, or logic behind the
concepts of: "Master Race" or "Slave Race.".

Every individual generates their own Karma and is thereafter subject
to it.

>From life to life, incarnation is not regulated by the political or
geographical boundaries we know of today.

Let me offer the following for consideration:

The mystery about reincarnation -- as to whether it is a fact or not,
revolves around our understanding of the nature and the powers of the
Mind (Manas).

Ordinarily the Mind is thought to be immaterial, or to be merely the
name for brain-action, in evolving thought. Thinking is still a
process wholly unknown other than by inference. Yet it is also held
that if there is no brain, there can be no mind. A good deal of
attention has been paid to cataloging some mental functions and
attributes, but the terms in our language are absent to describe
metaphysical and spiritual facts about man.

THE HIGHER MAN

Theosophy states the fifth principle is Manas, translated Mind. Other
names may have been given to it, but it is the Knower, The Perceiver,
The Thinker. The sixth principle is Buddhi, or spiritual discernment;
the seventh is Atma, or Spirit -- the ray from the Absolute Being.
English as a language, may suffice to describe in part what Manas is,
but not Buddhi, or Atma, and will leave many things relating to Manas
undescribed.


THE LOWER MAN

The course of evolution developed the four lower principles (Desire,
Life-energy, Astral and Physical bodies) and produced at last, the
form of man with a brain of better and deeper capacity than that of
any other animal.

This man in form was not man in mind, and needed the fifth principle,
the thinking, perceiving one, to differentiate him from the animal
kingdom and to confer the power of becoming Self-Conscious. The Monad
(Atma-Buddhi) was imprisoned in these forms, for without the presence
of the Monad evolution could not go forward.


THE LIGHTING-UP OF THE MIND

Going back for a moment to the time when mankind was devoid of mind,
the question arises, "who gave the mind, where did it come from, and
what is it?" It is the link between the Spirit of God above and the
personal below. It was given to the mindless Monads by others who had
gone through this process ages upon ages before in other worlds, and
it therefore came from older evolutionary periods which had been
carried out and completed long before the solar system began. This is
the strange theory which must be stated if we are to tell the truth
about Theosophy; and this is only handing on what others have said
before.

The manner in which this Light Of Mind was given to the Mindless Men
can be understood from the illustration of one candle lighting many.
Given one lighted candle and numerous unlighted ones, it follows that
from one light the others may also be set aflame. So in the case of
Manas. It is the candle of flame. The mindless men having four
elementary principles of Body, Astral Body, Life and Desire, are the
unlighted candles that cannot light themselves.


MIND IS A GIFT FROM OUR ELDER BROTHERS -- THE WISE

The "Sons of Wisdom," who are the Elder Brothers of the family of men
on any globe, have the Mind-light. It was derived by them from
others -- their "Elders," who reach back, and yet farther back, in
endless procession with no beginning or end. They set fire to the
combined lower principles and the Monad, thus lighting up Manas in the
new men. And from there began the preparing of another great race for
final initiation.

This lighting up of the fire of Manas is symbolized in all great
religions and Freemasonry. In the East a priest appears holding a
candle lighted at the altar, and thousands of others come to him in a
procession, to light their candles from this one.

Manas, or the Thinker, is the reincarnating being. It is the immortal
who carries the results and values of all the different lives lived on
earth or elsewhere.


MIND BECOMES DUAL IN THE PHYSICAL MAN

Its nature becomes dual as soon as it is attached to a body. For the
human Brain is a superior organism, and Manas uses it to reason from
premises to conclusions. This also differentiates man from animal, for
the animal acts from automatic, the so-called instinctual impulses.
Whereas the man, can use Reason. This is the lower aspect of the
Thinker or Manas, and not, as some have supposed, the highest and best
gift belonging to man.

Its other, and in Theosophy higher, aspect, is the intuitional, which
knows, and does not depend on reason. It is Manas allied to Buddhi --
spiritual discrimination and Wisdom. The lower, and purely
intellectual, is nearest to the principle of Desire, and is thus
distinguished from its other side which has affinity for the spiritual
principles (Buddhi and Atma,) above. If the Thinker, becomes wholly
intellectual, the entire nature begins to trend downward; for
intellect alone is cold, heartless, selfish, because it is not lighted
up by the two other principles of universality and immortality:
Buddhi and Atma.

It is Manas which sees the objects presented to it by the bodily
organs and the actual organs (which are seated in the Astral body)
within. When the open eye receives a picture on the retina, the whole
scene is turned into vibrations in the optic nerves which disappear
into the brain, and there Manas is enabled to perceive them as idea.
And so with every other organ or sense. If the connection between
Manas and the brain be broken, intelligence will not be manifested
unless Manas has by training found out how to project the astral body
out and away from the physical, and thereby keep up communication with
fellow men.


OUR ORGANS OF PERCEPTION ARE TOOLS FOR THE MIND

That the organs and senses do not cognize objects, hypnotism,
mesmerism, and spiritualism have now proved. For, as we see in
mesmeric and hypnotic experiments, the object seen or felt, and from
which, all the effects of solid objects may be sensed, is often only
an idea existing in the operator's brain. In hypnotism there are many
experiments, all of which go to show that so called matter is not per
se solid or dense; that sight does not always depend on the eye and
rays of light proceeding from an object; that the intangible for one
normal brain and organs, may be perfectly tangible for another; and
that physical effects in the body may be produced solely from an idea.

The well-known experiments of producing a blister by a simple piece of
paper, or preventing a real blistering plaster from making a blister,
by force of the idea conveyed to a subject, either that there was to
be or not to be a blister, conclusively prove the power of effecting
an impulse on matter by the use of that which is called Mind (Manas).
But all these phenomena are the exhibition of the powers of Lower
Manas acting in the astral Body and the fourth principle -- Desire,
using the physical body as the field for the exhibition of the forces.

LOWER MANAS AND ITS POWERS

It is this Lower Manas which retains all the impressions of a
life-time and sometimes strangely exhibits them in trances or dreams,
delirium, induced states, here and there in normal conditions, and
very often at the time of physical death. But it is so occupied with
the brain, with memory and with sensation, that it usually presents
but few recollections out of the mass of events that years have
brought before it.

It interferes with the action of Higher Manas because just at the
present point of evolution, Desire and all corresponding powers,
faculties, and senses are the most highly developed, thus obscuring,
as it were, the white light of the spiritual side of Manas. It (Lower
Manas) is tinted by each object presented to it, whether it be a
thought-object or a material one. That is to say, Lower Manas
operating through the brain is at once altered into the shape and
other characteristics of any object, mental or otherwise. This causes
it to have four peculiarities.

* First, to naturally fly off and away from a selected point, object,
or subject;
*
* Second, to fly to some pleasant idea;
*
* Third, to fly to an unpleasant idea;
*
* Fourth, to remain passive and considering nothing.
*
The first is due to memory and the natural motion of Manas; the second
and third are due to memory alone; the fourth signifies sleep when not
abnormal. And when abnormal is trending toward insanity.


HIGHER MANAS AND ITS WORK

These mental characteristics all belonging to Lower Manas. It is
these which the Higher Manas, aided by Buddhi and Atma, has to fight
and conquer. Higher Manas, if able to act, becomes what we sometimes
call Genius. If completely master, then one may become a god. But
memory continually presents pictures to Lower Manas, and the result is
that the Higher is obscured. Sometimes, however, along the pathway of
life we do see here and there men who are geniuses or great seers and
prophets. In these the Higher powers of Manas are active, and the
person is illuminated. Such were the great Sages of the past, men like
Buddha, Jesus, Confucius, Zoroaster, and others. Poets, too, such as
Tennyson, Longfellow, and others, are men in whom Higher Manas now and
then sheds a bright ray on the man below, to be soon obscured,
however, by the effect of dogmatic religious education which has given
memory certain pictures that always prevent Manas from gaining full
activity.

In this higher Trinity, we have the God above each one; this is Atma,
(the 7th principle) and may be called the Higher Self. Next, (the
sixth) is the spiritual part of the soul called Buddhi; when
thoroughly united with Manas (the fifth) this may be called the Divine
Ego, or the Spiritual Soul.


THE REINCARNATING SELF IS AN IMMORTAL

The inner Ego (Manas), who reincarnates, taking on body after body,
storing up the impressions of life after life, gaining experience and
adding it to the Divine Ego, suffering and enjoying through an immense
period of years, is the fifth principle -- Manas -- not united to
Buddhi.

This is the permanent individuality which gives to every man the
feeling of being himself and not some other; that which through all
the changes of the days and nights from youth to the end of life makes
us feel one identity through all the period; it bridges the gap made
by sleep; in like manner it bridges the gap made by the sleep of
death. It is this, and not our brain, that lifts us above the animal.

The depth and variety of the brain convolutions in man are caused by
the presence of Manas, and are not the cause of mind. And when we
either wholly, or now and then, become consciously united with Buddhi,
the Spiritual Soul, we "behold God," as it were. This is what the
ancients all desired to see, but what the moderns do not believe in,
the latter preferring rather to throw away their own right to be great
in nature, and to worship an imaginary god, made up solely of their
own fancies, and not very different from weak human nature.


DUTY AND WORK OF THE REINCARNATING MIND-MANAS

This permanent individuality in our present race has therefore been
through every sort of experience, for Theosophy insists on its
permanence and in the necessity for its continuing to take part in
evolution. It has a duty to perform, consisting in raising up to a
higher state all the matter concerned in the chain of globes to which
the earth belongs.

We have all lived and taken part in civilization after civilization,
race after race, on earth, and will so continue throughout all the
Rounds and Races until the seventh is complete. At the same time it
should be remembered that the matter of this globe, connected with it,
has also been through every kind of form, with possibly some
exceptions in very low planes of mineral formation.

But in general all the matter visible, or held in space still
unprecipitated, has been molded at one time or another into forms of
all varieties, many of these being such as we now have no idea of. The
processes of evolution, therefore, in some departments, now go forward
with greater rapidity than in former ages because both Manas and
matter have acquired facility of action.

Especially is this so in regard to man, who is the farthest ahead of
all things or beings in this evolution. He is now incarnated and
projected into life more quickly than in earlier periods when it
consumed many years to obtain a "coat of skin." This coming into life
over and over again cannot be avoided by the ordinary man because
Lower Manas is still bound by Desire, which is the preponderating
principle at the present period. Being so very influenced by Desire,
Manas is continually deluded while in the body, and being thus deluded
is unable to prevent the action upon it of the forces set up in the
life time.

These forces are generated by Manas, that is, by the thinking of a
whole life time. Each thought makes a physical as well as mental link
with the Desire in which it is rooted. All life is filled with such
thoughts, and when the period of rest after death is ended, Manas is
bound by innumerable electrical magnetic threads to earth by reason of
the thoughts of the last life, and therefore by desire, for it was
desire that caused so many thoughts and ignorance of the true nature
of things. This is called by the Hindu philosophies "maya."
(illusion).

An understanding of this doctrine of man being really a thinker and
made of thought, will make clear all the rest in relation to
incarnation and reincarnation.

The body of the inner man is made of thought, and this being so it
must follow that if the thoughts have more affinity for earth-life
than for life elsewhere a return to life here is inevitable.

At the present day Manas is not fully active in the race, as Desire
still is uppermost. In the next cycle of the human period Manas will
be fully active and developed in the entire race. Hence the people of
the earth have not yet come to the point of making a conscious choice
as to the path they will take; but when in the cycle referred to,
Manas is active, all will then be compelled to consciously make the
choice to right or left, the one leading to complete and conscious
union with Atma, the other to the annihilation of those beings who
prefer that path of an isolated selfishness.


The COMPLEXITY OF NATURE IS FOCUSED IN MAN

How man has come to be the complex being that he is and why, are
questions that neither Science nor Religion makes conclusive answer
to.

This immortal thinker having such vast powers and possibilities, all
his because of his intimate connection with every secret part of
Nature from which he has been built up, stands at the top of an
immense and silent evolution.

He asks why Nature exists, what the drama of life has for its aim, how
that aim may be attained. But Science and Religion both fail to give a
reasonable reply. Science does not pretend to be able to give the
solution, saying that the examination of things as they are (as Nature
has arranged them), is enough of a task. Religion offers an
explanation both illogical and unmeaning and acceptable but to the
bigot, as it requires us to consider the whole of Nature as a mystery
and to seek for the meaning and purpose of life, with all its sorrow,
in the whimsical and fanciful pleasure of a God who cannot be found
out. The educated and enquiring mind knows that dogmatic religion can
only give an answer invented by man while it pretends to be from God.

This gives an idea of the scope of Man's potential and work.

I hope this will prove to be of use.

Best wishes,

Dallas

========================

-----Original Message-----
From: Bart L
Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2002 6:26 PM
To
Subject: Theos-World Australia's karma