Theos-Talk Archives (December 2001 Message tt00031)

Subject:Jerry's Response To Daniel: Concerning HPB's statements about 
Atman 

Jerry you wrote in part:

"You CANNOT disprove my premise by simply throwing around more 
quotes. I can interpret every one of your quotes to 'prove' that atma 
is maya and changing and so on. The ONLY way you or Dallas or Peter 
can 'prove' me wrong is to submit an overview IN YOUR OWN WORDS that 
logically shows atma is permanent (which is, I submit, purely your 
own interpretation). I have challenged anyone at all to do this, and 
so far no one has done so. Your avoidance of my premise, and your 
continual throwing around of yet more quotes demonstrates to me a 
frantic attempt to ... what?"

Jerry, I think it is important for interested persons to actually 
read and study what Blavatsky wrote. That is why I tried to give 
some of HPB's own words about "atman" and "monad". Whether your view 
of what HPB writes is correct or not is up for each reader to decide 
if they think it is important to do so. But first one must ponder on 
what HPB writes instead of reading her through "your 
interpretation." 

I am not throwing around quotes. I'm just giving quotes so 
interested readers can easily read and compare them and ponder on 
them and then compare them with what you are writing. It's called 
COMPARISON. Hopefully you're not afraid of that, are you? :)

BELOW are the quotes again from HPB's pen.

Daniel

Subject: What Blavatsky writes on the subject of "Atman"

We say that the Spirit (the "Father in secret" of Jesus), or Atman, 
is no individual property of any man, but is the Divine essence which 
has no body, no form, which is imponderable, invisible and 
indivisible, that which does not exist and yet is, as the Buddhists 
say of Nirvana. It only overshadows the mortal; that which enters 
into him and pervades the whole body being only its omnipresent rays, 
or light, radiated through Buddhi, its vehicle and direct emanation. 
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/key/key-7.htm

Add to this Atma, the impersonal divine principle or the immortal 
element in Man, undistinguished from the Universal Spirit, and you 
have the same seven again. 
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/key/key-7.htm

First of all, Spirit (in the sense of the Absolute, and therefore, 
indivisible ALL), or Atma. As this can neither be located nor limited 
in philosophy, being simply that which is in Eternity, and which 
cannot be absent from even the tiniest geometrical or mathematical 
point of the universe of matter or substance, it ought not to be 
called, in truth, a "human" principle at all. Rather, and at best, it 
is in Metaphysics, that point in space which the human Monad and its 
vehicle man occupy for the period of every life. Now that point is as 
imaginary as man himself, and in reality is an illusion, a maya; but 
then for ourselves, as for other personal Egos, we are a reality 
during that fit of illusion called life, and we have to take 
ourselves into account, in our own fancy at any rate, if no one else 
does. To make it more conceivable to the human intellect, when first 
attempting the study of Occultism, and to solve the A B C of the 
mystery of man, Occultism calls this seventh principle the synthesis 
of the sixth, and gives it for vehicle the Spiritual Soul, Buddhi. 
Now the latter conceals a mystery, which is never given to any one, 
with the exception of irrevocably pledged chelas, or those, at any 
rate, who can be safely trusted. Of course, there would be less 
confusion, could it only be told; but, as this is directly concerned 
with the power of projecting one's double consciously and at will, 
and as this gift, like the "ring of Gyges," would prove very fatal to 
man at large and to the possessor of that faculty in particular, it 
is carefully guarded. But let us proceed with the "principles." This 
divine soul, or Buddhi, then, is the vehicle of the Spirit. In 
conjunction, these two are one, impersonal and without any attributes 
(on this plane, of course), and make two spiritual "principles
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/key/key-7.htm

Atma // Spirit // One with the Absolute, as its radiation
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/key/key-6.htm


We include Atma among the human "principles" in order not to create 
additional confusion. In reality it is no "human" but the universal 
absolute principle of which Buddhi, the Soul-Spirit, is the carrier. 
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/key/key-6.htm

This "Higher Self" is ATMA, and of course it is "non-materializable," 
as Mr. Sinnett says. Even more, it can never be "objective" under any 
circumstances, even to the highest spiritual perception. For Atman or 
the "Higher Self" is really Brahma, the ABSOLUTE, and 
indistinguishable from it. In hours of Samadhi, the higher spiritual 
consciousness of the Initiate is entirely absorbed in the ONE 
essence, which is Atman, and therefore, being one with the whole, 
there can be nothing objective for it. 
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/key/key-9.htm

THE HIGHER SELF is Atma the inseparable ray of the Universal and ONE 
SELF. It is the God above, more than within, us. Happy the man who 
succeeds in saturating his inner Ego with it! 
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/key/key-9.htm

Atma, the "Higher Self," is neither your Spirit nor mine, but like 
sunlight shines on all. It is the universally diffused "divine 
principle," and is inseparable from its one and absolute Meta-Spirit, 
as the sunbeam is inseparable from sunlight. 
Buddhi (the spiritual soul) is only its vehicle. Neither each 
separately, nor the two collectively, are of any more use to the body 
of man, than sunlight and its beams are for a mass of granite buried 
in the earth, unless the divine Duad is assimilated by, and reflected 
in, some consciousness. Neither Atma nor Buddhi are ever reached by 
Karma, because the former is the highest aspect of Karma, its working 
agent of ITSELF in one aspect, and the other is unconscious on this 
plane. 
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/key/key-8.htm

The student must not confuse this Spiritual Ego with the "HIGHER 
SELF" which is Atma, the God within us, and inseparable from the 
Universal Spirit. 
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/key/key-8.htm

Atman, or Atma (Sans.) The Universal Spirit, the divine monad, "the 
seventh Principle," so called, in the exoteric "septenary" 
classification of man. The Supreme Soul. 
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/key/key-glos.htm

Atma neither progresses, forgets, nor remembers. It does not belong 
to this plane: it is but the ray of light eternal which shines upon 
and through the darkness of matter -- when the latter is willing.
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd1-1-12.htm

Its Primary, the Spirit (Atman) is one, of course, with Paramatma 
(the one Universal Spirit), but the vehicle (Vahan) it is enshrined 
in, the Buddhi, is part and parcel of that Dhyan-Chohanic Essence; 
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd1-1-12.htm

The monad -- a truly "indivisible thing," as defined by Good, who did 
not give it the sense we now do -- is here rendered as the Atma in 
conjunction with Buddhi and the higher Manas. This trinity is one and 
eternal, the latter being absorbed in the former at the termination 
of all conditioned and illusive life. 
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd1-3-11.htm

Atma alone is the one real and eternal substratum of all -- the 
essence and absolute knowledge -- the Kshetragna.** It is called in 
the Esoteric philosophy "the One Witness," 
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd1-3-11.htm

Atma (our seventh principle) being identical with the universal 
Spirit, and man being one with it in his essence, what is then the 
Monad proper? It is that homogeneous spark which radiates in millions 
of rays from the primeval "Seven;" -- of which seven further on. It 
is the EMANATING spark from the UNCREATED Ray -- a mystery. In the 
esoteric, and even exoteric Buddhism of the North, Adi Buddha (Chogi 
dangpoi sangye), the One unknown, without beginning or end, identical 
with Parabrahm and Ain-Soph, emits a bright ray from its darkness. 
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd1-3-11.htm

"Oh, wise man, remove the conception that not-Spirit is Spirit," says 
Sankaracharya. Atma is not-Spirit in its final Parabrahmic state, 
Iswara or Logos is Spirit; or, as Occultism explains, it is a 
compound unity of manifested living Spirits, the parent-source and 
nursery of all the mundane and terrestrial monads, plus their divine 
reflection, which emanate from, and return into, the Logos, each in 
the culmination of its time. There are seven chief groups of such 
Dhyan Chohans, which groups will be found and recognised in every 
religion, for they are the primeval SEVEN Rays. Humanity, occultism 
teaches us, is divided into seven distinct groups and their sub-
divisions, mental, spiritual, and physical.* The monad, then, viewed 
as ONE, is above the seventh principle (in Kosmos and man), and as a 
triad, it is the direct radiant progeny of the said compound UNIT, 
not the breath (and special creation out of nihil) of "God," as that 
unit is called; for such an idea is quite unphilosophical, and 
degrades Deity, dragging it down to a finite, attributive condition. 
As well expressed by the translator of the "Crest-Jewel of Wisdom" -- 
though Iswara is "God" "unchanged in the profoundest depths of 
pralayas and in the intensest activity of the manvantaras" . . ., 
still "beyond (him) is 'ATMA,' round whose pavilion is the darkness 
of eternal MAYA."
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd1-3-11.htm

It is at this point that the Cosmic Monad (Buddhi) will be wedded to 
and become the vehicle of the Atmic Ray, i.e., it (Buddhi) will 
awaken to an apperception of it (Atman); and thus enter on the first 
step of a new septenary ladder of evolution, which will lead it 
eventually to the tenth (counting from the lowest upwards) of the 
Sephirothal tree, the Crown. 
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd1-1-09.htm

Thus it may be wrong on strictly metaphysical lines to call Atma-
Buddhi a MONAD, since in the materialistic view it is dual and 
therefore compound. But as Matter is Spirit, and vice versa; and 
since the Universe and the Deity which informs it are unthinkable 
apart from each other; so in the case of Atma-Buddhi. The latter 
being the vehicle of the former, Buddhi stands in the same relation 
to Atma, as Adam-Kadmon, the Kabalistic Logos, does to En-Soph, or 
Mulaprakriti to Parabrahm. 
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd1-1-09.htm

It now becomes plain that there exists in Nature a triple 
evolutionary scheme, for the formation of the three periodical 
Upadhis; or rather three separate schemes of evolution, which in our 
system are inextricably interwoven and interblended at every point. 
These are the Monadic (or spiritual), the intellectual, and the 
physical evolutions. These three are the finite aspects or the 
reflections on the field of Cosmic Illusion of ATMA, the seventh, the 
ONE REALITY.
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd1-1-09.htm

The Sixth principle in Man (Buddhi, the Divine Soul) though a mere 
breath, in our conceptions, is still something material when compared 
with divine "Spirit" (Atma) of which it is the carrier or vehicle. 
Fohat, in his capacity of DIVINE LOVE (Eros), the electric Power of 
affinity and sympathy, is shown allegorically as trying to bring the 
pure Spirit, the Ray inseparable from the ONE absolute, into union 
with the Soul, the two constituting in Man the MONAD, and in Nature 
the first link between the ever unconditioned and the manifested. 
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd1-1-06.htm

Parabraham is not this or that, it is not even consciousness, as it 
cannot be related to matter or anything conditioned. It is not Ego 
nor is it Non-ego, not even Atma, but verily the one source of all 
manifestations and modes of existence.
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd1-1-06.htm

on the psychic and spiritual plane, it is equally true that the Atman 
alone warms the inner man; i.e., it enlightens it with the ray of 
divine life and alone is able to impart to the inner man, or the 
reincarnating Ego, its immortality. 
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd2-1-06.htm

Spirit per se is an unconscious negative ABSTRACTION. Its purity is 
inherent, not acquired by merit; hence, as already shown, to become 
the highest Dhyan Chohan it is necessary for each Ego to attain to 
full self-consciousness as a human, i.e., conscious Being, which is 
synthesized for us in Man. The Jewish Kabalists arguing that no 
Spirit could belong to the divine hierarchy unless Ruach (Spirit) was 
united to Nephesh (living Soul), only repeat the Eastern Esoteric 
teaching. "A Dhyani has to be an Atma-Buddhi; once the Buddhi-Manas 
breaks loose from its immortal Atma of which it (Buddhi) is the 
vehicle, Atman passes into NON-BEING, which is absolute Being." This 
means that the purely Nirvanic state is a passage of Spirit back to 
the ideal abstraction of Be-ness which has no relation to the plane 
on which our Universe is accomplishing its cycle. 
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd1-1-10.htm

One of your letters begins with a quotation from one of my 
own . . . "Remember that there is within man no abiding principle" -- 
which sentence I find followed by a remark of yours "How about the 
sixth and seventh principles?" To this I answer, neither Atma nor 
Buddhi ever were within man, -- a little metaphysical axiom that you 
can study with advantage in Plutarch and Anaxagoras. The latter made 
his -- nous autochrates -- the spirit self-potent, the nous that 
alone recognised noumena while the former taught on the authority of 
Plato and Pythagoras that the semomnius or this nous always remained 
without the body; that it floated and overshadowed so to say the 
extreme part of the man's head, it is only the vulgar who think it is 
within them . . . Says Buddha "you have to get rid entirely of all 
the subjects of impermanence composing the body that your body should 
become permanent. The permanent never merges with the impermanent 
although the two are one. But it is only when all outward appearances 
are gone that there is left that one principle of life which exists 
independently of all external phenomena. It is the fire that burns in 
the eternal light, when the fuel is expended and the flame is 
extinguished; for that fire is neither in the flame nor in the fuel, 
nor yet inside either of the two but above beneath and everywhere -- 
(Parinirvana Sutra kwnen XXXIX). 
KH in the Mahatma Letters 
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/mahatma/ml-127.htm 

Compiled by Daniel H. Caldwell
BLAVATSKY ARCHIVES
http://hpb.cc