To "Know Thyself" as
far as possible is an important duty. A fuller knowledge of our intellectual
nature will enable us to cultivate the different faculties in a more purposeful
and profitable way. When the light of intellect shines on the path of conduct
it helps us to purify and ennoble our character and to be helpful to our fellow
men, and as no chance act can be a moral one this light is absolutely necessary
— we must know in order to do.
This knowledge of our mental
constitution is not easy to attain because of the wonderful complexity of life.
The old psychology combined simple sensations into perceptions, perceptions
into conceptions, conceptions into judgments, and judgments into syllogisms,
and thus built up the mental life. But we find that life is far richer and more
complex than the old science taught and we can no longer follow the old way.
Life seems full of contradictions, and its demands upon us often appear to be
opposed to each other.
In the physical world friction
hinders motion, motion and rest seem opposed to each other, yet energy cannot
be sustained without rest, and power comes through repose. What is true for the
physical world is also true for the mental sphere. There is an inborn tendency
to stay as we are, and another tendency just as strong to change. Professor James
calls this a struggle between "genius and old-fogeyish." He further
says that our "education is a ceaseless compromise between the
conservative and the progressive factors."
There is a demand for us to live
the simple life, to be thoughtful and meditative, and yet an equal demand that
we live the strenuous life, deciding promptly on what to do and doing it with
enthusiasm wasting no time in idle dreaming. When we turn to religion we find
these same contradictory tendencies and demands.
On the one hand there is a
tendency to be superstitious, to believe in the magical and supernatural, and
on the other hand a tendency to be materialistic, to believe only what the senses
demonstrate — rationalism and mysticism are constantly urging their apparently contradictory
claims. In the building of character we feel the impulse of self-surrender, yet
just as strongly we feel urged to self-assertion.
The spirit of content and the desire
to improve are ever in contention, and like Saint Paul we feel that we are two
men, a higher and a lower, a physical and a spiritual, so that often "The
good which I would I do not. but the evil which I would not that I practice"
(Romans VII, 19).
Does Theosophy throw any light on
this constitution and will it help us to understand and control these
contradictions and make life a unit with an intelligent purpose?
Will it give
us any assistance in the control and cultivation of our mental faculties, and through
that in the unfoldment and perfection of character?
Let us see. It teaches that the
real man is the thinker, and this thinker (Manas) is immortal but clothes
itself over and over again in transient personalities. The Voice of the Silence says:
« Thy shadows live and vanish;
that which in thee shall live forever, that which in thee knows, for it is
knowledge, is not of fleeting life; it is the man that was, that is, and will
be, for whom the hour shall never strike. »
The Wisdom Religion teaches that
this immortal Ego has in past ages gained a vast amount of wisdom in other
worlds of the universe, or under other material conditions and has now
descended to this earth to incarnate in these human-animal bodies, in order to
gain additional wisdom through association with the play of passions raging
upon this plane of the Universe. At the same time it may give to these lower
entities — human elementals — something of its own essence, so helping their
evolution to the spiritual plane.
Theosophy teaches that the lower
nature of man was through long ages slowly evolved until he reached a point
where the quaternary was complete and man was a fourfold being composed of
body, etheric double, Prana, and Kama. This was the mindless man spoken of in
Theosophical literature, an irrational, unreasoning animal. Kama or Desire
rules him, and Kama represents all the passions and emotions of man's nature,
showing itself in pride, lust, anger, envy, greed, and a host of similar
manifestations.
It is a Principle or state of consciousness common to the
animal world, but this mindless man had progressed a little further than the
animals below him, his brain and nervous system being far more perfect.
He was therefore richer in
instincts, for instinct is wisdom attained through stored up experiences of the
elemental soul in past embodiments, just as intuition on the higher plane of
consciousness in man is the result of stored up experience upon the mental
plane of being.
We are told that about eighteen
millions of years ago the Manasaputra (Sons of Mind) the immortal Egos
mentioned above, who had gained vast knowledge and experience in other worlds,
took up their abode in these mindless men. These Reincarnating Egos are the
Manas in us, the fifth Principle in man.
By this association, or incarnation, a
portion of the essence of the Higher Ego comes in contact with the animal brain
and nervous system. As the blowing of wind into a dull fire makes it blaze up
and burn brightly, or as a magnet in contact with non-magnetic iron seems to
impart something of itself to the iron, turning it into a magnet, so this contact
of Manas with the human-animal seems to bestow a portion of its own reasoning
and thinking power upon it, and the brain which before was reasonless now blazes
up and begins to look like a rational center of consciousness.
Manas, belonging to a higher
plane of being, cannot come into direct contact with the brain, but projects a part
of its own substance which clothes itself with Astral matter, and then with the
help of etheric matter permeates the brain and nervous system of the human
body. The ray of Manas thus projected is called the lower Manas, for Manas is dual
during each incarnation. It is sometimes spoken of as clasping Kama with one
hand, and holding on to its father (higher Manas) with the other.
This personality is often called
Kama-Manas, but this is not a new Principle, but the joining together of the
fourth and fifth. The fourth Principle supplies the animal and passional elements,
while lower Manas rationalizes these and adds the intellectual faculties. It is
lower Manas that listens to the voices from both above and below, and which
inclines now to one and then to the other.
It very rarely becomes one with
Kama, for the desires of Kama are distinctly recognized as coming from below,
but the connection is very close, indeed, so close that it sometimes identifies
itself with the lower, passionate nature and becomes really a partner with the
lower nature. By adding the light of reason, memory, and anticipation to the
delights of the sensuous nature, lower Manas greatly intensifies them and so
makes its task of conquering them more and more difficult.
Through this close companionship
there grows up a strange, illusionary, unreal entity that has no real sense of
the eternal, but speaks of existence as this short earthly life. And this
transient entity is our ordinary everyday selves. But in proportion as lower Manas
recognizes its spiritual father and reaches up towards him will be its power to
separate itself from its lower partner, and so bring into subjection the
passions and appetites and become indeed the vehicle of higher Wisdom. As lower
Manas conquers Kama and becomes master of the lower nature it manifests more
and more of its true nature. H. P. Blavatsky says:
« Whenever it disconnects itself,
for the time being from Kama it becomes the guide of the highest mental
faculties, and is the organ of free will in physical man. »
(Revue Lucifer, October 1890,
p.94)
It has already been said that lower
Manas functions in the brain and nervous system and so gives the brain — mind —
the mental faculties. If the molecular constitution of the brain be fine and the
physical organs of digestion and assimilation be healthy and the blood pure,
the expression of the soul will be clear and strong; but if the structure of
the brain be of a low order, coarse, or deficient, or the blood impure, the
body hurt by excesses, or bad living, the light of Manas will be dull and the
soul unable to express itself. When the windows of a lantern are dirty the
light does not shine out clearly, so if the instrument be poor the soul's
expression is poor, and if Kama be very strong it will rule the brain instead
of being ruled by it.
This is forcibly stated by H. P.
Blavatsky in her article on "Genius."
She says:
« The flame of genius is lit
by no anthropomorphic hand, save that of its own spirit. It is the very nature
of the Spiritual Entity itself, of our Ego, which keeps on weaving new life-woofs
into the web of reincarnation on the loom of time, from the beginnings to the
ends of the great Life-Cycle.
This it is that asserts itself
stronger than in the average man through its personality; so that what we call
the manifestations of genius in a person are only the more or less successful
efforts of that Ego to assert itself on the outward plane of its objective form
— the man of clay — in the matter-of-fact daily life of the latter.
The Egos of a Newton, an Aeschylus,
or a Shakespeare, are the same essence and substance as the Egos of a yokel, an
ignoramus, a fool, or even an idiot; and the self-assertion of their informing
genius depends on the physiological and material construction of the physical
man.
No Ego differs from another Ego,
in it primordial or original essence and nature. That which makes a mortal a
great man and another a vulgar, silly person is, as said, the quality and
make-up of the physical shell or casing, and the adequacy or inadequacy of
brain and body to transmit and give expression to the light of the real inner
man; and this aptness, or inaptness is, in its turn, the result of Karma. Or,
to use another simile, physical man is the musical instrument, and the Ego the
performing artist.
The potentiality of perfect melody
of sound is in the former — the instrument — and no skill of the latter can
awaken a faultless harmony out of a broken or badly made instrument. This
harmony depends on the fidelity of transmission, by word or act, to the objective
plane, of the unspoken divine thought in the very depths of man's subjective or
inner nature. Physical man may — to follow our simile — be a priceless Stradivarius,
or a cheap and cracked fiddle, or again a mediocrity between the two, in the
hands of the Paganini who ensouls them. »
(Revue Lucifer, November 1889)
She makes a distinction between
the true and the artificial genius, one being born of the light of the immortal
Ego, the other from the will-o-the-wisp of the terrestrial or purely human
intellect and the animal soul. She further says that this artificial genius is the
"outcome of culture and of purely intellectual acuteness. It is not the
direct light of the Manasaputra, the Sons of Wisdom, for true genius lit at the
flame of our higher nature, or the Ego, cannot die."
She further says that artificial
genius, which is often confused with the true, is but the outcome of long
studies and training. "Born out of the chaos of terrestrial sensations, of
perceptive and retentive faculties, yet of finite memory, it will ever remain
the slave of its body; and the body, owing to its unreliability and the natural
tendency of matter to confusion, will not fail to lead even the greatest
genius, so-called, back into its own primordial element, which is chaos again,
or evil, on earth."
The teaching is that every true
genius is pure and good, "Behold in every manifestation of genius — when
combined with virtue — in the warrior or the bard, the great painter, artist,
statesman or man of science, who soars above the heads of the vulgar herd, the
undeniable presence of the celestial exile, the divine Ego whose jailer thou
art, Oh man of matter!"
This is the truth, then,
"that genius is not due to blind chance, nor to innate qualities through
hereditary tendencies — though that which is known as atavism may often intensify
these faculties — but to an accumulation of antecedent individual experiences
of the Ego in its preceding life and lives. For though omniscient in its
essence and nature, it still requires experience through its personalities of
the things of earth, earthy, on the objective plane, in order to apply the fruition
of that abstract omniscience to them. And, adds our philosophy — the
cultivation of certain aptitudes throughout a long series of past incarnations
must finally culminate in some one life, in a blooming forth as genius, in one
or another direction."
In the light of this teaching some
things become clear to us, and the first is that, if our efforts at Mental Culture
are to be successful, we must be obedient to the physical laws of health and growth.
A man may have a large brain whose convolutions are deep and complex; indeed,
so far as the mental organs go, he may be a giant, but if the liver and spleen
do their work imperfectly, so that the blood is impure and poisonous, and the
circulation weak, the mental manifestations will be feeble and erratic.
His first duty is to purify the
body and restore the physical organs to healthy action. If the brain be of poor
quality, or if it has not been trained, but allowed (so to speak) to run wild,
the first duty will be one of curbing and guiding, by giving the brain certain
tasks to perform at certain times. Discipline
must first be attended to. To quicken and train any group of mental powers will
have a beneficial effect upon all the faculties and so make it easier to train
any single one of them. Let us not forget that the training of the mind is not cramming
it with facts, but the drawing out of its powers, and this will be largely
accomplished by exercise.
Mental exercise must be
persistent and methodical. As it is impossible to develop our muscles
thoroughly if we carelessly take an hour of exercise today, and then wait a
week or a month before we repeat the exercise, so the development of the mental
faculties depends upon exercise regularly and persistently taken.
Good books are a great help in
many ways, but if we wish to read in order to strengthen and develop our
thinking power we must not choose what is called easy reading, but get a book
by a good author and one full of strong fresh thought. Neither must we read for
speed, but read slowly, concentrate, think closely and intently over what we
read. Of course at first, this will be exhausting, but this practice for half
an hour a day will prove to be a great blessing, as by it one not only acquires
new ideas but also strengthens the thinking faculties.
Nature makes us pay for all we
get, and mental culture can only be bought by hard work. The law of periodicity
is of great importance, for we learn by experience that by taking up the same subject
at the same time each day the mind seems to be ready for it, and the work
becomes much easier, so that what at first was irksome becomes a delight.
A second thing that becomes clear
to us is that the work of mental culture is two fold. While obedience to the
physical laws that govern brain and body is necessary, and definite thinking is
of the greatest importance in Mental Culture, there is another side. The
physical brain is the vehicle used by the Thinker to express himself, for the
source of all thought is the immortal Self, and we only draw out what we already
possess. By exercise and training the brain becomes more fit to receive and
manifest the thought and will of the real man.
The power is there, and it should
fill us with hope and courage to remember that the more perfect we can make the
instrument the greater will be the power manifested. The daily meditation recommended
by Theosophy lifts one out of the turmoil of life, gives serenity and
self-control, and renders the brain sensitive to the touch of the real man.
This means increased energy in mental work and shows us that the spiritual side
of mental culture is as important as the physical. Let us in our efforts at
Mental Culture not neglect the daily meditation, that the mind may receive from
the spiritual planes a current of life and power.
JOHN SCHOFIELD.
(The Theosophical Quarterly, January
1910, vol. 7, p.279-284)
What a information of un-ambiguity and preserveness of precious
ReplyDeletefamiliarity regarding unexpected emotions.