prepared to receive and to respond to the impulses which come to it from
the physical, astral and--to a small extent--from the mental planes. His
physical atoms are considerably evolved, the sensory sheath is working
actively, and there is a very imperfect lower mental sheath; these have
been built up through the evolution of the animal realm. Do not fall
into the mistake of the western way of thinking, and say that man
descends from the animal; that is not true. It is only a fragment of
truth half seen and thereby distorted. What is true is this: that the
matter of his lower vehicles has been prepared by evolving through the
stages of the elemental, mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, in
order that it may be builded into the form of man; that _in previous
kalpas_ forms had been evolved that might fairly be described as
half-ape, half-human, that were never occupied by the triple Self, and
that therefore belonged to the animal, not to the human kingdom; that
in the present cycle the human form evolved, as a fœtus evolves, passing
rapidly through the lower stages on the way to the human, as in
pre-natal life, and it therefore has stamped upon it the stages through
which it has passed. I have been going over, roughly and swiftly, those
stages through which the matter of which the body is composed has gone
in the past, and you will see that the true theory of evolution is
different from the somewhat crude view that there is a regular
succession of births from the animal into the man. The matter has been
made plastic in the animal, but man in his form is the result of a
higher working; the germ of his life can never develop into the animal,
but only into the human, because more has been infolded into it, and
that germ must unfold along a line which is that of direct human growth.
Remembering that, to prevent a possible misconception, we turn to the
human centre that is now definitely formed. We speak of its encircling
form as the causal body, or Karana Sharîra, the form by which the Self
is limited; the Karana Sharîra is not the Self, remember, but is the
containing vehicle of the triple Self, and the organ of one aspect of
that Self, the aspect of knowledge, shown forth as intelligence. This
sheath is important, being relatively of a permanent nature, and it goes
on from birth to birth; death cannot touch it, birth cannot modify it;
it is the treasure-house or receptacle of all the qualities acquired by
experience through human evolution, and passes through the whole cycle
of re-incarnations; it is the special _human_ characteristic. The form
begins to adapt itself more and more to the life, and here comes in a
growing difficulty. The characteristic of the life of man is the life of
the intellect; this the specifically human part of evolution; but the
life of sensation is far more vivid and tumultuous in the beginning, and
the earlier stages of form are adapted to answer to these impulses. You
may ask, why not give the man at once a mental body only, in which to
work out his evolution, why must he struggle through the evolution of
this body of sensation? Because, if he misses that stage, he will not be
able to make up the links which are necessary for the continuity of his
consciousness. At a later time the perfect man is conscious on all
planes from Nirvâna downward to the physical, from the physical upwards
to Nirvâna. On every plane in unbroken continuity of consciousness the
Jîvanmukta lives and works. There is no link lacking. If, then, the man
does not establish, in the building of his body of sensation, certain
centres or, as they are called, chakras--that drawing into centres
which is the work of the upward arc, as giving qualities is the work of
the downward arc--if he does not draw the powers of sensation into
definite centres in the sheath of his astral body, he will not have the
links which he requires to receive impacts from the astral plane, and
through which he can send out thrills of consciousness in order to
impress it, rule it and guide it. That is why there is so much delay in
the savage condition, where the life of sensation is supreme; these
astral chakras are being builded up as centres of the senses, and they
are built firm and strong; the outer organs, the eye, the ear, the nose,
the tongue, the skin, these are merely the necessary organs in the
physical body for the expression of consciousness through these chakras.
If we take, for a moment, a swift survey of the evolution of forms, we
shall find that the building of organs follows the exercise of
life-functions; in the earliest forms there are no organs, but the
functions of life are present and active; the creature breathes and
assimilates, circulation goes on; but there are no organs for digestion,
no organs for breathing, no organs for circulation; the whole body does
everything. But as evolution proceeds and definite organs are formed in
the physical body, in the nervous system, and as later, in the astral
body, chakras or astral centres of sensation are formed--as this goes
on, we find a more specialised being developed with definite organs.
Always the organ comes after the function, and through the organ the
function expresses itself more and more perfectly. That is a fundamental
principle. And do not forget that in this you are on what is thought the
safer ground of western science. You do not find an organ appearing
before the development of its function. You always find the life-impulse
first, and then the moulding of the matter into a shape which enables
that impulse to express itself more perfectly. If we trace evolution
from the amœba upwards we find differentiation and specialisation
becoming more marked the whole way through, yet man himself turns round,
and with the very brain which has been formed under the vibrations of
intelligence he reverses the whole process, and asserts that thought is
produced by the brain; but every organ is formed as the organ of a
function, it is produced by life, and is not its creator.
This process goes on until the necessary organs are made and the nervous
system is linked to the chakras in the astral body, chiefly through what
is called the sympathetic system. There are certain nervous cells of a
peculiar kind in that system, of which modern science does not say
much, beyond giving you the forms and contents, and these are the links
between consciousness in the physical body and in the sensory body. Then
come the chakras already spoken of as the centres for the working of
consciousness in the astral body. A similar process goes on in the
mental body under the action of thought-impulses, and there we have also
an organised body able to respond to different kinds of thought, and
thus to serve consciousness as its organ for expression in the mental
world. As we grow mentally we build our organs for consciousness.
Coming to this building of form practically, we learn that we organise
the body of sensation to higher purposes by checking the life-impulse as
it runs out to the object of the senses. These objects gradually turn
away from the abstemious dweller in the body, it is written, and as the
lower world ceases to attract, the higher world begins to use the form
for nobler ends. If we desire to increase mental power, we must practise
steady thinking, and check the rovings of intelligence over the
phenomenal world. As a matter of fact, many people never really think at
all; what they call their thoughts are nothing more than the reflections
of other people's thoughts to which their consciousness responds; their
minds are looking-glasses, not productive organisms; most men's minds,
I fear, are looking-glasses reflecting objects that are before them, and
contemplating these reflections a man says to himself: "See! how I am
thinking!" when he is only repeating the thoughts of others. Now we are
not to be mere looking-glasses; when the objects of the outer world give
rise to images, the mind is to work on them, analyse, re-arrange,
combine; thinking is the work of the mind itself on the mental images
supplied through sensation, the working on the materials which have been
gradually gathered by experience. As soon might you call a loose heap of
bricks that you see in the compound of a house, a building, as call the
reflection of other people's thoughts, your thinking. That is only the
material for thought. Thinking is the work of the architect, of the
builder that builds these bricks into a definite edifice, and until we
have built up thoughts in our minds, we have no right to arrogate to
ourselves the name of thinkers. Practise then this independent thinking;
it is hard; you will not know how hard until you try it. Never let pass
a day without reading something that gives you material for thought. No
matter if the book be not religious; if it be only intellectual, that
will make you stronger in intellect. Even leaving spirituality aside
with its nobler possibilities, take some great book worthy of being
thought over, not a newspaper, not a sensational novel, not a child's
book, but a BOOK--an original book, on a real topic; what Charles Lamb
called a book. Read, but do not read much, perhaps not more than a dozen
or twenty lines; think these lines over and over and over for at least
thrice as long as you have taken to read them slowly. Do that every day
regularly, and do not miss it. You find time for your dinner; why, if
you can find time to feed your body and to talk, can you not find time
to feed your mind? Then your mind would grow. If you do that as an
experiment, say for three months only, never missing a day--for if you
miss a day, you will slip back and lose the value of the automatic
action of your mind--do that for three months as an experiment, as a
scientific man makes an experiment, and thus train yourselves for three
months in power of close attention and thought, and at the end of the
three months, you will be startled to find how much these powers have
grown. When you have put yourself through this experiment, then you will
not want a lecturer to tell you about the value of such self-discipline,
for you yourself will have proved it to be good. Take one faculty after
another to train; train your reasoning faculty, your memory, your power
of comparison and contrast. Take up a faculty, just as any one takes up
a study that he is working at, and work at it until you are an artist
in that particular faculty.
That is how form is builded, when the human Self is beginning to
co-operate with the work of Íshvara, when the centre is beginning to
take the control of its vehicles. It rationalises its workings, and
builds and modifies them step by step. When this has been done for many
lives, then comes the life for Yoga; then the man may be taught how to
make more rapid progress, and how to vivify the inner and subtler
sheaths of his being by certain practices, that will be taught him the
moment he is ready--but that will never be taught him until he _is_
ready, nay though he range the world over in search of a Guru, or live
the life of an ascetic in the cave or in the jungle. That is not enough,
so long as his desire is unconquered, so long as his mind is still
restless. When the senses are dominated, when the mind is controlled,
and not before--but then, as certainly as before there will not be the
coming--a Guru will appear who will take that man by the hand and lead
him along the path that is narrow as the edge of a razor, that may only
be trodden by the controlled in sense and by the steady in mind, for the
fall either to the one side or to the other means delay for many a birth
to come. Then is developed that aspect of Bliss which shows itself
outwardly as love; a faint reflection of that bliss is felt in many
stages of meditation, and joy has birth within you, wells up within you,
enwraps you fold by fold, until you in yogic trance reach the true
A'nanda, which is the essence of beauty, and makes you quiver under its
subtle vibrations of ineffable delight. And later, later still, at a
stage that you may reach, when all is purified through long evolution,
there comes the rising into the highest, where the subtlest matter
becomes the vehicle of that developed centre, now no longer a
circumference restraining and necessary, but an obedient vehicle which
will serve when it is wanted and fall away when wanted it is not. As it
is written that in the A'kâsha there is every possibility of form, so
the life that has reached Self-existence is a being that garbs itself in
any form by gathering the A'kâsha around it. Thus it may develop vehicle
after vehicle until the whole of the human series is builded for use,
but none of them is prison for limitation; then we say that the man is a
Jîvanmukta, He is free, and all matter has become His servant, to use
when He has need of it, to cast aside when He needs it not; every region
of the world is His to use, no region of the world is its own to bind
Him; He is liberated, and as the liberated Self He may, if He will,
still work for His brother men, remaining, as Shrî Shankarâchârya
taught us, until the end of His age, in order to lift humanity more
rapidly on its upward climb. Thus are formed Those who are the
co-workers of Íshvara in the helping of humanity, who, having gone
through all suffering, throw everything they have gained at the feet of
the Lord, who turn back to the world, never again to be bound by it, but
still responding to the compassion which is the very life of Íshvara
Himself. As long as Íshvara wills to remain in manifestation, so long
does He whose will is one with that of Íshvara, will also to remain. He
has nothing to gain, nothing to learn, nothing to take that any world
can give Him; but He stands beside His Lord as an organ of the
expression of the highest life, existing no longer for anything that He
takes, but as the channel of the life of God. That is the prize of our
calling, that the goal on which our hearts are fixed.
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* * * * *
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
The following variants appear in this text: "A'kâsha" and "Akâsha",
"A'nanda" and "Ananda", "Kabbalah" and "Kabala", "kârmic" and "karmic",
"out-pouring" and "outpouring", "Self-existence" and "Self-Existence",
"wellnigh" and "well-nigh".
The spelling "Brahmâ" appears to be standard, but "Brahma" also appears,
in the phrase "Mahad Brahma".
The phrase "may by" in "may by it be brought" on p. 20 should possibly be
"may be" but has been left unchanged.
Words in italics are indicated by underscores, _like this_.
The following amendments to spelling and punctuation have been made:
1) "hierachies" amended to "hierarchies" on p. 27.
2) "philosphy" amended to "philosophy" on p. 28.
3) "manâsic" amended to "mânasic" on p. 52.
4) Period added after "tato bhavati Bhârata" on p. 97.
5) "Avâtara" amended to "Avatâra" on p. 119.
6) Comma added after "kingdom" on p. 119.
End of Project Gutenberg's Evolution of Life and Form, by Annie Wood Besant