THEOSOPHY AND MENTAL CULTURE BY JOHN SCHOFIELD

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)