Theos-Talk Archives (April 2003 Message tt00108)

Tuesday, April 22, 2003

Re 7 "Principles" in Man as taught in Greece

Dear Kathy,

Searching, I found in the KEY TO THEOSOPHY (HPB) some references
to the 7 principles as know to the Greeks.

Here are the pages -- also one can find them in The SECRET
DOCTRINE

Bet wishes,

Dallas

--------------------------------

7 PRINCIPLES IN GREECE
and the WISDOM RELIGION



>From the KEY TO THEOSOPHY (HPB) p. 93 - 99


THE GREEK TEACHINGS

THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN SOUL AND SPIRIT

ENQUIRER. Do you really teach, as you are accused of doing by
some Spiritualists and French Spiritists, the annihilation of
every personality?

THEOSOPHIST. We do not. But as this question of the duality ?the
individuality of the Divine Ego, and the personality of the human
animal ?involves that of the possibility of the real immortal Ego
appearing in Seance rooms as a "materialised spirit," which we
deny as already explained, our opponents have started the
nonsensical charge.

* Paul calls Plato's Nous "Spirit"; but as this spirit is
"substance," then, of course, Buddhi and not Atma is meant, as
the latter cannot philosophically be called "substance" under any
circumstance. 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.


ENQUIRER. You have just spoken of psuche (personality) running
towards its entire annihilation if it attaches itself to Anoia
(Kama-folly). What did Plato, and do you mean by this?

THEOSOPHIST. The entire annihilation of the personal
consciousness, as an exceptional and rare case, I think. The
general and almost invariable rule is the merging of the personal
into the individual or immortal consciousness of the Ego, a
transformation or a divine transfiguration, and the entire
annihilation only of the lower quaternary . Would you expect the
man of flesh, or the temporary personality, his shadow, the
"astral," his animal instincts and even physical life, to survive
with the "spiritual EGO" and become sempiternal? Naturally all
this ceases to exist, either at, or soon after corporeal death.
It becomes in time entirely disintegrated and disappears from
view, being annihilated as a whole.


ENQUIRER. Then you also reject resurrection in the flesh?

THEOSOPHIST. Most decidedly we do! Why should we, who believe in
the archaic esoteric philosophy of the Ancients, accept the
unphilosophical speculations of the later Christian theology,
borrowed from the Egyptian and Greek exoteric Systems of the
Gnostics?


ENQUIRER. The Egyptians revered Nature-Spirits, and deified even
onions: your Hindus are idolaters, to this day; the Zoroastrians
worshipped, and do still worship, the Sun; and the best Greek
philosophers were either dreamers or materialists -- witness
Plato and Democritus. How can you compare!

THEOSOPHIST. It may be so in your modern Christian and even
Scientific catechism; it is not so for unbiased minds. The
Egyptians revered the "One-Only-One," as Nout; and it is from
this word that Anaxagoras got his denomination Nous, or as he
calls it, Nous autokrates, "the Mind or Spirit Self-potent," the
archetes kinedeos, the leading motor, or primum-mobile of all.
With him the Nous was God, and the logos was man, his emanation.

The Nous is the spirit (whether in Kosmos or in man), and the
logos, whether Universe or astral body, the emanation of the
former, the physical body being merely the animal.

Our external powers perceive phenomena; our Nous alone is able to
recognise their noumena.

It is the logos alone, or the noumenon, that survives, because
it is immortal in its very nature and essence, and the logos in
man is the Eternal Ego, that which reincarnates and lasts for
ever. But how can the evanescent or external shadow, the
temporary clothing of that divine Emanation which returns to the
source whence it proceeded, be that which is raised in
incorruptibility?


ENQUIRER. Still you can hardly escape the charge of having
invented a new division of man's spiritual and psychic
constituents; for no philosopher speaks of them, though you
believe that Plato does.

THEOSOPHIST. And I support the view. Besides Plato, there is
Pythagoras, who also followed the same idea.* [ F Note: Plato
and Pythagoras," says Plutarch, "distribute the soul into two
parts, the rational (noetic) and irrational (agnoia); that that
part of the soul of man which is rational is eternal; for though
it be not God, yet it is the product of an eternal deity, but
that part of the soul which is divested of reason (agnoia) dies."
The modern term Agnostic comes from Agnosis, a cognate word. We
wonder why Mr. Huxley, the author of the word, should have
connected his great intellect with "the soul divested of reason"
which dies? Is it the exaggerated humility of the modern
materialist?]
96

He described the Soul as a self-moving Unit (Monad) composed of
three elements, the Nous (Spirit), the phren (lower mind), and
the thumos (life, breath or the Nephesh of the Kabalists) which
three correspond to our "Atma-Buddhi," (higher Spirit-Soul), to
Manas (the EGO), and to Kama-rupa in conjunction with the lower
reflection of Manas.

That which the Ancient Greek philosophers termed Soul, in
general, we call Spirit, or Spiritual Soul, BUDDHI, as the
vehicle of ATMA (the Agathon, or Plato's Supreme Deity).

The fact that Pythagoras and others state that phren and thumos
are shared by us with the brutes, proves that in this case the
lower Manasic reflection (instinct) and Kama-rupa (animal living
passions) are meant.

And as Socrates and Plato accepted the clue and followed it, if
to these five, namely,

Agathon (Deity or Atma),

Psuche (Soul in its collective sense), b(Spirit or Mind),

Phren (physical - [or lower] mind), and b (Kama-rupa or passions)
we add the

Eidolon of the Mysteries, the shadowy form or the human double,
and the

physical body,

it will be easy to demonstrate that the ideas of both Pythagoras
and Plato were identical with ours.

Even the Egyptians held to the Septenary division. In its exit,
they taught, the Soul (EGO) had to pass through its seven
chambers, or principles, those it left behind, and those it took
along with itself. The only difference is that, ever bearing in
mind the penalty of revealing Mystery-doctrines, which was death,
they gave out the teaching in a broad outline, while we elaborate
it and explain it in its details. But though we do give out to
the world as much as is lawful, even in our doctrine more than
one important detail is withheld, which those who study the
esoteric philosophy and are pledged to silence, are alone
entitled to know.
97

THE GREEK TEACHINGS


ENQUIRER. We have magnificent Greek and Latin, Sanskrit and
Hebrew scholars. How is it that we find nothing in their
translations that would afford us a clue to what you say?

THEOSOPHIST. Because your translators, their great learning
notwithstanding, have made of the philosophers, the Greeks
especially, misty instead of mystic writers. Take as an instance
Plutarch, and read what he says of "the principles" of man.

That which he describes was accepted literally and attributed to
metaphysical superstition and ignorance. Let me give you an
illustration in point: "Man," says Plutarch, "is compound; and
they are mistaken who think him to be compounded of two parts
only.

For they imagine that the understanding (brain intellect) is a
part of the soul (the upper Triad), but they err in this no less
than those who make the soul to be a part of the body, i.e. those
who make of the Triad part of the corruptible mortal quaternary.

For the understanding (nous) as far exceeds the soul [psuche], as
the soul is better and diviner than the body. Now this
composition of the soul (psuche) with the understanding (nous)
makes reason; and with the body (or thumos, the animal soul)
passion; of which the one is the beginning or principle of
pleasure and pain, and the other of virtue and vice.

Of these three parts conjoined and compacted together, the earth
has given the body, the moon the soul, and the sun the
understanding to the generation of man." This last sentence is
purely allegorical, and will be comprehended
98

only by those who are versed in the esoteric science of
correspondences and know which planet is related to every
principle.

Plutarch divides the latter into three groups, and makes of the
body a compound of physical frame, astral shadow, and breath, or
the triple lower part, which "from earth was taken and to earth
returns"; of the middle principle and the instinctual soul, the
second part, derived from and through and ever influenced by the
moon*; [ F-Note: -- The Kabalists who know the relation of
Jehovah, the life and children-giver, to the Moon, and the
influence of the latter on generation, will again see the point
as much as some astrologers will.] and only of the higher part or
the Spiritual Soul, with the Atmic and Manasic elements in it
does he make a direct emanation of the Sun, who stands here for
Agathon the Supreme Deity. This is proven by what he says further
as follows:

"Now of the deaths we die, the one makes man two of three and the
other one of (out of) two. The former is in the region and
jurisdiction of Demeter, whence the name given to the Mysteries,
telein, resembled that given to death, teleutan. The Athenians
also heretofore called the deceased sacred to Demeter. As for the
other death, it is in the moon or region of Persephone."

Here you have our doctrine, which shows man a septenary during
life; a quintile just after death, in Kamaloka; and a threefold
Ego, Spirit-Soul, and consciousness in Devachan.

This separation, first in "the Meadows of Hades," as Plutarch
calls the Kama-loka, then in Devachan, was part and parcel of the
performances during the sacred Mysteries, when the candidates for
initiation enacted the whole drama of death, and the resurrection
as a glorified spirit, by which name we
99

mean Consciousness. This is what Plutarch means when he says:?

"And as with the one, the terrestrial, so with the other
celestial Hermes doth dwell. This suddenly and with violence
plucks the soul from the body; but Proserpina mildly and in a
long time disjoins the understanding from the soul.* [ *
Proserpina, or Persephone, stands here for post mortem Karma,
which is said to regulate the separation of the lower from the
higher "principles": the Soul, as Nephesh, the breath of animal
life, which remains for a time in Kama-loka, from the higher
compound Ego, which goes into the state of Devachan, or bliss.]

For this reason she is called Monogenes, only begotten, or rather
begetting one alone; for the better part of man becomes alone
when it is separated by her. Now both the one and the other
happens thus according to nature. It is ordained by Fate (Fatum
or Karma) that every soul, whether with or without understanding
(mind), when gone out of the body, should wander for a time,
though not all for the same, in the region lying between the
earth and moon (Kamaloka).+ [ Until the separation of the
higher, spiritual "principle" takes place from the lower ones,
which remain in the Kama-loka until disintegrated.]

For those that have been unjust and dissolute suffer then the
punishment due to their offences; but the good and virtuous are
there detained till they are purified, and have, by expiation,
purged out of them all the infections they might have contracted
from the contagion of the body, as if from foul health, living in
the mildest part of the air, called the Meadows of Hades, where
they must remain for a certain prefixed and appointed time. And
then, as if they were returning from a wandering pilgrimage or
long exile into their country, they have a taste of joy, such as
they principally receive who are initiated into Sacred Mysteries,
mixed with trouble, admiration, and each one's proper and
peculiar hope."

This is Nirvanic bliss, and no Theosophist could describe in
plainer though esoteric language the mental joys of Devachan,
where every man has his paradise around him, erected by his
consciousness. But you must beware of the general error
100

into which too many even of our Theosophists fall. Do not imagine
that because man is called septenary, then quintuple and a triad,
he is a compound of seven, five, or three entities; or, as well
expressed by a Theosophical writer, of skins to be peeled off
like the skins of an onion. The "principles," as already said,
save the body, the life, and the astral eidolon, all of which
disperse at death, are simply aspects and states of
consciousness.

There is but one real man, enduring through the cycle of life and
immortal in essence, if not in form, and this is Manas, the
Mind-man or embodied Consciousness.

The objection made by the materialists, who deny the possibility
of mind and consciousness acting without matter is worthless in
our case. We do not deny the soundness of their argument; but we
simply ask our opponents, "Are you acquainted with all the states
of matter, you who knew hitherto but of three?

And how do you know whether that which we refer to as ABSOLUTE
CONSCIOUSNESS or Deity for ever invisible and unknowable, be not
that which, though it eludes for ever our human finite
conception, is still universal Spirit-matter or matter-Spirit in
its absolute infinitude?" It is then one of the lowest, and in
its manvantaric manifestations fractioned-aspects of this
Spirit-matter, which is the conscious Ego that creates its own
paradise, a fool's paradise, it may be, still a state of bliss.

ENQUIRER. But what is Devachan?

THEOSOPHIST. The "land of gods" literally; a condition, a state
of mental bliss. Philosophically a mental condition analogous to,
but far more vivid and real than, the most vivid dream. It is the
state after death of most mortals.
Key pp 93 - 100


---------------------------------------------------


>From the KEY TO THEOSOPHY (HPB), Chapter 1


Eclectic Theosophy was divided under three heads:

(1) Belief in one absolute, incomprehensible and supreme Deity,
or infinite essence, which is the root of all nature, and of all
that is, visible and invisible.

(2) Belief in man's eternal immortal nature, because, being a
radiation of the Universal Soul, it is of an identical essence
with it.

(3) Theurgy, or "divine work," or producing a work of gods; from
theoi, "gods," and ergein, "to work."

The term is very old, but, as it belongs to the vocabulary of the
MYSTERIES, was not in popular use. It was a mystic belief --
practically proven by initiated adepts and priests ?that, by
making oneself as pure as the incorporeal beings ? i.e., by
returning to one's pristine purity of nature -- man could move
the gods to impart to him Divine mysteries, and even cause them
to become occasionally visible, either subjectively or
objectively.

It was the transcendental aspect of what is now called
Spiritualism; but having been abused and misconceived by the
populace, it had come to be regarded by some as necromancy, and
was generally forbidden. A travestied practice of the theurgy of
Iamblichus lingers still in the ceremonial magic of some modern
Kabalists.

Modern Theosophy avoids and rejects both these kinds of magic and
"necromancy" as being very dangerous. Real divine theurgy
requires an almost superhuman purity and holiness of life;
otherwise it degenerates into mediumship or black magic.

The immediate disciples of Ammonius Saccas, who was called
Theodidaktos, "god-taught" ?such as Plotinus and his follower
Porphyry ?rejected theurgy at first, but were finally reconciled
to it through Iamblichus, who wrote a work to that effect
entitled "De Mysteriis," under the name of his own master, a
famous Egyptian priest called Abammon.

Ammonius Saccas was the son of Christian parents, and, having
been repelled by dogmatic spiritualistic Christianity from his
childhood, became a Neo-Platonist, and like J. Boehme and other
great seers and mystics, is said to have had divine wisdom
revealed to him in dreams and visions. Hence his name of
Theodidaktos.

He resolved to reconcile every system of religion, and by
demonstrating their identical origin to establish one universal
creed based on ethics. His life was so blameless and pure, his
learning so profound and vast, that several Church Fathers were
his secret disciples.

Clemens Alexandrinus speaks very highly of him.

Plotinus, the "St. John" of Ammonius, was also a man universally
respected and esteemed, and of the most profound learning and
integrity. When thirty-nine years of age he accompanied the Roman
Emperor Gordian and his army to the East, to be instructed by the
sages of Bactria and India. He had a School of Philosophy in
Rome.

Porphyry, his disciple, whose real name was Malek (a Hellenized
Jew), collected all the writings of his master. Porphyry was
himself a great author, and gave an allegorical interpretation to
some parts of Homer's writings. The system of meditation the
Philaletheians resorted to was ecstacy, a system akin to Indian
Yoga practice. What is known of the Eclectic School is due to
Origen, Longinus, and Plotinus, the immediate disciples of
Ammonius?(Vide Eclectic Philos., by A. Wilder.)


THE WISDOM-RELIGION ESOTERIC IN ALL AGES


ENQUIRER. Since Ammonius never committed anything to writing, how
can one feel sure that such were his teachings?

THEOSOPHIST. Neither did Buddha, Pythagoras, Confucius, Orpheus,
Socrates, or even Jesus, leave behind them any writings. Yet most
of these are historical personages, and their teachings have all
survived. The disciples of Ammonius (among whom Origen and
Herennius) wrote treatises and explained his ethics. Certainly
the latter are as historical, if not more so, than the Apostolic
writings. Moreover, his pupils ? Origen, Plotinus, and Longinus
(counsellor of the famous Queen Zenobia)?have all left voluminous
records of the Philaletheian System ?so far, at all events, as
their public profession of faith was known, for the school was
divided into exoteric and esoteric teachings.


ENQUIRER. How have the latter tenets reached our day, since you
hold that what is properly called the WISDOM-RELIGION was
esoteric?

THEOSOPHIST. The WISDOM-RELIGION was ever one, and being the last
word of possible human knowledge, was, therefore, carefully
preserved. It preceded by long ages the Alexandrian Theo-
sophists, reached the modern, and will survive every other
religion and philosophy.


ENQUIRER. Where and by whom was it so preserved?

THEOSOPHIST. Among Initiates of every country; among profound
seekers after truth ?their disciples; and in those parts of the
world where such topics have always been most valued and pursued:
in India, Central Asia, and Persia.


ENQUIRER. Can you give me some proofs of its esotericism?

THEOSOPHIST. The best proof you can have of the fact is that
every ancient religious, or rather philosophical, cult consisted
of an esoteric or secret teaching, had an exoteric (outward
public) worship. Furthermore, it is a well-known fact that the
MYSTERIES of the ancients comprised with every nation the
"greater" (secret) and "Lesser" (public) MYSTERIES -- e.g.: . in
the celebrated solemnities called the Eleusinia, in Greece.

>From the Hierophants of Samothrace, Egypt, and the initiated
Brahmins of the India of old, down to the later Hebrew Rabbis,
all preserved, for fear of profanation, their real bona fide
beliefs secret.

The Jewish Rabbis called their secular religious series the
Mercavah (the exterior body), "the vehicle," or, the covering
which contains the hidden soul. ?i.e., their highest secret
knowledge. Not one of the ancient nations ever imparted through
its priests its real philosophical secrets to the masses, but
allotted to the latter only the husks.

Northern Buddhism has its "greater" and its "lesser" vehicle,
known as the Mahayana, the esoteric, and the Hinayana, the
exoteric, Schools. Nor can you blame them for such secrecy; for
surely you would not think of feeding your flock of sheep on
learned dissertations on botany instead of on grass?

Pythagoras called his Gnosis "the knowledge of things that are,
"e gnosis ton onton" and preserved that knowledge for his
pledged disciples only: for those who could digest such mental
food and feel satisfied; and he pledged them to silence and
secrecy.

Occult alphabets and secret ciphers are the development of the
old Egyptian hieratic writings, the secret of which was, in the
days of old, in the possession only of the Hierogrammatists, or
initiated Egyptian priests.

Ammonius Saccas, as his biographers tell us, bound his pupils by
oath not to divulge his higher doctrines except to those who had
already been instructed in preliminary knowledge, and who were
also bound by a pledge.

Finally, do we not find the same even in early Christianity,
among the Gnostics, and even in the teachings of Christ? Did he
not speak to the multitudes in parables which had a two-fold
meaning, and explain his reasons only to his disciples? "To you,"
he says, "it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of
heaven; but unto them that are without, all these things are done
in parables" (Mark iv. 11). "The Essenes of Judea and Carmel made
similar distinctions, dividing their adherents into neophytes,
brethren, and the perfect, or those initiated" (Eclec. Phil.).
Examples might be brought from every country to this effect.


ENQUIRER. Can you attain the "Secret Wisdom" simply by study?
Encyclopaedias define Theosophy pretty much as Webster's
Dictionary does, i. e., as "supposed intercourse with God and
superior spirits, and consequent attainment of superhuman
knowledge by physical means and chemical processes." Is this so?

THEOSOPHIST. I think not. Nor is there any lexicographer capable
of explaining, whether to himself or others, how superhuman
knowledge can be attained by physical or chemical processes. Had
Webster said "by metaphysical and alchemical processes," the
definition would be approximately correct: as it is, it is
absurd. Ancient Theosophists claimed, and so do the modern, that
the infinite cannot be known by the finite? i.e., sensed by the
finite Self ?but that the divine essence could be communicated to
the higher Spiritual Self in a state of ecstasy. This condition
can hardly be attained, like hypnotism, by "physical and chemical
means."


ENQUIRER. What is your explanation of it?

THEOSOPHIST. Real ecstasy was defined by Plotinus as "the
liberation of the mind from its finite consciousness, becoming
one and identified with the infinite." This is the highest
condition, says Prof. Wilder, but not one of permanent duration,
and it is reached only by the very, very few. It is, indeed,
identical with that state which is known in India as Samadhi. The
latter is practised by the Yogis, who facilitate it physically by
the greatest abstinence in food and drink, and mentally by an
incessant endeavour to purify and elevate the mind.

Meditation is silent and unuttered prayer, or, as Plato
expressed it, "the ardent turning of the soul toward the divine;
not to ask any particular good (as in the common meaning of
prayer), but for good itself ?for the universal Supreme Good" of
which we are a part on earth, and out of the essence of which we
have all emerged. Therefore, adds Plato, "remain silent in the
presence of the divine ones, till they remove the clouds from thy
eyes and enable thee to see by the light which issues from
themselves, not what appears as good to thee, but what is
intrinsically good." *

ENQUIRER. Theosophy, then, is not, as held by some, a newly
devised scheme?

THEOSOPHIST. Only ignorant people can thus refer to it. It is as
old as the world, in its teachings and ethics, if not in name, as
it is also the broadest and most catholic system among all.


ENQUIRER. How comes it, then, that Theosophy has remained so
unknown to the nations of the Western Hemisphere? Why should it
have been a sealed book to races confessedly the most cultured
and advanced?

THEOSOPHIST. We believe there were nations as cultured in days of
old and certainly more spiritually "advanced" than we are. But
there are several reasons for this willing ignorance. One of them
was given by St. Paul to the cultured Athenians? a loss, for long
centuries, of real spiritual insight, and even interest, owing to
their too great devotion to things of sense and their

* This is what the scholarly author of "The Eclectic Philosophy,"
Prof. A. Wilder, F. T. S., describes as "spiritual photography":
"The soul is the camera in which facts and events, future, past,
and present, are alike fixed; and the mind becomes conscious of
them. Beyond our every-day world of limits all is one day or
state -- the past and future comprised in the present." . . .
Death is the last ecstasis on earth. Then the soul is freed from
the constraint of the body, and its nobler part is united to
higher nature and becomes partaker in the wisdom and
foreknowledge of the higher beings."

Real Theosophy is, for the mystics, that state which Apollonius
of Tyana was made to describe thus: "I can see the present and
the future as in a clear mirror. The sage need not wait for the
vapours of the earth and the corruption of the air to foresee
events. . . . The theoi, or gods, see the future; common men the
present; sages that which is about to take place." "The Theosophy
of the Sages" he speaks of is well expressed in the assertion,
"The Kingdom of God is within us." long slavery to the dead
letter of dogma and ritualism. But the strongest reason for it
lies in the fact that real Theosophy has ever been kept secret.


ENQUIRER. You have brought forward proofs that such secrecy has
existed; but what was the real cause for it?

THEOSOPHIST. The causes for it were: Firstly, the perversity of
average human nature and its selfishness, always tending to the
gratification of personal desires to the detriment of neighbours
and next of kin. Such people could never be entrusted with divine
secrets. Secondly, their unreliability to keep the sacred and
divine knowledge from desecration. It is the latter that led to
the perversion of the most sublime truths and symbols, and to the
gradual transformation of things spiritual into anthropomorphic,
concrete, and gross imagery ?in other words, to the dwarfing of
the god-idea and to idolatry.

Key, pp. 1-12

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




===========================
-----Original Message-----
From: K B
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2003 10:59 AM
To:
Subject: Plotinus & 7 Principles in Greece

Hello Dallas and others,

I have recently been reading Plotinus' Enneads, and I
have found it difficult to line up the terms that
Plotinus uses for the principles as we understand them
in Theosophy.

I wonder if you know of an article that
shows the correlation between the terms used by
Plotinus and our Theosophical writers.

Kathy