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Theosophy and Psychology

Feb 10, 2012 07:37 AM
by Mark Jaqua


HPB on the Subconscious (and comments):

    "The fact is that the human brain is simply the canal between two planes - the psycho-spiritual and the material - through which every abstract and metaphysical idea filters from the Manasic down to the lower human consciousness..... Thus while the records of even important events are often obliterated from our memory, not the most trifling action of our lives can disappear from the 'Soul's' memory, because it is no MEMORY for it, but an ever present reality on the plane which lies outside our conceptions of space and time. 'Man is the measure of all things,' said Aristotle; and surely he did not mean by man, the form of flesh, bones and muscles!

    "Of all the deep thinkers Edgard Quinet, the author of _La Création,_ expressed this idea the best. Speaking of man, full of feelings and thoughts of which he has either no consciousness at all, or which he feels only as dim and hazy impressions, he shows that man realizes quite a small portion only of his moral being. 'The thoughts we think, but are unable to define and formulate, once repelled, seek refuge in the very root of our being.' . . . When chased by the persistent efforts of our will 'they retreat before it, still further, still deeper into - who knows what - fibres, but wherein they remain to reign and impress us unbidden and unknown to ourselves . . .'

    "Yes; they become as imperceptible and as unreachable as the vibrations of sound and colour when these surpass the normal range. Unseen and eluding grasp, they yet work, and thus lay the foundations of our future actions and thoughts, and obtain mastery over us, though we may never think of them and are often ignorant of their very being and presence. Nowhere does Quinet, the great student of Nature, seem more right in his observations than when speaking of the mysteries with which we are all surrounded: 'The mysteries of neither earth nor heaven but those present in the marrow of our bones, in our brain cells, our nerves and fibres. No need,' he adds, 'in order to search for the unknown, to lose ourselves in the realm of the stars, when here, near us and _in us,_ rests the unreachable . . . As our world is mostly formed of imperceptible beings which are the real constructors of its continents, so likewise is man.'"  - BCW XI, pp. 451-52

               I would say psychological events also stay for a lifetime in this unconscious register of events, and the more important they are, and undealt with, the more they constantly effect our conscious life.  In "Theosophical Glossary," _Antahkarana_ is discribed as the connection between the higher and lower selves, and by Sankaracharya as "understanding" and other schools as "the internal instrument, the Soul, formed by the thinking principle and egoism..."  I would think the Antahkarana could be described as the psychological nature itself, or directly dependent on the state of the psychological nature.  If one's personal psychological nature is in chaos - it affects or destroys the Antahkarana, or connection with one's deeper nature.  'So mundane psychology, self-knowledge and psychological effort is part of the Theosophist's path, I think.

                                                   - jake j.

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