RE: EGO, Ego, ego DO WE REMEMBER ?
Apr 10, 2006 04:33 AM
by W.Dallas TenBroeck
Monday, April 10, 2006
RE: EGO, Ego, ego DO WE REMEMBER ?
Dear Cass:
Thanks. you are right.
For the newcomer (and for us old students as well) much needs to be
explained.
It would be a good idea to read carefully through
W. Q/ Judge The OCEAN OF THEOSOPHY, and especially
H. P. Blavatsky The KEY TO THEOSOPHY
-- the terms are made clear there.
Example:
[ "Spiritually Above" is ATMA -- the ONE SPIRIT for all beings.
[ The "MONAD" is the imperishable ATMA-BUDDHI [Spirit-matter] -- this is
the essence of every independent "life-atom" or "Jiva."
“The three middle principles :
1 2 3
[ SPIRIT -- MIND -- DESIRE TO OWN, TO BE, TO HAVE ]
TRUTH -- THOUGHT -- SELFISH EMOTIONS, MOODS, YENS, Etc...
[1 BUDHI wisdom, knowledge, devotion to living a lawful life,
BROTHERHOOD, UNSELFISHNESS, UNIVERSALITY,
IMPERSONALITY, VIRTUES
[2 MANAS Mind, thought, memory, logic, analysis, synthesis, etc...
EMPLOYED IN AN IMPERSONAL MANNER
[3 KAMA desires and passions, likes and dislikes, moods,
emotions,
ALWAYS SELFISH, VICIOUS AND DEVIOUSLY ACQUISITIVE ]
in earth and man became with every race more material; the Soul stepping
back to make room for the physical intellect; the essence of elements
becoming the material and composite elements now known. [DESCENT INTO
MATTER]
Man is not, nor could he ever be, the complete product of the "Lord God";
but he is the child of the Elohim, so arbitrarily changed into the singular
masculine gender.
The first Dhyanis [the WISE] , commissioned to "create" man in their image,
could only throw off their shadows, like a delicate model for the Nature
Spirits of matter to work upon. (See Book II.) Man is, beyond any doubt,
formed physically out of the dust of the Earth, but his creators and
fashioners were many.
Nor can it be said that the "Lord God breathed into his nostrils the breath
of life," unless that God is identified with the "ONE LIFE," S D I
225
It is inevitable that much has to be studied as ancient psychology takes
into account many more divisions of consciousness and intelligence than
modern psychology has yet to encounter or describe in interactive detail.
Best wishes,
Dallas
============================================
-----Original Message-----
From: Cass Silva
Sent: Sunday, April 09, 2006 7:24 PM
To:
Subject: Re: DO WE REMEMBER ?
Hello Dallas
I think it might help the newcomers by defining ego.
Ego can refer to the Personality and is used throughout psychology
Whereas Eggo refers to the Higher Self. Forgive spelling, trying to
underline the differences.
Cass
======================================================
"W.Dallas TenBroeck" <dalval14@earthlink.net> wrote:
4/9/2006 3:56:16 AM
Dear Friend:
Do we remember past incarnations ?
REMEMBERING THE EXPERIENCES OF THE EGO
TO many it seems puzzling that we do not remember the experiences of the
Higher Self in sleep.
But as long as we ask "Why does not the lower self [Kama-Manas, the embodied
mind] remember these experiences," we shall never have an answer. There is a
contradiction in the question, because the lower self, never having had the
experiences it is required to remember, could not at any time recollect
them.
When sleep comes on, the engine and instrument of the lower personality is
stopped, and can do nothing but what may be called automatic acts. The brain
is not in use, and hence no consciousness exists for it until the waking
moment returns. The ego, when thus released from the physical chains, from
its hard daily task of living with and working through the bodily organs,
proceeds to enjoy the experiences of the plane of existence which is
peculiarly its own.
On that plane it uses a method and processes of thought, and perceives the
ideas appropriate to it through organs different from those of the body.
All that it sees and hears (if we may use those terms) appears reversed from
our plane. The language, so to say, is a foreign one even to the inner
language used when awake.
So, upon reassuming life in the body, all that it has to tell its lower
companion must be spoken in a strange tongue, and for the body that is an
obstruction to comprehension. We hear the words, but only now and then
obtain flashes of their meaning. It is something like the English-speaking
person who knows a few foreign words entering a foreign town and there being
only able to grasp those few terms as he hears them among the multitude of
other words and sentences which he does not understand.
What we have to do, then, is to learn the language of the Ego, so that we
shall not fail to make a proper translation to ourselves. For at all times
the language of the plane through which the Ego nightly floats is a foreign
one to the brain we use, and has to be always translated for use by the
brain. If the interpretation is incorrect, the experience of the Ego will
never be made complete to the lower man.
But it may be asked if there is an actual language for the Ego, having its
sound and corresponding signs. Evidently not; for, if there were, there
would have been made a record of it during all those countless years that
sincere students have been studying themselves. It is not a language in the
ordinary sense.
It is more nearly described as a communication of ideas and experience by
means of pictures.
So with it a sound may be pictured as a color or a figure, and an odor as a
vibrating line; an historical event may be not only shown as a picture, but
also as a light or a shadow, or as a sickening smell or delightful incense;
the vast mineral world may not only exhibit its planes and angles and
colors, but also its vibrations and lights.
Or, again, the ego may have reduced its perceptions of size and distance for
its own purposes, and, having the mental capacity for the time of the ant,
it may report to the bodily organs a small hole as an abyss, or the grass of
the field as a gigantic forest. These are adduced by way of example, and are
not to be taken as hard and fast lines of description.
Upon awakening, a great hindrance is found in our own daily life and terms
of speech and thought to the right translation of these experiences, and
THE ONLY WAY IN WHICH WE CAN USE THEM WITH FULL BENEFIT IS BY MAKING
OURSELVES POROUS, SO TO SPEAK, TO THE INFLUENCES FROM THE HIGHER SELF, AND
BY LIVING AND THINKING IN SUCH A MANNER AS WILL BE MOST LIKELY TO BRING
ABOUT THE AIM OF THE SOUL.
This leads us unerringly to virtue and knowledge, for the vices and the
passions eternally becloud our perception of the meaning of what the Ego
tries to tell us.
It is for this reason that the sages inculcate virtue. Is it not plain that,
if the vicious could accomplish the translation of the Ego's language, they
would have done it long ago, and is it not known to us all that only among
the virtuous can the Sages be found?
Eusebio Urban PATH, June, 1890
---------------------------------------------------------------------
“For the Monad [ATMA-BUDDHI] or Jiva per se cannot be even called spirit: it
is a ray, a breath of the ABSOLUTE, or the Absoluteness rather, and the
Absolute Homogeneity, having no relations with the conditioned and relative
finiteness, is unconscious on our plane.
Therefore, besides the material which will be needed for its future human
form, the monad requires
(a) a spiritual model, or prototype, for that material to shape itself into;
and
(b) an intelligent consciousness to guide its evolution and progress,
neither of which is possessed by the homogeneous monad, or by senseless
though living matter.
The Adam of dust requires the Soul of Life to be breathed into him: the two
middle principles, [MANAS and KAMA] which are the sentient life of the
irrational animal and the Human Soul, for the former is irrational without
the latter.
It is only when, from a potential androgyne, man has become separated into
male and female, that he will be endowed with this conscious, rational,
individual Soul, (Manas) "the principle, or the intelligence, of the
Elohim," to receive which, he has to eat of the fruit of Knowledge from the
Tree of Good and Evil. How is he to obtain all this?
The Occult doctrine teaches that while the monad is cycling on downward into
matter, these very Elohim—or Pitris, the lower Dhyan-Chohans—are evolving
pari passu with it on a higher and more spiritual plane, descending also
relatively into matter on their own plane of consciousness, when, after
having reached a certain point, they will meet the incarnating senseless
monad, encased in the lowest matter, and blending the two potencies, Spirit
and Matter, the union will produce that terrestrial symbol of the "Heavenly
Man" in space—PERFECT MAN.
In the Sankhya philosophy, Purusha (spirit) is spoken of as something
impotent unless he mounts on the shoulders of Prakriti (matter), which, left
alone, is—senseless.
But in the secret philosophy they are viewed as graduated. Though one and
the same thing in their origin, Spirit and Matter, when once they are on the
plane of differentiation, begin each of them their evolutionary progress in
contrary directions—Spirit falling gradually into matter, and the latter
ascending to its original condition, that of a pure spiritual substance.
Both are inseparable, yet ever separated.
In polarity, on the physical plane, two like poles will always repel each
other, while the negative and the positive are mutually attracted, so do
Spirit and Matter stand to each other—the two poles of the same homogeneous
substance, the root-principle of the universe. (248)
Therefore, when the hour strikes for Purusha to mount on Prakriti's
shoulders for the formation of the Perfect Man—rudimentary man of the first
2 1/2 Races being only the first, gradually evolving into the most perfect
of mammals—the Celestial "Ancestors" (Entities from preceding worlds, called
in India the Sishta) step in on this our plane, as the Pitris had stepped in
before them for the formation of the physical or animal-man, and incarnate
in the latter.
Thus the two processes—for the two creations: the animal and the divine
man—differ greatly.
The Pitris shoot out from their ethereal bodies, still more ethereal and
shadowy similitudes of themselves, or what we should now call "doubles," or
"astral forms," in their own likeness.*
This furnishes the Monad with its first dwelling, and blind matter with a
model around and upon which to build henceforth. But Man is still
incomplete. From Swayambhuva Manu (in Manu, Book I.), from whom descended
the seven primitive Manus or Prajapati, each of whom gave birth to a
primitive race of men, …this doctrine has left its impress on every Archaic
Scripture.
"Who forms Manu (the Man) and who forms his body? The LIFE and the LIVES.
Sin † and the MOON."
Here Manu stands for the spiritual, heavenly man, the real and non-dying EGO
in us, which is the direct emanation of the "One Life" or the Absolute
Deity.
As to our outward physical bodies, the house of the tabernacle of the Soul,
the Doctrine teaches a strange lesson; so strange that unless thoroughly
explained and as rightly comprehended, it is only the exact Science of the
future that is destined to vindicate the theory fully.”
S D I 247-9
---------------------------------------------------
S D I 572-3
“Esoterically the teaching differs: The divine, purely Adi-Buddhic monad
manifests as the universal Buddhi (the Maha-buddhi or Mahat in Hindu
philosophies) the spiritual, omniscient and omnipotent root of divine
intelligence, the highest anima mundi or the Logos. This descends "like a
flame spreading from the eternal Fire, immoveable, without increase or
decrease, ever the same to the end" of the cycle of existence, and becomes
universal life on the Mundane Plane.
>From this Plane of conscious Life shoot out, like seven fiery tongues, the
Sons of Light (the logoi of Life); then the Dhyani-Buddhas of contemplation:
the concrete forms of their formless Fathers—the Seven Sons of Light, still
themselves, to whom may be applied the Brahmanical mystic phrase: "Thou art
'THAT'—Brahm."
It is from these Dhyani-Buddhas that emanate their chhayas (Shadows) the
Bodhisattvas of the celestial realms, the prototypes of the
super-terrestrial Bodhisattvas, and of the terrestrial Buddhas, and finally
of men. The "Seven Sons of Light" are also called "Stars."
The star under which a human Entity is born, says the Occult teaching, will
remain for ever its star, throughout the whole cycle of its incarnations in
one Manvantara. But this is not his astrological star. The latter is
concerned and connected with the personality, the former with
* The Tanmatras are literally the type or rudiment of an element devoid of
qualities; but esoterically, they are the primeval noumenoi of that which
becomes in the progress of evolution a Cosmic element in the sense given to
the term in antiquity, not in that of physics. They are the logoi, the seven
emanations or rays of the logos. …
the INDIVIDUALITY. The "Angel" of that Star, or the Dhyani-Buddha will be
either the guiding or simply the presiding "Angel," so to say, in every new
rebirth of the monad, which is part of his own essence, though his vehicle,
man, may remain for ever ignorant of this fact.
The adepts have each their Dhyani-Buddha, their elder "twin Soul," and they
know it, calling it "Father-Soul," and "Father-Fire." It is only at the last
and supreme initiation, however, that they learn it when placed face to face
with the bright "Image." How much has Bulwer Lytton known of this mystic
fact when describing, in one of his highest inspirational moods, Zanoni face
to face with his Augoeides?
The Logos, or both the unmanifested and the manifested WORD, is called by
the Hindus, Iswara, "the Lord," though the Occultists give it another name.
Iswara, say the Vedantins, is the highest consciousness in nature.
"This highest consciousness," answer the Occultists, "is only a synthetic
unit in the world of the manifested Logos—or on the plane of illusion; for
it is the sum total of Dhyan-Chohanic consciousnesses."
"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
“According to the teachings, Maya, or the illusive appearance of the
marshalling of events and actions on this earth, changes, varying with
nations and places.
But the chief features of one's life are always in accordance with the
"Constellation" one is born under, or, we should say, with the
characteristics of its animating principle or the deity that presides over
it, whether we call it a Dhyan Chohan, as in Asia, or an Archangel, as with
the Greek and Latin churches.
In ancient Symbolism it was always the SUN (though the Spiritual, not the
visible, Sun was meant), that was supposed to send forth the chief Saviours
and Avatars. Hence the connecting link between the Buddhas, the Avatars, and
so many other incarnations of the highest SEVEN.
The closer the approach to one's Prototype, "in Heaven," the better for the
mortal whose personality was chosen, by his own personal deity (the seventh
principle), as its terrestrial abode.
For, with every effort of will toward purification and unity with that
"Self-god," one of the lower rays breaks and the spiritual entity of man is
drawn higher and ever higher to the ray that supersedes the first, until,
from ray to ray, the inner man is drawn into the one and highest beam of the
Parent-SUN. …
Yes; "our destiny is written in the stars!" Only, the closer the union
between the mortal reflection MAN and his celestial PROTOTYPE, the less
dangerous the external conditions and subsequent reincarnations—which
neither Buddhas nor Christs can escape. This is not superstition, least of
all is it Fatalism. The latter implies a blind course of some still blinder
power, and man is a free agent during his stay on earth.
He cannot escape his ruling Destiny, but he has the choice of two paths that
lead him in that direction, and he can reach the goal of misery—if such is
decreed to him, either in the snowy white robes of the Martyr, or in the
soiled garments of a volunteer in the iniquitous course; for, there are
external and internal conditions which affect the determination of our will
upon our actions, and it is in our power to follow either of the two. ...
When the last strand is woven, and man is seemingly enwrapped in the
net-work of his own doing, then he finds himself completely under the empire
of this self-made destiny. It then either fixes him like the inert shell
against the immovable rock, or carries him away like a feather in a
whirlwind raised by his own actions, and this is—KARMA.”
S D I 638-9
----------------------------------------
“Strange to say, he [Brahma, creator] begins by creating DEMONS, who
thus take precedence over the angels or gods. This is no incongruity, nor is
it due to inconsistency, but has, like all the rest, a profound esoteric
meaning, quite clear to one free from Christian theological prejudice.
He who bears in mind that the principle MAHAT, or Intellect, the "Universal
Mind" (literally "the great"), which esoteric philosophy explains as the
"manifested Omniscience" — the "first product" of Pradhana (primordial
matter) as Vishnu Purana says, but the first Cosmic aspect of Parabrahm or
the esoteric SAT, the Universal Soul, ‡ as Occultism teaches - is at the
root of SELF-Consciousness, will understand the reason why. The so-called
"Demons" — who are (esoterically) the Self-asserting and (intellectually)
active Principle— are the positive poles of creation, so to say; hence, the
first produced. This is in brief the process as narrated allegorically in
the Puranas. “
S D II 58-9
"...BUT THE TRUE ESOTERIC MEANING IS THAT MOST OF THEM WERE DESTINED TO
INCARNATE AS THE EGOS OF THE FORTHCOMING CROP OF MANKIND.
THE HUMAN EGO is neither Atman nor Buddhi, but the higher Manas: the
intellectual fruition and the efflorescence of the intellectual
self-conscious Egotism — in the higher spiritual sense. The ancient works
refer to it as Karana Sarira on the plane of Sutratma, which is the golden
thread on which, like beads, the various personalities of this higher Ego
are strung.
If the reader were told, as in the semi-esoteric allegories, that these
Beings were RETURNING NIRVANEES, FROM PRECEDING MAHA-MANVANTARAS — ages of
incalculable duration which have rolled away in the Eternity, a still more
incalculable time ago — he would hardly understand the text correctly; while
some Vedantins might say: "This is not so; the Nirvanee can never return";
which is true during the Manvantara he belongs to, and ERRONEOUS WHERE
ETERNITY IS CONCERNED. For it is said in the Sacred Slokas:
"The thread of radiance which is imperishable and dissolves only in Nirvana,
re-emerges from it in its integrity on the day when the Great Law calls all
things back into action. . . ."
Hence, as the higher "Pitris or Dhyanis" had no hand in his physical
creation, we find primeval man, issued from the bodies of his spiritually
fireless progenitors, described as aeriform, devoid of compactness, and
MINDLESS.
He had no middle principle to serve him as a medium between the highest and
the lowest, the spiritual man and the physical brain, for he lacked Manas.
The Monads which incarnated in those empty SHELLS, remained as unconscious
as when separated from their previous incomplete forms and vehicles.
There is no potentiality for creation, or self-Consciousness, in a pure
Spirit on this our plane, unless its too homogeneous, perfect, because
divine, nature is, so to say, mixed with, and strengthened by, an essence
already differentiated.
It is only the lower line of the Triangle — representing the first triad
that emanates from the Universal MONAD — that can furnish this needed
consciousness on the plane of differentiated Nature.
But how could these pure Emanations, which, on this principle, must have
originally been themselves unconscious (in our sense), be of any use in
supplying the required principle, as they could hardly have possessed it
themselves? .....
Can man — A God In The Animal Form — be the product of Material Nature by
evolution alone, even as is the animal, which differs from man in external
shape, but by no means in the materials of its physical fabric, and is
informed by the same, though undeveloped, Monad — seeing that the
intellectual potentialities of the two differ as the Sun does from the
Glow-worm? And what is it that creates such difference, unless man is an
animal plus a living god within his physical shell? Let us pause and ask
ourselves seriously the question, regardless of the vagaries and sophisms of
both the materialistic and the psychological modern sciences.” S D II
79 – 81
“It explains the mystery of, and fills the gap between, the informing
principle in man — the HIGHER SELF or human Monad — and the animal Monad,
both one and the same, although the former is endowed with divine
intelligence, the latter with instinctual faculty alone. How is the
difference to be explained, and the presence of that HIGHER SELF in man
accounted for?
"The Sons of MAHAT are the quickeners of the human Plant. They are the
Waters falling upon the arid soil of latent life, and the Spark that
vivifies the human animal. They are the Lords of Spiritual Life eternal." .
. . . "In the beginning (in the Second Race) some (of the Lords) only
breathed of their essence into Manushya (men); and some took in man their
abode."
This shows that not all men became incarnations of the "divine Rebels," but
only a few among them.
The remainder had their fifth principle simply quickened by the spark thrown
into it, which accounts for the great difference between the intellectual
capacities of men and races.
Had not the "sons of Mahat," speaking allegorically, skipped the
intermediate worlds, in their impulse toward intellectual freedom, the
animal man would never have been able to reach upward from this earth, and
attain through self-exertion his ultimate goal.
The cyclic pilgrimage would have to be performed through all the planes of
existence half unconsciously, if not entirely so, as in the case of the
animals.
It is owing to this rebellion of intellectual life against THE MORBID
INACTIVITY OF PURE SPIRIT, that we are what we are — self-conscious,
thinking men, with the capabilities and attributes of Gods in us, for good
as much as for evil.
Hence the REBELS are our saviours. Let the philosopher ponder well over
this, and more than one mystery will become clear to him. It is only by the
attractive force of the contrasts that the two opposites — Spirit and Matter
— can be cemented on Earth, and, smelted in the fire of self-conscious
experience and suffering, find themselves wedded in Eternity. This will
reveal the meaning of many hitherto incomprehensible allegories, foolishly
called "fables."
S D II 102-3
----------------------------------------
S D II 109-10
“This fire is the higher Self, the Spiritual Ego, or that which is eternally
reincarnating under the influence of its lower personal Selves, changing
with every re-birth, full of Tanha or desire to live. It is a strange law of
Nature that, on this plane, the higher (Spiritual) Nature should be, so to
say, in bondage to the lower.
Unless the Ego takes refuge in the Atman, the ALL-SPIRIT, and merges
entirely into the essence thereof, the personal Ego may goad it to the
bitter end. This cannot be thoroughly understood unless the student makes
himself familiar with the mystery of evolution, which proceeds on triple
lines — spiritual, psychic and physical. [S D I 181-2]
That which propels towards, and forces evolution, i.e., compels the growth
and development of Man towards perfection, is
(a) the MONAD, or that which acts in it unconsciously through a force
inherent in itself; and
(b) the lower astral body or the personal SELF.
The former, whether imprisoned in a vegetable or an animal body, is endowed
with, is indeed itself, that force. Owing to its identity with the
ALL-FORCE, which, as said, is inherent in the Monad, it is all-potent on the
Arupa, or formless plane.
On our plane, its essence being too pure, it remains all-potential, but
individually becomes inactive: e.g., the rays of the Sun, which contribute
to the growth of vegetation, do not select this or that plant to shine upon.
Uproot the plant and transfer it to a piece of soil where the sunbeam cannot
reach it, and the latter will not follow it.
So with the Atman: unless the higher Self or EGO gravitates towards its Sun
— the Monad — the lower Ego, or personal Self, will have the upper hand in
every case.
For it is this Ego, with its fierce Selfishness and animal desire to live a
Senseless life (Tanha), which is "the maker of the tabernacle," as Buddha
calls it in Dhammapada (153 and 154). Hence the expression, "the Spirits of
the Earth clothed the shadows and expanded them."
To these "Spirits" belong temporarily the human astral selves; and it is
they who give, or build, the physical tabernacle of man, for the Monad and
its conscious principle, Manas, to dwell in. But the "Solar" Lhas, Spirits,
warm them, the shadows.
This is physically and literally true; metaphysically, or 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.
Thus, as we shall find, for the first three and a half Root-Races, up to the
middle or turning point, it is the astral shadows of the "progenitors," the
lunar Pitris, which are the formative powers in the Races, and which build
and gradually force the evolution of the physical form towards perfection —
this, at the cost of a proportionate loss of spirituality.
Then, from the turning point, it is the Higher Ego, or incarnating
principle, the nous or Mind, which reigns over the animal Ego, and rules it
whenever it is not carried down by the latter. In short, Spirituality is on
its ascending arc, and the animal or physical impedes it from steadily
progressing on the path of its evolution only when the selfishness of the
personality has so strongly infected the real inner man with its lethal
virus, that the upward attraction has lost all its power on the thinking
reasonable man. In sober truth, vice and wickedness are an abnormal,
unnatural manifestation, at this period of our human evolution — at least
they ought to be so. The fact that mankind was never more selfish and
vicious than it is now, civilized nations having succeeded in making of the
first an ethical characteristic, of the second an art, is an additional
proof of the exceptional nature of the phenomenon.
S D II 109-110
------------------------------------------
There is a lot to be carefully combed out.
DTB
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