Theos-Talk Archives (December 2002 Message tt00659)

Dec 24 2002,





Dear Friends:





At this point of time in the year H P B's comments may seem to be
appropriate.





Best wishes,





Dallas











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DIALOGUE ON THE MYSTERIES OF THE AFTER LIFE


Article by H. P. Blavatsky

ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE INNER MAN AND ITS DIVISION
M. Of course it is most difficult, and, as you say, "puzzling" to
understand correctly and distinguish between the various aspects,
called by us the "principles" of the real EGO. It is the more so as
there exists a notable difference in the numbering of those principles
by various Eastern schools, though at the bottom there is the same
identical substratum of teaching in all of them.
X. Are you thinking of the Vedantins. They divide our seven
"principles" into five only, I believe?
M. They do; but though I would not presume to dispute the point with a
learned Vedantin, I may yet state as my private opinion that they have
an obvious reason for it. With them it is only that compound spiritual
aggregate which consists of various mental aspects that is called Man
at all, the physical body being in their view something beneath
contempt, and merely an illusion. Nor is the Vedanta the only
philosophy to reckon in this manner. Lao-Tze in his Tao-te-King,
mentions only five principles, because he, like the Vedantins, omits
to include two principles, namely, the spirit (Atma) and the physical
body, the latter of which, moreover, he calls "the cadaver." Then
there is the Taraka Raja Yoga School. Its teaching recognizes only
three "principles" in fact; but then, in reality, their Sthulopadhi,
or the physical body in its jagrata or waking conscious state, their
Sukshmopadhi, the same body in svapna or the dreaming state, and their
Karanopadhi or "causal body," or that which passes from one
incarnation to another, are all dual in their aspects, and thus make
six. 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, as in the esoteric division. l
<http://www.blavatsky.net/blavatsky/arts/#FNT1>
X. Then it seems almost the same as the division made by mystic
Christians: body, soul and spirit?
M. Just the same. We could easily make of the body the vehicle of the
"vital Double"; of the latter the vehicle of Life or Prana; of
Kamarupa or (animal) soul, the vehicle of the higher and the lower
mind, and make of this six principles, crowning the whole with the one
immortal spirit. In Occultism, every qualificative change in the state
of our consciousness goes to man a new aspect, and if it prevails and
becomes part of the living and acting EGO, it must be (and is) given a
special name, to distinguish the man in that particular state from the
man he is when he places himself in another state.
X. It is just that which is so difficult to understand.
M. It seems to me very easy, on the contrary, once that you have
seized the main idea, i.e., that man acts on this, or another plane of
consciousness, in strict accordance with his mental and spiritual
condition. But such is the materialism of the age that the more we
explain, the less people seem capable of understanding what we say.
Divide the terrestrial being called man into three chief aspects, if
you like; but, unless you make of him a pure animal, you cannot do
less. Take his objective body; the feeling principle in him--which is
only a little higher than the instinctual element in the animal--or
the vital elementary soul; and that which places him so immeasurably
beyond and higher than the animal--i.e., his reasoning soul or
"spirit." Well, if we take these three groups or representative
entities, and subdivide them, according to the occult teaching, what
do we get?
First of all Spirit (in the sense of the Absolute, and therefore
indivisible ALL) or Atma. As this can neither be located nor
conditioned in philosophy, being simply that which IS, in Eternity,
and as the ALL 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 that point in metaphysical 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 ABC of the mystery of man,
Occultism calls it the seventh principle, the synthesis of the six,
and gives it for vehicle the Spiritual Soul, Buddhi. Now the latter
conceals a mystery, which is never given to anyone with the exception
of irrevocably pledged chelas, 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" might prove very fatal to men at large and to the possessor
of that faculty in particular, it is carefully guarded. Alone the
adepts, who have been tried and can never be found wanting, have the
key of the mystery fully divulged to them . . . Let us avoid side
issues, however, and hold to 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." If we pass on to the
Human Soul (manas, the mens) everyone will agree that the intelligence
of man is dual to say the least: e.g., the high-minded man can hardly
become low-minded; the very intellectual and spiritual-minded man is
separated by an abyss from the obtuse, dull and material, if not
animal-minded man. Why then should not these men be represented by two
"principles" or two aspects rather? Every man has these two principles
in him, one more active than the other, and in rare cases, one of
these is entirely stunted in its growth; so to say paralysed by the
strength and predominance of the other aspect, during the life of man.
These, then, are what we call the two principles or aspects of Manas,
the higher and the lower; the former, the higher Manas, or the
thinking, conscious EGO gravitating toward the Spiritual Soul
(Buddhi); and the latter, or its instinctual principle attracted to
Kama, the seat of animal desires and passions in man. Thus, we have
four "principles" justified; the last three being (1) the "Double"
which we have agreed to call Protean, or Plastic Soul; the vehicle of
(2) the life principle; and (3) the physical body. Of course no
Physiologist or Biologist will accept these principles, nor can he
make head or tail of them. And this is why, perhaps, none of them
understand to this day either the functions of the spleen, the
physical vehicle of the Protean Double, or those of a certain organ on
the right side of man, the seat of the above mentioned desires, nor
yet does he know anything of the pineal gland, which he describes as a
horny gland with a little sand in it, and which is the very key to the
highest and divinest consciousness in man--his omniscient, spiritual
and all embracing mind. This seemingly useless appendage is the
pendulum which, once the clock-work of the inner man is wound up,
carries the spiritual vision of the EGO to the highest planes of
perception, where the horizon open before it becomes almost infinite.
. . .
X. But the scientific materialists assert that after the death of man
nothing remains; that the human body simply disintegrates into its
component elements, and that what we call soul is merely a temporary
self-consciousness produced as a by-product of organic action, which
will evaporate like steam. Is not theirs a strange state of mind?
M. Not strange at all, that I see. If they say that self-consciousness
ceases with the body, then in their case they simply utter an
unconscious prophecy. For once that they are firmly convinced of what
they assert, no conscious after-life is possible for them.
X. But if human self-consciousness survives death as a rule, why
should there be exceptions?
M. In the fundamental laws of the spiritual world which are immutable,
no exception is possible. But there are rules for those who see, and
rules for those who prefer to remain blind.
X. Quite so, I understand. It is an aberration of a blind man, who
denies the existence of the sun because he does not see it. But after
death his spiritual eyes will certainly compel him to see?
M. They will not compel him, nor will he see anything. Having
persistently denied an after-life during this life, he will be unable
to sense it. His spiritual senses having been stunted, they cannot
develop after death, and he will remain blind. By insisting that he
must see it, you evidently mean one thing and I another. You speak of
the spirit from the Spirit, or the flame from the Flame--of Atma in
short--and you confuse it with the human soul--Manas. . . . You do not
understand me, let me try to make it clear. The whole gist of your
question is to know whether, in the case of a downright materialist,
the complete loss of self-consciousness and self-perception after
death is possible? Isn't it so? I say: It is possible. Because,
believing firmly in our Esoteric Doctrine, which refers to the
Post-mortem period, or the interval between two lives or births as
merely a transitory state, I say:--Whether that interval between two
acts of the illusionary drama of life lasts one year or a million,
that post-mortem state may, without any breach of the fundamental law,
prove to be just the same state as that of a man who is in a dead
swoon.
X. But since you have just said that the fundamental laws of the
after-death state admit of no exceptions, how can this be?
M. Nor do I say now that they admit of exceptions. But the spiritual
law of continuity applies only to things which are truly real. To one
who has read and understood Mundakya Upanishad and Vedanta-Sara all
this becomes very clear. I will say more: it is sufficient to
understand what we mean by Buddhi and the duality of Manas to have a
very clear perception why the materialist may not have a
self-conscious survival after death: because Manas, in its lower
aspect, is the seat of the terrestrial mind, and, therefore, can give
only that perception of the Universe which is based on the evidence of
that mind, and not on our spiritual vision. It is said in our Esoteric
school that between Buddhi and Manas, or Iswara and Pragna, 2
<http://www.blavatsky.net/blavatsky/arts/#FNT2> there is in reality
no more difference than between a forest and its trees, a lake and its
waters, just as Mundakya teaches. One or hundreds of trees dead from
loss of vitality, or uprooted, are yet incapable of preventing the
forest from being still a forest. The destruction or post-mortem death
of one personality dropped out of the long series, will not cause the
smallest change in the Spiritual divine Ego, and it will ever remain
the same EGO. Only, instead of experiencing Devachan it will have to
immediately reincarnate.
X. But as I understand it, Ego-Buddhi represents in this simile the
forest and the personal minds the trees. And if Buddhi is immortal,
how can that which is similar to it, i.e., Manas-taijasi, 3
<http://www.blavatsky.net/blavatsky/arts/#FNT3> lose entirely its
consciousness till the day of its new incarnation? I cannot understand
it.
M. You cannot, because you will mix up an abstract representation of
the whole with its casual changes of form; and because you confuse
Manas-taijasi, the Buddhi-lit human soul, with the latter, animalized.
Remember that if it can be said of Buddhi that it is unconditionally
immortal, the same cannot be said of Manas, still less of taijasi,
which is an attribute. No post-mortem consciousness or Manas-Taijasi,
can exist apart from Buddhi, the divine soul, because the first
(Manas) is, in its lower aspect, a qualificative attribute of the
terrestrial personality, and the second (taijasi) is identical with
the first, and that it is the same Manas only with the light of Buddhi
reflected on it. In its turn, Buddhi would remain only an impersonal
spirit without this element which it borrows from the human soul,
which conditions and makes of it, in this illusive Universe, as it
were something separate from the universal soul for the whole period
of the cycle of incarnation. Say rather that Buddhi-Manas can neither
die nor lose its compound self-consciousness in Eternity, nor the
recollection of its previous incarnations in which the two--i.e., the
spiritual and the human soul, had been closely linked together. But it
is not so in the case of a materialist, whose human soul not only
receives nothing from the divine soul, but even refuses to recognize
its existence. You can hardly apply this axiom to the attributes and
qualifications of the human soul, for it would be like saying that
because your divine soul is immortal, therefore the bloom on your
cheek must also be immortal; whereas this bloom, like taijasi, or
spiritual radiance, is simply a transitory phenomenon.
X. Do I understand you to say that we must not mix in our minds the
noumenon with the phenomenon, the cause with its effect?
M. I do say so, and repeat that, limited to Manas or the human soul
alone, the radiance of Taijasi itself becomes a mere question of time;
because both immortality and consciousness after death become for the
terrestrial personality of man simply conditioned attributes, as they
depend entirely on conditions and beliefs created by the human soul
itself during the life of its body. Karma acts incessantly; we reap in
our after-life only the fruit of that which we have ourselves sown, or
rather created, in our terrestrial existence.
X. But if my Ego can, after the destruction of my body, become plunged
in a state of entire unconsciousness, then where can be the punishment
for the sins of my past life?
M. Our philosophy teaches that Karmic punishment reaches the Ego only
in the next incarnation. After death it receives only the reward for
the unmerited sufferings endured during its just past existence. 4
<http://www.blavatsky.net/blavatsky/arts/#FNT4> The whole punishment
after death, even for the materialist, consists therefore in the
absence of any reward and the utter loss of the consciousness of one's
bliss and rest. Karma--is the child of the terrestrial Ego, the fruit
of the actions of the tree which is the objective personality visible
to all, as much as the fruit of all the thoughts and even motives of
the spiritual "I"; but Karma is also the tender mother, who heals the
wounds inflicted by her during the preceding life, before she will
begin to torture this Ego by inflicting upon him new ones. If it may
be said that there is not a mental or physical suffering in the life
of a mortal, which is not the fruit and consequence of some sin in
this, or a preceding existence, on the other hand, since he does not
preserve the slightest recollection of it in his actual life, and
feels himself not deserving of such punishment, but believes sincerely
he suffers for no guilt of his own, this alone is quite sufficient to
entitle the human soul to the fullest consolation, rest and bliss in
his post-mortem existence. Death comes to our spiritual selves ever as
a deliverer and friend. For the materialist, who, notwithstanding his
materialism, was not a bad man, the interval between the two lives
will be like the unbroken and placid sleep of a child; either entirely
dreamless, or with pictures of which he will have no definite
perception. For the believer it will be a dream as vivid as life and
full of realistic bliss and visions. As for the bad and cruel man,
whether materialist or otherwise, he will be immediately reborn and
suffer his hell on earth. To enter Avitchi is an exceptional and rare
occurrence.
X. As far as I remember, the periodical incarnations of Sutratma 5
<http://www.blavatsky.net/blavatsky/arts/#FNT5> are likened in some
Upanishad to the life of a mortal which oscillates periodically
between sleep and waking. This does not seem to me very clear, and I
will tell you why. For the man who awakes, another day commences, but
that man is the same in soul and body as he was the day before;
whereas at every new incarnation a full change takes place not only in
his external envelope, sex and personality, but even in his mental and
psychic capacities. Thus the simile does not seem to me quite correct.
The man who arises from sleep remembers quite clearly what he has done
yesterday, the day before, and even months and years ago. But none of
us has the slightest recollection of a preceding life or any fact or
event concerning it. . . . I may forget in the morning what I have
dreamed during the night, still I know that I have slept and have the
certainty that I lived during sleep; but what recollection have I of
my past incarnation? How do you reconcile this?
M. Yet some people do recollect their past incarnations. This is what
the Arhats call Samma-Sambuddha--or the knowledge of the whole series
of one's past incarnations.
X. But we ordinary mortals who have not reached Samma-Sambuddha, how
can we be expected to realize this simile?
M. By studying it and trying to understand more correctly the
characteristics of the three states of sleep. Sleep is a general and
immutable law for man as for beast, but there are different kinds of
sleep and still more different dreams and visions.
X. Just so. But this takes us from our subject. Let us return to the
materialist who, while not denying dreams, which he could hardly do,
yet denies immortality in general and the survival of his own
individuality especially.
M. And the materialist is right for once, at least; since for one who
has no inner perception and faith, there is no immortality possible.
In order to live in the world to come a conscious life, one has to
believe first of all in that life during one's terrestrial existence.
On these two aphorisms of the Secret Science all the philosophy about
the post-mortem consciousness and the immortality of the soul is
built. The Ego receives always according to its deserts. After the
dissolution of the body, there commences for it either a period of
full clear consciousness, a state of chaotic dreams, or an utterly
dreamless sleep indistinguishable from annihilation; and these are the
three states of consciousness. Our physiologists find the cause of
dreams and visions in an unconscious preparation for them during the
waking hours; why cannot the same be admitted for the post-mortem
dreams? I repeat it, death is sleep. After death begins, before the
spiritual eyes of the soul, a performance according to a programme
learnt and very often composed unconsciously by ourselves; the
practical carrying out of correct beliefs or of illusions which have
been created by ourselves. A Methodist, will be Methodist, a
Mussulman, a Mussulman, of course, just for a time--in a perfect
fool's paradise of each man's creation and making These are the
post-mortem fruits of the tree of life. Naturally, our belief or
unbelief in the fact of conscious immortality is unable to influence
the unconditioned reality of the fact itself, once that it exists; but
the belief or unbelief in that immortality, as the continuation or
annihilation of separate entities, cannot fail to give colour to that
fact in its application to each of these entities. Now do you begin to
understand it?
X. I think I do. The materialist, disbelieving in everything that
cannot be proven to him by his five senses or by scientific reasoning,
and rejecting every spiritual manifestation, accepts life as the only
conscious existence. Therefore, according to their beliefs so will it
be unto them. They will lose their personal Ego, and will plunge into
a dreamless sleep until a new awakening. Is it so?
M. Almost so. Remember the universal esoteric teaching of the two
kinds of conscious existence: the terrestrial and the spiritual. The
latter must be considered real from the very fact that it is the
region of the eternal, changeless, immortal cause of all; whereas the
incarnating Ego dresses itself up in new garments entirely different
from those of its previous incarnations, and in which all except its
spiritual prototype is doomed to a change so radical as to leave no
trace behind.
X. Stop! . . . Can the consciousness of my terrestrial Egos perish not
only for a time, like the consciousness of the materialist, but in any
case so entirely as to leave no trace behind?
M. According to the teaching, it must so perish and in its fulness,
all except that principle which, having united itself with the Monad,
has thereby become a purely spiritual and indestructible essence, one
with it in the Eternity. But in the case of an out and out
materialist, in whose personal "I" no Buddhi has ever reflected
itself, how can the latter carry away into the infinitudes one
particle of that terrestrial personality? Your spiritual "I" is
immortal; but from your present Self it can carry away into after life
but that which has become worthy of immortality, namely, the aroma
alone of the flower that has been mown by death.
X. Well, and the flower, the terrestrial "I"?
M. The flower, as all past and future flowers which blossomed and
died, and will blossom again on the mother bough, the Sutratma, all
children of one root of Buddhi, will return to dust. Your present "I,"
as you yourself know, is not the body now sitting before me, nor yet
is it what I would call Manas-Sutratma--but Sutratma Buddhi.
X. But this does not explain to me at all, why you call life after
death immortal, infinite, and real, and the terrestrial life a simple
phantom or illusion; since even that post-mortem life has limits,
however much wider they may be than those of terrestrial life.
M. No doubt. The spiritual Ego of man moves in Eternity like a
pendulum between the hours of life and death. But if these hours
marking the periods of terrestrial and spiritual life are limited in
their duration, and if the very number of such stages in Eternity
between sleep and awakening, illusion and reality, has its beginning
and its end, on the other hand the spiritual "Pilgrim" is eternal.
Therefore are the hours of his post-mortem life--when, disembodied he
stands face to face with truth and not the mirages of his transitory
earthly existences during the period of that pilgrimage which we call
"the cycle of rebirths"--the only reality in our conception. Such
intervals, their limitation not withstanding, do not prevent the Ego,
while ever perfecting itself, to be following undeviatingly, though
gradually and slowly, the path to its last transformation, when that
Ego having reached its goal becomes the divine ALL. These intervals
and stages help towards this final result instead of hindering it; and
without such limited intervals the divine Ego could never reach its
ultimate goal. This Ego is the actor, and its numerous and various
incarnations the parts it plays. Shall you call these parts with their
costumes the individuality of the actor himself? Like that actor, the
Ego is forced to play during the Cycle of Necessity up to the very
threshold of Para-nirvana, many parts such as may be unpleasant to it.
But as the bee collects its honey from every flower, leaving the rest
as food for the earthly worms, so does our spiritual individuality,
whether we call it Sutratma or Ego. It collects from every terrestrial
personality into which Karma forces it to incarnate, the nectar alone
of the spiritual qualities and self-consciousness, and uniting all
these into one whole it emerges from its chrysalis as the glorified
Dhyan Chohan. So much the worse for those terrestrial personalities
from which it could collect nothing. Such personalities cannot
assuredly outlive consciously their terrestrial existence.
X. Thus then it seems, that for the terrestrial personality,
immortality is still conditional. Is then immortality itself not
unconditional?
M. Not at all. But it cannot touch the non-existent. For all that
which exists as SAT, ever aspiring to SAT, immortality and Eternity
are absolute. Matter is the opposite pole of spirit and yet the two
are one. The essence of all this, i.e., Spirit, Force and Matter, or
the three in one, is as endless as it is beginningless; but the form
acquired by this triple unity during its incarnations, the
externality, is certainly only the illusion of our personal
conceptions. Therefore do we call the after-life alone a reality,
while relegating the terrestrial life, its terrestrial personality
included, to the phantom realm of illusion.
X. But why in such a case not call sleep the reality, and waking the
illusion, instead of the reverse?
M. Because we use an expression made to facilitate the grasping of the
subject, and from the standpoint of terrestrial conceptions it is a
very correct one.
X. Nevertheless, I cannot understand. If the life to come is based on
justice and the merited retribution for all our terrestrial suffering,
how, in the case of materialists many of whom are ideally honest and
charitable men, should there remain of their personality nothing but
the refuse of a faded flower!
M. No one ever said such a thing. No materialist, if a good man,
however unbelieving, can die forever in the fulness of his spiritual
individuality. What was said is, that the consciousness of one life
can disappear either fully or partially; in the case of a thorough
materialist, no vestige of that personality which disbelieved remains
in the series of lives.
X. But is this not annihilation to the Ego?
M. Certainly not. One can sleep a dead sleep during a long railway
journey, miss one or several stations without the slightest
recollection or consciousness of it, awake at another station and
continue the journey recollecting other halting places, till the end
of that journey, when the goal is reached. Three kinds of sleep were
mentioned to you: the dreamless, the chaotic, and the one so real,
that to the sleeping man his dreams become full realities. If you
believe in the latter why can't you believe in the former? According
to what one has believed in and expected after death, such is the
state one will have. He who expected no life to come will have an
absolute blank amounting to annihilation in the interval between the
two rebirths. This is just the carrying out of the programme we spoke
of, and which is created by the materialist himself. But there are
various kinds of materialists, as you say. A selfish wicked Egoist,
one who never shed a tear for anyone but himself, thus adding entire
indifference the whole world to his unbelief, must drop at the
threshold of death his personality forever. This personality having no
tendrils of sympathy for the world around, and hence nothing to hook
on to the string of the Sutratma, every connection between the two is
broken with last breath. There being no Devachan for such a
materialists, the Sutratma will re-incarnate almost immediately. But
those materialists who erred in nothing but their disbelief, will
oversleep but one station. Moreover, the time will come when the
ex-material perceive himself in the Eternity and perhaps repent that
he lost even one day, or station, from the life eternal.
X. Still would it not be more correct to say that death is birth new
Life or a return once more to the threshold of eternity?
M. You may if you like. Only remember that births differ, and that
there are births of "still-born" beings, which are failures. More-over
with your fixed Western ideas about material life, the words "living"
and "being" are quite inapplicable to the pure subjective post-mortem
existence. It is just because of such ideas--a few philosophers who
are not read by the many and who lives are too confused to present a
distinct picture of it--that all your conceptions of life and death
have finally become so narrow. On the one hand, they have led to crass
materialism, and on the to the still more material conception of the
other life which ritualists have formulated in their Summer-land.
There the souls of men eat, drink and marry, and live in a Paradise
quite as sensual as that of Mohammed, but even less philosophical. Nor
are average conceptions of the uneducated Christians any better, e
still more material, if possible. What between truncated Angels, brass
trumpets, golden harps, streets in paradisiacal cities with jewels,
and hell-fires, it seems like a scene at a Christmas pantomime. It is
because of these narrow conceptions that you such difficulty in
understanding. And, it is also just because the life of the
disembodied soul, while possessing all the vividness of reality, as in
certain dreams, is devoid of every grossly objective form of
terrestrial life, that the Eastern philosophers have compared it with
visions during sleep.
Lucifer, January, 1889
_____


Footnotes

1 See "Secret Doctrine" for a clearer explanation.

2 Iswara is the collective consciousness of the manifested deity,
Brahmâ, i.e., the collective consciousness of the Host of Dhyan
Chohans; and Pragna is their individual wisdom.

3 Taijasi means the radiant in consequence of the union with Buddhi of
Manas, the human, illuminated by the radiance of the divine soul.
Therefore Manas-taijasi may be described as radiant mind; the human
reason lit by the light of the spirit; and Buddhi-Manas is the
representation of the divine plus the human intellect and
self-consciousness.

4 Some Theosophists have taken exception to this phrase, but the words
are those of the Masters, and the meaning attached to the word
"unmerited" is that given above. In the T.P.S. pamphlet No. 6, a
phrase, criticised subsequently in Lucifer was used, which was
intended to convey the same idea. In form however it was awkward and
open to the criticism directed against it; but the essential idea was
that men often suffer from the effects of the actions done by others,
effects which thus do not strictly belong to their own Karma, but to
that of other people--and for these sufferings they of course deserve
compensation. If it is true to say that nothing that happens to us can
be anything else than Karma--or the direct or indirect effect of a
cause--it would be a great error to think that every evil or good
which befalls us is due only to our personal Karma. (Vide further on.)

5 Our immortal and reincarnating principle in conjunction with the
Manasic recollections of the preceding lives is called Sutratma, which
means literally the Thread-Soul; because like the pearls on a thread
so is the long series of human lives strung together on that one
thread. Manas must become taijasi, the radiant, before it can hang on
the Sutratma as a pearl on its thread, and so have full and absolute
perception of itself in the Eternity. As said before, too close
association with the terrestrial mind of the human soul alone causes
the radiance to be entirely lost.

======================

Dec 24 2002