VII- Dreams and After Death States: The Invisible
Worlds
Related References
3) Navigating Through Time - The Rights
Of Passage
(HPB, Secret Doctrine, Vol I, p. 16)
The following summary will afford a clearer idea to the reader.
(1.) The ABSOLUTE; the Parabrahm of the
Vedantins or the one Reality, SAT, which is, as Hegel says, both
Absolute Being and Non-Being.
(2.) The first manifestation, the impersonal,
and, in philosophy, unmanifested Logos, the precursor of the
"manifested." This is the "First Cause,"
the "Unconscious" of European Pantheists.
(3.) Spirit-matter, LIFE; the "Spirit
of the Universe," the Purusha and Prakriti, or the second
Logos.
(4.) Cosmic Ideation, MAHAT or Intelligence,
the Universal World-Soul, the Cosmic Noumenon of Matter, the
basis of the intelligent operations in and of Nature, also called
MAHA-BUDDHI.
The One REALITY; its dual aspects in the conditioned Universe.
Further, the Secret Doctrine affirms:-
(b.)
The Eternity of the Universe in toto as a boundless plane; periodically
"the playground of numberless Universes incessantly manifesting
and disappearing," called "the manifesting stars,"
and the "sparks of Eternity." "The Eternity of
the Pilgrim" is like a wink
-----
"Pilgrim" is the appellation given to our Monad
(the two in one) during its cycle of incarnations. It is the
only immortal and eternal principle in us, being an indivisible
part of the integral whole-the Universal spirit, from which it
emanates, and into which it is absorbed at the end of the cycle.
When it is said to emanate from the one
(HPB, Secret Doctrine, Vol I, p. 17)
Moreover, the Secret Doctrine teaches: --
(c) The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal
Over-Soul, the latter being itself an aspect of the Unknown Root;
and the obligatory pilgrimage for every Soul -- a spark of the
former -- through the Cycle of Incarnation(or"Necessity")
in accordance with Cyclic and Karmic law, during the whole term.
In other words, no purely spiritual Buddhi (divine Soul) can
have an independent (conscious) existence before the spark which
issued from the pure Essence of the Universal Sixth principle,
-- or the OVER-SOUL, -- has (a) passed through every elemental
form of the phenomenal world of that Manvantara, and (b) acquired
individuality, first by natural impulse, and then by self-induced
and self-devised efforts (checked by its Karma), thus ascending
through all the degrees of intelligence, from the lowest to the
highest Manas, from mineral and plant, up to the holiest archangel
(Dhyani-Buddha). The pivotal doctrine of the Esoteric philosophy
admits no privileges or special gifts in man, save those won
by his own Ego through personal effort and merit throughout a
long series of metempsychoses and reincarnations.
(HPB, Secret Doctrine, Vol I, p. 37)
(a) Time is only an illusion produced by the succession of our
states of consciousness as we travel through eternal duration,
and it does not exist where no consciousness exists in which
the illusion can be produced; but "lies asleep." The
present is only a mathematical line which divides that part of
eternal duration which we call the future, from that part which
we call the past. Nothing on earth has real duration, for nothing
remains without change-or the same-for the billionth part of
a second; and the sensation we have of the actuality of the division
of "time" known as the present, comes from the blurring
of that momentary glimpse, or succession of glimpses, of things
that our senses give us, as those things pass from the region
of ideals which we call the future, to the region of memories
that we name the past.
.The real person or thing does not
consist solely of what is seen at any particular moment, but
is composed of the sum of all its various and changing conditions
from its appearance in the material form to its disappearance
from the earth. It is these "sum-totals" that exist
from eternity in the "future," and pass by degrees
through matter, to exist for eternity in the "past."
..Even so of persons and things, which, dropping out of
the to-be into the has-been, out of the future into the past
- present momentarily to our senses a cross-section, as it were,
of their total selves, as they pass through time and space (as
matter) on their way from one eternity to another: and these
two constitute that "duration" in which alone anything
has true existence, were our senses but able to cognize it there.
(Wm. Q. Judge, Articles, I: pp. 536-537)
Man is a Soul, and as such stands among material things. This
Soul is not only on its way upward for itself, but is compelled
at the same time to draw up, refine, purge and perfect gross
matter-so called- in which it is compelled to live.
..
These sheaths are necessary if the Soul is to know or act. For
it cannot by itself understand Nature at all, but transforms
instantly all sensations and ideas by means of the different
sheaths, until in the process it has directed body below it;
and in like manner they report from below upward in the case
of sensations from natural phenomena and impressions on the outside
Further Reading References:
Wm. Q. Judge, Ocean of Theosophy: pp. 15, 111
HPB, Key to Theosophy: p. 197
Wm. Q. Judge Articles, I: "Sheaths of the Soul"
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