Psychic Birth

A quickening of spiritual or cosmic consciousness and power. This new consciousness is one that recognizes oneness with God and the universe. Psychic birth is a spiritual birth. (cosmic Consciousness.

(See also: Psychic Birth, New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

PRANA

the yogic concept of a cosmic energy or life force, similar to the Chinese idea of chi, that enters the body with the breath. Prana is thought to flow through the body, bringing health and vitality. It is considered the vital link between the spiritual self and the material self.

(See also: PRANA, Alternative Health, Healing, Body Mind and Soul)

Cosmic Egg

A cosmogonic motif in which all things are contained in potential form within a single primordial egg.

(See also: Cosmic Egg, New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

Brahma's Day, Night, Age, Year, Life A Day of Brahma, a cosmic manvantara or out-breathing of Brahma, represents a period where worlds are evolved and pass through their allotted ages of manvantaric existence.

Each Day of Brahma consists of 1,000 aggregates of four yugas or 1,000 mahayugas (great ages). In a smaller sense it is also a mahamanvantara or kalpa of a planetary chain, composed of seven rounds, a period of 4,320,000,000 terrestrial years. A Night of Brahma, a cosmic pralaya, inbreathing of Brahma, or planetary paranirvana, is of equal length.

Seven Days of Brahma or seven planetary cycles make one solar kalpa. One Year of Brahma consists of 360 Divine Days and Nights, each Day of which is the duration of the imbodiment of a planetary chain, with Nights of equal length.

The Life of Brahma or of the solar system consists of 100 Divine Years (311,040,000,000,000 terrestrial years). The current Life of Brahma is about half completed -- a period of about 155,520,000,000,000 of our years having passed away since our solar system first began its mahamanvantara. There remain, therefore, fifty more Years of Brahma before the system sinks into cosmic pralaya. As only half the grand evolutionary period is accomplished, we are at the bottom of the cosmic cycle, i.e., on the lowest plane.

See also FOUR

(See also: Brahmas Day, Night, Age, Year, Life, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Extra-Cosmic. Outside of Kosmos or Nature; a nonsensical word invented to assert the existence of a personal god, independent of, or out side, Nature per se, in opposition to the Pantheistic idea that the whole Kosmos is animated or informed with the Spirit of Deity, Nature being but the garment, and matter the illusive shadow, of the real unseen Presence.

(See also: Extra-Cosmic, Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary, )

Cosmic Element-Principles. See TATTVAS

(See also: Cosmic Element-Principles, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Cosmic Cross

Four planets in opposition, each squared by another one making a cross.

(See also: Cosmic Cross, New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

Vayu (Sanskrit) Air; one of the five cosmic elements. Personified, the god and sovereign of the air and the king of the gandharvas. Agni, Vayu, and Surya formed the primeval Vedic Trimurti: " 'Agni (fire) whose place is on earth; Vayu (air, or one of the forms of Indra), whose place is in the air; and Surya (the sun) whose place is in the air' [celestial spaces]. (Nirukta.)

In esoteric interpretation, these three cosmic principles, correspond with the three human principles, Kama, Kama-Manas and Manas, the sun of the intellect" (TG 361). These three deities in this connection are three manifestations of cosmic fohat, guided and directed by cosmic mahat.

In later mythology Vayu is the father of Hanuman, the monkey-king who aids Rama in the Ramayana. The allegory of Hanuman becoming the son of Vayu by Anjuna (an ape-like monster) refers to the first glimmering of mind coming into the highest apes through the miscegenation of unevolved late third root-race and early fourth root-race humans with certain simians, themselves the descendants of a previous and parallel origin during an earlier time of the third root-race.

(See also: Vayu, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Polytheism The doctrine of and belief in a plurality of gods, cosmic spirits, or celestial entities under whatever name they may be described. The word came into use as a correlative of monotheism -- the doctrine as of the Jews, Christians, and Moslems, of one and only one God.

The unphilosophical nature of monotheism, which in the Occident is quite different from the significance of divine unity, is shown by the subterfuges resorted to in order to supply its deficiencies. As divinity cannot be successfully imagined as individually concerned with every operation in the universe, the general term nature is used to denote a kind of secondary god; while the progress of science has analyzed this into various laws and forces, which paradoxically enough perform somewhat the same functions as the gods of polytheism, except in their wrongly supposed lack of intelligence.

Less sophisticated and more profound intellects have never ceased to believe in a whole range of cosmic hierarchies, running from divinity down to the so-called nature spirits, and traditional peoples have always looked upon these as powers which are often dreaded and can be propitiated. Even Christianity has its saints, and its theology speaks of Angels and Archangels, of Dominions and Thrones, etc. As soon as we depart from the simple primeval idea of a universe filled with intelligent beings -- and indeed formed of these beings themselves -- of numerous hierarchies, grades, and kinds, we land in a maze of abstractions and contradictions.

The ancient and oriental pantheons are in reality allegories or personifications of the hosts and hierarchies of cosmic powers, divine, intermediate, and terrestrial, in uninterrupted serial sequences. Where an ignorant devotee might address prayers to some of these personifications, the enlightened one, in invoking Jupiter or Siva, would merely seek to evoke in himself the human power corresponding with the cosmic power, and of which the human is a direct, albeit a feeble, reflection.

(See also: Polytheism, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Consciousness:

The intelligent, supremely independent, divine Energy, which creates, pervades, and supports the entire universe.

(See also: Consciousness, Yoga, Yoga Dictionary, Siddha Yoga, Siddha Yoga Dictionary)

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V X Y Z

Cosmic Gods. Inferior gods, those connected with the formation of matter.

(See also: Cosmic Gods, Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary, )

Cosmic Planes. See DHATUS; PLANES; LOKAS AND TALAS; TATTVAS

(See also: Cosmic Planes, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

COSMIC SWITCHBOARD

(See also: COSMIC SWITCHBOARD, Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul, )

World-germs A metaphor for cosmic monads, fundamental elementary principles of all ancient religious and philosophical systems. Each monad is an eternal cosmic unity, albeit they appear, disappear, and reappear during the eternally revolving cosmic cycles. In themselves they are divine consciousness-centers, divine-spiritual particles, points of abstract, conscious, cosmic substance existing during manvantaras in a state of primeval differentiation.

The world-germs, are scattered like spawn throughout space. Each one pursues its karmic destiny, descending from a state of pure spirit through various phases by emanating from itself a series of sheaths or veils until the karmic limit has been reached, when each has become the cosmic spirit of a universe, world, sun, planet, etc., as the case may be. The spiritual essence of any world-germ or cosmic monad at no time actually descends or leaves its own high plane or status, but in the words of Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita, each establishes a world, universe, or hierarchy with karmically destined portions of itself, and yet remains separate, transcendent.

During the course of this descent into manifestation, fohat sets in motion the primordial world-germs, the aggregation of cosmic atoms and matter, some one way, some another. The world-germs come into frequent meetings and separations, or collisions and partings, until forming their final cosmic aggregation; afterwards as individuals they pass through the nebular phase and then become comets in space.

World-germs are "viewed by Science as material particles in a highly attenuated condition, but in Occult physics as 'Spiritual particles,' i.e., supersensuous matter existing in a state of primeval differentiation" (SD 1:200-1).

(See also: World-germs, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

ABYSS

The gulf between the individual mind and Cosmic Consciousness, between manifestation and non-manifestation, or between life and death. The plane that the magician must cross on his own, without any assistance whatever.

(See also: ABYSS, Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul, )

energy

1.    Life force, cosmic ether, healing medium, vitalizing force, primal juice, cosmic electricity.

2.    mc2: mass times the square of the speed of light.

3.    Electromagnetic fields consisting of positive, negative, and neutral charges which build and sustain the human body and all other matter.

4.    Forces of nature harnessed for human use including: coal, petroleum, natural gas, nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, hydroelectric, geothermal, organic waste and refuse, wind, tides, ocean waves, ocean currents, temperature differential, solar terrestrial and extraterrestrial, gravity, electrostatic, hydrogen

(See also: Energy, Body Mind and Soul)

Heart The heart is the seat in the human body of buddhic consciousness, corresponding to the anahata chakra which is ruled by the planet Venus. There are three principal centers of the human body: the heart as the center of spiritual consciousness; the head as the center of mental consciousness; and the navel as the center of kamic or emotional consciousness.

The heart is the organ through which the higher ego acts, seeking to impress the lower self which works through the brain. In this sense the heart is the most important part of the body, and when developed leads to spiritual mastery, the unity of atma-buddhi-manas. In another sense, the heart corresponds to prana, "but only because Prana and the Auric Envelope are essentially the same, and because again as Jiva it is the same as the Universal Deity" (BCW 12:694).

Cosmically, the sun is the beating heart of the solar system, and the sunspot cycle of approximately 12 years represents the cycle of its beating, as it sends forth and receives back the circulations on many planes which sustain the solar system. The sun is "a beating heart; in another sense, it is a brain. There is a temptation to use the words heart and brain literally, and such usage wanders not far from fact. But it is not the physical globe which is the true head and heart, except insofar as the physical universe is concerned. The real head and the real heart, coalescing and working as one, are the divinity behind and above and within the physical vehicle of our glorious daystar" (FSO 299; cf SD 1:541-2).

(See also: Heart, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Archetypal World or Universe (from Greek archetypos original pattern)

Either an abstract type in the divine mind, or a subtle form which is the model for a grosser form. In the processes of cosmic manifestation, forms are built by the builders working on a particular plane from abstract models already existing on a higher plane. In order for ideation to pass from the abstract into the concrete or visible form, the creative logoi see in the ideal world the archetypal forms of all and proceed to build upon these models forms both evanescent and transcendent (SD 1:380).

The Archetypal Man of the Qabbalah is the host of the higher dhyani-chohans collectively called 'Adam Qadmon or the upper triad of the ten Sephiroth, also svabhavat or the fourfold anima mundi, whence proceed the creative, formative, and material worlds. The archetypal world has three planes, corresponding to the First, Second, and Third Logoi, and to parabrahman with mulaprakriti or to Brahman with pradhana. In the human hierarchy, this is paramatman (the supreme self) from which fall the armies of rays which permeate every atom on every plane, constituting the unity in the divine selfhood which is the essence of all. In contrast with the septenary hierarchy below, this upper triad is called arupa (formless).

Archetypal world is also used to designate the fourth cosmic plane.

(See also: Archetypal World, Universe, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Akupara (Sanskrit) (from a not + kupara ocean)

Unbounded; the mythical tortoise which upholds the earth (sometimes kupara). Also the sea, whether earthly or cosmic; likewise a name for the sun (cf MB Vana-parvan, ch 199).

(See also: Akupara, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

SPIRIT

Soul and body are what the world sees. The mind connects them. The spirit, however, is one's own thing. It can be connected to the Cosmic Spirit or partly to itself and others on a lower level.

(See also: SPIRIT, Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul, )

Sachchidananda saccidananda (Sanskrit) [from sat reality + chit pure consciousness + ananda bliss]

Abstract being, abstract consciousness, abstract bliss; the state of the cosmic spiritual hierarch, Brahman or the Second Logos, the Absolute of our cosmic hierarchy. Subba Row wrote that the Logos is described as sachchidananda because as sat it is the efflux of parabrahman, as chit it contains within itself the whole law of cosmic evolution, as ananda it is the abode of impersonal bliss and the highest happiness possible for a person who has become a jivanmukta -- a freed monad, when union with the cosmic Logos is attained.

(See also: Sachchidananda, saccidananda, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Age of Aquarius

The New Age which begins (according to various calculations) between January 1, 1981 and May 5, 2012. Many New Agers believe the Aquarian Age will be characterized by a heightened degree of spiritual or cosmic consciousness.

(See also: Age of Aquarius, New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)