Masonic, Occult and Esoteric Online Library
Septenary Man
By J.A. Anderson
Lower Manas
In THE study of the human Principles progress is comparatively (§Jr easy so long as we have to deal with the lower quaternary alone. For the four Principles —the Body, the Linga Sharira, Prana, and Kama—are all upon planes either material or sufficiently near the material to be readily analyzed, classified and understood. But when the plane of mentality is reached one of the hardest problems in human consciousness presents itself. For there are in every human breast two forces struggling for mastery—the one trying to drag an indefinable something downward, and to identify this something with itself as the u I am myself"; the other as strenuously endeavoring to elevate this same indefinable center of consciousness, and merge it with itself as an "I am myself" upon an infinitely higher plane. It is as though the human soul stood entirely apart from both of these, the lower being our animal nature, and the higher the voice of the divine Inner Ego, or our conscience, as it is ordinarily termed. And yet it is extremely difficult to disentangle the soul from its association with the lower nature upon the one hand, or from the voice of conscience upon the other. Therefore it is that we have just spoken of it as an indefinable something which yielded now to the one and again yearned toward the other. This thinking Principle in its dual aspect is recognized by theosophic philosophy as one of the human Principles in its septenary classification. We have principally to deal with the lower of its aspects in this chapter, and yet this cannot intelligently be done without a brief examination, at least, of certain phases of the higher.
Man's Higher Ego, so the Wisdom-Religion teaches, is a spiritual entity, which has attained in former world-periods an almost infinite amount of wisdom upon other worlds of the Kosmos, or, at least, under other material conditions. It now descends to this earth for the double purpose of imparting its own divine LOWER MANAS. 75 essence and nature to lower entities struggling in the bonds of matter here, and that itself may learn, if but vicariously, by incar- nating in these human-animal bodies, additional wisdom through observing and being associated under the law of cause and effect with the play of passions raging upon this molecular plane of the Universe. To understand, then, the nature of the aspect with which we are dealing—Lower Manas—it is necessary to bear in mind what man would be without the incarnation of his Higher Ego, and what the effect of that incarnation has upon the animal nature. Without a Higher Ego, man would be only a talking animal; if, indeed, capable of this. As an animal, he is a bundle of instincts, passions, appetites, and desires, in no way different from the animals of the kingdom beneath him except in the longer period, and hence greater perfection, of the evolutionary processes he has experienced. The feeble intelligence observed in the lower animal is carried to a higher degree in him as an animal, but it is the same intelligence in kind. There is no exhibition of emotion, instinct, nor even of reason, in man which does not find its analogue or counterpart in the lower animals. Certain of these, as reason for instance, are only faintly seen; but others, as in many of the instincts and senses, are even more sharply developed than in man. The Higher Ego, then, descends to earth and incarnates or associates itself with the most perfect animal upon that earth, but which was before that incarnation but a perfected animal. By this association or incarnation is bestowed a portion of the essence of the Higher Ego upon or in this animal's brain. This, which before was reasonless, blazes up under the flame of the presence of the reasoning Higher Ego into a false semblance of a truly rational center of consciousness. The process seems to be almost entirely analogous to that which occurs when magnetism is bestowed upon non-magnetic iron through contact with a true magnet. The magnet has lost none of its own magnetism, and yet there appears to have emanated from it a portion of itself. Similarly, the Higher Ego, without sacrificing any of its own divine nature, bestows a portion of its own reasoning and thinking power upon the human-animal with which it is thus associated. There springs up, then, because of this emanation, an illusory entity having the feeling of "I am myself," entirely because of its borrowed glory from the Higher Ego. It is the result of the temporary fusing of this emanation of Manas with the human elementalsynthesizing the human form. Without this emanation, the ele- mental would have no feeling of " I am I"; yet, as a center ofdesires, instincts, and passions, it is so powerful as to almost completely merge this ray of Manas into its own passionate nature,and to cause it to lose all memory of, or relation to, its divine source, and to identify itself almost wholly with its "body," andthe desires and sensuous delights apparently connected with that body entirely, and which to it seem the sum of existence. Thiselemental, then, blazes up into a false semblance of a thinking,reasoning entity during the time of this association. But this canonly be temporary, for the elemental itself has not evolved to theplane where this feeling is normal and permanent by many eonsof years. Withdraw the emanation or ray of Manas, and its borrowed glory soon fades. It splutters and flickers for a few briefyears in Kama Loka, and then enters upon its cycle of latencyuntil again fanned into a flame by the reincarnating Higher Egodescending to earth in another body, which this same elemental,by virtue of past karmic association, must again synthesize—thesesuccessive incarnations constituting its manvantarasand pralayas.*This blazing up of an illusive " I am myself," which is not thehuman elemental alone, nor yet Lower Manas, is the chief mystery of human existence. For here the process of incarnationtakes place. Here is the mysterious weld joining body to soul. For the ray from Manas—the emanation of its own essence which causes the flaming up of the animal faculties in man, is capable of being withdrawn into the essence of the Higher Manas; and,indeed, its normal destiny is to be so withdrawn after each incarnation, carrying thence the fruitage or results of its experienceswhile in the body. It has become—this ray, or Lower Manas an almost independent entity during its long association with thebody. It has identified itself so closely with the desires and inter ests of that body, it has become so colored by its association with and experiencing of the purely animal desires, so changed from its state of original purity, that it, as we have seen, no longer rec- ognizes its source. And if it identify itself too entirely with that animal nature, then is it incapable of being withdrawn by its parent, or of returning to its source. In this case, righting with the force of its lower will, it deliberately chooses to remain associated with the animal entity synthesizing its body; believing itself to be that entity through the loss of its discriminating power because of this association. Then, upon the death of the body, it becomes truly a "lost soul."
The complex nature of our personality is thus readily perceived. It is also perceived that that indefinable something which listens to the voices from both above and below, and which inclines now to one and again to the other, is not the true individuality or Higher Ego, but is its reflection in matter—is truly the Lower Manas of our present study. This Lower Manas, then, is an emanation from Higher Manas,* welded to the animal elemental within us, by in- carnating in the physical body of that elemental. It remains entirely distinct from this elemental, however. The two are dis- parate, and the ray, or emanation, does not actually unite or fuse into its associate, as is shown by the fact that the desires of the latter are distinctly recognized as coming from a source beneath itself. There are thus two entities in every human breast,, which remain for ever separate, although each reacts so intimately upon the other. But the intimacy is brought about through both these occupying the same tenement, as it were—to use a very crude simile. The better illustration might be that of the multiple tubes attached to a phonograph. The same tunes or noises are then heard by all who apply any of the different tubes to their ears. Thus, the Lower Manas receives over the telegraphic service of the nervous system the same sense-impressions from the material world that are conveyed to the human-elemental, which comes ofits being incarnated in, or magnetically united to, every portion of that animal-elemental's brain and body. But, to make this simile more complete, it must be understood that the lower elemental selects and plays the tunes upon the phonograph, at first exclusively. Lower Manas is but the interested spectator and enjoyer of the performance, which thus consists in the play of the normal passions of the lower nature. But as it grows fond of these animal passions and appetites, rendered in siren music, as it associates, and by its awakened desires identifies itself with the stormy, passionate nature of the lower elemental, it soon takes upon itself the office of suggesting new delights, as well as of reveling in the memory of those which have gone, and in an acute anticipation of those which are to come. By thus adding the light of reason, memory, and anticipation to the non-intellectualized sensuous delights of the elemental in whose body it has incarnated, it increases the intensity of these a thousand-fold, and makes the task of subduing them a thousand times more difficult. And as it thus identifies itself more and more completely with its lower companion there grows up, as the result of the association, a strange, illusionary, unreal entity, whose life is truly limited by the horizons of the cradle and the grave, and which fleeting entity is our ordi- nary selves. For it is the production arising out of the intellectualization, during the period of the incarnation of Lower Manas, ofthe desires of that animal entity with which Lower Manas itself thus unconsciously coalesces. But the union which is so intimate during life that it is impossible to see where the one- begins andthe other leaves off is, nevertheless, destroyed at death. Theanimal-entity passes again into its old condition of a merely humananimal elemental; Higher Manas is entirely withdrawn, and the intellectualization of the lower faculties ceases. Through force ofhabit and through long association, the intellectual power of this human-elemental persists for some time after death; and this it is which constitutes the state or condition of consciousness called Kama Loka. But just as a dog, or horse, no matter how highlytrained its faculties may be, soon relapses into its former state ofwildness when no longer subjected to human influence, so doesthis human-elemental slowly lose the intellectualization it has gained by its life association with Lower Manas in the body. It is this separation of Lower Manas and its elemental associate that is meant when we are told that Higher Manas " withdraws its ray." The process, indeed, is unavoidable; for the physical body of the lower entity, being dead and dispersed, and that entity being able to maintain but a brief cycle of subjective mental activity, it can no longer afford a vehicle for the incarnation of the ray of Manas, and the latter of necessity withdraws to the devachanic plane of consciousness; just as the elemental of necessity passes into the condition of latency which overtakes all centers of consciousness when they fall below the plane of self-consciousness. The time required for this separation, or the withdrawing of the ray of Manas, is subject to the greatest variation. For if the lower, animal faculties have been intensely intellectualized, if the Lower Manas have leaned toward and lived in and upon these sense-gratifications, then it takes a correspondingly longer period for the animal-entity to pass into latency; and, on the contrary, if the personality has learned to control its lower associate, if the man has during life lived in his higher nature, and has taken little or no delight in the sensuous things of life, then will that elemental pass into latency almost immediately. The withdrawal of the ray of Manas in such a case is almost instantaneous, and Devachan is at once experienced. Happy is the man whose Kama Loka existence is thus brief!
It will also be seen that, if the Lower Manas entirely identifies itself with this kamic elemental, or with Kama as it is ordinarily stated, there is a possibility of its being unable to separate itself from its association with this elemental at death. Then a dreadful thing occurs; for if the normal line of union does not, or indeed cannot, yield, then must a separation upon a higher plane take place. In this case the division occurs between Higher Manas and its ray, and a "lost soul" is the result. Then the human elemental, thus intellectualized,—thus shining by the borrowed glory of the ray of Manas which it has succeeded in appropriating,—is enabled to live a brief life-cycle as an entirely independent entity. It is neither the human elemental nor the ray of Manas, but truly a compound of both of these. Having been 8o SEPTENARY MAN. throughout its whole life, or, it may be, throughout a series of past lives, attracted entirely earthward by these sensuous desires, which it not only failed to control but which it increased and strengthened by its own will, this "lost soul" is irresistibly attracted earthward upon the death of its body. It haunts mediums, and seeH every other possible avenue by which it can vicariously experience again the old sensuous delights. It may prolong this uncanny life for a long period; or its raging desires earthward may cause its reincarnation as a human moral monster, such as a Deeming or a Jessie Pomeroy. It will thus go on incarnating until all the borrowed light of Manas is extinguished, when it will have to pass into a condition about which it is useless to speculate. This much is evident, that, as has been pointed out, the association of personality to individuality being relatively permanent, and the same individual slowly and by almost numberless successive incar- nations elevating the personality to its own divine plane of self- consciousness, the severing of this association is a most serious and dreadful event. It is an association begun, no doubt, with the very beginning of humanity upon this globe. The "Secret Doctrine" states that each Higher Ego selected its "vehicle" during the middle of the Third Race of this Round, more than eighteen mill- ions of years ago. Since that time the association of the Higher Ego and lower personality has been uninterrupted, evidently. If, now, this association is violently broken off, the human ele- mental cannot go back to the condition in which it was so many millions of years since, but must remain without a hope of further progress upward, during unthinkable periods of time. For it there is no Higher Ego; and what will befall it after entering into the mysterious " eighth sphere" of the earlier teachings, it is impossible to conceive. As there can be nothing stationary in all this great Cosmos of immutable activity, and as such an entity has thrown itself outside of all possibility of progressing harmoniously under the " breath" of that Absolute Motion which is the cause of all evolution, the inference is justifiable, at least, that this Absolute Motion, which is constructive in the normal course of nature, becomes destructive in these instances, and that such entitities will be slowly but inevitably forced downwards from plane to plane of the Cosmos, reversing all the work of their up-building, until they at last become practically annihilated, or reduced to a condition so near annihilation that upward progress again becomes possible. And every step in all this must be accompanied by more or less acute suffering. For all suffering is due to violation of, and opposition to, nature's laws; and this state of inharmony and opposition to nature must be the position of such an entity during the entire cycle of its almost infinite descent.
But let us cease to look upon this gloomy possibility, and turn instead to that harmonic progression of the human soul, in which Lower Manas plays so important a part. It will be seen that as we are permanently associated with our personalities, as we are utterly unable to separate ourselves from them except by the dreadful process of losing them, and thus abandoning them to a fate too dreadful to contemplate, and that as every personality repre- sents the sum total of all preceding personalities, how important a recognition of this relation of Higher Ego to lower personality becomes in our study of human destiny! Each man upon the earth to-day is the result of an almost infinite past. His character is exactly what he himself has created. If he builds for himself a debased, wretched, vicious and wicked body in this life, he must return to a body having these same characteristics in the next, because he has never been and can not be separated from the character which he has engrafted upon his personality. The Lower Manas may, indeed, be withdrawn into its Parent and pass a cycle of comparative happiness and peace in Devachan, but upon it re- emerging from that cycle the old association must be renewed. There is no escape. We waken to life the same elementals with which we were formerly associated, and which, in a condition of latency, have been awaiting our return. We are bound to them by ties a thousand times stronger than the supposed force of gravitation which holds the earth within its orbit about the sun. So, upon the other hand, every good, moral and pure trait of character which we create in this or any life will follow us into our next as surely as the earth follows the sun through the heavens. The enemies we slay now will not return to fight us then, says the "Voice of the Silence," and a more encouraging and at the same time a more profoundly philosophical statement cannot be foundin any Holy Writ. The "I am I," of each personality is anemanation from the Higher Ego of each. It is a " mind-born son"of the Higher Ego, yet the travails of its birth extend over the eons of years which go to make a manvantara. This mystery ofmind-birth is exemplified each year at certain festivals in India, where, it is stated, thousands of pilgrims with unlighted torches crowd about the temple door, awaiting the appearance of the sacredfire. When it appears those nearest light their torches at its flame, and these, in turn, light those of others, and these, others, until at last every torch in all the great throng is blazing in a seaof flame, Yet the original holy flame is undimmed and undiminished. So with the mind-born. At the birth-throes of this physical race, we are told that many " received but a spark," and ofthese we are. With what care, then, ought we to guard this precious spark which shall one day expand into the shining flame ofa perfected human soul! For " becoming one with our HigherEgos" means—can but mean—expanding and growing in spirituality until we are one in spiritual nature as we are now one in essence. So that the toils of human life do not mean the merging of the human soul into some glorious source which shall endits existence as well as its suffering, but the coming into spiritual manhood of a new spiritual being^the mind-born pilgrim of the ages
This is the true relation which the Lower Manas, as it seems to the writer, bears to its human-animal body. Without pretendingthat this explanation is faultless, or that it is capable of explaining all the mysteries of life, it is submitted as a working andhighly ethical hypothesis for our present environments. All finite problems must of necessity impinge upon that Infinite ofwhich they constitute a portion. And that there are mysteries in human consciousness which no hypothesis is capable of solving, the writer freely admits. But it is claimed that this view doesexplain many of the mysteries of human existence; that it is in full accord with the doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation ; and that it furnishes a most philosophical and wholesome basis for ethics. By it is seen, if but dimly, why and how that we sow in one life LOWER MANAS. 83 returns to us in our next. The relation of the individuality to the personality is shown to be not the transitory condition which the ordinary view takes of it. And, once the fact dawns upon the human mind that this association of Higher Manas with the lower personality is permanent and durable, then will the very highest incentive towards the elevation and purification of that lower nature to which we are thus united be afforded. If we must live life after life upon this earth limited by a certain and inevitable association here, and if it is in our power to make this association either pleasant or unpleasant, then is it the height of folly not to take the necessary steps; to "take up arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end then" by subduing all the sources of our misery and unhappiness—our passionate, lower self. Recognizing this great fact, we shall engage in the battle of life with renewed hope ; we shall face a future fraught with the grandest prophecies, for when we shall have united our lower nature to our Higher Divine being, if we but reach up to this Divinity, out of that union shall we then be enabled truly to pass into that Paradise where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest.
