In our analysis of man’s nature we have so far considered only the
perishable elements which make up the lower man, and have arrived at
the fourth principle or plane—that of desire—without having touched
upon the question of Mind. But even so far as we have gone it must be
evident that there is a wide difference between the ordinary ideas
about Mind and those found in Theosophy. Ordinarily the Mind is
thought to be immaterial, or to be merely the name for the action of
the brain in evolving thought, a process wholly unknown other than by
inference, or that if there be no brain there can be no mind. A good
deal of attention has been paid to cataloguing some mental functions
and attributes, but the terms are altogether absent from the language
to describe actual metaphysical and spiritual facts about man. This
confusion and poverty of words for these uses are due almost entirely,
first, to dogmatic religion, which has asserted and enforced for many
centuries dogmas and doctrines which reason could not accept, and
secondly to the natural war which grew up between science and religion
just as soon as the fetters placed by religion upon science were
removed and the latter was permitted to deal with facts in nature. The
reaction against religion naturally prevented science from taking any
but a materialistic view of man and nature. So from neither of these
two have we yet gained the words needed for describing the fifth,
sixth, and seventh principles, those which make up the Trinity, the
real man, the immortal pilgrim.
The fifth principle is _Manas_, in the classification adopted by Mr.
Sinnett, and is usually translated Mind. Other names have been given
to it, but it is the knower, the perceiver, the thinker. The sixth is
_Buddhi_, or spiritual discernment; the seventh is _Atma_, or Spirit,
the ray from the Absolute Being. The English language will suffice to
describe in part what _Manas_ is, but not _Buddhi_, nor _Atma_, and
will leave many things relating to _Manas_ undescribed.
The course of evolution developed the lower principles and produced
at last the form of man with a brain of better and deeper capacity
than that of any other animal. But 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 was imprisoned in these forms, and
that monad is composed of _Atma_ and _Buddhi_; for without the presence
of the monad evolution could not go forward. Going back for a moment to
the time when the races were 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 all through this process
ages upon ages before in other worlds and systems of worlds, and it
therefore came from other evolutionary periods which were carried out
and completed long before the solar system had begun. This is the
theory, strange and unacceptable to-day, but 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. The Sons of Wisdom,
who are the Elder Brothers of every family of men on any globe, have
the light, derived by them from others who reach back, and yet farther
back, in endless procession with no beginning nor end. They set fire to
the combined lower principles and the Monad, thus lighting up _Manas_
in the new men and preparing 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 one priest appears holding
a candle lighted at the altar, and thousands of others light their
candles from this one. The Parsees also have their sacred fire which is
lighted from some other sacred flame.
_Manas_, or the Thinker, is the reïncarnating being, the immortal who
carries the results and values of all the different lives lived on
earth or elsewhere. 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 and 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. 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 above. If the Thinker, then,
becomes wholly intellectual, the entire nature begins to tend downward;
for intellect alone is cold, heartless, selfish, because it is not
lighted up by the two other principles of _Buddhi_ and _Atma_.
In _Manas_ the thoughts of all lives are stored. That is to say: in
any one life, the sum total of thoughts underlying all the acts of the
life-time will be of one character in general, but may be placed in
one or more classes. That is, the business man of to-day is a single
type; his entire life thoughts represent but one single thread of
thought. The artist is another. The man who has engaged in business,
but also thought much upon fame and power which he never attained,
is still another. The great mass of self-sacrificing, courageous,
and strong poor people who have but little time to think, constitute
another distinct class. In all these the total quantity of life
thoughts makes up the stream or thread of a life’s meditation—“that
upon which the heart was set”—and is stored in _Manas_, to be
brought out again at any time in whatever life the brain and bodily
environments are similar to those used in engendering that class of
thoughts.
It is _Manas_ which sees the objects presented to it by the bodily
organs and the actual organs 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, where _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 from the physical and thereby keep up
communication with fellowmen. 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 the same way
_Manas_, using the astral body, has only to impress an idea upon the
other person to make the latter see the idea and translate it into a
visible body from which the usual effects of density and weight seem
to follow. And 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 from an idea solely. 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 _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.
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 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 from any point, object,
or subject; _second_, to fly to some pleasant idea; _third_, to fly
to an unpleasant idea; _fourth_, to remain passive and considering
naught. 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 going toward insanity.
These mental characteristics all belonging to Lower _Manas_, are those
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 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_,
and may be called the Higher Self.
Next is the spiritual part of the soul called _Buddhi_; when thoroughly
united with _Manas_ this may be called the Divine Ego.
The inner Ego, who reïncarnates, 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.
This permanent individuality in the 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 and that 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 moulded 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 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 the 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. 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 reïncarnation. 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.