The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 3 of 4: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and PhilosophyBlavatsky, H. P. (Helena Petrovna)
Religion
The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 3 of 4: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy
Blavatsky, H. P. (Helena Petrovna)
Theosophy
That which has just been stated will, of course, suggest the question:
“How can a spiritual (or semi‐spiritual) personality lead a triple or even
a dual life, shifting respective ‘Higher Selves’ _ad libitum_, and be
still the one eternal Monad in the infinity of a Manvantara?” The answer
to this is easy for the true Occultist, while for the uninitiated profane
it must appear absurd. The “Seven Principles” are, of course, the
manifestation of one indivisible Spirit, but only at the end of the
Manvantara, and when they come to be re‐united on the plane of the One
Reality does the unity appear; during the “Pilgrim’s” journey the
reflections of that indivisible One Flame, the aspects of the one eternal
Spirit, have each the power of action on one of the manifested planes of
existence—the gradual differentiations from the one unmanifested plane—on
that plane namely to which it properly belongs. Our earth affording every
Mâyâvic condition, it follows that the purified Egotistical Principle, the
astral and personal Self of an Adept, though forming in reality one
integral whole with its Highest Self (Âtmâ and Buddhi) may, nevertheless,
for purposes of universal mercy and benevolence, so separate itself from
its divine Monad as to lead on this plane of illusion and temporary being
a distinct independent conscious life of its own under a borrowed illusive
shape, thus serving at one and the same time a double purpose: the
exhaustion of its own individual Karma, and the saving of millions of
human beings less favoured than itself from the effects of mental
blindness. If asked: “When the change described as the passage of a Buddha
or a Jîvanmukta into Nirvâna takes place, where does the original
consciousness which animated the body continue to reside—in the Nirvânî or
in the subsequent reincarnations of the latter’s ‘remains’ (the
Nirmânakâya)?” the answer is that _imprisoned_ consciousness may be a
“certain knowledge from observation and experience,” as Gibbon puts it,
but _disembodied_ consciousness is not an effect, but a cause. It is a
part of the whole, or rather a Ray on the graduated scale of its
manifested activity, of the one all‐pervading, limitless Flame, the
reflections of which alone can differentiate; and, as such, consciousness
is ubiquitous, and can be neither localized nor centred on or in any
particular subject, nor can it be limited. Its effects alone pertain to
the region of matter, for thought is an energy that affects matter in
various ways, but consciousness _per se_, as understood and explained by
Occult philosophy, is the highest quality of the sentient spiritual
principle in us, the Divine Soul (or Buddhi) and our Higher Ego, and does
not belong to the plane of materiality. After the death of the physical
man, if he be an Initiate, it becomes transformed from a human quality
into the independent principle itself; the conscious Ego becoming
Consciousness _per se_ without any Ego, in the sense that the latter can
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