English
On the other hand, the reasoners who cling to Free Will—never suspecting that it may exist, and exist with complete efficiency even if generally incapable of controlling acts—try to work it out by saying the emotions of mind have a uniform efficacy as motives; but independently of the attributes of mind, there is the substance thereof to be considered, the actual Self or Ego which is exempt from the conditions that attach to its attributes. This wtimate personality is free and independent, and a self-determining power of action, independent of external causes, resides therein. That is almost as much as saying that the height of a tree may be twenty feet, but that is the measure of its height and not the measure of the tree. Assuredly the Self or Ego is a very different thing from the attributes it manifests during any one earth life, but while it is in that earth life, you can no more deal with it for the purposes of its relations with earth—as something apart from the sum total of its attributes—than you can deal, on the physical plane, with Berkeley’s orange apart from the sum total of its size, colour, weight, shape, &c. There is a something in the Ego which has touch with the physical plane, but is not of it, and which is 154 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. exempt from the ‘‘ Uniformities ’’ spoken of by the old disputants concerning Free Will and Necessity. This something is the thought of the Ego, its own interior spiritual aspect which has direct relation to its acts, but does not constitute act, and therefore does not come —or, at all events, does not come entirely—within the operation of the Karmic forces which make up the influences under which the doctrine of uniformity is supposed to operate. It is free at any time, and always to appeal to its own Divine fountain-head to review the acts to which it has found itself driven, in the light of its own Divine consciousness; to reach out towards future acts that may better express the Divine purpose (which it may, if it so choose, become a co-operative agent in carrying out), and very often in so reaching it may discover as the future unrolls itself, that the Karmic forces of the past are asserting themselves in the same direction, and that the Free Will of its ennobled desire has a plain pathway before it, no longer encumbered by the obstacles that have hitherto created such terrible trouble—or it may find them, for that matter, strewn all the thicker in the way, and may only realise that they can be passed, however painful the process. The great point to emphasise is that the recognition of this interior freedom, which is in scientific and complete harmony with the whole view of Nature prescribed by the Esoteric Teaching, has the effect, among others, of accomplishing what has hitherto been regarded as a problem no less insoluble than the squaring of the circle —the reconciliation of Free Will and Necessity. THE SEVEN PRINCIPLES. 155 CHAPTER VI. THE SEVEN PRINCIPLES. To pave the way for an examination into which we must shortly enter concerning the actual conditions of those realms through which the soul must pass in the course of its progress from physical death to rebirth, it will be desirable to pause for a moment in order to get a clearer view of the conplex constitution of man. This constitution includes within itself vehicles adapted to the expression of consciousness on every plane of Nature besides that with which, for the moment, we are chiefly concerned, and no adequate comprehension of the process through which the evolution of the central individual consciousness is accomplished, can be attained by any thinker who fails to grasp the true character of the various vehicles in which that consciousness may at different times be manifest. On the plane of physical incarnation the vehicles are all involved one within the other, and in higher realms of Nature, we are, from one point of view, simpler beings than on this level. The conditions of physical existence have necessitated the finer state of complexity we here encounter, but in passing on to the examination of those which occult teaching describes as the “seven prin- ciples of man ’”’ it is well to bear in mind that the sep- tenary constitution is a part of man’s physical aspect, 156 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. and that the true individuality must not be thought of as a bundle of souls separable one from the other, as occult science has sometimes been unjustly supposed to teach. The complete entity as we see him here is rather a bundle of vehicles, and inspiring energies, each of which is adapted to function on different planes of Nature, which for mankind at large are almost inseparably imbedded in the lowest and most developed vehicle, the physical body. ‘These various vehicles are to some extent separable, even as regards mankind at large, and are readily and completely separable in the case of persons whose spiritual training has advanced to certain points, and in whose case evolution, likely to be a slow process for the bulk of humanity, has been abnormally hastened. Coming now to detail, I may enumerate the seven principles in a way which will be seen by readers of “Esoteric Buddhism ’’ to differ in no essential manner from the early statements on the subject there set forth, but which, so far as the language is concerned, may avoid misconceptions which the former termin- ology, perhaps, made possible. Arranged in numerical order, the seven principles may be described in the following way :— . Physical Body. . Etheric Double. Jiva. The Astral Vehicle. Manas. Buddhi. Atma. SAUD WD H THE SEVEN PRINCIPLES. 157 The first three principles taken in this order belong entirely to the physical manifestation. In the earlier presentation of these ideas I put Jiva as the second principle, and the “‘ Linga Sharira,’’ or Etheric Double, as the third. The modification now adopted involves no variation in the essential teaching, but appears preferable from certain points of view. First of all, as regards the Linga Sharira, that term was imported from Oriental terminology into our theosophical litera- ture in the beginning; but a fuller appreciation of the exact function of this element in our organism and of its own constitution considered separately shows that it is an Etheric rather than an Astral counterpart of the physical body, and, at the same time, the inter- mediate organism through which the Jiva, or life force, influences the whole system. Occult students can make a very clearly defined distinction in their own minds between the two words used above, which may not at first, to the ordinary reader, have a different signification. Etheric matter is still physical according .to the most accurate classification that can be adopted, although it is already entirely beyond the reach of instrumental observation and can only be seen by the finer senses appertaining to the Astral vehicle. Each plane of Nature, as we ascend through the refinements of the Cosmos, is constituted of different orders of matter, each order being subject to various modifica- tions on its own plane. For example, we have solid, liquid, and gaseous matter, and beyond these, four varieties of etheric matter into which the molecules of elementary matter, as known to ordinary chemistry, 158 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. may gradually be broken up. The whole subject is one of very deep interest, but I should be turning too far aside from the main path of what I have to say if I stopped here to unravel its complexities, even as far as these have at present been examined by occult students qualified to engage in such researches. It will be enough to make the leading idea of this occult development of chemical science intelligible in its broad outlines. The molecule of matter which possesses the characteristics of one of the known chemical elements must be thought of, in accordance with the actual truth of Nature, as a complicated structure built up of numerous ultimate physical atoms. All these ultimate physical atoms are identical in their own composition and attributes, or approximately so ; at all events for our present purposes whatever differ- ences are latent within them have nothing to say to their physical plane aspects. Each molecule may be roughly thought of as a different building, but each building is constructed of similar bricks. A great many bricks are required for some molecular structures, and whereas the simplest known to ordinary chemistry, the hydrogen molecule, contains only eighteen atoms, the molecules of some gases include many hundreds, and those of other substances some thousands, the figures expanding enormously in the case of molecules repre- senting the metallic elements. On the lowest etheric condition the gaseous molecules known to chemistry are broken up into sub-divisions, and in this condition appear at once to escape entirely beyond the reach of physical senses and instruments. THE SEVEN PRINCIPLES. 159 Their effects are, of course, manifest in all the various phenomena of Nature which have to do with etheric vibrations; and a time, of course, will come in the progress of physical plane knowledge when all this will be the A B C of the text books. In the higher varieties of etheric matter the sub-divisions get broken up again and again until finally, in the highest con- dition of etheric matter, we find the atoms entirely separated one from the other, and matter at that level to be perfectly uniform in its structure and homo- geneous in its constitution.