Theos-Talk Archives (June 2000 Message tt00206)

Dear Andrew,

Thanks for your thoughtful reply.

By way of sharing some further thoughts of my own I offer the below.  They
are not offered as contradicting anything you have said, but merely to
extend the exploration.

I agree with you that it is the modifications of the the mind that have to
inhibited in the passage you refer to from Patanjali.  But has you rightly
suggest these are inhibited and are not destroyed, as such.

The way I understand this in general is that at incarnation the Higher Manas
(the reincarnating Ego) emits a Ray which 'enters' into the the lower
vehicles.  It this ray which is the focus around which the material from the
astral and physical 'planes' (the skandhas) is gathered to form the
personality (kama-manas). In fact Manas is the pivot around which both the
higher and lower principles revolve, so to speak.  HPB obviously puts this
much better than I do in the SD, where she writes:

"the two higher principles [atma and buddhi] can have no individuality on
Earth, cannot be man, unless there is (a) the Mind, the Manas-Ego, to
cognize itself, and (b) the terrestrial false personality, or the body of
egotistical desires and personal Will, to cement the whole, as if round a
pivot (which it is, truly), to the physical form of man. It is the Fifth and
the Fourth principles* -- Manas and Kama rupa -- that contain the dual
personality: the real immortal Ego (if it assimilates itself to the two
higher) and the false and transitory personality"
(SD II 241)

The key result of the interplay between this Ray and its vehicles (ie the
astral / physical with their respective senses etc) is the 'personal
consciousness' (kama-manas) which IS that particular personality for the
duration of that incarnation.  Of itself this ray is pure, because it is of
the HIGHER MANAS, which is itself inseparable from the Monad (Atma-Buddhi).
Hence we find in the SD:

"What is human mind in its higher aspect, whence comes it, if it is not a
portion of the essence...of a higher Being: one from a higher and divine
plane?"
(SD II 81)

However this ray gets tainted, polluted, through its association with the
lower vehicles, particularly through its association with Kama, the
principle of desire.  It has to free itself of this pollution before it can
be completely withdrawn, after death, into the HIGHER EGO.  Those aspects of
its 'experience' that are noble, alruistic, pure and generally reflective of
the higher principles and fundamental spiritual laws in nature, it can
'take' into devachan.

The interplay between this 'Ray' and what we might call the 'astral manas',
the 'mind stuff' of the lower manasic 'plane' is what produces the "chitta
vrittis" referred to by Patanajali.  As you have already pointed out, these
are generally referred to as:

1) right knowledge, 2) wrong knowledge, 3) fancy, 4) sleep, 5) memory

As I understand it, all these pertain to the lower Manas alone.  The 'right
knowledge' here is not the RIGHT KNOWLEDGE which arises when Manas aligns
itself to Buddhi. Nor is the "sleep" mentioned  that DREAMLESS SLEEP
associated with higher states of samadhi.  If they were then they would not
need to be inhibited *prior* to Samadhi.

Now, there is nothing in the above that suggest that the mind is destroyed.
The passage from HPB (given below)that you qouted also suggests the mind, as
such, is not destroyed.  For if the Lower Manas is destroyed it cannot then
be withdrawn into the higher Triad.

> "There comes a moment in the highest meditation,
> when the Lower Manas is withdrawn into the
> Triad, which thus becomes the Quaternary, the
> Tetraktys of Pythagoras...This withdrawal of the
> Lower Manas from the Lower Quaternary, and the
> formation of the Tetraktys, is the Turya state;
> it is entered on the Fourth Path." (IG 193)

Perhaps we can understand this a little better if we keep look for some
correlations between the process described in the above passage and the
process that occurs when the Ego goes into devachan, after death.  Each
involves a withdrawal of the lower Manas into the Higher Triad.  The highest
Samadhi is carried out 'consciously' by the few who are able to do so.  The
after death process and union of the lower with the Higher takes place
automatically for the vast majority of us. The former leads to 'dreamless
sleep', the Turya state. The latter leads to a 'spiritual dream like state'
(devachan).

In either process the Mind, as such, is not destroyed but withdrawn and
MERGED into the higher.

That which is destroyed, dis-integrated, in the after death process are
those elements of the personal consciousness that were materially selfish in
one way or another and not 'worthy' of being withdrawn, along with the Ray,
into the Higher Triad.  It is thus the Kama-rupa form, the dregs of the
lower mind, that is destroyed - at least temporarily, for the skandhas will
return and re-form the material tendencies of the new personality in the
next birth.  For the vast majority of us this 'dis-integration' of the lower
principles happens automatically.  On the path of Initiation this may have
to be done consciously.

Is this what is meant when the the VOICE OF THE SILENCE states, "The Mind is
the great Slayer of the Real.  Let the Disciple slay the Slayer." ?

For if we read a few pages further on in THE VOICE the disciple is told,
outright, what it is that must be slain.

"Before the "mystic Power" can make of thee a god, Lanoo, thou must have
gained the faculty to slay thy lunar form at will.  The Self of matter and
the SELF of Spirit can never meet. One of the twain must disappear; there is
no place for both." (p12)

That which is to be slain is not 'the Mind', as such, but the LUNAR FORM,
the "Self of Matter", that personal conciousness built up around the
materialistic desire nature and the delusion of separatness - kama-manas, or
at least its dregs.  It is that Self of Matter which is caught in the web of
illusion - the "Great Heresy" described in THE VOICE as:

"(8)Attavada, the heresy of the belief in Soul or rather the separateness of
Soul or SELF from the ONE UNIVERSAL, Infinite SELF."  (page 74, original
edition)

Our task appears to be to live a life that is based on the spiritual laws of
One-ness and Botherhood to do all that we can to purify the mind of its
attachments to Kama, and to purify our actions so that as much as possible
of our lives is worthy of being 'raised up' to the Higher Spiritual Triad.

...Peter




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