Our chapter head, “the constitution of man,” may surprise a reader who has
not previously studied the Mystery teachings, or he may imagine that we
intend to give an anatomical dissertation, but such is not our intention.
We have spoken of the earth upon which we live as being composed of
several invisible realms in addition to the world we perceive by means of
our senses. We have also spoken of man as being correlated to these
various divisions in nature, and a little thought upon the subject will
quickly convince us that in order to function upon the various planes of
existence described, it is necessary that a man should have a body
composed of their substance, or at least have specialized for his own use,
some of the material of each of these worlds.
We have said that finer matter, called desire stuff and mind stuff,
permeates our atmosphere and the solid earth, even as blood percolates
through all parts of our flesh. But that is not a sufficient explanation
to account for all facts of life. If that were all, then minerals, which
are interpenetrated by the world of thought and the world of desire, would
have thoughts and desires as well as man. This is not the case, so
something more than mere interpenetration must be requisite to acquire the
faculties of thought and feeling.
We know that in order to function in this world, to live as a physical
being among other like beings, we must have a physical body all our own,
built of the chemical constituents of this visible world. When we lose it
at death, it profits us nothing that the world is full of just the very
chemicals needed to build such a body. We cannot then specialize them, and
therefore we are invisible to all others. Similarly, if we did not possess
a special body made of ether, we should be unable to grow and to
propagate. That is the case with the mineral. Had we no separate
individual desire body, we should be unable to feel desires and emotions,
there would be no incentive to move from one place to another. We should
then be stationary as plants, and did we not possess a mind, we should be
incapable of thought, and act upon impulse and instinct as animals.
Some one may of course object to this last statement, and contend that
animals do think. So far as our domesticated animals are concerned that is
partially true, but it is not quite in the same way that we think and
reason. The difference may perhaps best be understood if we take an
illustration from the electrical field. When an electric current _of high
voltage_ is passed through a coiled copper wire, and another wire is
placed in the center of the coils, that wire will become charged with
electricity _of a lower voltage_. So also the animal, when brought within
the sphere of human thoughts, evolves a mental activity of a lower order.
Paul, in his writings, also mentions _the natural body_ and the _spiritual
body_ while the man himself is a spirit inhabiting those vehicles. We will
briefly note the constitution of the various bodies of man invisible to
the physical sight but as objective to spiritual sight as the dense body
to ordinary vision.
_The Vital Body._
That body of ours which is composed of ether is called the “_vital body_”
in Western Mystery Schools, for, as we have already seen, ether is the
avenue of ingress for vital force from the sun and the field of agencies
in nature which promote such vital activities as assimilation, growth and
propagation.
This vehicle is an exact counterpart of our visible body, molecule for
molecule, and organ for organ, with one exception, which we shall note
later. But it is slightly larger, extending about one and one-half inches
beyond the periphery of our dense vehicle.
The spleen is the entrance gate of forces which vitalize the body. In the
etheric counterpart of that organ solar energy is transmuted to vital
fluid of a pale rose color. From thence it spreads all over the nervous
system, and after having been used in the body it radiates in streams,
much as bristles protrude from a porcupine.
The rays of the sun are transmitted either directly, or reflected by way
of the planets and the moon. The rays directly from the sun give spiritual
illumination, the rays received by way of the planets produce
intelligence, morality, and soul growth, but the rays reflected by way of
the moon make for physical growth, as seen in the case of plants which
grow differently when planted in the light of the moon from what is the
case when they are planted when the moon is dark. There is also a
difference in plants sown when the moon is in barren and fruitful signs of
the Zodiac.
The solar ray is absorbed by the human spirit which has its seat in the
center of the forehead, the stellar ray is absorbed by the brain and
spinal cord, and the lunar ray enters our system through the spleen.
The solar, stellar and lunar rays are three-colored, and in the lunar ray
which supplies our vital force, the blue beam is the life of The Father,
which causes germination, the yellow beam is the life of The Son, which is
the active principle in nutrition and growth, and the red beam is the life
of the Holy Spirit, which stimulates to action, dissipating the energy
stored by the yellow force. This principle is particularly active in
generation.
The various kingdoms absorb this life-force differently, according to
their constitution. Animals have only 28 pairs of spinal nerves. They are
keyed to the lunar month of 28 days and therefore dependent upon a
Groupspirit for an infusion of stellar rays necessary to produce
consciousness. They are altogether incapable of absorbing the direct ray
of the sun.
Man is in a transition stage, he has 31 pairs of spinal nerves which keys
him to the solar month, but the nerves in the so-called
cauda-equina—literally horse-tail—, at the end of our spinal cord, are
still too undeveloped to act as avenues for the spiritual ray of the sun.
In proportion as we draw our creative force upward by spiritual thought we
develop these nerves and awaken dormant faculties of the spirit. But it is
dangerous to attempt that development except under guidance of a qualified
teacher, and the reader is earnestly warned not to use any method
published in books, or sold, for their practice usually leads to dementia.
The safe method is never sold for money or any earthly consideration
however large or small; it is always freely given as a reward of merit.
“Ask and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be
opened”, said the Christ. If our life is a prayer for illumination, the
search will not be uncertain, nor the knock without response.
When solar energy has been transmuted in the spleen it traverses the whole
nervous system of the body glowing with a most beautiful color of a
delicate rosy hue. It answers the same purpose as electricity in a
telegraph system. We may string wires between cities, erect telegraph
stations, install receivers and transmitters. We may even have operators
ready at the keys, but until electric fluid is turned into our wires, the
telegraph keys will refuse to click. So also in the body, the human spirit
is operator, and from the central station of the brain, nerves ramify, go
through the whole body to all the different muscles. When this vitalizing
fluid of which we are speaking traverses the nervous system, the Ego may
send his commands to the muscles and cause them to move but if the vital
fluid for any reason does not flow into a certain part of the body such as
an arm or a limb, then the spirit is powerless to move that part of the
body and we say that it is paralyzed.
When we are in health, we specialize solar energy in such great quantities
that we cannot use it all in the body and therefore it radiates through
the pores of our skin in straight streams and serves a similar purpose as
an exhaust fan. That machine drives the foul air out of a room or building
and keeps the atmosphere within pure and sweet. The excessive vital force
which radiates from the body drives out poisonous gases, deleterious
microbes and effete matter thus tending to preserve a healthy condition.
It also prevents armies of disease germs, which swarm about in the
atmosphere, from entering; upon the same principle that a fly cannot wing
its way into a building through the exhaust fan. Thus it serves a most
beneficent purpose even after it has been utilized in our body and is
returning to the free state.
It is a curious and most astounding sight when one first observes how,
from exposed parts of the body such as hands and face, there suddenly
commences to flow a stream of stars, cubes, pyramids and a variety of
other geometrical forms. The writer has more than once rubbed his eyes
when he first perceived the phenomenon, for it seemed that he must be
suffering from hallucinations. The forms observed are chemical atoms
however, which have served their purpose in the body and are expelled
through the pores.
When one has eaten a meal, vital fluid is consumed by the body in great
quantities, for it is the cement whereby nature’s forces build our food
into the body. Therefore the radiations are weakest during the period of
digestion. If the meal has been heavy, the outflow is very perceptibly
diminished, and does not then cleanse our body as thoroughly as when the
food has been digested, nor is it as potent in keeping out inimical germs.
Therefore one is most liable to catch cold or other disease by overeating,
a fault which should be avoided by all who wish to keep in good health.
During ill health the vital body specializes but little solar energy.
Then, for a time, the visible body seems to feed upon the vital body as it
were, so that the vehicle becomes more transparent and attenuated at the
same rate as the visible body exhibits a state of emaciation. The
cleansing odic radiations are almost entirely absent during sickness,
therefore complications set in so easily.
Though science has not directly observed this vital body of man, it has
upon several occasions postulated the existence of such a vehicle as
necessary to account for facts in life and the radiations have been
observed by a number of scientists at different times and under varying
conditions. Blondlot and Charpentier have called them N-rays after the
city of Nantes where the radiations were observed by these scientists,
others have named them “The Odic fluid”. Scientific investigators who have
conducted researches into psychic phenomena have even photographed it when
it has been extracted through the spleen by materializing spirits. Dr.
Hotz for instance obtained two photographs of a materialization through
the German medium, Minna-Demmler. On one a cloud of ether is seen oozing
out through the left side of the medium, shapeless and without form. The
second picture, taken a few moments later, shows the materialized spirit
standing at the medium’s side. Other photographs obtained by scientists
from the Italian medium Eusapio Palladino show a luminous cloud
over-hanging her left side.
We said in the beginning of this description that the vital body is an
exact counterpart of the dense body with one exception: it is of the
opposite sex or perhaps we should rather say polarity. As the vital body
nourishes the dense vehicle, we may readily understand that blood is its
highest visible expression, and also that a positively polarized vital
body would generate more blood than a negative one. Woman who is
physically negative has a positive vital body, hence she generates a
surplus of blood which is relieved by the periodical flow. She is also
more prone to tears, which are white bleeding, than man, whose negative
vital body does not generate more blood than he can comfortably take care
of. Therefore it is not necessary for him to have the outlets which
relieve excess of blood in woman.
_The Desire Body._
In addition to the visible body and the vital body we also have a body
made of desire stuff from which we form our feelings and emotions. This
vehicle also impels us to seek sense gratification. But while the two
instruments of which we have already spoken, are well organized, the
desire body appears to spiritual sight as an ovoid cloud extending from
sixteen to twenty inches beyond the physical body. It is above the head
and below the feet so that our dense body sits in the center of this
egg-shaped cloud as the yolk is in the center of an egg.
The reason for the rudimentary state of this vehicle is, that it has been
added to the human constitution more recently than the bodies previously
mentioned. Evolution of form may be likened to the manner in which the
juices in the snail first condense into flesh and later become a hard
shell. When our present visible body first germinated in the spirit, it
was a thought-form, but gradually it has become denser and more concrete
until it is now a chemical crystallization. The vital body was next
emanated by the spirit as a thought-form and is in the third stage of
concretion which is etheric. The desire body is a still later acquisition.
That also was a thought form at its inception, but has now condensed to
desire stuff, and the mind, which we have only recently received, is still
but a mere cloudy thought form.
Arms and limbs, ears and eyes are not necessary to use the desire body,
for it can glide through space more swiftly than wind without such means
of locomotion as we require in this visible world.
When viewed by spiritual sight, it appears that there are in this desire
body a number of whirling vortices. We have already explained that it is a
characteristic of desire stuff to be in constant motion, and from the main
vortex in the region of the liver there is a constant outwelling flow
which radiates towards the periphery of this egg-shaped body and returns
to the center through a number of other vortices. The desire body exhibits
all the colors and shades which we know and a vast number of others which
are indescribable in earthly language. Those colors vary in every person
according to his characteristics and temperament and they also vary from
moment to moment as passing moods, fancies or emotions are experienced by
him. There is however in each one a certain basic color dependent upon the
ruling star at the moment of his birth. The man in whose horoscope Mars is
peculiarly strong usually has a crimson tint in his aura, where Jupiter is
the strongest planet the prevailing tint seems to be a bluish tone, and so
on with the other planets.
There was a time in the earth’s past history when incrustation was not yet
complete, and human beings of that time lived upon islands here and there,
amid boiling seas. They had not yet evolved eyes or ears, but a little
organ: the pineal gland, which anatomists have called _the third eye_,
protruded through the back of the head and was a _localised organ of
feeling_, which warned the man when he came too near a volcanic crater and
thus enabled him to escape destruction. Since then the cerebral
hemispheres have covered the pineal gland, and instead of a single organ
of feeling, the whole body inside and out is sensitive to impacts, which
of course is a much higher state of development.
In the desire body every particle is sensitive to vibrations similar to
those which we call sight, sounds and feelings and every particle is in
incessant motion rapidly swirling about so that in the same instant it may
be at the top and bottom of the desire body and impart at all points to
all the other particles a sensation of that which it has experienced thus
every particle of desire stuff in this vehicle of ours will instantly feel
any sensation experienced by any single particle. Therefore the desire
body is of an exceedingly sensitive nature, capable of most intense
feelings and emotions.
_The Mind._
This is the latest acquisition of the human spirit, and in most people who
have not yet accustomed themselves to orderly, consecutive thought, it is
a mere inchoate cloud disposed particularly in the region of the head.
When looking at a person clairvoyantly there appears to be an empty space
in the center of the forehead just above and between the eyebrows. It
looks like the blue part of a gas flame. That is mind stuff which veils
the human spirit, or Ego, and the writer has been told that not even the
most gifted seer can penetrate that veil which is said to have been spoken
of in ancient Egypt as “_the veil of Isis_” which none may lift and live,
for behind that veil is the Holy of Holies, the temple of our body, where
the spirit is to be left secure from all intrusion.
To those who have not previously studied the deeper philosophies the
question may occur: But why all these divisions; even the Bible speaks
only of soul and body, for most people believe soul and spirit to be
synonymous terms. We can only answer that this division is not arbitrary
but necessary, and founded upon facts in nature. Neither is it correct to
regard the soul and the spirit as synonymous. Paul himself speaks of _the
natural body_ which is composed of physical substances: solids, liquids,
gases and ethers; he mentions _a spiritual body_, which is the vehicle of
the spirit composed of the mind and desire body, and _the spirit itself_,
which is called Ego in Latin or “I” in English.
That term “I” is an appelation which can only be made by the human spirit
of itself. We may all call a dog, dog; or we may call a table, table, and
any one else may apply the same name to the dog and to the table, but only
a human being can be called “I” and only he himself can apply that most
exclusive of all words, I, for this is the badge of self-consciousness,
the recognition by the human spirit of _itself_ as an entity, separate and
apart from all others.
Thus we see that the constitution of man is more complex than appears upon
the surface, and we will now proceed to note the effect upon this
multiplex being of various conditions of life.