Material Force Dictionary

Physical Organs Natural history reveals that the organs of the body acquire a greater individual importance, and in some cases occupy a larger proportion of the organism, as we ascend from the lower to the higher animal forms. G. de Purucker points out that "Every one of the organs of the human physical body, both collectively and distributively, is the organic representative in man's physical sheath or body of one part or portion of his complex inner and invisible constitution. . . . every one of the monadic centers in man's being . . . has its own corresponding organ in the physical body, each such organ functioning in the body as much as it can according to the characteristic or type-activity of its inner and invisible cause. Thus the heart, the brain, the liver, the spleen, etc., is, each one, the expression on the physical plane and in the human physical body of a corresponding consciousness-center in the invisible constitution of the sevenfold man" (ET 961-2n).

There are manasic as well as kamic organs. The brain and heart are "the organs of a power higher than the Personality" (BCW 12:367; or St in Oc 89). The liver is called the kamic organ; the spleen is the vehicle of the linga-sarira. Of the rhythmic tides of vital air in the chest, it is said: "The primeval current of the life-wave is then the same which assumes in man the form of the inspiratory and expiratory motion of the lungs, and this is the source of the evolution and involution of the universe" (q from Nature's Finer Forces Rama Prasad, BCW 12:356 or Studies in Occultism 76). The uterus, within which a new manifestation of life appears, corresponds physically to the universal matrix -- cosmic space -- the fertilized cell being the point in the circle where differentiation begins. The eyes, from one standpoint at least, are the most occult of our senses. The fibers of the large optic nerves are interrelated with special organs of the senses and sensations -- optic thalami, pineal and pituitary glands, etc. -- which are grouped around the center of the brain.

Further, "every human organ and each cell in the latter has a key-board of its own, like that of a piano, only that it registers and emits sensations instead of sounds. Every key contains the potentiality of good or bad, of producing harmony or disharmony" according as the impulse comes from the higher or lower nature (BCW 12:368-9 or St in Oc 91). Memory has no special organ of its own in the brain, but has seats in every organ of the body. The whole body is a vast sounding board in which each cell bears a long record of impressions connected with its parent organ, and also it has a memory and consciousness of its own kind. These impressions are, according to the nature of the organ, physical, psychic, mental, or again mixed, as they relate to this or another plane, there being states of instinctual, mental, and purely abstract or spiritual consciousness. The physiological functions and reciprocal workings of cells and organs are in the body automatically directed by a "universally diffused mind" throughout that body, which is beyond all material analysis. Because of this intelligence operating throughout the organism, physiology is destined someday "to become the hand-maiden of Occult truths" (BCW 12:139; or Studies in Occultism 105).

On a larger scale, each organ has its own rhythm or vibratory rate of response to cosmic eternal motion. The response is animated by a "vital principle without which no molecular combinations could ever have resulted in a living organism, least of all in the so-called 'inorganic' matter of our plane of consciousness" (SD 1:603). The breaking of the normal rhythm of one organ disturbs that of all the rest, which accounts for the many reflex symptoms that often appear.

The general principles of occult physiology underlie and coordinate the numerous details of chemical, microscopic, and biological research. The human organism illustrates the modern scientific view of the electronic nature of matter. In man, the positive and negative phases of the one Life unite to manifest in functional currents of vitality; all of which has a significant bearing on the prevailing medical recourse to organotherapy, the end results of which are not recognized, as such, since they operate on inner lines of force. Each animal body -- human or beast -- is a complex organism whose various parts are vibrating in consonance with the synthetic character of its own evolutionary status of vital matter and conscious force -- its selfhood. Hence, the injection of the physiologic essence of any one creature's organs into the life-currents of another, aiming to give a certain impetus to functional reaction, inevitably adds a subtly disturbing foreign element. The same physical matter composes all animal bodies, so that the human and beast life-atoms are interchangeable, but such interchange is governed or regulated by extremely occult causal relations which raise their action outside or above the plane of human interference. Organotherapy, as at present understood and practiced, is a divergence from nature's normal processes, having no analog in nature which, in turn, provides resources of wholesome remedial matter. These artificial mixtures of both physical and superphysical forces, involve vital issues beyond the ken of research laboratories. The end results of unbalanced forces might be sought among the increase in cases of malignant, degenerative, and mental and nervous disorders, with their unequilibrated operation of functioning vitality and of consciousness.

Pi The mathematical symbol for the incommensurable ratio of the circumference of a circle to the length of its diameter, and for corresponding ratios in plane and solid geometry. Its incommensurability is a particular instance of the impossibility of expressing geometrical magnitudes exactly in number. Bearing in mind that there is a geometrical key to interpretation of cosmic law and structure, and that the facts of geometry cannot possibly be arbitrary or meaningless but must be faithful representations of general laws; then we shall understand that the ratio {pi sym}, involving such radial and important elements as the straight line and the circle, must be of paramount importance. The figures, either for approximate decimal evaluations or approximate fractional ratios, play an important part in the symbology of the ancient mystery-language. These figures and the numbers which they make are found in the numerical values of letters and words in the Hebrew and Greek alphabets. The problem of squaring the circle by a purely geometrical construction does not involve the use of {pi sym} at all.

(See also: Physical Organs , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Brahma’s Day. A period of 2,160,000,000 years during which Brahma having emerged out of his golden egg (Hiranyagarbha), creates and fashions the material world (being simply the fertilizing and creative force in Nature). After this period, the worlds being destroyed in turn, by fire and water, he vanishes with objective nature, and then comes Brahma's Night.

(See also: Brahma’s Day , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

A Theosophical definition of Kundalini or Kundalini-Sakti :

Kundalini - Kundalini-Sakti

(Sanskrit) A term whose essential meaning is "circular" or "winding" or "spiral" or "coiling" action, or rather energy, and signifies a recondite power in the human constitution.

Kundalini-sakti is derivative of one of the elemental forces of nature. It works in and through, in the case of man, his auric egg, and expresses itself in continuous action in many of the most familiar phenomena of existence even when man himself is unconscious of it.

In its higher aspect Kundalini is a power or force following winding or circular pathways carrying or conveying thought and force originating in the higher triad. Abstractly, in the case of man it is of course one of the fundamental energies or qualities of the pranas. Unskilled or unwise attempts to interfere with its normal working in the human body may readily result in insanity or malignant or enfeebling disease.

See also: Kundalini or Kundalini-Sakti , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

Cell (from Latin cella a small room)

A small enclosed space; applied to the unit of organic life since the mid-17th century, when Robert Hooke, using one of the early microscopes, discovered that cork consisted of many little empty enclosed spaces separated from each other, which he called cells. A century later these cells were found to contain a semi-transparent substance occurring in all vegetable and animal matter, which thereafter was regarded as the basis of organic life and so received the name of protoplasm. The cells is a collective entity containing subordinate symbiotic entities. Its structure is divided into two major parts: the central nucleus which contains the genetic material, and the surrounding cytoplasm. Theosophically, human cells sprang originally from the inner human entity, who functions as their oversoul.

The earliest human root-races were astral protoplasts that reproduced by division as cells do today. The late second and early third root-races, the "sweat-born," reproduced by throwing off germ cells which then grew into the new entity. Because each cell is an individual being or organism with its own inherent characteristics and possibilities, some of these vital cells thrown off by early human beings were used by the entities that evolved into the higher mammals. Human cells were not as thoroughly dominated by their parent entity as they are today:

"Hence, when any one of the cells forming part of such early human bodies freed itself from the psychical and physical control that then existed, it was enabled to follow, and instinctively did follow, the path of self-expression. But in our days when the psychical and physical dominance of the human incarnated entity over the human cells composing the human body is so strong, and because the cells have largely lost their power to individual self-expression through the biologic habit of subjecting to that overlordship of the human entity, such an individualized career of a cell in self-development is a virtual impossibility. . . .

"These cells which compose his body, had they not been held in the grip of the forces flowing from the inner dominating entity, man himself, for so long a time that their own individual lives, as it were, have been overpowered and bent in his direction and can now follow almost no other path than his; had they not been so dominated they would, by the amputation of a limb for instance, immediately begin to proliferate along their own tendency-line, to build up bodies of their own kind, each one following out that particular line of life force, or progressive development, which each such cell would contain in its cellular structure as a dominant, thus establishing a new ancestral or genealogical tree" (MIE 144-5).

See also GERM CELL.

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

Kundalini is the cosmic power in individual bodies. It is not a material force like electricity, magnetism, centripetal or centrifugal force. It is a spiritual potential Sakti or cosmic power. In reality it has no form. The Sthula Buddhi and mind have to follow a particular form in the beginning stage. From this gross form, one can easily, understand the subtle formless Kundalini. Prana, Ahamkara, Buddhi, Indriyas, mind, five gross elements, nerves are all the products of Kundalini.

Excerpt from the book Kundalini Yoga by Sri Swami Sivananda.

Read more here: » Kundalini: The Mysterious Kundalini

A Theosophical definition of Rupa :

Rupa

(Sanskrit) A word meaning "form," "image," "similitude," but this word is employed technically, and only rarely in the popular sense in which it is commonly used in English. It signifies rather an atomic or monadic aggregation about the central and indwelling consciousness, forming a vehicle or body thereof.

Thus the rupa-lokas are lokas or worlds where the body-form or vehicle is very definitely outlined in matter; whereas the arupa-lokas are worlds where the body-forms or "images" are outlined in a manner which to us humans is much less definite. It should be noted that the word rupa applies with equal force to the bodies or vehicles even of the gods, although these latter to us are purely subjective or arupa. (See also Loka)

See also: Rupa , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

Faith Healing, Drugless Healing Apart from the regular medical and surgical practice, widespread forms of drugless healing are employed today. Public opinion generally is either frankly skeptical about the whole matter, or believes that such afford safe and easy means of relief and escape from suffering and disease.

As a whole, these forms of faith or magnetic healing depend on the "inborn or inherent, ability of the 'healer' or practitioner to convey healthy life-force from himself to the diseased person. This is the key to success, or the lack of success, in all cases, and in all kinds of healing of whatever so-called 'school'" (SOPh 622). If the practitioner succeeds in conveying the vitality of the pranic fluids from his own healthy body to the diseased body or organ of another person, that healthy life-force "expels" or changes the inharmonious vibrations in the afflicted part and, by restoring harmony there, brings about health. Such cures can be permanent; usually they are temporary, lasting from a few days to a few years.

All these methods were known to the ancients. Unfortunately, the Western lack of any true psychology leaves unexplained the rationale of these healing systems -- whether by hypnotism, magnetism, mesmerism, or healing by faith as practiced by the Christian Scientists and faith-healers -- and gives no hint of their end results. The potential dangers incurred, both physical and superphysical, are unsuspected. The magnetic healer's emanation of his vitality and will-force inevitably carries and implants in the person it affects something of his own quality of mind, heart, and body. The germs of any latent disease, hidden vice, or mental bias will complicate any supposed cure.

Moreover, the subtle infection on inner lines karmically links for the future both healer and patient in the outcome. Even diseased or evil-minded persons of strong will and animal vitality can displace a disease and, by driving it back onto some inner level of the sufferer's constitution, can make a seeming cure. Howsoever it is displaced out of sight, it cannot be denied out of existence, and sooner or later it will reappear in a more untimely, unnatural, and probably a more dangerous form because of its suppression at the moment of its endeavor to exhaust itself in physical expression. Physical disease, originating in wrong thought in this or a former life, becomes visible on the most material level in working its way out of the system for good. It is positively pernicious for a healer to act upon the will, conscience, or moral integrity of the sick person by hypnotizing his mind, will, and conscience into believing that sickness does not exist, or that he is a victim of fate instead of suffering from his own past actions. Any such control of another's conscious life is a form of suggestion or hypnotism, and falls under what was formerly called black magic.

On the other hand, we are morally obligated to help the sick and suffering in the right ways of treating the body, mind, and soul; right because involving the arousing of the patient's own inner powers of spiritual, moral, and intellectual resistance against the weaknesses in himself. The wrong ways consist in the overpowering -- however good the motive of the practitioner may be -- of the moral instincts, will, and conscience of the sufferer, thereby rendering him weaker than before. In genuine mesmerism the vital emanation from a pure-minded, unselfish, healthy operator arouses the inert or disordered forces of the diseased organ or body, causing them to vibrate harmoniously and naturally. Thus the sufferer makes himself whole or healthy, and has no bad reaction. The best of all drugless healing methods is where the sufferer is brought into a state of hope, self-confidence, and the higher kind of resignation bringing peace and inner quiet, all of which works in harmony with the body's natural resources of health and healing. This is the kind of faith-cure used by Jesus and others of similar spiritual and intellectual stature.

(See also: Faith Healing, Drugless Healing , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Wand The wand of Hermes or caduceus, the magician's wand, the rods of Moses and Aaron, the scepter of kings which shows the force of temporal power, and the crosier of a bishop, are prototypes and antitypes of a universal principle -- the straight line, representing the masculine, active, positive power in nature. The magician may be said to possess a magic wand -- a name for the power he can wield -- and there may be various material copies of this, ranging from an actual magic wand supposedly prepared according to secret formulas, down to the humble stick or cudgel with which the ruffian enforces his will. The words rod and staff are often used figuratively as well as literally in the Bible.

In the four symbolic suits of the Tarot, the first is that of the batons, now become the clubs.

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

Sun The central focus of radiating energy, physical and spiritual, of any solar system. In our solar system the sun is one of several suns subordinate to the more central sun of the universal solar system. In the solar cosmos as a whole it is the Logos, the head of the septenary hierarchy of creative forces, corresponding to the Christos, Abraxas, Mithras, Dionysos, etc., in man. Its names among the many peoples of the earth are countless: Osiris, Ormazd, Apollo, Phoebus, Ammon-Ra, Helios, Surya, etc. Symbolized by the circle with a central point, it is for its own system the All-Father. Sun worship, in the occult sense, was once the universal foundation of religion, but it has mostly given place to what is really lunar worship. The sun is often found contrasted with the moon as spiritual is with material; and solar magic means white magic as contrasted with the dark lunar magic. Thus we find deities classed as solar and lunar, or particular deities have both a solar and a lunar aspect. As Father and Son he is seen in Osiris and Horus, atman and buddhi-manas, God and Christos.

Our visible sun, though the center of its system, is not the father of the planets but their "co-uterine brother," one of the "eight sons of Aditi." It is not the creator of the fohatic forces, but their radiating focus. Nor is it an incandescent and cooling body; it is nature's great laboratory of intelligently vital and electromagnetic forces for our system. "The Sun is the heart of the Solar World (System) and its brain is hidden behind the (visible) Sun. From thence, sensation is radiated into every nerve-centre of the great body, and the waves of the life-essence flow into each artery and vein. . . . The planets are its limbs and pulses" (SD 1:541). Physiologically, the sun pulsates life through the solar system, in connection with the 11 and 22 year sunspot phenomena -- the solar spots being due to the contraction of the solar heart.

The sun is a vitally electric glowing sphere; what our eyes see is a reflection, the shell of the real sun, which is hidden behind this reflection. Further, the sun is the storehouse of the vital force of the solar system, which is the "Noumenon of Electricity"; it issues forth from the sun as life currents not only for the earth and every organism upon it, but for all the planets of the solar system (SD 1:531). The production of this vital energy will not cease until the end of the solar manvantara when the sun will instantaneously disappear, after certain long-standing premonitory symptoms.

The sun, like each of the planets, is a chain of globes, of which we see only the globe on the fourth cosmic plane -- a highly ethereal body composed of the fifth, sixth, and seventh, states of matter (counting upwards) of the fourth cosmic plane.

Regarding the elements which scientists state are present in the sun, because such elements are present in spectroscopic observations, theosophy holds that no element on the earth is missing in the sun, and there are other elements there which are unknown to science, yet which are present in the sun.

In the enumeration of the seven sacred planets the sun is used as a substitute for an esoteric planet.

The enormous importance which the sun assumes in nature is based on its being the spiritual and intellectual head of solar system, as well as the general physical and psychological life-giver.

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

Logos (Greek) plural logoi. Word; expressive cosmic intelligence manifested in every rational being. With Plato, that power of the mind which is manifested in speech; its relation to nous or intelligence is not always clearly distinguished.

With reference to the logos in man, an important distinction was made by the ancients between the logos endiathetos (ideal or unspoken word) and the logos prophorikos (expressed or spoken word), the former being an unexpressed idea in the mind. The word was adopted by Christian theologians mingled with ideas taken from the Hebrews, used in the second sense, as found in the first chapter of John, where the Logos seems almost anthropomorphized.

In theosophy, logos stands for the manifested unity at the head of any hierarchy, which is the First Logos. There are innumerable such logoi in cosmic space. The Second Logos emanates from it and is dual, combining both the active and passive sides of the emanation from the First Logos, just as a word combines idea or thought with the vibratory energy of sound. The Third Logos, again, is the offspring or emanation from the Second or Dual Logos.

It is just in these three logoi, considered as a cosmic unit, that arose the original teaching of the Christian Trinity. In the original Christian idea, the Son was identified with the Third Logos and proceeded from the Father and the Holy Spirit, the Second Logos, originally in Christianity a feminine cosmic power; whereas the Roman Catholic Church made the procession of the Son come directly from the First Logos or Father, the Holy Ghost being misplaced and made the Third Logos. In later developments of Christian theology, the Logos is spoken of as the Word made flesh, the manifestation of God on earth, the Son of God, Christ, the miscalled Second Person of the Trinity. This idea was still further narrowed and debased into the doctrine of a single and special earthy manifestation of the Godhead.

After parabrahman, the one ineffable and unthinkable reality, comes the First or Unmanifested Logos, corresponding to paramatman in cosmos and atman in man, the supreme monadic self in any hierarchy; then as an emanation from the former comes the quasi-manifested or Second Logos, corresponding to cosmic and human buddhi, always envisaged as a feminine potency; and then from the former two proceeds the manifested, creative, or Third Logos, corresponding to mahat on the cosmic plane and manas in the human constitution. Thus Logos is a center of unity in a being, which may exist in an unmanifest or a manifest condition, but always derivative from the supreme mystery above it -- to which must be added an intermediate state of partial or incipient manifestation. Man is sometimes spoken of as the Third Logos, as it corresponds to manas.

"This (first)

Logos may be called in the language of old writers either Eswara or Pratyagatma or Sabda Brahmam. It is called the Verbum or the Word by the Christians, and it is the divine Christos who is eternally in the bosom of his father. It is called Avalokiteswara by the Buddhists; at any rate, Avalokiteswara in one sense is the Logos in general, . . . In almost every doctrine they have formulated the existence of a centre of spiritual energy which is unborn and eternal, and which exists in a latent condition in the bosom of Parabrahmam at the time of pralaya, and starts as a centre of conscious energy at the time of cosmic activity. It is the first gnatha or the ego in the cosmos, and every other ego and every other self . . . is but its reflection or manifestation. In its inmost nature it is not unknowable as Parabrahmam, but it is an object of the highest knowledge that man is capable of acquiring. . . .

". . . Parabrahmam by itself cannot be seen as it is. It is seen by the Logos with a veil thrown over it, and that veil is the mighty expanse of cosmic matter. It is the basis of all material manifestations in the cosmos.

". . . the first manifestation of Parabrahmam is a Trinity, the highest Trinity that we are capable of understanding. It consists of Mulaprakriti, Eswara or the Logos, and the conscious energy of the Logos, which is its power and light; and here we have the three principles upon which the whole cosmos seems to be based. First, we have matter; secondly, we have force -- at any rate, the foundation of all the forces in the cosmos; and thirdly, we have the ego or the one root of self, of which every other kind of self is but a manifestation or reflection" (Notes on BG 18-22).

On account of the universal analogies running throughout Nature, every cosmic unit, such as a solar system or a sun, is an expression in itself of a minor series of First, Second, and Third Logoi; and this primordial Triad through the Third Logos breaks into seven offspring-logoi, which become the seven solar logoi.

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

Shakta Tantrism: Brings a strong emphasis on the worship of the feminine force.

Depending on the school, this may be symbolic or literal in rites involving sexual intercourse, etc. Shakta Tantrism's main principle is the use of the material to gain the spiritual. In certain schools, historically, this implies embracing that which is normally forbidden and manipulating the forces to attain transcendent consciousness rather than lower consciousness. There are three main streams:

-       the righthand path (dakshina marga or dakshinachara) of conservative Hindu practice,

-       the left-hand path (vama marga or vamachara) involving the use of things normally forbidden such as taking intoxicants, meat, ritual sex, etc., and

-       the yogic path of the Kaula sect. Gorakshanatha followers are sometimes grouped with the latter.

See: Tantrism, Shaktism, kundalini, raja yoga, tantra.

(See also: Shakta Tantrism , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

Tsimtsum (Chaldean) [from the verbal root tsaman to contract, press together]

Contraction; a Qabbalistic term containing the philosophical idea of a previous expansion -- otherwise there could have been no subsequent contraction. Hence, tsimtsum is used to designate centrifugal and centripetal motion, expansion and contraction, which under the direction of the supreme of the Sephiroth brought forth and maintains the universe.

"The Unknown Absolute, above all number, manifested Itself through an emanation in which it was immanent yet as to which it was transcendental. It first withdrew Itself into Itself, to form an infinite Space, the Abyss; which It then filled with a modified and gradually diminishing Light or Vitalization, first appearing in the Abyss, as the centre of a mathematical point which gradually spread Its Life-giving energy or force throughout all Space. This concentration or contraction and its expansion, being the centripetal and centrifugal energies of creation and existence, the Qabbalists called Tzimtzum. The Will of Ain Soph then manifests Itself through the Ideal Perfect Model or Vitalizing Form, first principle and perfect prototype in idea, of all the to be created, whether spiritual or material. This is the Mikrokosm to the Ain Soph, the Makrokosm as to all the created. It is called the Son of Elohim, i.e., God, and the Adam Illa-ah or Adam Qadmon, the Man of the East or Heavenly Adam" (Myer, Qabbalah p. 231).

This idea is analogous to the Hindu inbreathing and outbreathing of Brahma.

Tsimtsum is stated to be particularly active in the third `olam or lowest triad of the Sephirothal Cosmic Tree -- each Sephirothal Tree is divided into a set of three triads, called respectively 1) intelligible or intellectual world; 2) formative or paradigmatic world; and 3) the natural world. It is in this last triad of Sephiroth, called `olam ham-Muteba`, where tsimtsum is specifically active.

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

A Theosophical definition of Asrama :

Asrama

(Sanskrit) A word derived from the root sram, signifying "to make efforts," "to strive"; with the particle a, which in this case gives force to the verbal root sram.

Asrama has at least two main significations.

1. The first is that of a college or school or a hermitage, an abode of ascetics, etc.; whereas the second meaning signifies a period of effort or striving in the religious life or career of a Brahmana of olden days. These periods of life in ancient times in Hindustan were four in number: the first, that of the student or brahmacharin;
2. second, the period of life called that of the grihastha or householder  - the period of married existence when the Brahmana took his due part in the affairs of men, etc.; third, the vanaprastha, or period of monastic seclusion, usually passed in a vana, or wood or forest, for purposes of inner recollection and spiritual meditation; and fourth, that of the bhikshu or religious mendicant, meaning one who has completely renounced the distractions of worldly life and has turned his attention wholly to spiritual affairs.

Brahmasrama. In modern esoteric or occult literature, the compound term Brahmasrama is occasionally used to signify an initiation chamber or secret room or adytum where the initiant or neophyte is striving or making efforts to attain union with Brahman or the inner god.

See also: Asrama , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

A Theosophical definition of Daiviprakriti :

Daiviprakriti

(Sanskrit) A compound signifying "divine" or "original evolver," or "original source," of the universe or of any self-contained or hierarchical portion of such universe, such as a solar system. Briefly, therefore, daiviprakriti may be called "divine matter," matter here being used in its original sense of "divine mother-evolver" or "divine original substance."

Now, as original substance manifests itself in the kosmic spaces as primordial kosmic light  - light in occult esoteric theosophical philosophy being a form of original matter or substance  - many mystics have referred to daiviprakriti under the phrase "the Light of the Logos." Daiviprakriti is, in fact, the first veil or sheath or ethereal body surrounding the Logos, as pradhana or prakriti surrounds Purusha or Brahman in the Sankhya philosophy, and as, on a scale incomparably more vast, mulaprakriti surrounds parabrahman. As daiviprakriti, therefore, is elemental matter, or matter in its sixth and seventh stages counting from physical matter upwards or, what comes to the same thing, matter in its first and second stages of its evolution from above, we may accurately enough speak of those filmy ethereal wisps of light seen in the midnight skies as a physical manifestation of daiviprakriti, because when they are not actually resolvable nebulae, they are worlds, or rather systems of worlds, in the making.

When daiviprakriti has reached a certain state or condition of evolutionary manifestation, we may properly speak of it under the term fohat. Fohat, in H. P. Blavatsky's words, is

"The essence of cosmic electricity. An occult Tibetan term for Daivi-prakriti, primordial light: and in the universe of manifestation the ever-present electrical energy and ceaseless destructive and formative power. Esoterically, it is the same, Fohat being the universal propelling Vital Force, at once the propeller and the resultant."  - Theosophical Glossary, p. 121

All this is extremely well put, but it must be remembered that although fohat is the energizing power working in and upon manifested daiviprakriti, or primordial substance, as the rider rides the steed, it is the kosmic intelligence, or kosmic monad as Pythagoras would say, working through both daiviprakriti and its differentiated energy called fohat, which is the guiding and controlling principle, not only in the kosmos but in every one of the subordinate elements and beings of the hosts of multitudes of them infilling the kosmos. The heart or essence of the sun is daiviprakriti working as itself, and also in its manifestation called fohat, but through the daiviprakriti and the fohatic aspect of it runs the all-permeant and directive intelligence of the solar divinity. The student should never make the mistake, however, of divorcing this guiding solar intelligence from its veils or vehicles, one of the highest of which is daiviprakriti-fohat.

See also: Daiviprakriti , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

Hypnotism (from Greek hypnos sleep)

One name for an artificially produced somnambulistic, entranced, or psychologized state. A better word for the procedure is psychologization, hypnotism being but one phase of the general subject which includes fascination, multiple or double personality, some religious ecstasies, and different methods of psychic healing. All these things operate in and upon the important intermediate part between our spiritual and physical-astral self and usually affect the latter self very strongly. This intermediate part is the human soul of the reincarnating entity -- the man or woman we see and know. As this includes the psychomental-emotional powers and faculties, it is intimately related to intelligence and sanity, to emotions and conduct, and to health.

Theosophy holds that mesmerism is not hypnotism. In hypnotism the subject's intermediate nature is disjoined from its natural relations with his physical and astral body and put out of the control of the person himself, becoming susceptible to other influences. This process is a reversal of all evolutionary currents which in every being unfold and manifest from conscious centers within. Such a reversal is dangerous and far-reaching in its results, spiritually, mentally, morally, psychically, and physically.

Moreover, the hypnotizer endangers himself by such intimate linking with the lower mind and feeling of his subject -- whose spiritual nature is always beyond another's control. From the operator's entrance into, and operation of, the subject's physico-astral body, there results a mutual infection with each other's faulty human nature. Whoever thus changes the forces and trend of another's life, obligates himself to share karmically in those changes to the end.

Psychologizing a person to heal him of disease or rid him of some injurious habit is also harmful. Bodily ills, in themselves, are the cleansing processes by which past inner wrongs of thought and feeling, having reached the material plane, can be worked out of the system. As for karmic faults and failings in character, the person restrained from them by hypnotism or psychologization merely loses a timely opportunity to develop his spiritual will by which alone every human being must consciously work out his own destiny. The apparent cure of disease, or of a weakness, means that these have been driven inwards, dammed back, inevitably to reappear with accumulated force at a less opportune time in this or a future life. Nor does the practice of self-hypnotization or self-psychologization prevent a disjunction of the person's intermediate nature from his immortal self. The results finally appear as mental disease resulting in crime or as physical disease which is the minor evil.

Suggestion has a dual power: for good or for ill, the results depending upon both the motive and the method of its use. The conscious and unconscious use of it for self-interest is unfortunately met with everywhere; as a part of modern training in high-power salesmanship, it pervades the methods popular in both commercial and professional circles. However, suggestion has a power of noble appeal to the intelligence and spiritual will of others whose better nature responds to a good example, impersonal teaching, and pure and helpful thoughts and feelings. Hypnotism and other such practices are dangerous because they so often fall into black magic or sorcery.

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

Cancer, Carcinoma A malignant opithelial tumor composed of a connective tissue-stroma surrounding groups or nests of multiplying epithelial cells. In general, carcinomas have capacity for unlimited growth, for invading adjacent tissues, and for producing similar typical growths in distant tissues in the same body or, as in experimental research, by grafts which take in another animal's body. These multiplying cells, drawing freely upon the nutritive materials of the living matter, pile up an unorganized, functionless, purposeless, uncontrolled local mass of its own cells running riot at the expense of the body.

The search for causes has held as suspect everything tangible in the human body and in the human milieu. Yet it is the different degree of development of the complex inner elements and urges of conscious quality which, giving personal play to the circulating life-forces, make the modern industrialized type just what it is as a human phenomenon of interacting spirit and matter. The searching analyses have yet to stress the reaction of modern people's combined mental, emotional, and ethical consciousness and vital forces upon the highly organized matter in their own bodies.

In each person the cosmic forces of vitality and intelligence manifest, perforce, according to individual karma. These combined factors are the noumena of all structural, chemical, functional, and biological phenomena. But these universal forces, in manifesting, are stepped down through the successive laya-centers of the inner person's spiritual, mental, emotional, and psychic nature. This series of conscious conditions provides and sets the stage, and directs the personal play of the manifesting impersonal forces. Every physical change as well as pathological phenomenon is "produced by certain conditions and changes in the tissues of the body which allow and force life to act in that body; . . . all this is due to those unseen creators and destroyers that are called in such a loose and general way, microbes" (SD 1:262).

During life the entire human constitution is suffused or permeated by the organic vital fluid of the reimbodying ego, which acts as a cohering factor for all the life-atoms of all the planes of the constitution to form an organic electrical field in which these life-atoms may inhere and work both collectively and individually, under the impulses and urges originating in the substance of the reimbodying ego. At times, the intense and unceasing vital activities of the life-atoms overcome the cohering, dominating influence of the organic psychoelectrical field. This is what brings about "many if perhaps not all of the various forms of disease of a lasting character. Cases of malignant disease are due to the same general cause but on account of specific and unusual circumstances are localized in some portion of the body where the power or control of the organic vitality becomes greatly weakened" (ET 813).

Lingering diseases are often preceded by a gradual withdrawal on inner lines of the higher parts of the human constitution which, being denied timely expression here, are drawn toward their native spiritual levels of existence. Thus the waning influence of the cohering, harmonizing, and balancing spiritual life-atoms and forces leaves the uncontrolled pranic forces to be expended upon the vital-astral-physical nature which manifests along the various materialistic mental, emotional, and sensuous levels and lines of life. An overdeveloped materialism is usurping the natural place and preventing the functional play of the duly awakening higher mind and spirit -- the essentials, at this stage, alike for our civilization's present safety and for its further progress.

This dangerous collective lack of balanced evolution is repeated in the play of the life-forces upon the cells of the cancerous individual. He is karmically responsible, as a self-conscious being with free will, for staging his own play of these impelling forces. His functionless cancer cell with its one primitive activity of self-division, localized out-of-time, is a biological throwback in type to the huge ethereal ovoid cell-forms of the first root-race. These primitive cells were then the normal encasement of the nascent, unself-conscious humans-to-be whose mode of reproduction was simple division. Now the normal body cell does not go off on its own, but adds its function to the complex organism in whose development it also has acquired its minor place to work and to evolve.

Nature, working always and everywhere to evolve suitable forms for the progressive imbodiments of the manifesting one life, leaves civilized man free to do his part by spiritually balancing his own human growth. Otherwise, he becomes an unnatural unit in the universal plan which makes ethics the natural cohering, harmonizing factor in the universe itself which actually is imbodied consciousness. Highly evolved culture without spiritual leaven is only sublimated selfishness.

Long-continued selfish emotions cause a distorted and inharmonious flow of the pranic currents of the body and they cause disease according to the type of the emotions. This concerns the majority today, for few have a working philosophy of life which can take things as they come. Aside from the frankly criminal and vicious types, the inner life of the many is self-centered and disturbed by the emotional play of worry, grief, disappointment, unhappiness, or a sense of futility or frustration -- for all of whom there seems to be no way of escape. Even the exceptional cases who have no articulate troubles, and who outwardly seem free from the prevailing restlessness, suffer from a muted unrest and an inward tension, a haunting feeling of self-reproach for somehow being unworthy of themselves, while a more satisfying reality of life is waiting to be attained. Evidently, the emotional effect of all these conditions -- to which the generally uncivilized are immune as yet -- react in disorder of the psychomagneto-electric forces flowing along the highly organized network of nerves. The retarded or short-circuited forces produce disease in one or another organ according to the type of the emotions. Back of all precancerous microscopical and chemical findings of changes in the blood, or in the polarity of the cells, or what not, are causative inharmonies or wrongs of the inner life.

No age or personal condition is wholly exempt from malignancy; and the karmic causes, in child or adult, may date back to a former life. Cancer, with its ability to grow in any living tissue, has been found in nearly all animals and in many plants, showing the closely knit natural relationships between all forms of life, each kingdom acting upon and reacting from harmonies or disturbances in other kingdoms. Experimental research has taken it over to the animal world countless times. Moreover, humanity's milieu is, in a real sense, an emanation of itself, because the vital human stream of incoming and outgoing material and of life-atoms on all planes is interchanged with and used by all other things and beings. Hence, humanity's unbalanced quality stamped upon this visible and invisible substance would predispose its impress to reappear, at times, in the physical forms of nature's less conscious entities.

(See also: Cancer, Carcinoma , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

A Theosophical definition of Zodiac :

Zodiac

The Greeks called the zodiac the "circle of life," and they divided it into twelve houses or signs, named as follows: Aries, the Ram; Taurus, the Bull; Gemini, the Twins; Cancer, the Crab; Leo, the Lion; Virgo, the Virgin; Libra, the Scales; Scorpio, the Scorpion; Sagittarius, the Archer; Capricornus, the Goat; Aquarius, the Water-bearer; Pisces, the Fishes.

The entrance of the sun into each one of the twelve zodiacal constellations or signs brings with it a new cosmic force into operation, not merely on our earth, but distributively speaking throughout our own individual lives. The entering into the present astrological era which is now under way will inaugurate the development in the human race, in a certain line, of powers to come that will be nobler than were those of the last astrological zodiacal era.

There is a strict and close correspondence between each one of the globes of our earth-chain, and a respective one of the constellations of the zodiac  - each such constellation being one of the "houses of the circle of life."

See also: Zodiac , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

Vira Saivism (Saiva): (Sanskrit) "Heroic Saivism." Made

prominent by Basavanna in the 12th century. Also called

Lingayat Saivism. Followers, called Lingayats,

Lingavantas or Sivasharanas, always wear a Sivalinga on

their person. Vira Saivites are proudly egalitarian and

emphasize the personal relationship with Siva, rather than

temple worship. Vira Saiva priests, jangamas, conduct

marriages and other domestic rites and also act as gurus or

teachers. Among the most central texts are Basavanna's

Vachanas, Allama Prabhu's Mantragopya,

Chennabasavanna's Karana Hasuge, and the collected

work called Shunya Sampadane. The monistic-theistic

doctrine of Vira Saivism is called Shakti Vishishtadvaita -

a version of qualified nondualism which accepts both difference and nondifference between soul and God, like

rays are to the sun. In brief, Siva and the cosmic force or

existence are one ("Siva are you; you shall return to

Siva."). Yet, Siva is beyond His creation, which is real,

not illusory. God is both efficient and material cause. In

Vira Saivism, Siva divides from His Absolute state into

Linga (Supreme Lord) and anga, individual soul, the two

eventually reuniting in undifferentiated oneness. There are

three aspects of Sivalinga. 1) Ishtalinga, personal form of

Siva, in which He fulfills desires and removes afflictions -

God as bliss or joy; 2) Bhavalinga, Siva beyond space and

time, the highest divine principle, knowable through

intuition; 3) Pranalinga, the reality of God which can be

apprehended by the mind. The soul merges with Siva by a

progressive, six-stage path called shatsthala, consisting of

bhakti (devotion), mahesha (charity and selfless service),

prasada (seeking Siva's grace), Pranalinga (experience of

all as Siva), sharana (egoless refuge in Siva) and aikya

(oneness with Siva). Today Vira Saivism is a vibrant faith,

particularly strong in its religious homeland of Karnataka,

South Central India. Roughly 40 million people live here,

of which perhaps 25% are members of the Vira Saiva

religion. Early on, they rejected brahminical authority, and

along with it the entire caste system and the Vedas. By

rejecting the Vedas, they continue to stand outside

mainstream Hinduism, but in their profound love of Siva

and acceptance of certain Saiva Agamas, as well as the

main truths of the Vedic wisdom, they have identified

themselves as a unique Saiva sect. Though they have

established their faith as a distinct and independent

religion in Indian courts of law, they are still widely

embraced as devout brothers and sisters of the Hindu

dharma.

See: Lingavanta, Saivism.

(See also: Vira Saivism , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

BELIEF

What KG calls a "primal obsession" and in Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God, he says, "Every magician must discover the word that conceals his dominant obsession, must vibrate it until its energizing elemental is awakened." Myths are never intended to be believed. They are opportunities to restructure our values and lead us to new insights. Goblins need not be real in order to be real. No magician ever believes anything. That includes the current consensus. Gurdjieff went so far as to say, "Believe nothing, not even yourself." Feelings, unless one has trained intuitional talents, can never be trusted to reflect reality. The alternative to believing is simply experiencing or knowing.

It is not belief that acts as a placebo, it is the absence of doubt. This is the real meaning of Gnosticism which had no truck with belief, but was concerned solely with knowing (from Gk. gnostikos, good at knowing). You know something by direct experience of the body and mind, not through second-hand evidence or teaching or belief. Healing has nothing to do with struggling against disbelief, it is a relaxing into the experience itself and accepting, without giving way to despair, that whatever happens is all right. When patients say they believe, they really mean they have learned how to relax on the tightrope without falling off. If they had to keep forcing themselves to believe, theyd quickly wither and fall.

Meanwhile, 19th Century rationalism is paling to insignificance. Our Xtian children, reared in frustration and boredom, soon desert their native religions and run away to sex and drugs. Then, after burning themselves out, they return in the mantle of shame that we force them to wear, offering themselves to be brainwashed anew in our guilt-ridden, mind-murdering belief factories.

There is a deplorable tendency for our society to mention religion and magic in the same breath, as though they were synonyms. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Admittedly, it is an idiosyncrasy of some magi to bristle at religion, chiefly because it is authoritarian, rigid, ignorant and oppressive, and also because it belittles and persecutes creativity. However, a sharp line between magic and religion must be strongly drawn. We are told that magic goes beyond belief. It does nothing of the kind - it shuns belief like the pox! If religion is 100% belief, magic is based in equal parts upon knowledge, originality, perseverance and boldness. Where confusion arises in the popular mind is over sorcery, which uses the trappings of magic and religion indiscriminately, is based on belief and subordination, but at the same time brazenly seeks selfish material gain and ego enhancement. Sorcery is really a kind of credulous business transaction, whose motto might well be the ends glorify the means.

Although Judaism and Buddhism are special cases, in Xtianity and Islam, the purpose of religion is individual salvation in the Hereafter. These belief-based religions assure salvation through fixing one's faith on a God or a Paraclete which is other than the self and which, in fact, erases the self altogether. The purpose of magic, on the other hand, is frankly the transmogrification in whole or in part, with or without the invocation of Gods of the hell that our world really is. Since the magician always dwells at the chaotic, creative edge of the present, this transmogrification concerns itself with means as much as ends. He rings in the changes as he goes along, extemporaneously. Nor does the magician cringe and subordinate himself, but acts on equal footing with the pantheistic and holonomic principle that each part is equal to, if not greater than, the whole. Since, moreover, any part, in a sense, is equal to any other part, the magician himself is neither more nor less valuable than anyone or anything else. The individual self is merely unique in the meaning and interpretation of its contribution. Therefore, the magician is always willing to sacrifice himself in any manner that may prove necessary to his work.

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

Epidemics (from Greek epi upon + demos the people)

The causes usually assigned to epidemic diseases are: individual susceptibility; earth conditions of heat, moisture, soil, water, hygiene, and sanitation; and mass movements of people, as in wars, pilgrimages, etc. While all these factors provide physical and psychological conditions favorable for the spread of certain epidemic diseases and emotional disorders, there remain potent invisible causes to be reckoned with.

Blavatsky discusses unusual and serious effects of certain causes which in some cases are cosmic rather than bacterial (BCW 13: 109). She explains that all such mysterious epidemics as influenza are due to an exuberance of ozone in the air, where an excess of oxygen has become ozone under the powerful stimulus of electricity.

The pranic life-atoms of the human body make an electrical field which, permeating our astral-vital-physical constitution, puts us in contact with the natural flow of ethereal currents of electric and magnetic force. These forces emanate from great cosmic entities who are the intelligent agencies for the karmic action of the so-called laws of nature. They function in the noumenal realm of causes which are due to appear on earth as phenomena of all kinds. These entities, leaving aside solar forces, are the regents of the seven sacred planets, who help to build the body and oversee the destiny of both humanity and the earth. They act automatically and impersonally in harmony with the combined causes and effects of ethereal and terrestrial conditions.

The sun, moon, planets, earth, and human brain are all magnets in contact with a common network of "live" wires of consciousness. The atoms in the solar system not only probably change their combining equivalents on every planet, but they undergo a certain change in their rapid passage through our atmosphere: concerning "the Spirit, the noumenon of that which becomes in its grossest form oxygen and hydrogen and nitrogen on Earth. . . . Before these gases and fluids become what they are in our atmosphere, they are interstellar Ether; still earlier and on a deeper plane -- something else, and so on in infinitum" (SD 1:626). These fluids and gases, then, have been stepped down, plane after plane, bringing to us the karmic influences of the hierarchies of entities which compose the solar organism. They are the tangible carriers of the cosmic electrical fire of divine, spiritual, mental, psychic, astral, and material forces which infill the universe. Here, in brief, are the astrological causative influences in typical epidemics, which are variously operating in other karmic diseases and mental and emotional disorders such as popular uprisings, fanatical movements, and waves of crime and vice. Happily, the same impersonal agents of the karmic law, under the influences of far higher spiritual agents, are equally active and helpful during human cycles of ethical and spiritual aspiration and progress.

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

Ahura-Mazda (Avestan) Aura-Mazda (Old Persian) Auhr-Mazd (Pahlavi) Hormazd, Hormoz, Ormazd, Ormuzd (Persian) (from Avestan ahura lord of life from the verbal root ahu conscious life + mazda the creator of mind, remembering, bearing in mind from the verbal root man to think + da the creator, bestower; cf Pahlavi dehesh creation)

The lord of life and creator of mind; the immutable light, the uncreated supreme deity of the Mazdean system. Pythagoras said that "the Iranian Magis consider Ahura Mazda a being whose body is of light and his soul is of truth." He is referred to as the maker of the material world and father of the six Amesha-Spentas. In later Persian literature similar descriptions of the supreme creator have been given. Ferdowsi refers to him as the lord of jan (consciousness) and kherad (intellect).

Regarding the dualistic cosmic system of the Zoroastrians -- good and evil -- Blavatsky comments: "No more philosophically profound, no grander or more graphic and suggestive type exists among the allegories of the World-religions than that of the two Brother-Powers of the Mazdean religion, called Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu, better known in their modernized form of Ormuzd and Ahriman. Of these two emanations, 'Sons of Boundless Time' -- Zeruana-Akrana -- itself issued from the Supreme and Unknowable Principle, the one is the embodiment of 'Good Thought' (Vohu-Mano), the other of 'Evil Thought' (Ako-Mano). The 'King of Light' or Ahura Mazda, emanates from Primordial Light and forms or creates by means of the 'Word,' Honover (Ahuna-Vairya), a pure and holy world. But Angra Mainyu, though born as pure as his elder brother, becomes jealous of him, and mars everything in the Universe, as on the earth, creating Sin and Evil wherever he goes.

"The two Powers are inseparable on our present plane and at this stage of evolution, and would be meaningless, one without the other. They are, therefore, the two opposite poles of the One Manifested Creative Power, whether the latter is viewed as a Universal Cosmic Force which builds worlds, or under its anthropomorphic aspect, when its vehicle is thinking man" (BCW 13:123-4).

Because Maz or Mez in the word Mazda can also be another way of pronouncing myth, Mazda can mean that which is created by Mez, by the hidden truth. Then Ahura-Mazda would mean the life-bearer who is created by the hidden truth.

(See also: Ahura-Mazda , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)