Masonic, Occult and Esoteric Online Library
Septenary Man
By J.A. Anderson
The Reincarnating Ego
The Reincarnating Ego, known also as the Higher Ego, Higher^-^ Manas, etc., has to be next studied. It is unnecessary to state that almost insuperable difficulties attend its attemptedexamination. Being at the very base of man's existence, it cannot be approached by any ordinary methods of analysis, either deductive or inductive. Its origin is lost in the mists of eternal duration; and its activities upon this plane of conscious existenceare clouded by the material darkness which enwraps it as with abenumbing, stifling shroud. So paralyzed are its natural functions, so concealed its true nature, that it is small wonder that almost athird of the inhabitants of the world do not suspect its existence; while of the remainder, although recognizing it philosophically,few have but the faintest conception of its real nature or attributes.
That there is an inner, or buried, ego very greatly superior tothat of our ordinary, waking, conscious life is easily susceptible of scientific proofs. Chief among these stand the phenomena ofhypnotism, trance, prophecy, clairvoyance, and allied states. Ashas been pointed out elsewhere,* the effect of hypnotism, mostdisastrous to the waking will, is to apparently remove layer after layer of these fleshly garments which hinder the free functioningof the soul, so that a very ordinary or even stupid person becomesprofound, philosophical, possessed of deeper, and even of technical, knowledge of which he has no waking consciousness.Clairvoyance, prophetic dreams, somnambulic trance, togetherwith thousands of phenomena whose profound bearing upon theexistence and native functions of the soul have hitherto beenoverlooked by psychologists, afford ample evidence not only ofthe presence of a soul, but of the farther and most important fact that instead of aiding, widening or of almost creating it, which is the popular conception, the body limits the normal consciousness of this soul to a degree little suspected by even philosophic minds.
While the Higher Ego has its base in spirit, or consciousness, it itself appears to represent and to be the very essence of that condition of consciousness known as Thought. What thought is in its ultimate essence can not be self-cognized. Therefore, it must ever remain a mystery to self-conscious beings, until they shall have passed above and beyond it—a state which quite tran- scends our present power of conception. Viewed from the standpoint of the phenomenal universe, it appears to be the active agent in creation, for there is no fact nor phenomenon which is not plainly its result. From world to atom, from sun to man, there is absolutely nothing which is not due to its creative activity. Yet Thought requires a Thinker; it is not self-born. Unlike consciousness, its very presence is the eternal witness of differentiation; it first proclaims the dawn of another period of manifestation; it testifies to the outward flowing of the Great Breath of the Ocean of Being. Before its appearing even "Universal Mind was not, for there were no Ah-hi to contain it," declares the sublime stanzas of Dzyan. It is the universal creator; yet the conception of creation throughout the Western world must be carefully eliminated before one begins an analysis of its phenomena.
For Thought creates by entering into and becoming its creations. There is no use for extraneous matter in the sense of a potter using clay, of which he fashions a vessel entirely distinct and apart 4from himself, which represents the Western idea of the creative act—except that this further supposes the Creator of the Universe to first create the clay, of which he fashions his creations, out of absolutely nothing. The Occult teaching is, as said, that Thought 4= becomes its own creations. Thus, let suppose that it is the duty of one of the Ah-hi to create a solar system, such as ours. His thought would infuse itself into and energise a vast " Body" of "primordial" matter—the latter itself already the seat of innumerable latent, or subjectively conscious, entities. With every atom of all this mass of matter the Ah-hi consciously identifies himself, just as man identifies himself with the matter of his body, and every atom thrills with the thought of the worlds to be. In this manner are impressed those primal laws, and that apparently blind purpose in nature which cause it to struggle upward along the hard and devious paths of evolution.
Let us suppose primordial matter to differentiate into " fire- mist," this into ethereal, this into astral, and this into molecular matter, and a nebula to be thus born in apparently empty space. All the future course of the newly created system is graven in the records of the physical heavens, and he who runs may read. The mechanical agent has been change in vibration, modifications in the ceaseless motion of the "Great Breath," as the Hindus so poetically term the action of "That which Is, Was, and Will Be"; but the directing, guiding force has been Thought, using as its agent " Fohat," or Cosmic will.
This is the macrocosmic process, and as its details are studied it is seen why man is said to be the microcosm, or little copy, of that macrocosm. There is within him a creative center of consciousness, associated, as was seen in our study of the body, with almost innumerable hierarchies of conscious, but—note well —not self-conscious entities. To become self-conscious is to use creative force; to guide differentiation; to furnish a center wheiein the creative ray of Mahat may be focused upon a lower plane. Such a Mahatic center our Higher Egos are. As unity in essence pervades the entire manifested universe, so it becomes possible, and indeed the law, that Thought thus associating itself with entities below the Manasic plane bestows upon them a portion of its own power. In other words, it "emanates" itself, and its emanations become, in turn, "like unto their Father." This would not be possible if all things were not one in essence, and it shows that in every atom of the Universe there are all the potentialities of the highest god. That which has the potentialities of flame can be quickened into flame by the application of flame, which seems to be the compassionate law capable of reuniting and rebinding all the wayfarers and pilgrims, lost in the illusive cycle of differenti- ation, to their one source and origin, the Absolute. When high, creative Dhyan Choans "thought" this world into mayavic* exist- ence, the idea of man was impressed upon its every atom, and this is, as has been shown, the true reason for all nature pointing towards and culminating in man. This primal impress is also the cau.c e for nature's blind groping after manhood—for the creation of those " men-monsters, terrible and bad,"* which were produced by entities without the "fire" of Mind, yet still unconsciously responding to the primal impulse which demanded " men" for this earth.
Such mindless creators could not bestow that which they did not have. They could give to man passion, emotion, the desire for sentient existence—in short, could produce an animal; but a man was an unrealizable dream to them. The oneness in essence of all that is, and, because of this oneness, the capability of bestowing their own nature upon other differentiations in the one essence, upon the one hand, and of receiving this impress, upon the other, is the key which will unlock the source of whatever of Manas or Thought man has within his being. All things are born by emanation, except the " Primordial Seven,"f who are said, to " radiate" directly from the Absolute. The production of the humble unicellular animal or vegetable by fission is as truly an emanation of its own essence, upon its lowly plane, as is the creation of a thinking entity by emitting the spark of manasic fire, upon a higher. The parent which has produced another being by dividing itself is as whole and perfect as before, and a thousand brains can be set successively throbbing with thought by our Higher Egos without lessening their divinity or making them one whit less perfect than before.
This is one of the functions of the Higher Ego—to bestow its own power of thought upon those animal elementals whose outer vestments are our bodies, and thus to render them capable of start- ing on the long and perilous journey towards godhood. For in an eternity of endless progression, when man shall be done with matter, other entities must step into the place vacated by him, and, when their turn comes, scale the heights and sound the depths of self-conscious existence. By all the laws of correspond- ence and analogy, these ought to be those elemental beings most closely associated with man, which are not the animals, as might be supposed, but those human elementals which synthesize our human-animal bodies.
And the question is an open one, at least, whether that " Ray" of Manas which incarnates in each human body is not a true division —a begetting upon the plane of mentality of another " mind born Son." If it be but a ray,—a vague and unsatisfactory explanation of its relation to the Higher Ego,—then must the human elemental become the mind-born son.
The real entity at the base of man's conscious existence is declared to be the Higher Ego. Its horizons of life are bounded by the vast eons comprised in a Maha-manvantara, with the possibility of eternal existence if it assimilate itself to Buddhi, or the Substance-Aspect of the Absolute. Standing behind the veil of mutable matter in which its various successive personalities are clothed, itself robed in imperishable cosmic substance, it knows not birth nor death; the dread gulfs which mark the boundaries of sen- suous life for it do not exist. Its home is on the plane of thought and from this divine view-point it approaches sensuous life only by the avenues its emanations cause to arise in the humananimal brain. It bestows upon the brain of the animal man in whom it incarnates its own feeling of "I-am-ness." This borrowed feeling of egohood is the "I am I" of our ordinary waking life. Its horizon of existence is bounded by the farther shores of Devachan, as the life of the human elemental is limited by those of Kama Loka. This " I am I," as we have seen, is a compound of the ray of Manas colored by the sensuous experiences of Kama.* And yet, although its life seems thus limited, it is only self- consciously so limited. There is no doubt that the same personality attends the Higher Ego throughout all its incarnations. It is differently colored by different lines of physical heredity; but the inner entities of which the personality is composed must be the same, to a very large degree, if not wholly, else karmaf would not be satisfied. Certainly, the human elemental is the same throughout all normal incarnations. It must be borne in mind that, in incarnating, it is entities with which the soul or ego is associated, not abstractions. And these entities are its microcosm; constitute the "little world" upon which it is trying its 'prentice hand at governing before being assigned larger opportunities. They are its microcosm, its little cosmos; and it is as impossible for them to become dissociated from the soul to which they are karmically bound as it is for the granite mountains of this earth to suddenly rise in the air and float away to Venus; for so close is the tie which binds man to his microcosm. The rocks and mountains, the seas and oceans of this earth, are indissolubly connected with its Regent; and, although these are ensouled by an almost infinite number of lower entities, they are the vestments of his personality while he is on the earth, and cannot be discarded even upon the re-embodiment of the earth as a new planet, for we are distinctly told that the "vital principles" of a planet merely transfer themselves to a new point in space upon the death of an old, worn-out world. And what are vital Principles but the whole hosts of conscious or subconscious entities who have been clothed with the matter of the old world ? Let us avoid loose reasoning, and always remember that we are dealing with consciousness, and that in all the finite Universe there is not a particle of matter which is not the clothing and expression of a conscious entity; nor no thought which is not the direct action of a thinking entity. So shall we avoid vagueness and generalities. It is far better to confess when we reach the point where our knowledge fails than to attempt to conceal our ignorance behind an array of meaningless generalities. So that the reincarnation of a world means the reincarnating of the entities which made up that world, and the reincarnating of the Higher Ego means the re-association of that ego with its old microcosm of entities. All that is new is the very outer- most and coarsest molecules, made up of lives so near the material aspect of the Absolute that they can be used by almost any entity as its clothing, whether that entity be an animal, a vegetable, or even those fused into a rock.
But all this has been shown in former chapters. It is restated here to emphasize the relation which the Higher Ego bears to its humble body, and the importance of a connection which is thus karmic and almost interminable, and the character of which can 9o SEPTENARY MAN. only be changed by thought. The importance of this relation can not be overestimated. We can not separate ourselves from our bodies—or, rather, from the entities which compose those bodies—until we have so changed them by our thought that they become capable of taking up for themselves the struggle of self- conscious existence. Their consciousness is daily and hourly being molded by our thought, as Manas toils at his kingly, creative function among these the lower lives of our bodies. For Thought means creation, is creation,—and to be a thinker is to be a creator. Above the planes of Thought we can faintly conceive of a sea of absolute consciousness, rest, and bliss; but when we descend below this there is the clamor and toil of ceaseless activity, for all the immeasurable universes are in the throes of its active, creative effort. This activity proceeds in cycles, which afford to entities a temporary respite; but it is only temporary a brief period of comparative inactivity and rest before they again respond to the blows of the Hammer of Thor in the resounding workshops of creation.
We must recognize the Higher Ego as a kingly Creator, and these entities clothed in the material molecules of this plane as the plastic matter which, heated to redness by the flame of his presence, he is slowly forging into diviner shapes, if we would ever gain an insight into the seemingly mysterious relation between Soul and Body—between Higher Ego and lower Personality. Thought, under one of its seven modes of activity, is constantly active within us; not a moment passes that has not to some degree changed our relation to. the entire Universe. The reaction of that Universe because of this change is one of the seven phases of karma.* The voice of conscience is that of our Higher Ego upon its own divine plane; for action and reaction are apparent, and it creates with. knowledge of and in harmony with Universal Law. But upon the plane of Lower Manas it is not yet fully conscious, because the latter is still in the coils of Kama.f Therefore, it can only lift its voice in solemn warning when the lower self, yielding to sensuous delights, sows the wind which shall, cause the reaping of the whirlwind. Happy, indeed, is the man in whom this kingly creation of thought is under the direct guidance of this Divine Monitor!
For the " I am I" of the ordinary man is, as we have seen, the product of the illusion of " I-am-ness" set up in the human brain as a consequence of the incarnation of the Higher Ego. It has no real existence, and fades forever, even as a seeming entity, when the last devachanic dream ceases and the Higher Ego again takes up its active creative efforts. It is well that this is so. No enlightened man would wish to carry into eternity the "I" of his earthly appetites, passions, vanities, ignorance, and selfishness. Even the Christian recognizes this, and believes that in some mysterious manner he will be "changed in the twinkling of an eye," although all nature is proclaiming by every act that su:h is not, never was, and never will be, her methods.
Yet this reflection of Manas, this emanation from the Divine Thinker, is of the same essence as its parent, and affords a stair- way by which the latter may descend, and, still more important to us, a means whereby we may ascend to our divine parent. For its Ray, the Lower Manas, is, indeed, ourselves—our very selves, in truth,—and if kept pure andundefiled may be indrawn into the Higher Ego to share, and be, its immortality.
But such is not its ordinary fate. The thought of Manas has as yet scarcely begun to impress itself upon and to mold its associated microcosm into its own divine designs. The effect of its incarnations thus far have been, in the vast majority of men, to fan into a fiercer flame the passionate and reasonless sense- consciousness by rationalizing these lower passions which before were reasonless. Its divine labor, to spiritualize by infusing its own divine essence into every atom of the body, lies yet very largely in the future—a task to try even its kingly powers. And this spiritualization—strangest mystery of all! —we its sons have the power to hasten, retard, or even prevent entirely. By dwelling in and living for the things of the flesh alone, we can so change and color the pure emanation of Manas, which constitutes our real selves, that it becomes wholly of the earth, earthy. For Manas is pure thought ; it knows naught of emotion or sense-consciousness except as these afford it food for thought. And its thought must 92 SEPTENARY MAN. be pure. No flash of impurity, even, can be thrown across its divine nature. For it, all the delights of impure sensuous exist- ence are meaningless; it views them as one might the movementsof a panorama of which he positively knew nothing. It knows, indeed, that they are sinful and wicked; and, if the lower self is not too debased, raises its warning voice, but no record of the act itself can be imprinted upon its own pure nature. Therefore, the Higher Ego is not—can not be—soiled with the crimes or vices of its lower reflection, although it may and does suffer because of these. But its suffering is not personal. It is the woe for others' sake, the voicing of that old plaint, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered ye under my wings even as a hen gathereth her chickens, and ye would not!"
Therefore, the effort is mutual on the part of the lower andHigher Selves, when the former is not too blinded by sensuous delight to attempt union with its Parent. For if the mission of the Lower Ego is to ascend, that of the Higher is equally to descend. It has to conquer self-consciousness upon this stormyplane of molecular sense life, and it can only do this by raising its passion-tossed entities to a state where they respond instantly to its creative touch. It can never know this earth until it has con- quered it, and so it seems that, although the trend of material evolution appears to be, and is, so decidedly upward, this is but half the process, and is met by an equally imperious descent of the spiritual or Thought side of nature. Our Higher Egos are ascending out of matter only in the sense of overcoming it; in the struggle they are ever grasping firmer and closer holds upon it. Yet when Thought really descends into matter it dissipates its illusions, so that in conquering the world it shall dissipate its illu- sions and change even its very forms.
Man is thus the microcosm of the Macrocosm, and he repeats the history of his association with its matter with every new life. Asthe Higher Ego returns to incarnation, it molds almost instantly the matter of the Astral Round, which it conquered and madeplastic to its thought during that world period, into the astral shape of its future form. This constitutes the Linga Sharira, which has been already fully described. Into it, as we have THE REINCARNATING EGO. 93 seen, the molecules of this too solid flesh flow, making man's bodythus but a kind of petrified or carnified astral form. But the Thought of the Higher Ego can and does, in the case of the trained Adept consciously, and of the ordinary individual unconsciously, produce other astral forms. These have well been called Thought forms, for there is no form which is not a Thought form. Yet in their conscious production we but see another evi- dence of the kingly nature of the Higher Ego, and of the real hold, through it, the soul has upon Divinity. For however feebly the voice of the Higher Ego may be heard, however vague and unreal its presence may seem, yet it is present in every thinking man, constituting him one with that mighty power which brought stars and worlds into being. His body is not himself; its desires, passions, emotions, caprices, vanities, and all the puerile things which now occupy his divine but degraded thinking Principle, are not his desires, but those of beings far, far below him, and with which he is associated to conquer and lead to a higher existence. His thoughts are alone himself, and he is master of their divinely creative potencies, if he but wills it. There is no power in nature which is not his rightful heritage, if he but claims it. And the one requisite is to recognize himself as a thinking soul, hampered, restricted, and manacled by a body, instead of imagining himself a body full of false desires, false needs, and false ideals, which the equally false theologies of the West have taught him to regard as in some vague and unreal way to be possessed of a soul. And whatever his soul may be on planes above Thought, with such he has small present concern. In the Cycle of Necessity, in the onward rush of manifested life in which he now finds himself, he is a center of pure creative thought, taking an active, responsible part in fashioning not only the microcosm with which he is more closely associated, but also in molding the world which is his present home, and changing to some degree at least the very Universe in which he has his being. Recognizing this, he will guard his thoughts as a miser his gold, and will never permit himself to think a vile or wicked one after he realizes that thus he has given birth to a vile and wicked form. For the fact that all are of one essence makes it possible, and indeed almost necessary, that his thought should affect others. Under the illusion that thought is harmless, the thinker who revels in thoughts of lust, hatred, or crime, which some weaker man takes up and carries into action without knowing why, has the greater share in the real responsibility. For each thought, by the mysterious action of karma, molds his being, and carries with it the certainty of its own punishment.
punishment. We are thus gods, and the sons of God. Let us, therefore, claim our birthright and exercise our kingly function in a kingly manner. Let us endeavor to feel ourselves one with that throbbing heart of nature which is ever pressing onward to higher and nobler ends. Let us no longer exercise the divine power of thought upon the clamor of the senses; but, stilling these, hearken to the voice of our inner god; creep closer to the heart of nature, and reverentially listen. So may we find that there is meaning in the apparent chaos of existence; so may the breath from the wings of the Swan of Life fan our cheeks; so may we re-enter the Paradise wehave lost, for we will have recreated it by the irresistible power of purified, holy, compassionate Thought, and will have reunited ourselves to and rebecome our own Higher Selves!
