Masonic, Occult and Esoteric Online Library
Septenary Man
By J.A. Anderson
The Linga Sharira
THE Second human Principle is called in Sanscrit the Linga ^-^ Sharira, or Design Body. It is so called because it is upon or within it, as upon a model, that the physical body is constructed. It stands in the relation to the latter that the astral world of the Third Round, or great World Period, stands to this the Molecular Round, or Fourth World Period, and can be best un- derstood by remembering this correspondence or analogy. In those wonderfully deep and comprehensive generalizations of evolution which constitute a portion of the teachings of the Wisdom Religion, the formation of a world is carried backward to points in time compared with which modern geologic figures seem trifling; and it is to the third of these periods, as concerned with the birth and growth of this world, that the "matter" of the Linga Sharira is referred. That is to say, that this world, as has been pointed out in a previous chapter, has passed through an immense period of time in which it was fiery in its constitution, after which, by a change in the rate of the vibration of its " matter " it cooled down into an ethereal state ; thence, by means of a still slower rate, its matter became that which we term astral; and, finally, by still another change of vibration, it assumed the coarse, molecular condition of the present great world period, or, as it is technically known in theosophical literature, the Fourth Round.
With each of these great world periods, the forms of the entities upon the earth, including man, have of necessity to correspond with the matter of the Round—their bodies being built out of it. The matter of the Third great World Period was astral—that is, its rate of vibration, molecular constitution, and electric, magnetic, and other properties, were such that it assumed this state. During the immense period involved in a "Day of Brahma," a Round, or, scientifically, the length of time in which any particular rate of vibration remains the keynote or dominating motion in the mat ter of a world, this astral world was occupied by all the hosts of entities which we now find upon the earth, but of course in a very much less progressed state.
Like glazier's putty, "matter" becomes more pliable, more responsive to thought, the more it is used; and so this astral matter has, by its long use during an entire Round, become so plastic that thought-forms are instantly constructed of it, as is experienced every night in dreams. For the forms and scenes perceived in dreams are actual and real; are constructed by the ideative force of the imagination out of this same plastic astral matter; and, lor the brief period during which man's feeble will holds them intact, are as real and as stable as any material forms within the Cosmos. The very changes which are observed in fleeting or panoramic dreams are possible because of, and due to, this ability of astral matter to respond to the vagaries of even the dreaming imagination, though this be quite uncontrolled by the higher mind. But with the change of vibration at the close of the Third great World Period, appeared molecular matter as we perceive it to-day just as a change of temperature—which is but a change of vibration—in a saline solution will cause solid crystals to appear in that which was before transparent.
Such crystals represent the exact vibratory change which has taken place in the entire fluid ; or, to resort to scientific terms again, the amount of heat which has become "latent" in the process. For it must not be understood that all the substance of the earth changes its rate of vibration at the end of each great evolutionary period, or that all the energies concerned in its construction become "latent," except those comparatively feeble molecular forces with which we are familiar. Only a small portion, compared with the entire mass of matter, does so, and only a very minute portion of better understood. ihe changes of vibration which constitute and determine these great world periods, or Rounds, are due, weare taught, to that which is termed Monadic impulse, or to the almost, if not quite, direct action of that eternal Motion which is described in Eastern philosophy as the " Great Breath." In its origin and essence, it is alike unknowable; as finite beings we are limited entirely to studies of its finite modes of motion. But of itself this Monadic motion is incapable of producing form, and must be understood as that of the Universal or Absolute Monad ; that Unknowable base upon which all the so-called properties of matter as well as the infinite states of consciousness within the Universe alike rest, for Spirit and Matter are but aspects of the One Absolute, Causeless Cause, and, as such aspects, are both conditioned and finite. That portion of the Absolute which is at the base of a human soul is called the human monad; and this monad, having descended into the sphere of finite or conditioned exist- ence, in, let us say the fire-mist stage of evolution, finds itself incapable of constructing a form.
To quote the "Secret Doctrine":* " For the Monad, or Jiva, per se, can not even be 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." It is at this point that Eastern Wisdom solves our perplexity by its theory of emanations. At each great change in the vibration of matter, advantage of the change is taken by high creative beings to clothe themselves with the matter which has thus taken on new qualities, both because of such change of vibration and because of these creative beings having bestowed upon the entities which ensoul it a portion of their own essence by emanation. Such creative Beings are the source of all forms in the so-called " lower" kingdoms, as they are, indeed, in all nature.the forces involved pass into molecular activities. Thus, the earth still has the fiery, ethereal, and astral globes of preceding world periods ; each globe being the mother liquid, so to speak, out of which the lower one has crystallized.
All these states interpenetrate, or are in a condition, as again expressed in terms of science, of co-adunition, and constitute the seven globes of our earth chain. The origin of the Linga Sharira of Man may now, perhaps, be The form of Man, then, during all the Rounds preceding this was given by high or low creative beings who have the power to cause the " matter" of each Period or Round to assume definite designs. This is the key to the numerous Pitris or "fathers," which we find accredited to Man in such apparently confusing and profuse perplexity in the "Secret Doctrine." Each appropriate Hierarchy gave to his Monad the form it occupied during that particular World Period; and in doing so imparted, just as ^the magnet imparts its own magnetism to non-magnetic iron, a portion of their own essence. This imparted essence, again, is a key to a portion of the still more confusing array of " Principles," which seem to be a part, and still not a part, of man's complex being. It is, however, this complexity entering into his constitution which makes Man the microcosm of the macrocosm ; for as every entity in the universe either " is, was, or prepares to become a man," so do all the creative intelligences, all the so-called "forces" of nature, aid and conspire to make Man what he now is and what he may become, by a long evolutionary association with (thus bestowing their own essence upon) him.
In the Third great World Period certain entities, whom we may term "human elementals," and whom, we are told, had arrived at this stage during the course of an evolution upon the moon, associated themselves with the still unconscious human monad, and constructed for it, out of astral matter, an astral body—the prototype of the present Linga Sharira as well as the model said to be needed by the " too spiritual" monad. They remained associated with the human monad, and constituted Man's chief principle during the entire Third Round, and are still so associ- ated with him. But their office of modeling for him a body of even astral matter has ceased. His molecular body is, as we >have seen, built up of " pranic lives," and by the " Spirits of the Earth," we are further told. Another and very much higher class of entities—our own Higher Egos—have taken charge of the duty of furnishing a new Linga Sharira at each birth, and the office of the " Lunar Pitris" has become, at best, only mechanical. They are now the servitors of the real Man, and must follow the designs laid down by the true Man, the Higher Ego.
The design body, the Linga Sharira, then, is a " thought body"of the Higher Ego, the true man, impressed first, and before thephysical body is formed, upon the plastic astral matter of theThird Round. The Higher Ego, can not so quickly impressphysical matter, for this is yet too new, hard, and unyielding. Butthe changes which follow, in the human form and features, upona radical change of thought give a promise and prophesy of thosepowers which it is slowly acquiring, and of which we shall see thecompleted fruition at the close of this Manvantara, when thewhole earth will be but the reflection of perfected human Thought.Meantime, astral matter is utilized because of its plasticity, andinto the model so furnished the senseless—upon this plane—"lowerlives" build Man's form. What is the modus operandum of the actual construction ofthe Linga Sharira? The Higher Ego can not be said to construct it consciously —or, at least, not self-consciously.
It is certainly a creative act upon the part of the soul returning to incarnation, but one not exercised as yet self-consciously bythe vast majority of the human race. For the exact copying of purely physical tendencies as to size and shape, or of low psychic tricks of gesture, etc., show that there are other forces at work besides the pure, creative energy of the Soul. The ordinary childis almost an exact copy of its physical parents, showing that these, too, have had their undoubtedly subconscious influence in determining the new form, and that this influence has been amost potent one. The explanation lies in the fact of physicalheredity: that there are in our bodies to-day, as Weissmann declares, cells which have never died since the world began. These cells are impressed, are, indeed, the very record of man's physical past, and carry in their essence an almost irresistible tendency to exactly repeat the old physical structure, as is seen in those lowly forms where physical heredity is almost the sole modifying agency. Nature opposes this tendency upon the higher planes of her kingdoms by interposing cells from two differing parents, thus providing a physical basis for that necessary variation which evolutionary progress demands—and which necessity is the true reason for the evolutionary separation into sexes;—and, secondly, the further modifying influence of the ideation of the returning soul and of its physical parents upon the mental plane. It is along this line of unstable equilibrium that all evolutionary progress takes place, and man's wonderfully complex nature affords it its highest field of activity.
Thus, the initiative force—that of the returning soul—calls into activity the "fiery lives," and the first or ideal thought-form upon their plane is constructed. But as this tends to repeat itself upon lower and lower planes of Man's being, as his Ego descends to more and more material planes in the successive steps of its reincarnation, more and more modifying and obstructive energies are encountered. The subconscious thought of the parents is one source of these; then come the Skandhas—sleeping or " latent" entities representing man's passional and emotional nature as expressed or evolved in past lives, which demand modifications that shall better express their qualities. All these are at work on the plastic astral model ; and when this finally encounters the lower cell lives, carrying the impress of the experience and " habits" of myriads of ages, the Linga Sharira succumbs: the divine consciousness of the soul has sunk too deeply into matter to make its energies a potent factor; and the imperfect human form, largely the repetition of its physical ancestry, is the result.
The astral model, also, is the reason for the perpetuation of species throughout all nature. In the lower kingdoms it, having been, so to speak, permanently molded by the ideation of the Creative Entities for the Round, tends, as we have seen, to an almost exact repetition of the same form. As evolution, however, pushes the entity upward in the scale of being, the complex factors, which we have pointed out as modifying influences upon the human Linga Sharira, slowly come into play; sex differentiation occurs, and, one by one, all the various modifying evolutionary forces exert their activites. There is no possible reason why two cells almost identical in form should differentiate, the one into the form of a delicate fern, and the other into that of a giant sequoia, except that this ideal astral form persists, and is an actual model into which, just as in the human instance, the forms of all the entities of the lower kingdoms of nature are built. In studying the nature and functions of the Linga Sharira more specifically, we are taught that it dissipates, step by step, with the matter of the body. This is because of the withdrawal after death from it, as well as from the physical body, of the " fiery lives," which gave both their vitality.
This vitality, from one—purely mechanical—standpoint, is supplied by the " fiery lives" becoming latent, or changing the rate of their vibration. It is anal- ogous to the disappearance of heat by crystallization, etc., uponlower planes. But in this case the latency is enforced by the unconsciously exercised will of the reincarnating entity. Its tanha, or desire for physical existence, causes the " fiery lives" to yield to it, and it synthesizes the force so derived into the construction and preservation of its body. During life the LingaSharira is said to be the vehicle of Prana, or the Life Principle but its connection with this will be best studied when we take upthe latter Principle. It. is capable of passing out of the bodyduring life, and in such case has the peculiar power of attracting to itself physical atoms from the surrounding atmosphere in such quantities as to reproduce a replica of the human form. In cer- tain instances this projection is, no doubt, the seat of the soul itself In any case, the real physical body appears languid andapathetic during the absence of this its astral counterpart. This power of attracting to itself physical atoms resident in the atmosphere is the cause of the Linga Sharira being so often seen bypeople who are not clairvoyant.
Given a death in which the dying person has intently thought of some distant dear one, andthe Linga Sharira has often been known to go, under the impulse of this thought force, to that person or distant place, and actually appear as a more or less faint duplicate or image of the dyingperson. It is often noticed as a vague violet light, or violet mist, over the graves of the recently dead, and also in these cases is seen by non-clairvoyants, and must of course be composed of.matter capable of being seen by the physical eye. Such visible matter is, in the opinion of the writer, an attempt at reincarnation, byreclothing itself, temporarily and faintly, with physical atoms float- ing in the atmosphere, and is the result of the force of habit due to its life-long association with a physical body. This power, or innate tendency, rather, to surround itself with physical or molecular matter is no doubt at the basis of most of the " materializations" which take place at spiritualistic" seances." The Linga Sharira of the medium leaves, or oozes out of, the body ; the very capacity for doing which constitutes one a " medium." Once outside the body, under the strong, impelling desire of the medium, or of some of the sitters, the Linga Sharira becomes molded into the form of some departed person, and then attracts to itself a sufficient amount of physical atoms to appear as solid flesh. It has, in fact, become a solid, though temporary, thoughtform of some person present among the sitters, and is possessed of the limited intelligence which such thought-forms are capable of exhibiting.
So powerful may be the so-called " materialization," so deceiving the electric and magnetic forces involved, that such " spooks" have all the appearances of a solid physical body; have actual weight, though this has been known to vary by many pounds within a very few moments in the same " spook," upon being weighed. But this change in weight is doubtless due more to an interference with the laws of attraction and repulsion, of which gravity is a phase, than with any real accession or departure of actual physical molecules. Many of these physical molecules are drawn from the sitters present, as the exhaustion of those who are at all mediumistic, after such a seance, amply testifies. The decomposition at the close of the seance of molecules thus withdrawn from the bodies of sitters is the cause of that peculiarly offensive " grave odor" which is always perceived when a genuine materialization has taken place. Of course, the Linga Sharira will not explain all the phenomena of materializations; it is only its part in this process that now concerns us. A Linga Sharira thus extruded and materialized is capable of being injured by blows or violence of any sort, in which case, upon its returning to the body, the marks of injuries thus inflicted upon it will be repeated upon the medium's body, and reappear as actual fleshly injuries. This is because, being the model of the physical form, the real supporter of the physical cells, when it, the model, is altered the tendency of the physical cells to flow into the new design is almost irresistible, and in this manner actually causes the repetition of injuries upon the physical body.
This fact is known in spiritualistic parlance as " repercussion," and the rela- tion of the Linga Sharira to the physical form fully explains this otherwise inexplicable phenomenon. The capacity to thus project the Linga Sharira is possessed in a greater or lesser degree by mediums and seers, and, Mr. Wm. Q. Judge declares, by the hysterical, cataleptic and scrofulous.* The organs of sense, the real centers for seeing, hearing, tasting, and smelling, are located in the Linga Sharira, the proof of which was pointed out in the lecture upon the physical body. Yet, although man has thus the capacity for seeing, hearing, tast- ing, and smelling, or, in other words, of exercising all his senses upon the astral plane, his capacity for so doing is almost nil while in the physical body, and is exceedingly limited even whendisconnected from this by death.
The exercise of the astral senses during life constitutes a low form of clairvoyance andclairaudience, which is much sought after by those ignorant of their own nature, and to whom such glimpses into the unseen are taken for communications from some "heavenly" sphere. There is, no doubt, something which corresponds to sense-organs in astral bodies much higher than the Linga Sharira; but as man's soul recedes inward these become less and less capable of conveying to him external impressions, because of their not yet being sufficiently perfected by use. It will, no doubt, be a portion of his evolution to perfect these interior sense-organs during future World Periods—to become self-conscious, and to exteriorise these now subjective planes in a manner exactly similar to that in which he objectivises his present physical environment. Such sense- organs and astral bodies, composed of finer grades of matter than is the Linga Sharira, correspond to the great hiatus in vibration which lies between the waves of sound, or those which affect man's sense of hearing, and those of light, which appeal to his organs of vision. Thus, sound-waves travel at the rate of about thirteen hundred feet a minute, and are of variable length, while waves of light travel at the rate of 184,000 miles a second, and have a wave length of about 1-52,000 of an inch. Between the sense of sound, said to be the result of molecular motion, and that of sight,, attributed to "ethereal" vibrations, there Is evidently an Immense gulf of hidden sense potentialities. In the vibrations of light, also, there is evidently an unbroken continuity of successively more rapid vibrations above the violet ray, as proven by the chemical changes produced, and below the red ray, with which man's color perception ceases in this direction. So of all his senses. There are sounds which he can not hear; there are substances which have for him no taste. Into such realms of nature interior senses, located in finer, more ethereal astral bodies, must some time project him. Thus we are told, in the " Secret Doctrine," • that ether, now so hypothetical and unreal, will become visible in the air towards the end of this globe Round or World Period. This does not mean that ether is not in the atmosphere now, but that we are unable to perceive it; and prophesies, not the condensation of the ether, but the evolution of finer qualities of perception in our sense-organs.
The condition of human consciousness at death can also be best understood, perhaps, by an examination of the correspondence between the separation of the lower human Principles and the changes of vibration which limit and define a World Period. Thus, at the death of the body, a period which corresponds to the termination of this Fourth Round, or molecular World Period, the life Principle retreats inward, and the body is left to decay, precisely as a dead world in space decays when its higher Principles are also withdrawn, as we see in the case of the dead moon, and of those recently dissipated intra-Mercurial planets which science suspects, but of which it so vainly seeks evidence. The soul then becomes six-principled for a brief period—has for its outermost clothing the Linga Sharira. But it soon detaches itself from this vehicle, for the Linga Sharira as well as the body is molecular. Then the Ego clothes itself with an astral form of finer matter; or of that of a higher rate of vibration, and becomes a five-principled being.
That is to say, that all the "lives" with which it was associated upon the material plane pass into Pralaya, or latency, and no longer disturb the soul by their activities. Prana also disappears—which will be more fully explained when dealing with that Principle. So long as there is the faintest con nection between the soul and the Linga Sharira so long is the lat- ter capable of disturbing, to a degree at least, the repose cf thesoul. This is one reason for cremation, aside from other purelysanitary reasons. Like all states of matter, the astral plane of substance has its seven grades, the lowest of which passes directly into the physical,or visible, molecular condition, while its higher States grade upward into vibrations capable of affording all those vestments ofthe soul which constitute its many "Astral Bodies." There is there can be—no abrupt break between the vibrations of onestate and that of another. They are as continuous as life itself. Our sense-organs may and do mark them off into distinct planes,as when the sense of sight records one rate of vibration as red,and one, but slightly higher, as orange; but there is no point atwhich we can say that here, precisely, the red ceases and theorange begins.
So with the after-death states and the vestmentsof the soul —a portion of the Linga Sharira remains entangledwithin the cells of the body, and dissipates pari passu with it. Another portion oozes out of the body, forming a wraith or dupli-cate of this, and also affording a very transient vestment for thesoul. This, after being abandoned by the Ego, is, no doubt, re-attraoted to the latter, and also dissipates, step by step, with it. Still another portion is used by the kama-manasic, or lower, mind,or Principle, to clothe itself with a thought-form, which afterwardsfades, with the cessation of the activities of this, into the "spook,"the abode of the kama-rupa, or that human elemental which is thesynthesizer of man's purely animal body, as it continues, for amore prolonged period, its existence as an independent entity inkama-loka. The successive abandonment of these vestments, ortheir vibrations, ceasing to possess the power to command thesoul's attention, constitute the key to the after-death states of consciousness. While in the Linga Sharira proper, the state of thesoul is that of calm. Stupefied by the great change in its environment as to vibration, would, perhaps, better express its condition.
But as it recovers from this shock, as it gathers itself together, soto speak, and particularly after, by its own mental effort, it constructs for itself a body of astral matter containing the impress, habits, and desires of the life it has just quitted.it is itself again. It is in kama-loka—in that uncanny region where it is still under the influence of earth desires, thrust upon its consciousness by the vigorous vibrations of this which has been well termed the "body of desire." For it is the seat of desire during life, and still more so after the death of the body. But, let us suppose that these earth-tending desires are not fed or renewed vicariously by any foolish medium, to her own and the soul's hurt ; then they slowly cease, and the soul falls asleep to all vibration except that of its own proper "thought body," in which "to will is to create, and to think is to see."
This is its "heaven," its Devachan, its rest; a state, from the standpoint of vibration alone, caused and made possible by the cessation of all the activities or vibrations of the lower bodies which it has cast off, or to which it has become indifferent. No vibrations reach it now but the very highest and most spiritual of its past life—those unselfish, altruistic, and spirit- ual enough to make an impress upon and be recorded within the tablets of the true soul. The hierarchies of turbulent, passionate lives with which he was associated while in the physical body, and whose imperious voices he so ignorantly mistook for the demands of his own soul, have been hushed; he is again at the fountain source of his true being, drinking again of the waters of everlasting life. In Devachan
"The sin and shame, the woe and misery Will all have faded. Memory's drifting ships Will cast the gall and wormwood in the sea, And bring sweet wines alone into our longing lips."
Here the soul remains, enjoying all the felicities of its own divinity, until the impulse of its spiritual nature is exhausted, when it again bows to the law of its own evolution; again yields to the sway of the " fiery lives" as they force it once more into the realms of sensuous existence; constructs for itself a new Linga Sharira, into and upon which a new physical body is builded, and—takes up its old-life tasks again.
