MAN AND HIS BODIES/PART 4

 

THE MIND BODIES

 

We have already studied at some length the physical and astral bodies of man. We have studied the physical both in its visible and invisible parts, working on the physical plane; we have followed the various lines of its activities, have analysed the nature of its growth, and have dwelt upon its gradual purification . Then we have considered the astral body in a similar fashion, tracing its growth and functions, dealing with the phenomena connected with its manifestation on the astral plane, and also with its purification. Thus we have gained some idea of human activity on two out of seven great planes of our universe. Having done so, we can now pass on to the third great plane, the mind world; when we have learned something of this we shall have under our eyes the physical, the astral, and the mental worlds - our globe and the two spheres surrounding it - as a triple region, wherein man is active during his earthly incarnations and wherein he dwells also during the periods which intervene between the death that closes one earth-life and the birth which opens another. These three concentric spheres are man's school-house and kingdom: in them he works out his development, in them his evolutionary pilgrimage; beyond them he may not consciously pass until the gateway of Initiation has opened before him, for out of these three worlds there is no other way.

This third region, that I have called the mind world, includes, though it is not identical with, that which is familiar to Theosophists under the name of Devachan or Devaloka, the land of the Gods, the happy or blessed land, as some translate it. Devachan bears that name because of its nature and condition, nothing interfering with that world which may cause pain or sorrow; it is a specially guarded state, into which positive evil is not allowed to intrude, the blissful resting-place of man in which he peacefully assimilates the fruits of his physical life.

A preliminary word of explanation regarding the mind world as a whole is necessary in order to avoid confusion. While, like the other regions, it is sub-divided into seven sub-planes, it has the peculiarity that these seven are grouped into two sets - a three and a four. The three upper sub-planes are technically called arûpa, or without body, owing to their extreme subtlety, while the four lower are called rûpa, or with body. Man has two vehicles of consciousness, consequently, in which he functions on this plane, to both of which the term mind body is applicable. The lower of these, the one with which we shall first deal, may, however, be allowed to usurp the exclusive use of the name until a better one be found for it; for the higher one is known as the causal body, for reasons which will become clear further on. Students will be familiar with the distinction between the Higher and Lower Manas; the causal body is that of the Higher Manas, the permanent body of the Ego, or man, lasting from life to life; the mind body is that of the Lower Manas, lasting after death and passing into Devachan, but disintegrating when the life on the rûpa levels of Devachan is over.

 

(a) The Mind Body. — This vehicle of consciousness belongs to, and is formed of, the matter of the four lower levels of Devachan. While it is especially the vehicle of consciousness for that part of the mental plane, it works upon and through the astral and physical bodies in all the manifestations that we call those of the mind in our ordinary waking consciousness. In the undeveloped man, indeed, it cannot function separately on its own plane as an independent vehicle of consciousness during his earthly life, and when such a man exercises his mental faculties, they must clothe themselves in astral and physical matter ere he can become conscious of their activity. The mind body is the vehicle of the Ego, the Thinker, for all his reasoning work, but

during his early life it is feebly organized and somewhat inchoate and helpless, like the astral body of the undeveloped man.

The matter of which the mind body is composed is of an exceedingly rare and subtle kind. We have already seen that astral matter is much less dense than even the ether of the physical plane, and we have now to enlarge our conception of matter still further, and to extend it to include the idea of a substance invisible to astral sight as well as to physical, far too subtle to be perceived even by the "inner" senses of man. This matter belongs to the fifth plane counting downwards, or the third plane counting upwards, of our universe, and in this matter the Self manifests as mind, as in the next below it (the astral) it manifests as sensation. There is one marked peculiarity about the mind body, as its outer part shows itself in the human aura; it grows, increases in size and in activity, incarnation after incarnation, with the growth and development of the man himself. This peculiarity is one to which so far we are now accustomed. A physical body is built incarnation after incarnation, varying according to nationality and sex, but we think of it as very much the same in size since Atlantean days. In the astral body we found growth in organization as the man progressed. But the mind body literally grows in size with the advancing evolution of the man. If we look at a very undeveloped person, we shall find that the mind body is even difficult to distinguish - that it is so little evolved that some care is necessary to see it at all. Looking then at a more advanced man, one who is not spiritual, but who has developed the faculties of the mind, who has trained and developed the intellect, we shall find that the mind body is acquiring a very definite development, and that it has an organization that can be recognized as a vehicle of activity; it is a clear and definitely outlined object, fine in material and beautiful in colour, continually vibrating with enormous activity, full of life, full of vigour, the expression of the mind in the world of the mind.

As regards its nature, then, made of this subtle matter; as regards its functions, the immediate vehicle in which the Self manifests as intellect; as regards its growth, growing life after life in proportion to the intellectual development, becoming also more and more definitely organized as the attributes and the qualities of the mind become more and more clearly marked. It does not, like the astral body, become a distinct representation of the man in form and feature when it is working in connection with the astral and physical bodies; it is oval - egg-like - in outline, interpenetrating of course the physical and astral bodies, and surrounding them with a radiant atmosphere as it develops - becoming, as I said, larger and larger as the intellectual growth increases. Needless to say, this egg-like form becomes a very beautiful and glorious object as the man develops the higher capacities of the mind: it is not visible to astral sight, but is clearly seen by the higher vision which belongs to the world of mind. Just as an ordinary man living in the physical world sees nothing of astral world - though surrounded by it - until the astral senses are opened, so a man in whom only the physical and astral senses are active will see nothing of the mind world, or of forms composed of its matter, unless mental senses be opened, albeit it surrounds us on every side.

These keener senses, the senses which belong to mind world, differ very much from the senses with which we are familiar here. The very word "senses" in fact, is a misnomer, for we ought rather to say mental "sense." The mind comes into contact with the things of its own world as it were directly oven its whole surface. There are no distinct organs for sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell; all the vibrations which we should here receive through separate sense-organs, in that region give rise to all these characteristics once when they come into touch with the mind. The mind body receives them all at one and the same time and is, as it were, conscious all over of everything which is able to impress it at all.

It is not easy to convey in words any clear idea of the way this sense receives an aggregate of impressions without confusion, but it may perhaps be best described by saying that if a trained student passes into that region, and there communicates with another student, the mind in speaking speaks at once by colour, sound and form, so that the complete thought is conveyed as a coloured and musical picture instead of only a fragment of it being shown, as is done here by the symbols we call words. Some readers may have heard of ancient books written by great Initiates in colour-language, the language of the Gods; that language is known to many chelâs, and is taken, so far as form and colour are concerned, from the mind-world "speech," in which the vibrations from a single thought give rise to form, to colour, and to sound. It is not that the mind thinks a colour, or thinks a sound, or thinks a form; it thinks a thought, a complex vibration in subtle matter, and that thought expresses itself in all these ways by the vibrations set up. The matter of the mind world is constantly being thrown into vibrations which give birth to these colours, to these sounds, to these forms; and if a man be functioning in the mind body apart from the astral and the physical, he finds himself entirely freed from the limitations of their sense-organs, receptive at every point to every vibration that in the lower world would present itself as separate and different from its fellows.

When, however, a man is thinking in his waking consciousness and is working through his astral and physical bodies, then the thought has its producer in the mind body and passes out, first to the astral and then to the physical; when we think, we are thinking by our mind body - that is, the agent of thought, the consciousness which expresses itself as "I". The "I" is illusory, but it is the only "I" known to the majority of us. When we were dealing with the consciousness the physical body, we found that the man himself was not conscious of all that was going on in the physical body itself, that its activities were partially independent of him, that he was not able to think as the tiny separate cells were thinking, that he did not really share the consciousness of the body as a whole. But when we come to the mind body we come to a region so closely identified with the man that it seems to be himself. "I think," "I know" - can we go behind that? The mind is the Self in the mind body, and it is that which for most of us seems the goal of our search after the Self. But this is only true if we are confined to the waking consciousness. Anyone who has learned that the waking consciousness, like the sensations of the astral body, is only a stage of our journey as we seek the Self, and who has further learned to go beyond it, will be aware that this in its turn is but an instrument of the real man. Most of us, however, as I say, do not separate, cannot separate in thought the man from his mind body, which seems to them to be his highest expression, his highest vehicle, the highest self they can in any way touch or realize. This is the more natural and inevitable in that the individual, the man, at this stage of evolution, is beginning to vivify this body and to bring it into preeminent activity. He has vivified the physical body as a vehicle of consciousness in the past, and is using it in the present as a matter of course. He is vivifying the astral body in the backward members of the race, but in very large numbers this work is at least partially accomplished; in this Fifth Race he is working at the mind body, and the special work on which humanity should now be engaged is the building, the evolution of this body.

We are, then, much concerned to understand how the mind body is built and how it grows. It grows by thought. Our thoughts are the materials we build into this mind body; by the exercise of our mental faculties, by the development of our artistic powers, our higher emotions, we are literally building the mind body day by day, each month and year of our lives. If you are not exercising your mental abilities; if, so far as your thoughts are concerned, you are a receptacle and not a creator; if you are constantly accepting from outside instead of forming from within; if, as you go through life, the thoughts of other people are crowding into your mind; if this be all you know of thought and of thinking, then, life after life, your mind body cannot grow; life after life you come back very much as you went out; life after life you remain as an undeveloped individual. For it is only by the exercise of the mind itself, using its faculties creatively, exercising them, working with them, constantly exerting them - it is only by these means that the mind body can develop, and that the truly human evolution can proceed.

The very moment you begin to realize this you will probably try to change the general attitude of your consciousness in daily life; you will begin to watch its working; and as soon as you do this you will notice that, as just said, a great deal of your thinking is not your thinking at all, but the mere reception of the thoughts of other people; thoughts that come you not know how; thoughts that arrive you do not know whence; thoughts that take themselves off again you not know whither; and you will begin to feel, probably with some distress and disappointments that instead of the mind being highly evolved it is little more than a place through which thoughts are passing. Try yourself, and see how much of the content of your consciousness is your own, and how much of it consists merely of contributions from outside. Stop yourself suddenly now and then during the day, and see what you are thinking about, and on such a sudden checking you will probably either find that you are thinking about nothing - a very common experience - or that you are thinking so vague that a very slight impression is made upon anything you can venture to call your mind. When you have tried this a good many times, and by the very trying have become more self-conscious than you were, then begin to notice the thoughts you find in your mind, and see what difference there is between their condition when they came into the mind and their condition when they go out of it - what you have added to them during their stay with you. In this way your mind will become really active, and will be exercising its creative powers, and if you be wise you will follow some such process as this: first, you will choose the thoughts that you will allow to remain in the mind at all; whenever you find in the mind a thought that is good you will dwell upon it, nourish it, strengthen it, try to put into it more than it had at first; and send it out as a beneficent agent into the astral world; when you find in the mind a thought that is evil you will turn it out with all imaginable promptitude. Presently you will find that as you welcome into your mind all thoughts that are good and useful, and refuse to entertain thoughts which are evil, this result will appear: that more and more good thoughts will flow into your mind from without, and fewer and fewer evil thoughts will flow into it. The effect of making your mind full of good and useful thoughts will be that it will act as a magnet for all the similar thoughts that are around you; as you refuse to give any sort of habourage to evil thoughts, those that approach you will be thrown back by an automatic action of the mind itself. The mind body will take on the characteristic of attracting all thoughts that are good from the surrounding atmosphere, and repelling all thoughts that are evil, and it will work upon the good and make them more active, and so constantly gather a mass of mental material which will form its content, and will grow richer every year. When the time comes when the man shall shake off the astral and physical bodies finally, passing into the mind world, he will carry with him the whole of this gathered-up material; he will take with him the content of consciousness into the region to which it properly belongs, and he will use his devachanic life in working up into faculties and powers the whole of the materials which it has stored.

At the end of the devachanic period the mind body will hand on to the permanent causal body the characteristics thus fashioned, that they may be carried on into the next incarnation. These faculties, as the man returns, will clothe themselves in the matter of the rûpa planes of the mind world, forming the more highly organized and developed mind body for the coming earth-life, and they will show themselves through the astral and physical bodies as the "innate faculties," those with which the child comes into the world. During the present life we are gathering together materials in the way which I have sketched; during the devachan life we work up these materials, changing them from separate efforts of thought into faculty of thought, into mental powers and activities. That is the immense change made during the devachanic life, and inasmuch as it is limited by the use we are making of the earth-life, we shall do well to spare no efforts now. The mind body of the next incarnation depends on the work we are doing in the mind body of the present; here is, then, the immense importance to the evolution of the man of the use which he is now making of his mind bodes; it limits his activities in Devachan, and by limiting those activities it limits the mental qualities with which he will return for his next life upon earth. We cannot isolate one life from another, nor miraculously create something out of nothing. Karma brings the harvest according to our sowing: scanty or plentiful is the crop as the labourer gives seed and tillage.

The automatic action of the mind body, spoken of above, may perhaps be better understood if we consider the nature of the materials on which it draws for its building. The Universal Mind, to which it is allied in its inmost nature, is the storehouse in its material aspect from which it draws these materials. They give rise to every kind of vibration, varying in quality and in power according to the combinations made. The mind body automatically draws to itself from the general storehouse matter that can maintain the combinations already existing in it, for there is a constant changing of particles in the mind body as in the physical, and the place of those which leave is taken by similar particles that come. If the man finds that he has evil tendencies and sets to work to change them, he sets up a new set of vibrations, and the mind body, moulded to respond to the old one resists the new, and there is conflict and suffering. But gradually, as the older particles are thrown out and are replaced by others that answer to the new vibrations - being attracted from outside by their very power to respond to them - the mind body changes its character, changes, in fact, its materials, and its vibrations become antagonistic to the evil and attractive to the good. Hence the extreme difficulty of the first efforts, met and combated by the old form-aspect of the mind; hence the increasing ease of right thinking as the old form changes, and finally, the spontaneity and the pleasure that accompany the new exercise.

Another way of helping the growth of the mind body is the practice of concentration; that is, the fixing of the mind on a point and holding it there firmly, not allowing it to drift or wander. We should train ourselves in thinking steadily and consecutively, not allowing our minds to run suddenly from one thing to another, not to fritter their energies away over a large number or insignificant thoughts. It is a good practice to follow a consecutive line of reasoning, in which one thought grows naturally out of the thought that went before it, thus gradually developing in ourselves the intellectual qualities which make our thoughts sequential and therefore essentially rational; for when the mind thus works, thought following thought in definite and orderly succession, it is strengthening itself as an instrument of the Self for activity in the mind world. This development of the power of thinking with concentration and sequence will show itself in a more clearly outlined and definite mind body, in a rapidly increasing growth, in steadiness and balance, the efforts being well repaid by the progress which results from them.

 

(b) the Causal Body. — Let us now pass on to the second mind body, known by its own distinctive name of causal body. The name is due to the fact that all the causes reside in this body which manifest themselves as effects on the lower planes. This body is the "body of Manas," the form-aspect of the individual, of the true man. It is the receptacle, the storehouse, in which all the man's treasures are stored for eternity, and it grows as the lower nature hands up more and more that is worthy to be built into its structure. The causal body is that into which everything is woven which can endure, and in which are stored the germs of every quality, to be carried over to the next incarnation; thus the lower manifestations depend wholly on the growth and development of this man for "whom the hour never strikes." 

The causal body, it is said above, is the form-aspect of the individual. Dealing, as we do here, only with the present human cycle, we may say that until that comes into existence there is no man; there may be the physical and etheric tabernacles prepared for his habitation; passions, emotions and appetites may gradually be gathered to form the kâmic nature in the astral body; but there is not man until the growth through the physical and astral planes has been accomplished, and until the matter of the mind world is beginning to show itself within the evolved lower bodies. When, by the power of the Self preparing its own habitation, the matter of the mind plane begins slowly to evolve, then there is a downpouring from the great ocean of Âtmâ-Buddhi which is ever brooding over the evolution of man - and this, as it were, meets the upward-growing, unfolding mind-stuff, comes into union with it, fertilizes it, and at that point of union the causal body, the individual, is formed. Those who are able to see in those lofty regions say that this form-aspect of the true man is like a delicate film of subtlest matter, just visible, marking where the individual begins his separate life; that delicate, colourless film of subtle matter is the body that lasts through the whole of the human evolution, the thread on which all the lives are strung, the reincarnating Sûtrâtmâ, the "thread-self". It is the receptacle of all which is in accordance with the Law, of every attribute which is noble and harmonious, and therefore enduring. It is that which marks the growth of man, the stage of evolution to which he has attained. Every great and noble thought, every pure and lofty emotion, is carried up and worked into his substance.

Let us take the life of an ordinary man and try to see how much of that life will pass upwards for the building of the causal body, and let us imagine it pictorially as a delicate film; it is to be strengthened, to be made beautiful with colour, made active with life, made radiant and glorious, increasing in size as the man grows and develops. At a low stage of evolution he is not showing much mental quality, but rather he is manifesting much passion, much appetite. He feels sensations and seeks them; they are the things to which he turns. It is as though this inner life of the man puts forth a little of the delicate matter of which it is composed, and round that the mind body gathers; and the mind body puts forth into the astral world, and there comes into contact with the astral body, and becomes connected with it, so that a bridge is formed along which anything capable of passing can pass. The man sends his thoughts downwards by this bridge into the world of sensations, of passions, of animal life, and the thoughts intermingle with all these animal passions and emotions; thus the mind body becomes entangled with the astral body and they adhere to each other and are difficult to separate when the time of death comes. But if the man, during the life which he is spending in these lower regions, has an unselfish thought, a thought of service to someone he loves, and makes some sacrifice in order to do service to his friend, he has then set up something that is able to endure, something that is able to live, something that has in it the nature of the higher world; that can pass upwards to the causal body and be worked into its substance, making it more beautiful, giving it perhaps its first touch of intensity of colour; perhaps all through the man's life there will only be a few of these things that are able to endure, to serve as food for the growth of the real man. So the growth is very slow, for all the rest of his life does not aid it; all his evil tendencies born of ignorance and fed by exercise, have their germs drawn inward and thrown into latency, as the astral body which gave them home and form is dissipated in the astral world; they are drawn inward into the mind body and lie latent there, lacking material for expression in the devachanic world; when the mind body in its turn perishes, they are drawn into the causal body, and there still lie latent, as in suspended animation. They are thrown outwards as the Ego, returning to earth-life reaches the astral world, reappearing there as evil tendencies brought over from the past. Thus the causal body may be spoken of as the storehouse of evil as well as good, being all that remains of the man after the lower vehicles are dissipated, but the good is worked into its texture and aids its growth, while the evil, with the exception noted below, remains as germ.

But the evil which a man works in life, when he puts into its execution his thought, does more injury to the causal body than merely to lie latent in it, as the germ of future sin and sorrow. It is not only that the evil does not help the growth of the true man, but where it is subtle and persistent it drags away, if the expression may be permitted, something of the individual himself. If vice be persistent, if evil be continually followed, the mind body becomes so entangled with the astral that after death it cannot free itself entirely, and some of its very substance is torn away from it, and when the astral dissipates this goes back to the mind stuff of the mind world and is lost to the individual; in this way, if we think again of our image of a film, or bubble, it may be to some extent thinned by vicious living - not only delayed in its progress, but something wrought upon it which makes it more difficult to build into. It is as though the film were in some way affected as to capacity of growth, sterilized or atrophied to some extent. Beyond this, in ordinary cases, the harm wrought to the causal body does not go.

But where the Ego has become strong both in intellect and will without at the same time increasing in unselfishness and love, where it contracts itself round its own separated centre instead of expanding as it grows, building a wall of selfishness around it and using its developing powers for the "I" instead of for the all; in such cases arises the possibility alluded to in so many of the world-scriptures, of more dangerous and ingrained evil, of the Ego setting itself consciously against the Law, of fighting deliberately against evolution. Then the causal body itself, wrought on by vibrations on the mental plane of intellect and will, but both turned to selfish ends, shows the dark hues which result from contraction and loses the dazzling radiance which is its characteristic property. Such harm cannot be worked by a poorly developed Ego nor by ordinary passional or mental faults; to effect injury so far-reaching the Ego must be highly evolved, and must have its energies potent on the mânasic plane. Therefore is it that ambition, pride and the powers of the intellect used for selfish aims are so far more dangerous, so far more deadly in their effects, than the more palpable faults of the lower nature, and the "Pharisee" is often further from the "kingdom of God" than "the publican and the sinner." Along this line is developed the "black magician," the man who conquers passion and desire, develops will and the higher powers of the mind, not to offer them gladly as forces to help forward the evolution of the whole, but in order to grasp all he can for himself as unit, to hold and not to share. These set themselves to maintain separation as against unity, they strive to retard instead of to quicken evolution: therefore they vibrate in discord with the whole instead of in harmony, and are in danger of that rending of the Ego which means the loss of all the fruits of evolution.

All of us who are beginning to understand something of this causal body can make its evolution a definite object in our life; we can strive to think unselfishly and so contribute to its growth and activity. Life after life, century after century, millennium after millennium, this evolution of the individual proceeds, and in aiding its growth by conscious effort we are working in harmony with the divine will, and carrying out the purpose for which we are here. Nothing good that is once woven into the texture of this causal body is ever lost, nothing is dissipated: for this is the man that lives for ever.

Thus we see that by the law of evolution everything that is evil, however strong for the time it may seem, has within itself the germ of its own destruction, while everything that is good has in it the seed of immortality; the secret of this lies in the fact that everything evil is inharmonious, that it sets itself against the cosmic law; it is therefore sooner or later broken up by that law, dashed into pieces against it, crushed into dust. Everything that is good, on the other hand, being in harmony with the law, is taken on by it, carried forward; it becomes part of the stream of evolution, of that "not ourselves which makes for righteousness," and therefor it can never perish, can never be destroyed. Here lie not only the hope of man but the certainty of his final triumph; however slow the growth, it is there; however long the way, it has its ending. The individual which is our Self is evolving, and cannot now be utterly destroyed; even though by our folly we may make the growth slower than it need be, none the less everything we contribute to it, however little, lasts in it for ever and is our possession for all the ages that lie in front.