H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Volume 3

Gaining Immortality (Page 515) There is no distinct or separate immortality for the men of earth outside of the Ego which informed them. That Higher Ego is the sole bearer of all its alter egos on earth and their sole representative in the mental state called Devachan. As the last embodied personality, however, has a right to its own special state of bliss, unalloyed and free from the memories of all others, it is the last life only which is fully and realistically vivid. Devachan is often compared to the happiest day in a series of many thousands of other “days” in the life of a person. The intensity of its happiness makes the man entirely forget all others, his past becomes obliterated.

This is what we call the Devachanic state, the reward of the personality, and it is on this old teaching that the hazy Christian notion of Paradise was built, borrowed with many other things from the Egyptian Mysteries, wherein the doctrine was enacted. And this is the meaning of the passage quoted in Isis. The Soul has triumphed over Apophis, the Dragon of Flesh. Henceforth, the personality will live in eternity, in its highest and noblest elements, the memory of its past deeds, while the “characteristics” of the “Dragon” will be fading out in Kâma Loka. If the question be asked, “How live in eternity, when Devachan lasts but from 1,000 to 2,000 years,” the answer is: “In the same way as the recollection of each day which is worth remembering lives in the memory of each one of us.” For the sake of an example, the days passed in one personal life may be taken as an illustration of each personal life, and this or that person may stand for the Divine Ego.

To obtain the key which will open the door of many a psychological mystery it is sufficient to understand and remember that which precedes and that which follows. Many a Spiritualist has felt terribly indignant on being told that personal immortality was conditional; and yet such is the philosophical and logical fact. Much has been said already on the subject, but no one to this day seems to have fully understood the doctrine. Moreover, it is not enough to know that such a fact is said to exist. An Occultist, or he who would become one, must know why it is so; for having learned and comprehended the raison d’être, it becomes easier to set others right in their erroneous speculations, and, most important of all, it affords one an opportunity, without saying too much, to teach other people to avoid a calamity which, sad to say, occurs in our age almost daily. This calamity will now be explained at length.

(Page 516) One must know little indeed of the Eastern modes of expression to fail to see in this passage quoted from the Book of the Dead, and the pages of Isis, (a) an allegory for the uninitiated, containing our Esoteric teaching; and (b) that the two terms “second death” and “Soul” are, in one sense, blinds. “Soul” refers indifferently to Buddhi-Manas and Kâma-Manas. As to the term “second death,” the qualification “second” applies to several deaths which have to be undergone by the “Principles” during their incarnation, Occultists alone understanding fully the sense in which such a statement is made. For we have (1) the death of the Body; (2) the death of the Animal Soul in Kâma Loka; (3) the death of the Astral Linga Sharîra, following that of the Body; (4) the metaphysical death of the Higher Ego, the immortal, every time it “falls into matter,” or incarnates in a new personality. The Animal Soul, or lower Manas, that shadow of the Divine Ego which separates from it to inform the personality, cannot by any possible means escape death in Kâma Loka, at any rate that portion of this reflection which remains as a terrestrial residue and cannot be impressed on the Ego. Thus the chief and most important secret with regard to that “second death,” in the Esoteric teaching, was and is to this day the terrible possibility of the death of the Soul, that is, its severance from the Ego on earth during a person’s lifetime. This is a real death (though with chances of resurrection), which shows no traces in a person and yet leaves him morally a living corpse. It is difficult to see why this teaching should have been preserved until now with such secrecy, when, by spreading it among people, at any rate among those who believe in reincarnation, so much good might be done. But so it was, and I had no right to question the wisdom of the prohibition, but have given it hitherto, as it was given to myself, under pledge not to reveal it to the world at large. But now I have permission to give it to all, revealing its tenets first to the Esotericists, and then when they have assimilated them thoroughly it will be their duty to teach others this special tenet of the “second death,” and warn all the Theosophists of its dangers.

To make the teaching clearer, I shall seemingly have to go over old ground; in reality, however, it is given out with new light and new details. I have tried to hint at it in the Theosophist as I have done in Isis, but have failed to make myself understood. I will now explain it, point by point.

 

The Philosophical Rationale of the Tenet

LIGHT AND LIFE(Page 517) (1) Imagine, for illustration’s sake, the one homogeneous, absolute and omnipresent Essence, above the upper step of the “stair of the seven planes of worlds,” ready to start on its evolutionary journey. As its correlating reflection gradually descends, it differentiates and transforms into subjective, and finally into objective matter. Let us call it at its north pole Absolute Light; at its south pole, which to us would be the fourth or middle step, or plane, counting either way, we know it Esoterically as the One and Universal Life. Now mark the difference. Above, LIGHT; below, Life. The former is ever immutable, the latter manifests under the aspects of countless differentiations. According to the Occult law, all potentialities included in the higher become differentiated reflections in the lower; and according to the same law, nothing which is differentiated can be blended with the homogeneous.

Again, nothing can endure of that which lives and breathes and has its being in the seething waves of the world, or plane of differentiation. Thus Buddhi and Manas being both primordial rays of the One Flame, the former the vehicle, the upâdhi or vâhana, of the one eternal Essence, the latter the vehicle of Mahat or Divine Ideation (Mahâ-Buddhi in the Purânas), the Universal Intelligent Soul—neither of them, as such, can become extinct or be annihilated, either in essence or consciousness. But the physical personality with its Linga Sharîra, and the animal soul, with its Kâma, [Kâma Rûpa, the vehicle of the Lower Manas, is said to dwell in the physical brain, in the five physical senses and in all the sense-organs of the physical body.] can and do become so. They are born in the realm of illusion, and must vanish like a fleecy cloud from the blue and eternal sky.

He who has read these volumes with any degree of attention, must know the origin of the human Egos, called Monads, generically, and what they were before they were forced to incarnate in the human animal. The divine beings whom Karma led to act in the drama of Manvantaric life, are entities from higher and earlier worlds and planets, whose Karma had not been exhausted when their world went into Pralaya. Such is the teaching; but whether it is so or not, the Higher Egos are—as compared to such forms of transitory, terrestrial mud as ourselves—Divine Beings, Gods, immortal throughout the Mahâmanvantara, or the 311,040,000,000,000 years during which the Age of Brahmâ lasts. And as the Divine Egos, in (Page 518) order to re-become the One Essence, or be indrawn again into the AUM, have to purify themselves in the fire of suffering and individual experience, so also have the terrestrial Egos, the personalities, to do likewise, if they would partake of the immortality of the Higher Egos. This they can achieve by crushing in themselves all that benefits only the lower personal nature of their “selves” and by aspiring to transfuse their thinking Kâmic Principle into that of the Higher Ego. We (i.e., our personalities) become immortal by the mere fact of our thinking moral nature being grafted on our Divine Triune Monad, Ãtmâ-Buddhi-Manas, the three in one and one in three (aspects). For the Monad manifested on earth by the incarnating Ego is that which is called the Tree of Life Eternal, that can only be approached by eating the fruit of knowledge, the Knowledge of Good and Evil, or of GNOSIS, Divine Wisdom.

In the Esoteric teachings, this Ego is the fifth Principle in man. But the student who had read and understood the first two Papers, knows something more. He is aware that the seventh is not a human, but a universal Principle in which man participates; but so does equally every physical and subjective atom, and also every blade of grass and everything that lives or is in Space, whether it be sensible of it or not. He knows, moreover, that if man is more closely connected with it, and assimilates it with a hundredfold more power, it is simply because he is endowed with the highest consciousness on this earth; that man, in short, may become a Spirit, a Deva, or a God, in his next transformation, whereas neither a stone nor a vegetable, nor an animal, can do so before they become men in their proper turn.

(2) Now what are the functions of Buddhi? On this plane it has none, unless it is united with Manas, the conscious Ego. Buddhi stands to the divine Root Essence in the same relation as Mûlaprakriti to Parabrahman, in the Vedânta School; or as Alaya the Universal Soul to the One Eternal Spirit, or that which is beyond Spirit. It is its human vehicle, one remove from that Absolute, which can have no relation whatever to the finite and the conditioned.

(3) What, again, is Manas and its functions? In its purely metaphysical aspect, Manas, though one remove on the downward plane from Buddhi, is still so immeasurably higher than the physical man, that it cannot enter into direct relation with the personality, except through its reflection, the lower mind. Manas is Spiritual Self-Consciousness in itself, and Divine Consciousness when united with Buddhi, which is the true “producer” of that “production” (vikâra), or Self-Consciousness, through Mahat.

The Two Egos (Page 519) Buddhi-Manas, therefore, is entirely unfit to manifest during its periodical incarnations, except through the human mind or lower Manas. Both are linked together and are inseparable, and can have as little to do with the lower Tanmâtras, [Tanmâtra means subtle and rudimentary form, the gross type of the finer elements. The five Tanmâtras are really the characteristic properties or qualities of matter and of all the elements; the real spirit of the word is “something” or “merely transcendental,” in the sense of properties or qualities.] or rudimentary atoms as the homogeneous with the heterogeneous. It is, therefore, the task of the lower Manas, or thinking personality, if it would blend itself with its God, the Divine Ego, to dissipate and paralyse the Tanmâtras, or properties of the material form. Therefore, Manas is shown double, as the Ego and Mind of Man. It is Kâma-Manas, or the lower Ego, which, deluded into a notion of independent existence, as the “producer” in its turn and the sovereign of the five Tanmâtras, becomes Ego-ism, the selfish Self, in which case it has to be considered as Mahâbhûtic and finite, in the sense of its being connected with Ahankâra, the personal “I-creating” faculty. Hence

Manas has to be regarded as eternal and non-eternal in its atomic nature (paramanu rûpa), as eternal substance (dravya), finite (kârya-rûpa) when linked as a duad with Kâma (animal desire or human egoistic volition), a lower production, in short. [See Theosophist, August. 1883. “The Real and the Unreal.”]

While, therefore, the INDIVIDUAL EGO, owing to its essence and nature, is immortal throughout eternity, with a form (rûpa), which prevails during the whole life cycles of the Fourth Round, its Sosie, or resemblance, the personal Ego, has to win its immortality.

(4) Antahkarana is the name of that imaginary bridge, the path which lies between the Divine and the human Egos, for they are Egos, during human life, to rebecome one Ego in Devachan or Nirvâna. This may seem difficult to understand, but in reality, with the help of a familiar, though fanciful illustration, it becomes quite simple. Let us figure to ourselves a bright lamp in the middle of the room, casting its light upon the wall. Let the lamp represent the Divine Ego, and the light thrown on the wall the lower Manas, and let the wall stand for the body. That portion of the atmosphere which transmits the ray from the lamp to the wall, will then present the Antahkarana. We must further suppose that the light thus cast is endowed with reason and intelligence, and (Page 520) possesses, moreover, the faculty of dissipating all the evil shadows which pass across the wall, and of attracting all brightness to itself, receiving their indelible impressions. Now, it is in the power of the human Ego to chase away the shadows, or sins, and multiply the brightnesses, or good deeds, which make these impressions, and thus through Antahkarana, ensure its own permanent connection, and its final re-union, with the Divine Ego. Remember that the latter cannot take place while there remains a single taint of the terrestrial, of matter, in the purity of that light. On the other hand, the connection cannot be entirely ruptured and final re-union prevented, so long as there remains one spiritual deed, or potentiality to serve as a thread of union; but the moment this last spark is extinguished, and the last potentiality exhausted, then comes the severance. In an Eastern parable, the Divine Ego is likened to the Master who sends out his labourers to till the ground and to gather in the harvest, and who is content to keep the field so long as it can yield even the smallest return. But when the ground becomes absolutely sterile, not only is it abandoned, but the labourer also (the lower Manas) perishes.

On the other hand, however, still using our simile, when the light thrown on the wall, or the rational human Ego, reaches the point of actual spiritual exhaustion, the Antahkarana disappears, no more light is transmitted, and the lamp becomes non-existent to the ray. The light which has been absorbed gradually disappears and “Soul eclipse” occurs; the being lives on earth and then passes into Kâma Loka as a mere surviving congeries of material qualities; it can never pass onwards towards Devachan, but is reborn immediately, a human animal and scourge.

This simile, however fantasic will help us to seize the correct idea. Save through the blending of the moral nature with the Divine Ego, there is no immortality for the personal Ego. It is only the most spiritual emanations of the personal Human Soul which survive. Having, during a lifetime, been imbued with the notion and feeling of the “I am I” of its personality, the Human Soul, the bearer of the very essence of the Karmic deeds of the physical man, becomes, after the death of the latter, part and parcel of the Divine Flame, the Ego. It becomes immortal through the mere fact that it is now strongly grafted on the Monad, which is the “Tree of Life Eternal.”

And now we must speak of the tenet of the “second death.” What happens to the Kâmic Human Soul, which is always that of a debased and wicked man or of a soulless person? This mystery will now be explained.

Death of the Soul (Page 521) The personal Soul in this case, viz., in that of one who has never had a thought not concerned with the animal self, having nothing to transmit to the Higher, or to add to the sum of the experiences gleaned from past incarnations which its memory is to preserve throughout eternity—this personal Soul becomes separated from the Ego. It can graft nothing of self on that eternal trunk whose sap throws out millions of personalities, like leaves from its branches, leaves which wither, die and fall at the end of their season. These personalities bud, blossom forth and expire, some without leaving a trace behind, others after commingling their own life with that of the parent stem. It is the Souls of the former class that are doomed to annihilation, or Avîtchi, a state so badly understood, and still worse described by some Theosophical writers, but which is not only located on our earth, but is in fact this very earth itself.

Thus we see that Antahkarana has been destroyed before the lower man has had an opportunity of assimilating the Higher and becoming at one with it; and therefore the Kâmic “Soul” becomes a separate entity, to live henceforth, for a short or long period according to its Karma, as a “soulless” creature.

But before I elaborate this question, I must explain more clearly the meaning and functions of the Antahkarana. As already said, it may be represented as a narrow bridge connecting the Higher and the lower Manas. If you look at the Glossary of the Voice of the Silence, pp.88 and 89, you will find it is a projection of the lower Manas, or, rather, the link between the latter and the Higher Ego, or, between the Human and the Divine or Spiritual Soul. [As the author of Esoteric Buddhism and the Occult World called Manas the Human Soul, and Buddhi the Spiritual Soul, I have left these terms unchanged in the Voice, seeing that it was a book intended for the public.

At death it is destroyed as a path, or medium of communication, and its remains survive as Kâma Rûpa.

the “shell.” It is this which the Spiritualists see sometimes appearing in the séance rooms as materialized “forms,” which they foolishly mistake for the “Spirits of the Departed.” [In the exoteric teachings of Râja Yoga, Antahkarana is called the inner organ of perception and is divided into four parts: the (lower) Manas, Buddhi (reason), Ahankâra (personality), and Chitta (thinking faculty). It also, together with several other organs, forms a part of Jîva, Sou called also Lingadeh. Esotericists, however, must not be misled by this popular version.] So far is this from being (Page 522) the case that in dreams, though Antahkarana is there, the personality is only half awake; therefore, Antahkarana is said to be drunk or insane during our normal sleeping state. If such is the case during the periodical death, or sleep, of the living body, one may judge what the consciousness of Antahkarana is like when it has been transformed after the “eternal sleep” into Kâma Rûpa.

But to return. In order not to confuse the mind of the Western student with the abstruse difficulties of Indian metaphysics, let him view the lower Manas, or Mind, as the personal Ego during the waking state, and as Antahkarana only during those moments when it aspires towards its Higher Ego, and thus becomes the medium of communication between the two. It is for this reason that it is called the “Path.” Now, when a limb or organ belonging to the physical organism is left in disuse, it becomes weak and finally atrophies. So also it is with mental faculties; and hence the atrophy of the lower mind-function called Antahkarana, becomes comprehensible in both completely materialistic and depraved natures.

According to Esoteric Philosophy, however, the teaching is as follows: Seeing that the faculty and function of Antahkarana is as necessary as the medium of the ear for hearing, or that of the eye for seeing; then so long as the feeling of Ahankâra, that is, of the personal “I” or selfishness, is not entirely crushed out in a man, and the lower mind not entirely merged into and become one with the Higher Buddhi-Manas, it stands to reason that to destroy Antahkarana is like destroying a bridge over an impassable chasm; the traveller can never reach the goal on the other shore. And here lies the difference between the exoteric and Esoteric teaching. The former makes the Vedânta state that so long as Mind (the lower) clings through Antahkarana to Spirit (Buddhi-Manas) it is impossible for it to acquire true Spiritual Wisdom, Gnyâna, and that this can only be attained by seeking to come en rapport, with the Universal Soul (Ãtmâ); that, in fact it is by ignoring the Higher Mind altogether that one reaches Râja Yoga. We say it is not so. No single rung of the ladder leading to knowledge can be skipped. No personality can ever reach or bring itself into communications with Ãtmâ, except through Buddhi-Manas; to try and become a Jîvanmukta or a Mahâtma, before one has become an Adept or even a Narjol (a sinless man) is like trying to reach Ceylon from India without crossing the sea. Therefore we are told that if we destroy Antahkarana before the personal is absolutely under the control of the impersonal Ego, we risk to lose the latter and be severed for ever from it, unless indeed we hasten to re-establish the communication by a supreme and final effort.

Reincarnation of Lower Soul (Page 523) It is only when we are indissolubly linked with the essence of the Divine Mind, that we have to destroy Antahkarana.

Like as a solitary warrior pursued by an army, seeks refuge in a stronghold; to cut himself off from the enemy, he first destroys the drawbridge, and then only commences to destroy the pursuer; so must the Srotâpatti act before he slays Antahkarana.

Or as an Occult axiom has it:

The Unit becomes Three, and Three generate Four. It is for the latter [the Quarternary] to rebecome Three, and for the Divine Three to expand into the Absolute One.

Monads, which become Duads on the differentiated plane, to develop into Triads during the cycle of incarnations, even when incarnated know neither space nor time, but are diffused through the lower Principles of the Quarternary, being omnipresent and omniscient in their nature. But this omniscience is innate, and can manifest its reflected light only through that which is at least semi-terrestrial or material; even as the physical brain which, in its turn, is the vehicle of the lower Manas enthroned in Kâma Rûpa. And it is this which is gradually annihilated in cases of “second death.”

But such annihilation—which is in reality the absence of the slightest trace of the doomed Soul from the eternal MEMORY, and therefore signifies annihilation in eternity—does not mean simply discontinuation of human life on earth, for earth is Avîtchi, and the worst Avîtchi possible. Expelled forever from the consciousness of the Individuality, the reincarnating Ego, the physical atoms and psychic vibrations of the now separate personality are immediately reincarnated on the same earth, only in a lower and still more abject creature, a human being only in form, doomed to Karmic torments during the whole of its new life. Moreover, if it persists in its criminal or debauched course, it will suffer a long series of immediate reincarnations.

Here two questions present themselves: (1) What becomes of the Higher Ego in such cases? (2) What kind of an animal is a human creature born soulless?

Before answering these two very natural queries, I have to draw the attention of all of you who are born in Christian countries to the fact that the romance of the vicarious atonement and the mission of Jesus (Page 524) as it now stands, was drawn or borrowed by some too liberal Initiates from the mysterious and weird tenet of the earthly experience of the reincarnating Ego. The latter is indeed the sacrificial victim of, and through, its own Karma in previous Manvantaras, which takes upon itself voluntarily the duty of saving what would be otherwise soulless men or personalities. Eastern truth is thus more philosophical and logical than Western fiction. The Christos or Buddhi-Manas of each man, is not quite an innocent and sinless God, though in one sense it is the “Father,” being of the same essence with the Universal Spirit, and at the same time the “Son,” for Manas is the second remove from the “Father.” By incarnation the Divine Son makes itself responsible for the sins of all the personalities which it will inform. This it can do only through its proxy or reflection, the lower Manas. The only case in which the Divine Ego can escape individual penalty and responsibility as a guiding Principle, is when it has to break off from the personality, because matter, with its psychic and astral vibrations, is then, by the very intensity of its combinations, placed beyond the control of the Ego. Apophis, the Dragon, having become the conqueror, the reincarnating Manas, separating itself gradually from its tabernacle, breaks finally asunder from the psycho-animal Soul.

Thus, in answer to the first question, I say:

(1) The Divine Ego does one of two things: either (a) it recommences immediately under its own Karmic impulses a fresh series of incarnations; or (b) it seeks and finds refuge in the bosom of the Mother, Alaya, the Universal Soul, of which the Manvantaric aspect is Mahat. Freed from the life-impressions of the personality, it merges into a kind of Nirvânic interlude, wherein there can be nothing but the eternal Present, which absorbs the Past and Future. Bereft of the “labourer,” both field and harvest now being lost, the Master, in the infinitude of his thought, naturally preserves no recollection of the finite and evanescent illusion which had been his last personality. And then, indeed, is the latter annihilated.

(2) The future of the lower Manas is more terrible, and still more terrible to humanity than to the now animal man. It sometimes happens that after the separation the exhausted Soul, now become supremely animal, fades out in Kâma Loka, as do all other animal souls. But seeing that the more material is the human mind, the longer it lasts, even in the intermediate stage, it frequently happens that after the present life of the soulless man is ended, he is again and again reincarnated into new personalities, each one more abject than the other.