4-23-02 - DREAM - I was in an office where there was a large screen TV high up on the wall. It was showing a group of people who were deciding the fate of who was going to live or die.  The camera was panning the faces of the people in the group. I knew all of them and my heart swelled with pride that I knew all of them and held them all in high regard.

The meeting was very lively with a lot of gestures and smiling faces, so I had to assume  the meeting went well though I couldn't hear what they were saying.

Then the meeting was over and the camera showed the whole group crossing the street together. The center four of the group (two men and two women) wore voluminous robes such as one would see in a high court - but I took it to mean that they had PhDs or some high office like that - none of them was wearing black - their robes were purple and dark blue. Then three people on each side of the center four were wearing black suits like Rabbis or priests, and one person on each end was wearing regular clothing - so it appeared that they were lined up by rank to each side. There were 12 in all.

***

After I woke up, I attempted to meditate to remember more details about the above dream - such as why they were deciding which people lived or died or the circumstances. I fell asleep:

DREAM - I was in the same office, having slept overnight on a cot. It was 8:15 a.m. and the phone rang. It was 'the teacher' and I told him the dream so we could discuss it.

While talking to 'the teacher' I was having a vision of encyclopedia pages that were scanning downward quickly. There were two columns on the pages.  I could only  pick out a word here and there. I saw 'ein sof'  and that it appeared that I was looking at a computer screen close up with the AOL task bar at the top so I couldn't read the name of the encyclopedia I was looking at. The name was hidden.

I asked 'the teacher' about the encyclopedia pages I was seeing and he said, "Yes! It's possible to transmit information across time and space like that."

I said, "I mean, I AM receiving this information - it's right in front of me."  As I said that, the page had words in the shape of the state of Texas in the center of the page between the two columns of print.

I had been assuming he was sending it to me mentally, when he did not; he was only telling me that it was possible to do it. I had no way of knowing how I was receiving it, or where it was from.

While I was talking to 'the teacher' a man dressed in a brown suit came into the office and asked for a copy of a letter. He said the letter was from 'the third day'.  I was forced to hang up the phone quickly to try to help the man..

I had no clue which file cabinet a letter from the 'third day' would be in. There were thousands of file cabinets in this office building.

Then the head secretary came in. She had worked in this office longer than I had and I hoped she could answer the man's question.

She sat at her desk brushing her short dark hair like she had just got out of bed. So I started brushing my hair too because I had just woke up myself. So we were brushing our hair simultaneously and I was thinking how much she and I were alike.

The boss came in then. His name was Ray. I didn't actually see his face - only that he was there next to me. He said to me, "You could dress more appropriately."

I looked down at myself and saw that I was wearing my pink pajama top (actually a sweat-suit top) over my pink pajamas and I realized I was still dressed for bed, not for work. Instant guilt flooded through me and I knew I had to run home across the street and change clothes. It would only take 5 minutes. So I grabbed my multicolored coat-sweater (which I call my coat of many colors) and put it on over my pajamas and headed for the elevator.  (I was actually dressed this way in bed)

When the elevator door opened, there was a square piece of royal blue oriental rug laying on the elevator door track but the door closed and I went down in the elevator to go home.

The elevator door opened and that same royal blue oriental carpet square was laying over the elevator door track.

I was amazed by this. Then the elevator door closed and it dragged the carpet piece across the doorway and the elevator door jammed open. So I reached down and picked up the carpet piece which seemed more like a towel now and the elevator door opened again.

I saw that the elevator itself was sunk down in the pit about a foot down and was full of garbage trash, so I assume I was now in the basement and woke up.

xxx

THE THIRD DAY: Genesis 1:9 - And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place and let dry ground appear." and it was so. 10 - God called the dry ground "land" and the gathered waters he called "seas". And God saw that it was good. 11 - The God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so. 12 - The land produced vegetation plants bearing see according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 - And there was evening, and there was morning - the third day.

The reference to the State of Texas, I believe is a remembrance that I learned my basic metaphysics lessons from there. 

Ein Sof

Also spelled Ain Soph. This literally means without end, or eternal. God as Ein-Sof is completely inconceivable, impersonal, and without attributes. It's usage is strikingly similar to the Hindu term, Brahman.

On 11-10-97, I had this brief dream:

 - DREAM - The Mythology web page should include "The Creation of the Tree of Life and the Tree of Water, The coming of Anu and EA, and the Gilgamesh story.

We have since written about the Tree of Life on 112 different pages. 

A Personal Experience:

THE SEPHIROTH - MUSIC FOR OUR EARS AND HEARTS

3-19-98 - While Joe was talking to me early this a.m. around 5 a.m., I experienced an intense desire to close my eyes. It WAS NOT out of boredom. :-)

Joe was expressing his theories about the Sephiroth . The Tree of Life. He said that many people feel that the Sephiroth has to do with music.

I said that was VERY interesting. I said that because when I closed my eyes, I was seeing a book and each 5 lines explained a section of the Sephiroth. As I watched, each word on each line became a circle and then each circle became a musical note.

When I told Joe my vision, he asked if those notes could be played. I said, "Yes! They could be played. If they were played as I saw them, it would be like playing a musical scale or if seeing it electronically, it would look like a sine wave.

After Joe left for work, I heard a telephone ring in my left ear. The phone had rung in my head only...not in the physical. I lay there quietly and I then heard 5 knocks.

Each knock brought one of those musical staff lines into view again. On the top appeared a brilliant green sign that read, "Happy Cheers Day" Then I began to see the lines of the staff below it fill in. On the next line, it read, "THE GAME OF LIFE"

and below that: "How to get through life without dying".

Below that was a line of music. The top four lines became musical notes easily played. I waited for the lower line to fill in and it never did. It remained blank.

Note: I seems to me that one should not play those notes which lie on the lower spaces if one wants to live without dying. I'm thinking that those lower notes would represent such low tones as "fear" and "anger'.

What do you think?

Love, Light, and Joy

Dee

THE TREE OF LIFE CROP CIRCLE FORMATION

KABBALISTIC VIEW

Ein Sof
Infinity

The term Ein Sof is sometimes taken in Kabbalah to refer to God's very essence.

When more precisely used, Ein Sof refers to God's infinite light, before the beginning of the creative process. Ein Sof = 207 = Or ("light"). Were Ein Sof -- literally "no end" -- meant to refer to the essence of God, it would be more appropriate to call God Ein Techila -- "no beginning" ("no end" implies a "beginning" which precedes it, but nothing precedes God). The infinite light which emanates from God's very essence does in fact possess a beginning (God's essence) but does not possess an end.

Even more precisely, Chassidut teaches (in the name of the Maggid of Mezritch) that Ein Sof refers to the infinite light generated by themalchut of Echad. The thought and desire of Ana Emloch resulted, spontaneously, in a "surge" of infinite energy and light to enact the creative process (just as the heart of a mortal king becomes full of "infinite" energy and light to materialize his will to rule).

The relation between Ein Sof and the power of malchut is indicated by the fact that Ein Sof = Adon Olam ("the Master of the universe"; Ein= 61 = Adon, Sof = 146 = Olam). In the beginning of our daily prayers we praise God as: "The Master of the universe [Adon Olam] who ruled before any being was created."

The surge of infinite energy and light, Ein Sof, is referred to in the Zohar as the Tehiru Ela'ah, the "higher brilliance" (in contrast to the Tehiru Tata'ah, the "lower brilliance," which appears after the initial contraction of God's infinite light).

HINDU VIEW

From: http://www.wisdomworld.org/additional/ListOfCollatedArticles/TheKabbalah-Part3of3.html

THE KABBALISTIC Tree of Life is a picture or diagram of Creation cast in the image of a tree. As this is a visual rendering, an abstraction, let us continually remember the idea of analogy and correspondence. Hence, if the rendering be taken literally it will be meaningless. After all how does one explain the inexplicable?

Whenever we endeavor to understand the "inexplicable" we find our only vehicle is through the use of symbolism. Symbols are the outermost face of archetypal forces, which emerge into our world as recognizable forms. A symbol, like a map, relates to the living ideas which animate them. They are not definitions or periods at the end of a sentence. We have a tendency, in our time and culture, to reduce symbols into signs. A sign serves as a code, a unit of information or data, which reduces ideas into a clearly recognizable something. We need only drive down the street to see the myriad of signs we confront daily. A symbol, on the other hand, is a starting point for the imagination.

When speaking of the imagination, it is important to distinguish it from fantasies which are the production of the brain and based upon what we already know. Imagination, however, is the bridge between our self-awareness and our connection to archetypal energies. Through these energies we have the capacity to support, maintain and create our sense of self, our sense of time, along with an understanding of the universe in which we interact.

Thinkers during the Renaissance, such as Robert Fludd and Johann Reichlin, etc. understood the value of the intellect when translating subjective experiences into objective communication. They viewed the intellect as a navigator and decision maker, but recognized the imagination as the true key for unlocking wisdom -- A wisdom which could only emerge as a living force without being reduced into a familiar code of laws. When reading H. P. Blavatsky's translation of The Stanzas of Dzyan, we can sense the vitality and power of this force. These Stanzas stimulate our imaginative faculties. They are poetry of a divine order, and are able to unlock knowledge from a deeper level in ourselves. These unaccustomed regions in our nature, when stirred, allow us to become aware of the Universal Design in an intimate way. In other words, knowledge becomes less of an abstraction and more of a reality. In order to appreciate what the Kabbalah means to convey, we must begin with a receptivity at this level. Thus we are enabled to move away from the logical or rational mind and into the very soul of our poetic nature. Kabbalah asks that we move beyond our own thinking and enter into a dialog between thought, reason and imagination -- to listen, to remember, to reawaken -- to let the wisdom that supports, maintains and informs our very cells and atoms to function in a way that is beyond everyday comprehension. We are the living product of an ancientness of Being and if we become open to listen, even momentarily, to this wisdom we may find that it is truly closer to us than the nose on our face.

Moving into the symbolism and language employed by the Kabbalah, we will begin with the unknowable, the unutterable and unspeakable. This is known as the Absolute, the No-Thing which is symbolized by the outermost radiation above the Tree. The name given this radiation is Ain -- God the Transcendent. Ain is beyond existence, Ain is Absolute No Thing. Ain is not above or below, neither still nor in motion. There is no where Ain is, for Ain is not. Out of Ain emanates En Sof or the endless absolute ALL. God the transcendent becomes God the immanent.

The last curve or radiation is Ain Sof Aur, the endless light of Will. The Kabbalists say that God willed to see God which caused the first contraction in the Absolute All or En Sof, making a place for the mirror of Existence.

In this way The Endless light of Will or Ain Sof Aur radiated like a beam of light into the Void of unmanifested existence. It was the dimensionless point created after the contraction of the Absolute All. (Or the Point in the Center of the Circle.)

This brought into focus three factors that made the Void:

1^st was the Will of the Absolute

The following, from Stanza I of the Book of Dzyan, illustrate a means through which this "divine formula" may be transmitted:

    1. THE ETERNAL PARENT WRAPPED IN HER EVER INVISIBLE ROBES HAD SLUMBERED ONCE AGAIN FOR SEVEN ETERNITIES.

    2. TIME WAS NOT, FOR IT LAY ASLEEP IN THE INFINITE BOSOM OF DURATION.

    3. UNIVERSAL MIND WAS NOT, FOR THERE WERE NO AH-HI TO CONTAIN IT.

    4. THE SEVEN WAYS TO BLISS WERE NOT. THE GREAT CAUSES OF MISERY WERE NOT, FOR THERE WAS NO ONE TO PRODUCE AND GET
            ENSNARED BY THEM.

    5. DARKNESS ALONE FILLED THE BOUNDLESS ALL, FOR FATHER, MOTHER AND SON WERE ONCE MORE ONE, AND THE SON HAD NOT
           AWAKENED YET FOR THE NEW WHEEL, AND HIS PILGRIMAGE THEREON.

The ancient teachings are given as tools to help us reawaken to the knowledge of our divine and celestial origins. They attempt to relate ideas of spiritual evolution and brotherhood in the deepest sense. Through self effort, hard work, study and question we can at least, like Socrates, try to ask questions of a penetrating nature. Edison said that invention is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. If we diligently grapple with the universality and wisdom of the inner meaning presented by these teachings we will most often notice the perspiration but, when, in those fleeting moments, we experience inspiration -- a universe within and without opens in a way undreamed of in our wildest flight of fancy. And, let us ever keep in mind these wise words from the great hermetic philosopher, Robert Fludd:

"TO BELIEVE IS TO REFLECT, TO KNOW IS TO PENETRATE."

  HELENA BLAVATSKY EXPLAINS IT BETTER THAN I CAN!

FROM ISIS UNVEILED  http://www.sacred-texts.com/the/sd/sd1-1-11.htm

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 213 THE CREATIVE POWERS.

STANZA VII.

1. BEHOLD THE BEGINNING OF SENTIENT FORMLESS LIFE (a). 

FIRST, THE DIVINE (vehicle) (b), THE ONE FROM THE MOTHER-SPIRIT (Atman); THEN THE SPIRITUAL -- (Atma-Buddhi, Spirit-soul)* (c); (again) THE THREE FROM THE ONE (d), THE FOUR FROM THE ONE (e), AND THE FIVE (f), FROM WHICH THE THREE, THE FIVE AND THE SEVEN (g) -- THESE ARE THE THREE-FOLD AND THE FOUR-FOLD DOWNWARD; THE "MIND-BORN SONS OF THE FIRST LORD (Avalokiteswara) THE SHINING SEVEN (the "Builders").** IT IS THEY WHO ARE THOU, ME, HIM, O LANOO; THEY WHO WATCH OVER THEE AND THY MOTHER, BHUMI (the Earth). 

(a) The hierarchy of Creative Powers is divided into seven (or 4 and 3) esoteric, within the twelve great Orders, recorded in the twelve signs of the Zodiac; the seven of the manifesting scale being connected, moreover, with the Seven Planets. All this is subdivided into numberless groups of divine Spiritual, semi-Spiritual, and ethereal Beings. 

The Chief Hierarchies among these are hinted at in the great Quaternary, or the "four bodies and the three faculties" of Brahma exoterically, and the Panchasyam, the five Brahmas, or the five Dhyani-Buddhas in the Buddhist system. 

The highest group is composed of the divine Flames, so-called, also spoken of as the "Fiery Lions" and the "Lions of Life," whose esotericism is securely hidden in the Zodiacal sign of Leo. It is the nucleole of the superior divine World. They are the formless Fiery Breaths, identical in one aspect with the upper
Sephirothal TRIAD, which is placed by the Kabalists in the "Archetypal World." 

The same hierarchy, with the same numbers, is found in the Japanese system, in the "Beginnings" as taught by both the Shinto and the Buddhist sects. In this system, Anthropogenesis precedes Cosmogenesis, as the Divine merges into the human, and creates  midway in its descent into matter -- the visible Universe. The legendary personages -- remarks reverentially Omoie -- "having to be understood as the stereotyped embodiment of the higher (secret) doctrine, and its sublime truths." To state it at full length, however, would occupy too much of our space, but a few words on this old system cannot be out of place.

The  following is a short synopsis of this Anthropo-Cosmogenesis, and it shows how closely the most separated notions echoed one and the same Archaic teaching. 

When all was as yet Chaos (Kon-ton) three spiritual Beings appeared on the stage of future creation: (1) Ame no ani naka nushi no Kami, "Divine Monarch of the Central Heaven"; (2) Taka mi onosubi no Kami, "Exalted, imperial Divine offspring of Heaven and the Earth"; and (3) Kamu mi musubi no Kami, "Offspring of the Gods," simply. 

These were without form or substance (our arupa triad), as neither the celestial nor the terrestrial substance had yet differentiated, "nor had the essence of things been formed." 

In the Zohar -- which, as now arranged and re-edited by Moses de Leon, with the help of Syrian and Chaldean Christian Gnostics in the XIIth century, and corrected and revised still later by many Christian hands, is only a little less exoteric than the Bible itself -- this divine "Vehicle" no longer appears as it does in the "Chaldean Book of Numbers." True enough, Ain-Soph, the ABSOLUTE ENDLESS NO-THING, uses also the form of the ONE, the manifested "Heavenly man" (the FIRST CAUSE) as its chariot (Mercabah, in Hebrew; Vahan, in Sanskrit) or vehicle to descend into, and manifest through, in the phenomenal world. But the Kabalists neither make it plain how the ABSOLUTE can use anything, or exercise any attribute whatever, since, as the Absolute, it is devoid of attributes; nor do they explain that in reality it is the First Cause (Plato's Logos) the original and eternal IDEA, that manifests through Adam Kadmon, the Second Logos, so to speak.

In the "Book of Numbers" it is explained that EN (or Ain, Aior) is the only self-existent, whereas its "Depth" (Bythos or Buthon of the Gnostics, called Propator) is only periodical. The latter is Brahm as differentiated from Brahma or Parabrahm. It is the Depth, the Source of Light, or Propator, which is the unmanifested Logos or the abstract Idea, and not Ain-Soph, whose ray uses Adam-Kadmon or the manifested Logos (the objective Universe) "male and female" -- as a chariot through which to manifest. But in the Zohar we read the following incongruity: "Senior  occultatus est et absconditus; Microprosopus manifestus est, et non manifestus." (Rosenroth; Liber Mysterii, IV., 1.) This is a fallacy, since Microprosopus or the microcosm, can only exist during its manifestations, and is destroyed during the Maha-Pralayas. Rosenroth's Kabala is no guide, but very often a puzzle. 

(b) As in the Japanese system, in the Egyptian, and every old cosmogony -- at this divine FLAME, The "One," are lit the three descending groups. Having their potential being in the higher group, they now become distinct and separate Entities. These are called the "Virgins of Life," the "Great Illusion," etc., etc., and collectively the "Six-pointed Star." The latter is the symbol, in almost every religion, of the Logos as the first emanation. It is that of Vishnu in India (the Chakra, or wheel), and the glyph of the Tetragrammaton, the "He of the four letters" or -- metaphorically -- "the limbs of Microprosopos" in the
Kabala, which are ten and six respectively. The later Kabalists however, especially the Christian mystics, have played sad havoc with this magnificent symbol.* For the "ten limbs" of the Heavenly Man are the ten Sephiroth; but the first Heavenly Man is the unmanifested Spirit of the Universe, and ought never to be degraded into Microprosopus -- the lesser Face or Countenance, the prototype of man on the terrestrial plane.** Of this, however, later on. The six-pointed Star refers to the six Forces or Powers of Nature, the six planes, principles, etc., etc., all synthesized by the seventh, or the central point in the Star. All these, the upper and lower hierarchies included, emanate from the "Heavenly or Celestial Virgin,"*** the great mother in all religions, the Androgyne, the  Sephira-Adam-Kadmon. In its Unity, primordial light is the seventh, or highest, principle, Daivi-prakriti, the light of the unmanifested Logos. But in its differentiation it becomes Fohat, or the "Seven Sons." The former is symbolised by the Central point in the double-Triangle; the latter by the hexagon itself, or the "six limbs" of the Microprosopus the Seventh being Malkuth, the "Bride" of the Christian Kabalists, or our Earth. Hence the expressions: 

"The first after the 'One' is divine Fire; the second, Fire and AEther; the third is composed of Fire, AEther and Water; the fourth of Fire, AEther, Water, and Air."* The One is not concerned with Man-bearing globes, but with the inner invisible Spheres. "The 'First-Born' are the LIFE, the heart and pulse of the Universe; the Second are its MIND or Consciousness,"

(c) The second Order of Celestial Beings, those of Fire and AEther (corresponding to Spirit and Soul, or the Atma-Buddhi) whose names are legion, are still formless, but more definitely "substantial." They are the first differentiation in the Secondary Evolution or "Creation" -- a misleading word. As the name shows, they are the prototypes of the incarnating Jivas or Monads, and are composed of the Fiery Spirit of Life. It is through these that passes, like a pure solar beam, the ray which is furnished by them with its future vehicle, the Divine Soul, Buddhi. These are directly concerned with the Hosts of the higher world of our system. From these twofold Units emanate the threefold. 

In the cosmogony of Japan, when, out of the chaotic mass, an egglike nucleus appears, having within itself the germ and potency of all the universal as well as of all terrestrial life, it is the "three-fold" just named, which differentiates. "The male  aethereal" (Yo) principle  ascends and the female grosser or more material principle (In) is precipitated into the Universe of substance, when a separation occurs between the celestial and the terrestrial. From this the female, the mother, the first rudimentary objective being is born. It is ethereal, without form or sex, and yet it is from this and the mother that the Seven Divine Spirits are born, from whom will emanate the seven creations, just as in the Codex Nazaraeus from Karabtanos and the Mother Spiritus the seven evilly disposed (material) spirits are born. It would be too long to give here the Japanese names, but once translated they stand in this order: -- 

(1.) The "Invisible Celibate," which is the creative logos of the noncreating "father," or the creative potentiality of the latter made manifest. 

(2.) "The Spirit (or the God) of the rayless depths" (of Chaos); which becomes differentiated matter, or the world-stuff; also the mineral realm. 

(3.) "The Spirit of the Vegetable Kingdom," of the "Abundant Vegetation." 

(4.) This one is of dual nature, being at the same time "The Spirit of the Earth" and "the Spirit of the Sands," the former containing the potentiality of the male element, the latter that of the female element, the two forming a combined nature. 

These two were ONE; yet unconscious of being two. 

In this duality were contained (a) the male, dark and muscular Being, Isu no gai no Kami; and (b) Eku gai no Kami, the female, fair and weaker or more delicate Being. Then, the: -- 

(5th and 6th.) Spirits who were androgynous or dual-sexed, and, finally: -- 

(7.) The Seventh Spirit, the last emanated from the "mother," appears as the first divine human form distinctly male and female. It was the seventh creation, as in the Puranas, wherein man is the seventh creation of Brahma. 

These, Tsanagi-Tsanami, descended into the Universe by the celestial Bridge (the milky way), and "Tsanagi, perceiving far below a chaotic mass of cloud and water, thrust his jewelled spear into the depths, and dry land appeared." Then the two separated to explore Onokoro, the newly-created island-world; etc., etc. (Omoie). 

Such are the Japanese exoteric fables, the rind that conceals the kernel of the same one truth of the Secret Doctrine. Turning back to the esoteric explanations in every cosmogony: -- 

(d) The Third order corresponds to the Atma-Buddhi-Manas: Spirit, Soul and Intellect, and is called the "Triads." 

(e) The Fourth are substantial Entities. This is the highest group among the Rupas (Atomic Forms*). It is the nursery of the human, conscious, spiritual Souls. They are called the "Imperishable Jivas," and constitute, through the order below their own, the first group of the first septenary** host -- the great mystery of human conscious and intellectual Being. For the latter are the field wherein lies concealed in its privation the germ that will fall into generation. That germ will become the spiritual potency in the physical cell that guides the development of the embryo, and which is the cause of the hereditary transmission of faculties and all the inherent qualities in man. The Darwinian theory, however, of the transmission of acquired faculties, is neither taught nor accepted in Occultism. Evolution, in it, proceeds on quite other lines; the physical, according to esoteric teaching, evolving gradually from the spiritual, mental, and psychic. This inner soul of the physical cell -- this "spiritual plasm" that dominates the germinal plasm -- is the key that must open one day the gates of the terra incognita of the Biologist, now called the dark mystery of Embryology. 

(f) The Fifth group is a very mysterious one, as it is connected with the Microcosmic Pentagon, the five-pointed star representing man. In India and Egypt these Dhyanis were connected with the Crocodile, and their abode is in Capricornus. These are convertible terms in Indian astrology, as this (tenth) sign of the Zodiac is called Makara, loosely translated "crocodile." The word itself is occultly interpreted in various ways, as will be shown further on. In Egypt the defunct man -- whose symbol is the pentagram or the five-pointed star, the points of which represent the limbs of a man -- was shown emblematically transformed into a crocodile: Sebakh or Sevekh "or seventh," as Mr. Gerald Massey says, showing it as having been the type of intelligence, is a dragon in reality, not a crocodile. He is the "Dragon of Wisdom" or Manas, the "Human Soul," Mind, the Intelligent principle, called in our esoteric philosophy the "Fifth" principle. 

Says the defunct "Osirified" in ch. lxxxviii., "Book of the Dead," or the Ritual, under the glyph of a mummiform god with a crocodile's head: -- 

(1) "I am the god (crocodile) presiding at the fear . . . at the arrival of his Soul among men. I am the god-crocodile brought for destruction" (an allusion to the destruction of divine spiritual purity when man acquires the knowledge of good and evil; also to the "fallen" gods, or angels of every theogony). 

(2) "I am the fish of the great Horus (as Mankara is the "crocodile," the vehicle of Varuna). I am merged in Sekten." 

This last sentence gives the corroboration of, and repeats the doctrine of, esoteric Buddhism, for it alludes directly to the fifth principle (Manas), or the most spiritual part of its essence rather, which merges into, is absorbed by, and made one with Atma-Buddhi after the death of man. For Se-khen is the residence or loka of the god Khem (Horus-Osiris, or Father and Son), hence the "Devachan" of Atma-Buddhi. In the Ritual of the Dead the defunct is shown entering into Sekhem with Horus-Thot and "emerging from it as pure spirit" (lxiv., 29). Thus the defunct says (v. 130): "I see the forms of (myself, as various) men
transforming eternally . . . I know this (chapter). He who knows it . . . takes all kinds of living forms." . . . 

And in verse 35, addressing in magic formula that which is called, in Egyptian esotericism, the "ancestral heart," or the re-incarnating principle, the permanent EGO, the defunct says: -- 

"Oh my heart, my ancestral heart necessary for my transformations, . . . . . . do not separate thyself from me before the guardian of the Scales. Thou art my personality within my breast, divine companion watching over my fleshes (bodies). . . . . .." 

It is in Sekhem that lies concealed "the Mysterious Face," or the real man concealed under the false personality, the triple-crocodile of Egypt, the symbol of the higher Trinity or human Triad, Atma, Buddhi and Manas.* In all the ancient papyri the crocodile is called Sebek (Seventh), while the water is the fifth principle esoterically; and, as already stated, Mr. Gerald Massey shows that the crocodile was "the Seventh Soul, the supreme one of seven -- the Seer unseen." Even exoterically Sekhem is the residence of the god Khem, and Khem is Horus avenging the death of his father Osiris, hence punishing the Sins of man when he becomes a disembodied Soul. Thus the defunct "Osirified" became the god Khem, who "gleans the field of Aanroo," i.e., he gleans either his reward or punishment, as that field is the celestial locality (Devachan) where the defunct is given wheat, the food of divine justice. The fifth group of the celestial Beings is supposed to contain in itself the dual attributes of both the spiritual and physical aspects of the Universe; the two poles, so to say, of Mahat the Universal Intelligence, and the dual nature of man, the spiritual and the physical. Hence its number Five, multiplied and made into ten, connecting it with Makara, the 10th sign of Zodiac. 

(g) The sixth and seventh groups partake of the lower qualities of the Quaternary. They are conscious, ethereal Entities, as invisible as Ether, which are shot out like the boughs of a tree from the first central group of the four, and shoot out in their turn numberless side groups, the lower of which are the Nature-Spirits, or Elementals of countless kinds and varieties; from the formless and unsubstantial -- the ideal THOUGHTS of their creators -- down to the Atomic, though, to human perception, invisible organisms. The latter are considered as the "Spirits of Atoms" for they are the first remove (backwards) from the physical Atom -- sentient, if not intelligent creatures. They are all subject to Karma, and have to work it out through every cycle. For, as the doctrine teaches, there are no such privileged beings in the universe, whether in our or in other systems, in the outer or the inner worlds,* as the angels of the Western Religion and the Judean. A Dhyan Chohan has to become one; he cannot be born or appear suddenly on the plane of life as a full-blown angel. The Celestial Hierarchy of the present Manvantara will find itself transferred in the next cycle of life into higher, superior worlds, and will make room for a new hierarchy, composed of the elect ones of our mankind. Being is an endless cycle within the one absolute eternity, wherein move numberless inner cycles finite and conditioned. Gods, created as such, would evince no personal merit in being gods. Such a class of beings, perfect only by virtue of the special immaculate nature inherent in them, in the face of suffering and struggling humanity, and even of the lower creation, would be the symbol of an eternal injustice quite Satanic in character, an ever present crime. It is an anomaly and an impossibility in Nature. Therefore the "Four" and the "Three" have to incarnate as all other beings have. This sixth group, moreover, remains almost inseparable from man, who draws from it all but his highest and lowest principles, or his spirit and body, the five middle human principles being the very essence of those Dhyanis.* Alone, the Divine Ray (the Atman) proceeds directly from the One. When asked how that can be? How is it possible to conceive that those "gods," or angels, can be at the same
time their own emanations and their personal selves? Is it in the same sense in the material world, where the son is (in one way) his father, being his blood, the bone of his bone and the flesh of his flesh? To this the teachers answer "Verily it is so."  But one has to go deep into the mystery of BEING before one can fully comprehend this truth. 

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STANZA VII. -- THE RAYS

2. THE ONE RAY MULTIPLIES THE SMALLER RAYS. LIFE PRECEDES FORM, AND LIFE SURVIVES THE LAST ATOM (of Form, Sthula-sarira, external body). THROUGH THE COUNTLESS RAYS THE LIFE-RAY, THE ONE, LIKE A THREAD THROUGH MANY BEADS (pearls) (a). 

(a) This sloka expresses the conception -- a purely Vedantic one, as already explained elsewhere -- of a life-thread, Sutratma, running through successive generations. How, then, can this be explained? By resorting to a simile, to a familiar illustration, though necessarily imperfect, as all our available analogies must be. Before resorting to it, however, I would ask whether it seems unnatural, least of all "supernatural," to any one of us, when we consider that process known as the growth and development of a foetus into a healthy baby weighing several pounds evolves from what? From the segmentation of an
infinitesimally small ovum and a spermatozoon; and afterwards we see that baby develop into a six-foot man! This refers to the atomic and physical expansion from the microscopically small into something very large, from the -- to the naked eye -- unseen, into the visible and objective. Science has provided for all this; and, I dare say, her theories, embryological, biological, and physiological, are correct enough so far as exact observation of the material goes. Nevertheless, the two chief difficulties of the science of 
embryology -- namely, what are the forces at work in the formation of the foetus, and the cause of "hereditary transmission" of likeness, physical, moral or mental -- have never been properly answered; nor will they ever be solved till the day when scientists condescend to accept the Occult theories.* But if this physical phenomenon astonishes no one, except in so far as it puzzles the Embryologists, why should our intellectual and inner growth, the evolution of the human-spiritual to the Divine-Spiritual, be regarded as, or seem, more impossible than the other? Now to the simile. 

Complete the physical plasm, mentioned in the last foot-note, the "Germinal Cell" of man with all its material potentialities, with the "spiritual plasm," so to say, or the fluid that contains the five lower principles of the six-principled Dhyan -- and you have the secret, if you are spiritual enough to understand it. 

"When the seed of the animal man is cast into the soil of the animal woman, that seed cannot germinate unless it has been fructified by the five virtues (the fluid of, or the emanation from the principles) of the six-fold Heavenly man. Wherefore the Microcosm is represented as a Pentagon, within the Hexagon Star, the "Macrocosm." ("[[Anthropos]],") a work on Occult Embryology, Book I.). Then: "The functions of Jiva on this Earth are of a five-fold character. In the mineral atom it is connected with the lowest principles of the Spirits of the Earth (the six-fold Dhyanis); in the vegetable particle, with their second -- the Prana (life); in the animal, with all these plus the third and the fourth; in man, the germ must receive the fruition of all the five. Otherwise he will be born no higher than an animal"; namely, a congenital idiot. Thus in man alone the Jiva is complete. As to his seventh principle, it is but one of the Beams of the Universal Sun. Each rational creature receives only the temporary loan of that which has to return to its source; while his physical body is shaped by the lowest terrestrial lives, through physical, chemical, and physiological evolution. "The Blessed Ones have nought to do with the purgations of matter."
(Kabala, Chaldean Book of Numbers). 

It comes to this: Mankind in its first prototypal, shadowy form, is the offspring of the Elohim of Life (or Pitris); in its qualitative and physical aspect it is the direct progeny of the "Ancestors," the lowest Dhyanis, or Spirits of the Earth; for its moral, psychic, and spiritual nature, it is indebted to a group of divine Beings, the name and characteristics of which will be given in Book II. Collectively, men are the handiwork of hosts of various spirits; distributively, the tabernacles of those hosts; and occasionally and singly, the vehicles of some of them. In our present all-material Fifth Race, the earthly Spirit of the Fourth is still strong in us; but we are approaching the time when the pendulum of evolution will direct its swing decidedly upwards, bringing Humanity back on a parallel line with the primitive third Root-Race in Spirituality. During its childhood, mankind was composed wholly of that Angelic Host, who were the indwelling Spirits that animated the monstrous and gigantic tabernacles of clay of the Fourth Race built by (as they are now also) and composed of countless myriads of lives.

Man is not, nor could he ever be, the complete product of the "Lord God"; but he is the child of the Elohim, so arbitrarily changed into the singular masculine gender. The first Dhyanis, commissioned to "create" man in their image, could only throw off their shadows, like a delicate model for the Nature Spirits of matter to work upon. Man is, beyond any doubt, formed physically out of the dust of the Earth, but his creators and fashioners were many. Nor can it be said that the "Lord God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life," unless that God is identified with the "ONE LIFE," Omnipresent though invisible, and unless the same operation is attributed to "God" on behalf of every living Soul -- or Nephesch, which is the vital Soul, not the divine Spirit or Ruach, which ensures to man alone a divine degree of immortality, that no animal, as such, could ever attain in this cycle of incarnation. It is the inadequate distinctions made by the Jews, and now by our Western metaphysicians, who, not knowing of, and being unable to understand, hence to accept, more than a triune man -- Spirit, Soul, Body -- thus confuse the "breath of life" with immortal Spirit.* This applies also directly to the Protestant theologians, who, in translating verse 8 of Ch. III. in the Fourth Gospel, have entirely perverted the meaning. Indeed the verse is made to say "The wind bloweth where it listeth," instead of "the Spirit goeth where it willeth," as in the original and also in the translation of the Greek Eastern Church. 

Thus the philosophy of psychic, spiritual, and mental relations with man's physical functions is in almost inextricable confusion. Neither the old Aryan, nor the Egyptian psychology are now properly understood. Nor can they be assimilated without accepting the esoteric septenary, or, at any rate, the Vedantic quinquepartite division of the human inner principles. Failing which, it will be for ever impossible to understand the metaphysical and purely psychic and even physiological relations between the Dhyan-Chohans, or Angels, on the one plane, and humanity on the other. No Eastern (Aryan) esoteric
works are so far published, but we possess the Egyptian papyri which speak clearly of the seven principles or the "Seven Souls of Man."* The Book of the Dead gives a complete list of the "transformations" that every defunct undergoes, while divesting himself, one by one, of all those principles -- materialised for the sake of clearness into ethereal entities or bodies. We must, moreover, remind those who try to prove that the ancient Egyptians knew nothing of and did not teach Reincarnation, that the "Soul" (the Ego or Self) of the defunct is said to be living in Eternity: it is immortal, "co-eval with, and disappearing with the Solar boat," i.e., for the cycle of necessity. This "Soul" emerges from the
Tiaou (the realm of the cause of life) and joins the living on Earth by day, to return to Tiaou every night. This expresses the periodical existences of the Ego. (Book of the Dead, cvxliii.) 

The shadow, the astral form, is annihilated, "devoured by the Uraeus" (cxlix., 51), the Manes will be annihilated; the two twins (the 4th and 5th principles) will be scattered; but the Soul-bird, "the divine Swallow -- and the Uraeus of Flame" (Manas and Atma-Buddhi) will live in the eternity, for they are their mother's husbands.** 

Like alone produces like. The Earth gives Man his body, the gods (Dhyanis) his five inner principles, the psychic Shadow, of which those gods are often the animating principle. SPIRIT (Atman) is one -- and indiscrete. It is not in the Tiaou. 

For what is the Tiaou? The frequent allusion to it in the "Book of the Dead" contains a mystery. Tiaou is the path of the Night Sun, the inferior hemisphere, or the infernal region of the Egyptians, placed by them on the concealed side of the moon. The human being, in their esotericism, came out from the moon (a triple mystery -- astronomical, physiological, and psychical at once); he crossed the whole cycle of existence and then returned to his birth-place before issuing from it again. Thus the defunct is shown arriving in the West, receiving his judgment before Osiris, resurrecting as the god Horus, and circling round the sidereal heavens, which is an allegorical assimilation to Ra, the Sun; then having crossed the Noot (the celestial abyss), returning once more to Tiaou: an assimilation to Osiris, who, as the God of life and reproduction, inhabits the moon. Plutarch (Isis and Osiris, ch. xliii.) shows the Egyptians celebrating a festival called "The Ingress of Osiris into the moon." In chapter xli. life is promised after death; and the renovation of life is placed under the patronage of Osiris-Lunus, because the moon was the symbol of life-renewals or reincarnations, owing to its growth, waning, dying, and reappearance every month. In the Dankmoe, (iv. 5) it is said: -- "Oh, Osiris-Lunus! That renews to thee thy renewal." And Safekh says to Seti I. (Mariette's Abydos, plate 51), "Thou renewest thyself as the god Lunus when a babe." It is still better explained in a Louvre papyrus (P. Pierret, "Etudes Egyptologiques"): "Couplings and conceptions abound when he (Osiris-Lunus) is seen in heaven on that day." Says Osiris: "Oh, sole radiant beam of the moon! I issue from the circulating multitudes (of stars) . . . . . . Open me the Tiaou, for Osiris N. I will issue by day to do what I have to do amongst the living" ("Book of the Dead," ch. ii.), -- i.e., to produce conceptions. 

Osiris was "God manifest in generation," because the ancients knew, far better than the moderns, the real occult influences of the lunar body upon the mysteries of conception.* Later on, when the moon became connected with female goddesses** -- with Diana, Isis, Artemis, Juno, etc., that connection was due to a thorough knowledge of physiology and female nature, physical as much as psychic. But, primarily, the Sun and Moon were the only visible and, so to say, tangible [by their effects] psychic and physiological
deities -- the Father and the Son, while Space and air in general, or that expanse of Heaven called Noot by the Egyptians, was the concealed Spirit or Breath of the two. These "Father and Son" were interchangeable in their functions and worked harmoniously together in their effects upon terrestrial nature and humanity; hence they were regarded as ONE, though TWO in personified Entities. They were both males, and both had their distinct and also collaborative work in the causative generation of Humanity. So much from the astronomical and cosmic standpoints viewed and expressed in symbolical language -- which became in our last races theological and dogmatic. But behind this veil of Cosmic and Astrological symbols, there were the Occult mysteries of Anthropography and the primeval genesis of man. And in this, no knowledge of symbols -- or even the key to the post-diluvian symbolical language of the Jews -- will, or can help, save only with reference to that which was laid down in national scriptures for exoteric uses; the sum of which, however cleverly veiled, was only the smallest portion of the real primitive history of each people, often relating, moreover, -- as in the Hebrew Scriptures -- merely to the terrestrial human, not divine life of that nation. That psychic and spiritual element belonged to MYSTERY and INITIATION. There were things never recorded in scrolls, but, as in Central Asia, on rocks and in subterranean crypts. 

Nevertheless, there was a time when the whole world was "of one lip and of one knowledge," and Man knew more of his origin than he does now, and thus knew that the Sun and Moon, however large a part they do play in the constitution, growth and development of the human body, were not the direct causative agents of his appearance on Earth; these agents being, in truth, the living and intelligent Powers which the Occultists call Dhyan Chohans. 

As to this, a very learned admirer of the Jewish Esotericism tells us that "the Kabala says expressly that Elohim is a 'general abstraction'; what we call in mathematics 'a constant co-efficient' or a 'general function' entering into all construction, not particular; that is, by the general ratio 1 to 31415, (the astro-Dhyanic and) Elohistic figures." To this the Eastern Occultist replies: Quite so, it is an abstraction to our physical senses. To our spiritual perceptions, however, and to our inner spiritual eye, the Elohim or Dhyanis are no more an abstraction than our soul and spirit are to us. Reject the one and you reject the other -- since that which is the surviving Entity in us is partly the direct emanation from, and partly those celestial Entities themselves. One thing is sure; the Jews were perfectly acquainted with sorcery and various maleficent forces; but, with the exception of some of their great prophets and seers like Daniel and Ezekiel (Enoch belonging to a far distant race and not to any nation but to all, as a generic character), they knew little of, nor would they deal with, the real divine Occultism, their national character being averse to anything which had no direct bearing upon their own ethnical, tribal, and individual benefits -- witness their own prophets, and the curses thundered by them against the "stiff-necked race." But even the Kabala plainly shows the direct relation between the Sephiroth, or Elohim, and men. Therefore, when it is proved to us that the Kabalistic identification of Jehovah with Binah, a female Sephiroth, has still another, a sub-occult meaning in it, then and then only the Occultist will be ready to pass the palm of perfection to the Kabalist. Until then, it is asserted that, as Jehovah is in the abstract sense of a "one living God," a single number, a metaphysical figment, and a reality only when put in his proper place as an emanation and a Sephiroth -- we have a right to maintain that the Zohar (as witnessed by the BOOK OF NUMBERS, at any rate), gave out originally, before the Christian Kabalists had disfigured it, and still gives out the same doctrine that we do; i.e., it makes Man emanate, not from one Celestial MAN, but from a Septenary group of Celestial men or Angels, just as in "Pymander, the Thought Divine."

(3) WHEN THE ONE BECOMES TWO -- THE "THREE-FOLD" APPEARS (a). THE THREE ARE (linked into) ONE; AND IT IS OUR THREAD, O LANOO, THE HEART OF THE MAN-PLANT, CALLED SAPTAPARNA (b). 

(a) "When the ONE becomes two, the three-fold appears": to wit, when the One Eternal drops its reflection into the region of Manifestation, that reflection, "the Ray," differentiates the "Water of Space"; or, in the words of the "Book of the Dead"; "Chaos ceases, through the effulgence of the Ray of Primordial light dissipating total darkness by the help of the great magic power of the WORD of the (Central) Sun." Chaos becomes male-female, and Water, incubated through Light, and the "three-fold being issues as its First-born." "Osiris-Ptah (or RA) creates his own limbs (like Brahma) by creating the gods destined to personify his phases" during the Cycle (xvii., 4). The Egyptian Ra, issuing from the DEEP, is the Divine
Universal Soul in its manifested aspect, and so is Narayana, the Purusha, "concealed in Akasa and present in Ether." 

This is the metaphysical explanation, and refers to the very beginning of Evolution, or, as we should rather say, of Theogony. The meaning of the Stanza when explained from another standpoint in its reference to the mystery of man and his origin, is still more difficult to comprehend. In order to form a clear conception of what is meant by the One becoming two, and then being transformed into the "three-fold," the student has to make himself thoroughly acquainted with what we call "Rounds." If he refers to "Esoteric Buddhism" -- the first attempt to sketch out an approximate outline of archaic Cosmogony -- he will find that by a "Round" is meant the serial evolution of nascent material nature, of the seven globes of our chain* with their mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms (man being there included in the latter and standing at the head of it) during the whole period of a life-cycle. The latter would be called by the Brahmins "a Day of Brahma." It is, in short, one revolution of the "Wheel" (our planetary chain), which is composed of seven globes (or seven separate "Wheels," in another sense this time). When evolution has run downward into matter, from planet A to planet G, or Z, as the Western students call it, it is one Round. In the middle of the Fourth revolution, which is our present "Round": "Evolution has reached its acme of physical development, crowned its work with the perfect physical man, and, from this point, begins its work spirit-ward." All this needs little repetition, as it is well explained in "Esoteric Buddhism." That which was hardly touched upon, and of which the little that was said has misled many, is the origin of man, and it is upon this that a little more light may now be thrown, just enough to make the Stanza more comprehensible, as the process will be fully explained only in its legitimate place, in Book II. 

Now every "Round" (on the descending scale) is but a repetition in a more concrete form of the Round which preceded it, as every globe -- down to our fourth sphere (the actual earth) -- is a grosser and more material copy of the more shadowy sphere which precedes it in their successive order, on the three higher planes. On its way upwards on the ascending arc, Evolution spiritualises and etherealises, so to speak, the general nature of all, bringing it on to a level with the plane on which the twin globe on the opposite side is placed; the result being, that when the seventh globe is reached (in whatever Round) the nature of everything that is evolving returns to the condition it was in at its starting point -- plus, every time, a new and superior degree in the states of consciousness. Thus it becomes clear that the "origin of  man," so-called, on this our present  Round, or life-cycle on this planet, must occupy the same place in the same order -- save details based on local conditions and time -- as in the preceding Round. Again, it must be explained and remembered that, as the work of each Round is said to be apportioned to a different group of so-called "Creators" or "Architects," so is that of every globe; i.e., it is under the supervision and guidance of special "Builders" and "Watchers" -- the various Dhyan-Chohans. 

The group of the hierarchy which is commissioned to "create"* men is a special group, then; yet it evolved shadowy man in this cycle just as a higher and still more spiritual group evolved him in the Third Round. But as it is the Sixth -- on the downward scale of Spirituality -- the last and seventh being the terrestrial Spirits (elementals) which gradually form, build, and condense his physical body -- this Sixth group evolves no more than the future man's shadowy form, a filmy, hardly visible transparent copy of themselves. It becomes the task of the fifth Hierarchy -- the mysterious beings that preside over the constellation Capricornus, Makara, or "Crocodile" in India as in Egypt -- to inform the empty and ethereal animal form and make of it the Rational Man. This is one of those subjects upon which very little may be said to the general public. It is a MYSTERY, truly, but only to him who is prepared to reject the existence of intellectual and conscious spiritual Beings in the Universe, limiting full Consciousness to man alone, and that only as a "function of the Brain." Many are those among the Spiritual Entities, who have incarnated bodily in man, since the beginning of his appearance, and who, for all that, still exist as independently as they did before, in the infinitudes of Space. . . . 

To put it more clearly: the invisible Entity may be bodily present on earth without abandoning, however, its status and functions in the supersensuous regions. If this needs explanation, we can do no better than remind the reader of like cases in Spiritualism, though such cases are very rare, at least as regards the nature of the Entity incarnating, or taking temporary possession of a medium. Just as certain persons -- men and women, reverting to parallel cases among living persons -- whether by virtue of a peculiar organization, or through the power of acquired mystic knowledge, can be seen in their "double" in one place, while the body is many miles away; so the same thing can occur in the case of superior Beings. 

Man, philosophically considered, is, in his outward form, simply an animal, hardly more perfect than his pithecoid-like ancestor of the third round. He is a living body, not a living being, since the realisation of existence, the "Ego-Sum," necessitates self-consciousness, and an animal can only have direct consciousness, or instinct. This was so well understood by the Ancients that the Kabalist even made of soul and body two lives, independent of each other.* The soul, whose body vehicle is the Astral, ethero-substantial envelope, could die and man be still living on earth -- i.e., the soul could free itself
from and quit the tabernacle for various reasons -- such as insanity, spiritual and physical depravity, etc.** Therefore, that which living men (Initiates) can do, the Dhyanis, who have no physical body to hamper them, can do still better. This was the belief of the Antediluvians, and it is fast becoming that of modern intellectual society, in Spiritualism, besides the Greek and Roman Churches, which teach the ubiquity of their angels. The Zoroastrians regarded their Amshaspends as dual entities (Ferouers), applying this duality -- in esoteric philosophy, at any rate -- to all the spiritual and invisible denizens of the numberless worlds in space which are visible to our eye. In a note of Damascius (sixth century) on the Chaldean oracles, we have a triple evidence of the universality of this doctrine, for he says: "In these oracles the seven Cosmocratores of the world, ('The World-Pillars,') mentioned likewise by St. Paul, are double -- one set being commissioned to rule the superior worlds the spiritual and the sidereal, and the other to guide and watch over the worlds of matter." Such is also the opinion of Jamblichus, who makes an evident distinction between the archangels and the "Archontes." (See "De Mysteriis," sec. ii., ch. 3.) The above may be applied, of course, to the distinction made between the degrees or orders of spiritual beings, and it is in this sense that the Roman Catholic Church tries to interpret and teach the difference; for while the archangels are in her teaching divine and holy, their doubles are denounced by her as devils.* But the word "ferouer" is not to be understood in this sense, for it means simply the reverse or the opposite side of some attribute or quality. Thus when the Occultist says that the "Demon is the lining of God" (evil, the reverse of the medal), he does not mean two separate actualities, but the two aspects or facets of the same Unity. Now the best man living would appear, side by side with an Archangel -- as described in Theology -- a fiend. Hence a certain reason to depreciate a lower "double," immersed far
deeper in matter than its original. But there is still as little cause to regard them as devils, and this is precisely what the Roman Catholics maintain against all reason and logic. 

(b) The concluding sentence of this sloka shows how archaic is the belief and the doctrine that man is seven-fold in his constitution. The thread of being which animates man and passes through all his personalities, or rebirths on this Earth (an allusion to Sutratma), the thread on which moreover all his "Spirits" are strung -- is spun from the essence of the "threefold," the "fourfold" and the "fivefold"; which contain all the preceding. Panchasikha, agreeably to Bhagavata Purana is one of the seven Kumaras who go to Sveta-Dvipa to worship Vishnu. We shall see further on, what connection there is between the "celibate" and chaste sons of Brahma, who refuse "to multiply," and terrestrial mortals. Meanwhile it is
evident that "the Man-Plant," Saptaparna, thus refers to the seven principles, and man is compared to the seven-leaved plant of this name* so sacred among Buddhists. 

4. IT IS THE ROOT THAT NEVER DIES, THE THREE-TONGUED FLAME OF THE FOUR WICKS* (a) . . . THE WICKS ARE THE SPARKS, THAT DRAW FROM THE THREE-TONGUED FLAME (their upper triad) SHOT OUT BY THE SEVEN, THEIR FLAME; THE BEAMS AND SPARKS OF ONE MOON REFLECTED IN THE RUNNING WAVES OF ALL THE RIVERS OF THE EARTH ("Bhumi," or "Prithivi")** (b). 

(a) The "Three-tongued flame" that never dies is the immo rtal spiritual triad -- the Atma-Buddhi and Manas -- the fruition of the latter assimilated by the first two after every terrestrial life. The "four wicks" that go out and are extinguished, are the four lower principles, including the body. 

"I am the three-wicked Flame and my wicks are immortal," says the defunct. "I enter into the domain of Sekhem (the God whose arm sows the seed of action produced by the disembodied soul) and I enter the region of the Flames who have destroyed their adversaries," i.e., got rid of the sin-creating "four wicks." (See chap. i., vii., "Book of the Dead," and the "Mysteries of Ro-stan.") 

(b) Just as milliards of bright sparks dance on the waters of an ocean above which one and the same moon is shining, so our evanescent personalities -- the illusive envelopes of the immortal MONAD-EGO -- twinkle and dance on the waves of Maya. They last and appear, as the thousands of sparks produced by the moon-beams, only so long as the Queen of the Night radiates her lustre on the running waters of life: the period of a Manvantara; and then they disappear, the beams -- symbols of our eternal Spiritual Egos -- alone surviving, re-merged in, and being, as they were before, one with the Mother-Source. 
ON THE HIDDEN DEITY, ITS SYMBOLS AND GLYPHS.

THE SEVEN RAYS

Ray One - Will, purpose, power, destruction 
Ray Two - Love, wisdom, inclusiveness, coherence, magnetism 
Ray Three - Active Intelligence, adaptability, creativity 
Ray Four - Harmony through conflict, beauty, sensitivity, unity 
Ray Five - Concrete knowledge, science, mind, analysis 
Ray Six - Devotion, idealism, adherence, force 
Ray Seven - Order, ceremony, organization, group, magic 

From: Alice Bailey and Djwal Kihl

As part of the initial Plan, the one Life sought expansion, and the seven aeons or emanations came forth from the central vortex and actively repeated the earlier process in all its details. They too came into manifestation and in the work of expressing active life, qualified by love and limited by an outward phenomenal appearance, they swept into a secondary activity and became the seven Builders, the
seven Sources of life and the seven Rishis of all the ancient scriptures. They are the original psychic Entities, imbued with the capacity to express love (which involves the concept of duality, for the loving and the loved, the desiring and the desired, must here be posited) and to emerge from subjective being into objective becoming. We call these seven by various names, as follows:

1. The Lord of Power or Will. This Life wills to love, and uses power as an expression of divine beneficence. For His body of manifestation He uses that planet for which the sun is regarded as the esoteric substitute.

2. The Lord of Love-Wisdom, Who is the embodiment of pure love, is regarded by esotericists as being as close to the heart of the Solar Logos as was the beloved disciple close to the heart of the Christ of
Galilee. This Life instills into all forms the quality of love, with its more material manifestation of desire, and is the attractive principle in nature and the custodian of the Law of Attraction, which is the
life-demonstration of pure Being. This Lord of Love is the most potent of the seven rays, because He is on the same cosmic ray as the solar Deity. He expresses Himself primarily through the planet Jupiter, which is His body of manifestation.

3. The Lord of Active Intelligence. His work is more closely linked to matter and He works in cooperation with the Lord of the second ray. He is the motivating impulse in the initial work of creation. The planet Saturn is His body of expression within the solar system, and through the medium of matter (which beneficently obstructs and hinders) He provides humanity with a vast field of experiment and
experience.

4. The Lord of Harmony, Beauty and Art. The main function of this Being is the creation of Beauty (as an expression of truth) through the free interplay of life and form, basing the design of beauty upon the initial plan as it exists in the mind of the solar Logos. The body of manifestation of this life is not revealed, but the activity emanating from it produces that combination of sounds, colors and word music that expresses - through the form of the ideal - that which is the originating idea. This fourth Lord of creative expression
will resume activity upon the Earth about six hundred years hence, though already the first faint impress of His influence is being felt and the next century will see a reawakening of creative art in all its branches.

5. The Lord of Concrete Knowledge and Science. This is a Great Life in close touch with the mind of the creative Deity, just as the Lord of the second ray is in close touch with the heart of that same Deity. His influence is great at this time, though not as potent as it will be later. Science is a psychological unfoldment in man due to this ray influence, and is only entering into its real work. His influence is waxing in power, just as the influence of the sixth Lord is waning.

6. The Lord of Devotion and Idealism. This solar Deity is a peculiar and characteristic expression of the quality of the solar Logos. Forget not that in the great scheme of the universal universe (not just our universe) our solar Logos is as differentiated and distinctive in quality as are any of the sons of men. This ray force, with the second ray, is a true and vital expression of the divine nature. A militant focusing upon the ideal, a one-pointed devotion to the intent of the life urge, and a divine sincerity are the qualities of this Lord, and set their impress upon all that is found within His body of manifestation. Advanced esotericists debate as to whether Mars is, or is not, the planet through which He manifests. You must remember that only a few of the planets are the bodies of expression of the Lords of the rays. There are ten "planets of expression" (to use the term employed by the ancient Rishis), and only seven ray Lives are
regarded as the Builders of the system. The great mystery, which is finally revealed in the higher initiations, is the relation of a ray to a planet. Therefore seek not full information at this time. The influence of this sixth Lord is now passing out.

7. . The Lord of Ceremonial Order or Magic is now coming into power and is slowly but surely making His pressure felt. His influence is most potent upon the physical plane, for there is a close numerical
interrelation between (for instance) the Lord of the seventh ray and the seventh plane, the physical, just as the seventh root race will see complete conformity to and a perfect expression of law and order. This ray of order and its incoming is partially responsible for the present tendency in world affairs toward governmental dictatorship and the imposed control of a central governing body.

DREAMS OF THE TRIPLE MALE

THE LORDS OF KARMA

The 'Lords of Karma' are given as a term that you may realize those laws or rules that you would apply in judging
the lifetime, or that which is accomplished in an incarnation.

In the East, broadly speaking, people do believe in reincarnation and, correctly, in relation to the Law of Karma. Unfortunately, even in the East, the Law of Karma is seen from an erroneous point of view. There is a correct interpretation and approach to the idea of rebirth, and its close connection with the Law of Action and Reaction, Cause and Effect.

In the Orient, most people believing in the Law of Karma accept that they are who and where they are because of their actions in a previous life, which is true; but, unfortunately, they think they can do nothing about changing their particular situation, which is not true. In the West, we tend to think that we are totally in control of our destiny, which we are to some extent, but that there is no greater law governing our destiny, which is not true.

The Westerner tends to reject the idea of a future life, mostly because of the way the Bible has been edited and translated erroneously over the last two milleniums. It is an idea which is only just beginning to be entertained by people's minds. Most people who come to believe in reincarnation are interested in knowing who they were in their pat lives. The popular literature in the West about reincarnation is almost exclusively about previous existences.

Is it of value to know our past lives? At a certain point it can be helpful. But until one is ready for knowing that information, not only is it not of major value, it can actually be dangerous. There is a little-known law that when we become truly aware of a particular past life we enter into the karma of that time. Most of us have enough to do with dealing with our current lives, than to bring the full load of karma from a previous life into it. Knowing the details of a past life is not a game to play for fun. It brings great responsibility with it.

The whole subject is fraught with danger and complexity. When our past lives by themselves into our consciousness, they will do so under law. It is more important to know that every moment we are alive, we are making karma for our future - we are creating our karma and our next life right now.

If you go to a professional person who tells you they can tell you who you were in a previous life and that you were important and powerful (it is usually some king, queen, priestess or someone equally famous), how can you prove this? You can't! In fact, speaking as one who has had an experience in a dream/vision that led me to believe I was a particular person, I have since met, on the internet, no less than 6 other people who have been told the same thing. Unless all seven of our souls were in that same person in a past life, 6 of us, or maybe all 7 are very mis-led. You can't believe anything you are told by others, and even dreams and visions can lead you astray and cause you to do silly things and even 'dumb' things you wouldn't have done had you not had this sort of revelation.

It's much more important to be the best person you can be in this lifetime in order not to rack up bad karma, and in fact, the way life is going now, karma is tending to be returned to everyone, sometimes within minutes, and not centuries like it used to. So, you will want to earn good karma, and not the bad kind - remember - it's always 'cause and effect' and if the cause is negative so will the effect.

Certain religious people believe that if they are poor, hungry, miserable, indebted to the landlord, with hardly enough to feed their family, that they must have been someone really terrible before. They believe it is the Law of Karma because they were so bad, nasty, horrible, such low-grade human beings in their past life, they deserve the misery they are in now. They believe that; it is the teaching. And they believe, because it is the Law of Karma, that there is nothing they can do about it. They accept it totally, fatalistically, as their due according to the law. And they also believe that if they accept their lot meekly and try to be good they will be rewarded with a life of higher status next time around. If there is anything which has kept the Orient down, in terms of its living standards, its social happiness, social democracy and equality, it is the acceptance of the Law of Karma on that basis.

There is nothing to prevent these people from transforming their lives except the acceptance that they can change their status in life despite their karma.

The Law of Cause and Effect, Karma

Every thought, every action that we have and make sets into motion a cause. These causes have their effects. These effects make our lives, for good or bad. We are now, have been, and will go on, making our lives from moment to moment. Sooner or later, the causes set into motion by our thoughts and actions will produce effects which will come back to; and we will experience that as good karma or bad karma. Many people have come to use the term, "What goes 'round, comes 'round." That means that people are recognizing that karma really does exist. 

When it is uncomfortable we call it bad karma. And when it is good karma, when life is relatively easy we do not notice it. We take it as our right, because that is what we expect life to be like. People usually only talk about karma when they mean bad karma. It is important to realize and remember that we have more good karma than bad karma.

Lords of Karma

Like all laws, the Law of Karma is under the control, the jurisdiction, of certain beings -- in this case, the Lords of Karma. The Lords of Karma are like cosmic judges. They look at this action and reaction of causes and effects which we set in motion, and they regulate this according to our needs as evolving souls. It is always the soul which incarnates, in every entity, human or sub-human. Our souls incarnate in a personality with a given structure of energies, rays, which relate to the karma and the possibilities of that particular incarnation. This is done in accordance with the particular needs and requirements of the soul at that moment in time and space. 

The souls cooperate with the Lords of Karma to decide what pain we will suffer or what pleasure we will enjoy in any particular life. That, of course, is not precisely the way to describe what happens. The soul is not at all concerned with or interested, in our pleasure or our suffering. These are simply psychological reactions to events.
What they are interested in is the working out of the Law, the cosmic Law of Cause and Effect. Also, the soul has its own purposes for every given incarnation. It provides itself with a physical vehicle, the personality, with mental, emotional and physical bodies which will provide the possibility for its intentions being achieved in that particular life. That purpose might not be achieved, but the soul provides the possibility. The soul lives ever in hope! The current way to say it is this, "We keep coming back until we get it right!"

The ultimate aim is to live life in such a way that we make no personal karma. We can do that either by being perfect or by being dead. Since being perfect is much more of a challenge than being dead, most people accept the premise of trying, more or less, to achieve the soul's purpose and staying to the last possible moment to do so. Thus, we work with this burden (in many cases) or to service to others, which we have ourselves decided to do prior to the incarnation.

We try, consciously or unconsciously, to try to become perfect. We have no control over the events of life. The only thing we can control is our reaction to these events as they come along in our lives. So the proper aim of the awakened person is to achieve such a measure of detachment from events that we can control ourselves. In this way we cope with the burden of karma in any given incarnation. This is not meant to be a case of sitting in a catatonic stupor, so that we do nothing and therefore create no karma.

What we can do, in every event, in every situation, is distance ourselves emotionally from that event -- looking at the
event as out there, and us here, and not react. In this way we gradually create an impersonality in relation to life, a detachment in relation to events, where we become indifferent to whether our karma is good or bad.

I know that sounds like a very cold and calculated way to live, but once you are spiritually awakened, there is a good reason to do this. 

Renunciation Leads to Self-Mastery

Correctly seen, evolutionary life is a gradual renunciation of the lower for the sake of the higher. As a soul in incarnation, a high level of divinity has incarnated at a lower level of divinity, and the journey to perfection, the evolutionary goal, is the gradual renunciation of these lower levels, by embodying, at these lower levels, the higher; becoming more and more what one essentially is as a soul.

The soul makes its journey into incarnation over aeons of time, and then back, out of the need to incarnate at all. The path of return for the soul is the gradual release of itself from the limitations of the physical, astral and mental planes. This is done by infusing its vehicles -- physical, emotional and mental -- with its energies and qualities. Two things are going on at the same time in this process. One is the gradual spiritualizing of the vehicle by the soul. The other is the burdening of the vehicle, intentionally, by the soul, to burn up ancient karma and overcome it.

As the soul progresses in its incarnational experience, so its reflection, the man or woman in incarnation, receives a heavier and heavier burden of karma until, in the last incarnation of all, the burden is at its heaviest. It is for this reason that the last initiation is called, in the West, the Crucifixion (Being Christed) and, in the East, the Great Renunciation. In that experience everything, all the lower aspects, are being renounced in favor of the higher spiritual reality. That is why the life of the awakened spiritual person who is working on the initiation of being Christed is usually, from the world's point of view, painful, heavy indeed.

People imagine that, as a man or woman progresses in evolution, they should become freer and freer of karma. The opposite is true. Not only that, but as a man or woman becomes a disciple, becomes initiate, a world-server, they take more and more of the weight of world karma. They are the upholders of the world. Their shoulders are, and need to be, broad. Imagine a bridge over a river, and the river is the world and its karma, and the disciples and initiates are the pillars of the bridge, and the spaces between are the masses of people. Where there are spaces, the water flows easily through. It is the pillars of the bridge that take the force of the flood, of the water.

In a very real sense, the disciples and initiates of the world support the world. That is one reason why the life of a disciple is, from the average man's point of view, a very difficult life to lead. But, of course, he is governed by the great Law of Service. Under this law, disciples and initiates come very frequently into incarnation to serve world need and to finish off this earth experience as quickly as possible -- not to get it over with, but to serve the better. The more advanced a person is, the more he can serve, the more useful he can be to the world.

When a certain level is reached -- the relationship to the Law of Cause and Effect changes. Gradually the law is manipulated by the person himself. As a conscious divine soul, working in the world, he becomes really the pilot of his own plane. He may have a co-pilot, his Master, but he is the pilot. It is not an automatic thing, but gradually this point is achieved. He takes an active part in his own evolution, consciously working with the Law of Karma, under the control of his soul. Then it may come to pass that his previous lives will open up before his inner eye. As this happens, also the karma of that time becomes open to him on the physical plane, which, of course, increases the burden of the initiate.

The aim is that by the time the person is ready to take the initiation and become a Master, all karma will have been resolved, burned up, taken back to the source from which it came.

Service: The Best Method for Resolving Karma

How do you get rid of karma; how do you deal with it? Well, you cannot give it away. It is too heavy, nobody wants it. There is no sale for excess karma; everyone has enough of their own. So what do you do, how can you cope with this burden that limits your activity, your joy and happiness? There is a very simple method. It is called service. Service is the absolute best way for getting rid of karma. Of course it does not get rid of it, but it burns it up.

The process is something like this: as you serve you draw to yourself energy. By giving out energy, you get energy back; that is the law. Basically, it is the Law of Love, which governs our nature, without which the universe would not exist. It is, of course, in another sense, the Law of Cause and Effect itself. As you give love, you set in motion a cause, the effect of which is the return of love. So the law itself sets in motion its own fulfilment. As we serve, we demonstrate love. As we demonstrate love, by law, we get love. That strengthens and potentizes the individual in a way in which he can deal with his own karma.

As the person progresses in love, in service, he is automatically distancing himself from the effect of events. The events take place, but they have less and less effect on his psychology. In the East they say: well, it's my karma. In France they say: well, c'est la vie. Gradually, we have to develop an attitude of c'est la vie. If it is good, easy: c'est la vie. If it is hard, if it is painful, makes us unhappy: c'est la vie. We really have to live with that attitude.

Right Relationship Ends the Karmic Cycle

The Law of Karma is a great binding law, but it is benign. Nobody receives more karma than their soul, and the Lords of Karma, know they can usefully handle. Some lives for some people are very hard, very painful, very limited indeed. From the point of view of the soul, this is probably intentional and useful, productive. Because the soul knows that, by the burning in this way of a burden of karma from the past, greater progress can be made. What holds us back, what limits us, is our karma. The efforts made in dealing with the karma pave the way for periods of
growth. Our development proceeds thus in cycles.

The Law of Karma is not a mechanical law of punishment. If you hit somebody on the head, it is not inevitable that you will be hit on the head. It is not a question of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It is simply the energetic outcome of previous causes set in motion by ourselves. All that we do will inevitably come back in some way or other. However, we can do something about it. The untouchables of India can change their lives. They are not bound by karma to be ntouchables. That is a social structure, a class system, which binds people to particular stations in
life. It is totally artificial and man-made. The poverty, the squalor, the degradation and the misery of people in the Third World or in this one is not necessary, it is not a result of karma, but of our greed. And we have the major responsibility to help them change these conditions and enter true living.

People think of karma as always from the past life, but what about yesterday's karma, or the day before, last week's, last month's karma? It is this succession of moments of action and reaction which today we are coping with, which tomorrow and in our next life we will cope with. Until we come into right relationship with each other and with the whole of which we are a part, we will go on making bad karma. It is more important, more useful, to realize the benefit of right relationship, thus handling the Laws of Karma and Rebirth correctly, than to know our past lives.

Excerpted in part from: