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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780835604819 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Quest Books |
| Publication date: | 01/01/1989 |
| Series: | Quest Book Series |
| Edition description: | Revised ed. |
| Pages: | 203 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.25(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.63(d) |
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
THE PILLAR OF LIGHT
I SEE no means to avoid, in the writing of this book, and the putting forth of what I hope are clear ideas about the Rays, certain matters of a rather abstract character, and foremost among them a statement about the universality of God or Brahman, whom some regard as living far away on a high plane somewhere beyond our vision. The fact is that the Sachehidananda Brahman is here and now, before ns and with us every day. Analyse the entire world of your experience, and you will find that it is composed of three parts: there is first a great mass of objects of all kinds, which are material on every plane, however high; secondly, there are vast numbers of living beings, with consciousness evolved in various degrees; and thirdly, there is yourself. The first of these three is the world of sat, existence; the second is that of chit, consciousness; and the third is ananda, happiness, the true self. The "will to live" is the will to have this joy.
This will be better understood if we recall the story of the great pillar of light. The great being Narayana, Vishnu, the soul and life of the Universe, thousandeyed and omniscient, was reclining upon his couch, the body of the great serpent Sesha or Ananta, endless time, which lay coiled up on the waters of space, for it was the night of being. Then Brahma, the great creator of the world of being, called sat, came to him and touched him with his hand, and said, "Who art thou?" Then an argument arose between those two as to who was the greater, and while this was going on, and as it threatened to become furious, there appeared before them a vast pillar of fire and light, incomparable and indescribable, which astonished the disputants so much that they forgot their quarrel and agreed to search for the end of so wonderful a thing. Vishnu plunged downwards for a thousand years, but he could not find its base, and Brahma flew upwards for a thousand years, but he could not find its top, and both returned baffled. Then Shiva, whose nature is ananda, stood before them and explained that they two were one in him their overlord, the pillar of light, who was three in one, and that in the coming age Brahma would be born from Vishnu, and Vishnu should cherish him, until at the end of it they both should see their overlord again.
People sometimes think that by going upwards they may find God, but the truth is that even were they to go downwards below their present state and search for a thousand years they could not find the end of Him. This does not mean that He is here but invisible and unknown to us. He is here visible and known; for the world that we see with our eyes is His sat, and the consciousness by which we know it is His chit, and the self that we cannot but affirm ourselves to be is Hisananda. Each one of as is in that pillar of light, no matter where he may go to in the space of being, nor where he may be occupied in the time of consciousness.
No man will ever escape these three realities: he cannot say "I am not"; he cannot say, "I am unconscious"; nor can he at last fail to rest his knowledge upon the outer world of being. Though there be millions of worlds within worlds and beings within beings, sat, chit and ananda are everywhere present, and everywhere in one. The things that we see and touch and taste and smell and hear are sat, true being, and in that realm of being no man will ever escape from that upon which all rely, the evidence of their senses, even though his clairvoyance may extend through all possible planes up the pillar of light.
God the Universe, the Sachchidananda Brahman, is not composed of three realities put together — sat, chit and ananda — but That spreads itself out in space and time, in what is called manifestation, where and when the qualities of sat and chit come into activity amid the mysterious cyclic changes that go on in the life of the eternal super-being.
We find ourselves in such a dual world of matter and consciousness, the great passive and active principles. In the seventh chapter of The Bhagavad-Gita Shri Krishna says: "Earth, water, fire, air, ether, manas, buddhi and ahamkara — these are the eightfold division of my manifestation." The last word is prakriti, translated variously as 'matter' and as 'nature,' but manifestation expresses the idea of it, as the word comes from kri, 'to make or do,' with the preposition pra, which means 'forth'. It may strike some students as strange that these eight manifestations should be mentioned together as though they formed one class, and should be described in the next verse as "My lower manifestation There is a good reason for that, however, for they are in one class, although they fall into two subdivisions within it, composed of the first five and the last three respectively. The first five words name the five planes of human evolution — earth is the physical plane, water the astral, fire the mental, air the buddhic, and ether the atmie or nirvanic. The Sanskrit word which is here translated ether is akasha, and this is regarded as the root-matter of the five planes under consideration. These five planes must be regarded for our present purpose in one eyeful, if I may use such an expression, as one world having five degrees or grades of density in its matter; we must disregard the steps which these degrees of density make, and think of the whole as one world shading imperceptibly downwards, from the highest point to the lowest.
The remaining three divisions of "My manifestation" are manas, buddhi and ahamkara, Here we have the atma-buddhi-manas familiar to Theosophists. They are three faculties or powers of consciousness. Ahamkara means literally 'I — making,' and agrees with the Theosophical conception of atma. Manas is the faculty with which consciousness cognises the material aspect of the world; buddhi is that with which it becomes aware of the consciousnesses within that world, and ahamkara or atma is that with which it individualises these experiences and so makes for each of us "my world" and "my consciousness". This last faculty knows the one I, but it manifests it in a thousand or a million apparent I's.
When Shri Krishna throws consciousness and matter into the same class, he does not suggest that consciousness is in any way superior to matter or above it. We are not to think that consciousness is manifested in a fivefold world from above that world; matter and consciousness are equal partners, two aspects of one manifestation. It is not that life or consciousness manifests in the material world from above with different degrees of power. The world is just as much a world of life as of matter; the two are mixed together, and on the whole equally.
To understand this, consider the following. In the physical level of the world we seem to be in a world of matter. The matter is so obvious, so prominent, so dominant, so ever-present, that we have some difficulty in recognising the existence of any life at all in this plane, and even then we find only sparks or points of it embodied in men, animals and other beings. It looks very much like a great world of matter in which only a tiny bit of life incarnates. When one enters on the astral plane one finds a change from this state; there the matter is a little less dominant and the life a little more evident — the powers of consciousness are more influential and the limitations of matter less rigid, obstructive and resistive. At the next level, the lower mental, life is a degree more prominent still, and matter still less dominant. Thus the three planes, physical, astral and lower mental, constitute a region in which we may say there is more matter than life.
Now consider the highest of the five planes. Here the conditions are quite the reverse of those in the physical world. It is a great sea of the powers of consciousness. It is as difficult to find matter there as it is to find consciousness in the physical plane. Similarly, the buddhic plane may be said to offer reverse conditions to those which prevail on the astral, and the higher mental to those of the lower mental.
Suppose, then, that a visitor from some other state of being should enter our fivefold field of manifestation. If he happened to come into it at the physical level he would describe it as a world of matter in which there are points of life, centres of consciousness; but if he touched it at its highest level he would call it a world of consciousness in which there are some points of matter.
These principles are shown in the following diagram:
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
CHAPTER 2
CONSCIOUSNESS
IN Hindu and Theosophical books the terms ichchha, jnana and kriya are employed to indicate the three essential constituents of consciousness. Those words are usually and quite accurately translated as will, wisdom and activity, but the significance of the English words in this connection will not be understood unless it is clearly realised that they refer to states of consciousness and nothing else.
The three states of consciousness link the being who has them to the three great worlds — ichchha or will to the self, jnana or wisdom to the world of consciousness itself, and kriya or activity to the world of things or being. Therefore jnana is the very essence of consciousness.
When we see the great scope of these three states we may realise the inadequacy of their English names, which in fact draw attention principally to the positive or outward-working aspect of each of them. Consciousness is always twofold — as being receptive or aware, and as being active and influential, or, in other words, as possessing faculties and powers. Each of its three states is both a faculty and a power.
Ichchha is oar consciousness of self, and also the power that is will. Jnana is oar consciousness of others and also the power that is love. And kriya is our consciousness of things, and also the power that is thought.
Consciousness can never be seen on any plane with any sort of clairvoyance; only being can be seen — but consciousness can be experienced, and is of course being experienced by every conscious being. Let as realise that however splendid amid the relativity of things may be the being aspect of a jivatma or living self on the higher planes, it still belongs to the world of things or sat. Again, consciousness is not snbject at any time or on any plane to the limitations of sat, or, to express the same fact in another way, to go from one place to another it need not cross intervening space. It crosses only time. If, for example, I ask you to walk from one place to another, and after yon have done it 1 question, "What were you doing? Were you moving?" I should expect the answer, "No, I was not moving." And if I press the matter farther and question, "What then were you doing?" I should expect the reply, "I was thinking; I was perceiving the motion of the body."
It is only by inference from observation through the senses that human beings know the position and motion of their own bodies. If you are sleeping in a Pullman berth on the railway, and the train is running smoothly, you cannot tell whether yon are going head or feet first; but when you let up the blind and look at the lights and shadowy objects flitting by, you infer that you go head first, and then invest the body with the supposed sensations of motion in that direction.
When this freedom from space limitations that is enjoyed by consciousness is understood and remembered, it is possible to obtain accurate ideas of the nature of will, wisdom and activity as conscious operations.
When men speak of God they do not, as a rule, think of the Universal God of whom I have spoken, but imagine One who is the supreme consciousness of our solar system. He is one consciousness and it is that in which we all take part — not that it is divided among us, but that we share in it with Him. That great consciousness, called by Theosophists the solar Logos, shows the three powers of will, wisdom and activity. He is of Vishnu in essence, but His will puts Him in touch with Shiva and His activity with Brahma. But by analogy these aspects of that Vishnu have been called also Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma. Though these personifications are misleading, I mention them because I want to tell the story of our Vishnu's creation of His world.
First of all Brahma was sent forth to wield the creative power or divine activity. It is recounted in the books for the understanding of men that He performed His work by sitting in meditation, and that as He meditated the worlds took form under the power of His thought. Such was His activity. It was Vishnu who then entered into the material world and filled it with life, and Shiva with His power that is Self who was there as its super-being.
The true Brahma is outside consciousness, but this Brahma is not, being only a personification of the kriya of our solar Logos. I tell the story only to show that the creative activity was not action with hands and feet in space, but what we call thought. The matter of space in the world of sat is touched by the power of kriya, and takes form under its influence.
CHAPTER 3
THOUGHT-POWER
What is true of the three powers of consciousness of Vishnu is true of those of any man, for all our powers are part of that great consciousness — just as the materials of our bodies, with their properties, are taken from the great sea of material being. It is the thought in any person that is his activity as a man. This activity is twofold, whether you consider the universal or the apparently particular being. (1) It is to be found in the faculty of discrimination that is behind all perception. No man passively perceives. There is no such thing as the passive reception of modifications in consciousness, and all perception is rather of the nature of looking out of a window to see what passes by. The things of the world will never break in upon anybody's consciousness. But consciousness, when it is active, opens itself to the perception of things, and thus has what, if we are very careful, we may be permitted to call a negative aspect. (2) It also acts in a positive manner, so that every thought carries with it the power over things that the thought of the solar Brahma exerted in the beginning. This truth about the activity of consciousness as distinct from the action of matter solves the problem of action and inaction which troubles so many students of The Bhagavad-Gita.
In the Western world there is most dire confusion about the relation between will and desire, and much discussion as to which of these works the body and thus causes its actions in the world. The answer to that problem is that neither will nor desire directly operates the body. Thought or kriya is the only power that; deals with things, and it is with thought-power, kriya-shakti, that the body has been built and that all its activities which are not reflex are performed. In illustration of this I will observe that whenever you pick up your pen from the table, you do it by thought-power. Lookers-on might say that they saw you pick up the pen with your hand, but it was the thought that lifted the hand. There has been a glimpse of the truth abont this matter thrown into European psychology in the theory that Monsieur Emil Coué has put forward, that whenever there is a conflict in the human mind between will and thought it is always thought that wins the day. That is true if we remember that we are thinking of results in action in the world, and also if we take care to observe that in the statement the term 'will' is wrongly used. The theory is true, but its expression in English is clumsy.
Many illustrations may be given to make the idea vivid and impressive. One of the best gives the experience of a certain motor-car dealer in Los Angeles, whose custom it was to teach his clients how to drive the cars that they bought from him. There was a certain man, who had purchased a car and was learning to drive, but for a long time had been falling short of success, because of an attraction for telegraph poles, which is not uncommon in those circumstances. This gentleman would go out in the early morning on the best road that he could find, when there was nobody about, and he would be coming along, driving his car in a tentative and unsteady manner, with his eyes on the road, and for a time blissfully ignorant of the existence of telegraph poles. Sooner or later, however, one would catch his eye, perhaps as he came to a bend in the road, and then he would begin to say to himself, "Oh, I do hope that I shall not run into that pole. I really must not run into it," and as he repeated these words the thought of the pole would become bigger and bigger in his mind, until it occupied his imagination and left little or no room for the thought of the road. Then became apparent the power of thought, for the thing that occupied his imagination, that filled his mind, dominated his action, although he was fervently wishing not to run into the post. His hands, uncertain before, now became steady upon the steering wheel, and he would find himself driving with the precision of an expert straight for the dreaded telegraph pole; and lucky for him it was that he had a teacher by his side, for it is somewhat doubtful whether on all such occasions he could have found the presence of mind to stop his car before running off the road.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Seven Rays"
by .
Copyright © 1925 The Theosophical Publishing House.
Excerpted by permission of Theosophical Publishing House.
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Table of Contents
PART I THE SOURCE OF THE RAYS,
CHAPTER,
Preface,
I. The Pillar of Light,
II. Consciousness,
III. Thought-Power,
IV. Love-Power,
V. Will-Power,
VI. Matter. Energy and Law,
VII. The Divine and the Material,
VIII. Harmony,
IX. The Seven Principles,
X. Inter-Relations,
PART II THE SEVEN RATS,
XI. The First Bay,
XII. The Second Ray,
XIII. The Third Ray,
XIV. The Fourth Bay,
XV. The Fifth Ray,
XVI. The Sixth Ray,
XVII. The Seventh Ray,
XVIII. A Master's Table,
PART III THE GREAT USE AND DANGER OF KNOWLEDGE OF THE RATS,
CHAPTER,
XIX. Your Ray,
XX. Progress without Danger,
XXI. Stages of Self-Realization,
Glossary of principal Sanskrit words used in this Book,