Mental Dictionary

The shuddhashuddha tattvas: Actinodic, or spiritual-magnetic, energy. The seven tattvas from maya to purusha make up the shuddhashuddha (pureimpure) realm.

1.    maya tattva: mirific energy, the "material" cause of the "impure sphere." The category of maya brings into being as its immediate aids the following five tattvas, known as the "five sheaths," pancha kanchuka, of the individual soul, purusha. Collectively they make up the vijnanamaya kosha, or mental body.

2. kala tattva: the phenomenon of time, which divides all experience into past, present and future.
3. niyati tattva: karmic destiny; necessity; order; law of cause and effect; restraint.
4. kala tattva: creativity, aptitude, the power which draws the soul toward spiritual knowledge. Its energy partially removes the veil of anava which clouds the inherent powers of the soul.
5. vidya tattva: limited knowledge, the power which gives the soul practical knowledge in accord with its present life experiences.
6. raga tattva: attachment, the arousal of desire, without which no experience of the objective world is possible.
7. purusha tattva: soul identity; soul connected with subjectivity. Through identification with the five above "sheaths," the soul, atman, becomes a purusha, or bound soul, capable of experiencing the higher Antarloka as a limited individual. This fivefold sheath is called the pancha kanchuka, or vijnanamaya kosha (mental body).

See:tattvas, tattva, atattva, antahkarana, guna, kosha, Siva

(See also: Shuddhashuddha tattvas , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

Spiritual Remedies

It is an unquestionable truth of life that the most precious possession that you have is your very own spiritual self. As we tend to move away from that intrinsic part of ourselves the body gets trapped by negative energies, which are the root cause of ailments. Spiritual therapies channelise your energies back on the right track, by venturing deep within yourself.

As God's children, all individuals have a part of divinity in themselves. By invoking the strength of that divinity through the control over ones thoughts, one can shape ones life very strongly. It is therefore important that one should attempt to root out all negative thoughts from the mind and concentrate on only the positive ones.

The negative thought patterns which cause ailments are anger, criticism, resentment and guilt. It is utterly impossible to maintain a healthy body under such distressed condition. For instance, criticism indulged in over long periods will often lead to disease as arthritis. Anger turns into things that boil and burn and in the long run infect the body and it also leads to heart ailments. Resentment eats into your system and ultimately leads to tumour and cancer. Guilt always seeks punishment and leads to all sorts of pain.

Next to hate, worry is just about the worst form of self-destructive mental activity. Hatred is the most severely damaging mental activity. It poisons the body and the mind and its effects are almost permanent. Similarly if you have no will to live, you are unlikely to have a long life. On the other hand, if you intend to live with a positive mind, you will definitely live a long and healthy life. Thus a person who exercises, meditates and thinks positively, is telling his body that he wants to stay healthy throughout his life.

Think of the experiences in life that you wish to be fulfilled. And you will find your thought patterns taking real shapes. This phenomenon is called metaphysical causation. This describes the power in the words and thoughts to create experiences. And explains the connection between thoughts and your physical self. Thus a stiff neck could easily be indicative of inflexibility in a person to listen to the other side of an argument.

So if need be, be willing to change your words and thoughts and watch your life change right before you. The way to control your life is to control your choice of words and thoughts. Since no one can delve into the depths of your, but you. Although easier said than done, this can be achieved better by practicing the arts of relaxation and concentration. For which one can in turn take the help of music and mantras.

(See also: Spiritual Remedies , Ayurveda, Ayurvedic Dictionary, Alternative Health, Body Mind and Soul)

Mars: Mars rules Aries. Mars is energy. It is the kind of energy that your body uses to contract muscles, to assimilate food, and to fire synapses in the brain. It is the kind of energy that makes gasoline burn, pushing pistons up and down, thereby moving your car. It is the dynamic energy of all action in the material world.

The god Mars was responsible for two distinctive kinds of energetic activity: He was the god of war, going around sowing terror and fear in the enemy and inspiring courage as well. On the other hand, he was a god of agriculture, encouraging the planting and tending of crops, and even encourage the crops themselves to grow.

The sign and house of Mars show where your personal energies tend to go when you are not guiding them. It also shows where you can concentrate your energy through decisive action for the strongest results. There is a certain reckless quality to Mars. This planet has to do with sharp instruments and vigorous force. We need to understand this planet in order to manage energy well, or it can become angry and destructive. Thus reading about Mars in your chart can provide answers to your questions about why some situations may have turned out badly, and how to use your physical and emotional energy more successfully in the future.

Mars is also the planet of desire. We all tend to use our energy to get what we want when we want it. Desire is a good thing, because it impels us forward to something new and better. It helps us to find partners and mates. It helps us to find satisfying food, clothing and shelter. On the mental level, desire helps us to choose an area of study, to select books or movies we want to experience. On a still higher level, Mars indicates the direction of our spiritual passion. It shows what religious or spiritual path will satisfy our desire to understand the universe and master our own actions.

The aspects of Mars in your chart indicate the directions in which you can most easily direct your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual energies. Understanding Mars helps you to direct your actions to gain the best results.

(See also: Mars , Magic, Shamanism, Paganism, Wicca)

Falling : Dream Interpretation Dictionary - Falling symbolizes the action of returning to awake consciousness

Falling symbolizes the action of returning to awake consciousness.

There is an old wive's tale which says if you dream you are falling and you hit the bottom you will die. This is not true. Falling symbolizes the mental action of returning to awake consciousness therefore at the time the dreamer would "hit bottom" he/she usually wakes and the dream images are no longer present.

Source: The Dreamer's Dictionary

(See also: Dream Interpretation, Dream Dictionary, Meaning of Dreams, Dream Interpretation Falling , Dream Dictionary Falling )

Magical Powers

One of the great things about dreams, especially lucid dreams where you are aware of dreaming and can practically control the outcome, is that you can acquire unusual powers. These may include almost any conceivable ability needed to solve the problem at hand. The problem is that you may lose them without explanation at a critical moment. The acquisition of magical powers may come from a number of sources. You may simply conjure them from within yourself. You may be given an article of clothing that contains special powers, or you may find a rock or other object that projects power into you. The implication is that you can solve problems with available resources. However, this may simply be a wish-fulfilment dream to dispose of problems without working them through.

The loss of powers is often a reality-check dream. While you may think you have power in your dream to do great and glorious things, the truth in waking is that problems do not always solve themselves. There may be a level at which your mind is concerned about your waking bravado in certain situations.

The magic you experience could be a sign that you are struggling against the most reasonable outcome of a particular situation. Often, we are unable to appreciate the logic or simplicity of a given situation because of our desire to over analyse it.

Are the magical powers you have in your dream physical or mental?

What do you use these powers to accomplish?

Source: iVillage, http://www.ivillage.co.uk

(See also: Dream Archives, Meaning of Dreams, Dream Interpretation, Dream Dictionary, Dream Dictionary - Magical Powers , Meaning of Dreams about Magical Powers , Dream Interpretation Magical Powers )

Psychism, from the Greek psyche. A term now used to denote very loosely every kind of mental phenomena, e.g., mediumship, and the higher sensitiveness, hypnotic receptivity, and inspired prophecy, simple clairvoyance in the astral light, and real divine seership; in short, the word covers every phase and manifestation of the powers and potencies of the human and the divine Souls.

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

Hair

• If a woman dreams that she has beautiful hair and combs it, she will be careless in her personal affairs, and will lose advancement by neglecting mental application.
• For a man to dream that he is thinning his hair, foreshadows that he will become poor by his generosity, and suffer illness through mental worry.
• To see your hair turning gray, foretells death and contagion in the family of some relative or some friend.
• To see yourself covered with hair, omens indulgence in vices to such an extent as will debar you from the society of refined people. If a woman, she will resolve herself into a world of her own, claiming the right to act for her own pleasure regardless of moral codes
• If a man dreams that he has black, curling hair, he will deceive people through his pleasing address. He will very likely deceive the women who trust him. If a woman's hair seems black and curly, she will be threatened with seduction.
• If you dream of seeing a woman with golden hair, you will prove a fearless lover and be woman's true friend.
• To dream that your sweetheart has red hair, you will be denounced by the woman you love for unfaithfulness. Red hair usually suggests changes
• If you see brown hair, you will be unfortunate in choosing a career.
• If you see well kept and neatly combed hair, your fortune will improve.
• To dream you cut your hair close to the scalp, denotes that you will be generous to lavishness towards a friend. Frugality will be the fruits growing out therefrom.
• To see the hair growing out soft and luxuriant, signifies happiness and luxury.
• For a woman to compare a white hair with a black one, which she takes from her head, foretells that she will be likely to hesitate between two offers of seeming fortune, and unless she uses great care, will choose the one that will afford her loss or distress instead of pleasant fortune.
• To see tangled and unkempt hair, life will be a veritable burden, business will fall off, and the marriage yoke will be troublesome to carry.
• If a woman is unsuccessful in combing her hair, she will lose a worthy man's name by needless show of temper and disdain.
• For a young woman to dream of women with gray hair, denotes that they will come into her life as rivals in the affection of a male relative, or displace the love of her affianced.
• To dream of having your hair cut, denotes serious disappointments.
• For a woman to dream that her hair is falling out, and baldness is apparent, she will have to earn her own livelihood, as fortune has passed her by.
• For man or woman to dream that they have hair of snowy whiteness, denotes that they will enjoy a pleasing and fortunate journey through life.
• For a man to caress the hair of a woman, shows he will enjoy the love and confidence of some worthy woman who will trust him despite the world's condemnation.
• To see flowers in your hair, foretells troubles approaching which, when they come, will give you less fear than when viewed from a distance.
• For a woman to dream that her hair turns to white flowers, augurs that troubles of a various nature will confront her, and she does well if she strengthens her soul with patience, and endeavors to bear her trials with fortitude.
• To dream that a lock of your hair turns gray and falls out, is a sign of trouble and disappointment in your affairs. Sickness will cast gloom over bright expectations.
• To see one's hair turn perfectly white in one night, and the face seemingly young, foretells sudden calamity and deep grief. For a young woman to have this dream, signifies that she will lose her lover by a sudden sickness or accident. She will likely come to grief from some indiscretion on her part. She should be careful of her associates.

Source: 10 000 Dream Interpretations, by Gustavus Hindman Miller

(See also: Dream Archives, Meaning of Dreams, Dream Interpretation, Dream Dictionary, Dream Dictionary - Hair , Meaning of Dreams about Hair , Dream Interpretation Hair )

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)

Meditation

Ideal for disciplining the mind and removing stress & strain, it is best done after a quick bath to cleanse yourself. Critical in satisfying the mind's hunger, when done well it is so nourishing that even the body can survive on less. Control of desire, or mental hunger, is the key to longevity and immortality. Anything can be meditation so long it is sincere and heartfelt. The simplest and healthiest involves the sun and its golden colour is deemed the most nourishing and productive.

While this routine acts as a critical shield of defence against the destabilising influences of an external environment, by using selective choice in some of the other factors mentioned below you can easily improve upon the condition of your total health.

(See also: Meditation , Ayurveda, Ayurvedic Dictionary, Alternative Health, Body Mind and Soul)

Thoth, Thot (Greek) Tehuti (Egyptian) Egyptian goddess of wisdom, equivalent to the Greek Hermes, Thoth was often represented as an ibis-headed deity, and also with a human head, especially in his aspect of Aah-Tehuti (the moon god), and as the god of Mendes he is depicted as bull-headed. Although best known in his character of the scribe or recorder of the gods, holding stylus and tablet, this is but another manner of showing that Thoth is the god of wisdom, inventor of science and learning; thus to him is attributed the establishment of the worship of the gods and the hymns and sacrifices, and the author of every work on every branch of knowledge both human and divine. He is described in the texts as "self-created, he to whom none hath given birth; the One; he who reckons in heaven, the counter of the stars; the enumerator and measurer of the earth [cosmic space]

and all that is contained therein: the heart of Ra cometh forth in the form of the god Tehuti" -- for he represents the heart and tongue of Ra, reason and the mental powers of the god and the utterer of speech. It has been suggested that Thoth is thus the equivalent of the Platonic Logos. Many are his epithets: his best known being "thrice greatest" -- in later times becoming Hermes Trismegistus.

In The Egyptian Book of the Dead, the deceased must learn to master everything he encounters in the underworld, and does this through the instruction of Thoth, who also teaches the pilgrim the way of procedure. Finally when the deceased reaches the stage of judgment, it is Thoth who records the decree pointed out to him by the dog-headed ape on the balance, the scales of which weigh the heart against the feather. The gods receive the verdict from Thoth, who in turn announce it to Osiris, enabling the candidate to enter the realm of Osiris, as being one osirified. Thus Thoth is the inner spiritual recorder of the human constitution, who registers and records the karmic experiences and foretells the future destiny of the deceased, showing that each person is judged by himself -- for Thoth here is the person's own higher ego; as regards cosmic space, Thoth is not only the cosmic Logos, but its aspect as the intelligent creative urge inherent in that Intelligence.

Thoth was also arbiter of the gods as in the battle between the god of light and the god of darkness, restoring the equilibrium which had been destroyed during the conflict. Similarly in the fights between Horus and Set, when the evil has a temporary ascendancy, Thoth restores harmony. Interestingly,

"Thoth remains changeless from the first to the last Dynasty. . . . the celestial scribe, who records the thoughts, words and deeds of men and weighs them in the balance, liken him to the type of the esoteric Lipikas. His name is one of the first that appears on the oldest monuments. He is the lunar god of the first dynasties, the master of Cynocephalus -- the dog-headed ape who stood in Egypt as a living symbol and remembrance of the Third Root-Race" (TG 331).

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

Manodhatu (Sanskrit) [from manas mind + dhatu world, sphere]

The sphere or world of the mind or intellect; a generalizing name not only for one of the divisions of the mental plane, but also for the sum total of each person's mental faculties.

(See also: Manodhatu , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Maze

The maze could represent your current mental outlook. A maze is a frightening and confusing place. If in your dream you are trapped in a maze and are having difficulty getting to the end, then you need to stop and consider your current emotional and psychological status. I don't mean to suggest anything is terribly wrong. Simply speaking, are you often confused and unsure of which way to go? If you are facing many hard decisions this dream is a good indicator that you need to step back and look at the entire picture. Edgar Cayce said that being in a maze in a dream may be symbolic of an "emotionally disorganized" person. At times we are all emotionally disorganized and confused, but admitting this dream's message is step in the right direction.

Source: Dream Lover Incorporated, http://www.dreamloverinc.com

(See also: Dream Archives, Meaning of Dreams, Dream Interpretation, Dream Dictionary, Dream Dictionary - Maze , Meaning of Dreams about Maze , Dream Interpretation Maze )

 Shaucha:

mental and bodily cleanliness

(See also:  Shaucha , Body Mind and Soul)

Alignment

Synchronization of mental and spiritual vibrations with a god, goddess, or astronomical body. Often the complete balance and centering of the chakras is called an alignment.

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

Trance [from Latin transpire to cross, pass over]

A state in which the soul seems to have passed out of the body into another state of being, a rapture, an ecstasy. In a general way, the entranced conditions thus defined are divided into varying degrees of a negative, unconscious state, and into progressive gradations of a positive, conscious, illumining condition. Examples of all degrees of these conditions have occurred among peoples in all ages, and the two conditions may exist coordinately, or either may exist as an active factor to the virtual exclusion of the other.

Although in both kinds of entranced cases there is a more or less temporary dissociation of the human soul -- a disruption of the normal relations of the personality -- the resulting psychological conditions in typical cases of the two classes are distinctly opposite. In the unconscious state, the person's mental-psychological or intermediate nature is in a subnormal and unnatural condition, even if he is seeing and reporting clairvoyant visions of unknown past events and of as yet unknown future. While his dislocated intermediate nature is thus functioning upon the chaotic astral plane, he is devoid of the judgment and will power of his higher mind, and is as helpless as in a nightmare or disorderly dream.

This subnormal state may result from self-psychologization or from the hypnotic or psychological influence of another person; the person may be the unconscious victim of primitive nature forces; or he may be controlled by some disembodied human elementary, as sometimes happens in cases of mediumship. In any one of the above unconscious "absences," no memory of the experience is self-consciously retained afterwards.

In cases of ecstasy, on the other hand -- or of the true seer -- there is supernormal activity of the mental-spiritual nature of the person whose human soul in being freed or absent from its kama-manasic desires and consciousness, becomes allied with his higher mind. Thus he becomes intellectually highly lucid, spiritually conscious, and illumined. His now quiescent personal self offers no bar to the reality of the light of truth flowing into him from his own higher nature. His condition, whether a spontaneous exaltation, a state self-induced, or invoked at will, is a direct contrast with the mediumistic state. He is vividly self-conscious of his experience, and he retains the memory of it. Such an exalted state of entrancement is only possible for those individuals who are prepared by great purity of life and a trained will, which are also prerequisites for the mystic rites of the higher initiations.

A person is entranced in various minor degrees when he is temporarily absent-minded, or is absorbed in a brown study, and even in a certain sense when he is asleep. Many persons of mediumistic or psychic constitution become negatively absent from their ordinary senses, or they cultivate such a state for the purpose of becoming conscious on the astral plane. These unfortunates, who yield to the psychic lure of the unknown, receive nothing but a confused and unreliable vision. Worse yet, they thus open their own natures to the invasion and possible possession by astral entities of all kinds, even by excarnate actively evil beings -- the elementaries -- seeking physical satisfaction of unexpended intense desires. Not a few of such victims become such from their craving to get out in the astral, and to cultivate powers for the controlling of others, as taught by various pseudo-occultists who brazenly advertise their appeals to selfish human nature.

Any phase of negative trance state is therefore unnatural and often highly dangerous, because the whole trend of nature is towards an ever greater self-consciousness and a stronger spiritual will and nobler intellectual activity.

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

Illuminati

(ÒEnlightened OnesÓ) A rationalistic society founded in Germany soon after 1776 by Adam Weishaupt, a professor of canon law. Originally promoted free thought and democratic political theories.

It had close affinities with the Freemasons and seemingly was organized on a Masonic plan. For ten years it was very popular among German rationalists, but as a society it had limited influence. The Roman Catholic Church, which Weishaupt left in his youth and rejoined before his death, condemned the Illuminati; in 1785 the Bavarian government dissolved the organization, believing it was secretly trying to take over monarchies. All members were arrested except for Weishaupt who fled, and is believed by some to have escaped to America.

In Spain and Italy in the 15th cent. the term Illuminati referred to persons believed to hold supernatural mental powers. Other groups using the name have included a mystical sect that flourished in the 16th cent, in Spain and France, the original Rosicrucians, and certain followers of Boehme and Swedenborg.

There is also an order of Freemasons called Illuminati. Many people today believe that Weishaupt recreated the society in America and that today it is the power behind all the world's governments and giant corporations.

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

Anugraha, Anugrahana (Sanskrit) (from anu-grah to support, uphold, foster, treat kindly)

Favor, kindness, promoting or favoring a good object. In the Vishnu-Purana (1:5) applied to the eighth creation (in the Matsya and other Puranas to the fifth creation), the period of formative development "which possesses both the qualities of goodness and darkness." In Sankhya philosophy anugraha-sarga is the creation or formation of "the feelings or mental conditions."

Blavatsky calls the anugraha creation a blind, "for it refers to a purely mental process: the cognition of the 'ninth' creation, which, in its turn, is an effect, manifesting in the secondary of that which was a 'Creation' in the Primary (Prakrita) Creation. The Eighth, then, called Anugraha (the Pratyayasarga or the intellectual creation of the Sankhyas . . .), is 'that creation of which we have a perception' -- in its esoteric aspect -- and 'to which we give intellectual assent (Anugraha) in contradistinction to organic creation.' It is the correct perception of our relations to the whole range of 'gods' and especially of those we bear to the Kumaras -- the so-called 'Ninth Creation' -- which is in reality an aspect of or reflection of the sixth in our manvantara (the Vaivasvata)" (SD 1:456).

All theses various "creations" mentioned in the Puranas represent stages of evolutionary production, following each other in regular serial order, and thus unfolding into manifestation what lay originally latent in the seed out of which these various stages arise. Thus the reference in the Vishnu-Purana, for example, by analogical reasoning can apply either to a universe, solar system, planetary chain, or to the developmental history of earth and its inhabitants.

(See also: Anugraha, Anugrahana , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Elemental (Elementals) Used by medieval European mystics, such as the Fire-philosophers, Rosicrucians, and Qabbalists, to signify those classes of ethereal beings evolved in and born of the four elements or kingdoms of nature. Ordinarily they are spoken of as existing in four classes corresponding to the four popular elements air, fire, water, and earth; but theosophy describes these kingdoms of nature as seven or even ten in number: four of the material or quasi-material range, and three (or six) of highly ethereal and even quasi-spiritual substance. They are often described as nature spirits or sprites.

More strictly, the word is confined to those beings who are beginning their evolutionary growth, who have developed in their constitution but one of the four elements -- that one from which they were born -- and who are therefore in the elemental state of growth. It is a generalizing term for all beings evolutionally below the minerals. Nevertheless, by extension of meaning, the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms are often referred to as families of elemental beings, though in more advanced stages. An elemental, therefore, is a being who has entered our, or any other, universe on its lowest plane or world.

There are three kingdoms of the elementals below the mineral kingdom, each of which has seven (or ten) subdivisions, and every entity high or low has passed through this stage at some time in its career.

There are four commonly recognized great classes of these unevolved beings, called by the medieval European mystics gnomes, undines, sylphs, and salamanders -- elementals respectively of earth, water, air, and fire. These elementals are not only the inhabitants of and born from the respective elements, but really are the elements themselves. They are from one viewpoint simply nature forces, tools of the higher intelligences, and actually perform all the physical work of the world.

From another point of view they may be looked upon as life-atoms in different stages of evolutionary growth; and being in various degrees of evolution they are variously spiritual, ethereal, astral, or material, running through vast ranges on all these planes. Thus they exist everywhere: in the air we breathe, the food we eat, and all the tissues of physical nature. Through their agency we perform all our bodily or mental activities.

The three kingdoms of elementals actually build and form every new planet or world, beginning in serial order with the lowest of the three kingdoms, preparing the globe for the advent of the mineral kingdom, to be followed in turn by the vegetable and higher kingdoms in regular succession. The elementals are not only the matters of nature, but when acting together and used by higher intelligences become the forces or energies of nature, such as electricity, magnetism, light, vitality, etc. Unconsciously, human and other beings use them in the carrying on of all their bodily functions. For example, our bodies cohere through the automatic aid of the elementals of earth; and the elementals of fire give us our bodily heat.

The four kingdoms of elementals, existing in the four elements, are also known under the general designation of fairies and fays in the myths, fables, traditions, and poetry of all nations, ancient and modern. Their names are legion: peris, devs, jinn, sylvans, satyrs, fauns, elves, dwarfs, trolls, nixies, kobolds, brownies, banshees, leprechauns, pixies, moss-people, good people, good neighbors, wild women, men of peace, white ladies, and many more. They have been seen, feared, blessed, banned, and invoked in every quarter of the globe in every age.

These elementals are the principal nature forces used by the disimbodied human dead, very real but never visible "shells" mistaken for spirits at seances, and are the producers of all the phenomena except the purely subjective. They may be described as centers of force having instinctive desires but no consciousness as we understand it. Hence their acts may be what we humans call good or bad, indifferently. They have astral forms which partake, to a distinguishing degree, of the element to which they belong and also of the universally encompassing ether. They are a combination of sublimated matter and a purely rudimental mind. Some remain throughout several cycles relatively unchanging, so far as radical change goes, but still have no separate individuality, and usually acting collectively, so to speak. Others, of certain elements and species, change under a fixed law which Qabbalists explain. The most solid of their bodies are ordinarily just immaterial enough to escape perception by our physical eyesight, but not so unsubstantial that they cannot be perfectly recognized by the inner or clairvoyant vision. They not only exist and can all live in ether, but can handle and direct it for the production of physical effects, as readily as we can compress air or water for the same purpose by pneumatic and hydraulic apparatus; in which occupation they are readily helped by the human elementaries or astral shells.

More than this, they can so condense the ether as to make for themselves tangible bodies which, by their Protean powers, they can cause to assume such likeness as the elementals themselves are at the time impressed to assume, this being caused by their taking automatically as their models the portraits they find stamped in the memory of a person or persons present at a seance. It is not necessary that the sitter should be thinking at the moment of the one represented: the image may have faded many years before. The mind receives indelible impressions even from chance acquaintances. As a few seconds' exposure of the sensitized photographic plate is all that is requisite to preserve indefinitely the image of the sitter, so is it in incomparably greater degree with the mind. Unable to invent anything or to produce anything of itself, the elemental automatically reflects stamped impressions in the memory of human beings to its very depths; hence the nervous exhaustion and mental oppression of certain sensitive natures at spiritualistic circles. The elemental will bring to light long-forgotten remembrances of the past: forms, images, even familiar sentences, long since faded from memory, but vividly preserved on the astral tablets of the imperishable book of life. The elementals are very imitative, having neither developed will nor intelligence of their own which they self-consciously use, and hence tend automatically to copy forms in all the higher kingdoms. They have therefore many shapes or bodies, some of the more advanced taking even a quasi-human form.

Some of the elementals are said to be friendly, others unfriendly, to humanity not because of any deliberate intent on their part, but simply because mankind happens to be in such evolutionary position that it is affected one way or the other by them. Also, as different people contain in their constitution a preponderance of one of the elements over the other, they are more sensitive to the elementals of their predominating element.

(See also: Elemental, Elementals , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Trailokya, or Trilokya (Sanskrit). Lit., the "three regions" or worlds ; the complementary triad to the Brahmanical quaternary of worlds named Bhuvanatraya.A Buddhist profane layman will mention only three divisions of every world, while a non-initiated Brahman will maintain that there are four. The four divisions of the latter are purely physical and sensuous, the Trailokya of the Buddhist are purely spiritual and ethical. The Brahmanical division may be found fully described under the heading of Vyahritis, the difference being for the present sufficiently shown in the following parallel:

Brahmanical Division of the Worlds. Buddhist Division of the Regions.

1.     Bhur, earth.

2.     World of desire, Kamadhatu or Kamaloka.

3.     Bhuvah, heaven, firmament.

4.     World of form, Rupadhatu.

5.     Swar atmosphere the sky.

6.     Mahar, eternal luminous essence. }

7.     The formless world Arupadhatu.

All these are the worlds of post mortem states. For instance, Kamaloka or Kamadhatu, the region of Mara, is that which medieval and modern Kabalists call the world of astral light, and the "world of shells Kamaloka has, like every other region, its seven divisions, the lowest of which begins on earth or invisibly in its atmosphere; the six others ascend gradually, the highest being the abode of those who have died owing to accident, or suicide in a fit of temporary insanity, or were otherwise victims of external forces. It is a place where all those who have died before the end of the term allotted to them, and whose higher principles do not, therefore, go at once into Devachanic state - sleep a dreamless sweet sleep of oblivion, at the termination of which they are either reborn immediately, or pass gradually into the Devachanic state. Rupadhatu is the celestial world of form, or what we call Devachan.

With the uninitiated Brahmans, Chinese and other Buddhists, the Rupadhatu is divided into eighteen Brahma or Devalokas; the life of a soul therein lasts from half a Yuga up to 16,000 Yugas or Kalpas, and the height of the "Shades" is from half a Yojana up to 16,000 Yojanas (a Yojana measuring from five and a half to ten miles !), and such-like theological twaddle evolved from priestly brains. But the Esoteric Philosophy teaches that though for the Egos for the time being, everything or everyone preserves its form (as in a dream), yet as Rupadhatu is a purely mental region, and a state, the Egos themselves have no form outside their own consciousness. Esotericism divides this " region" into seven Dhyanas, "regions", or states of contemplation, which are not localities but mental representations of these.

Arupadhatu: this "region" is again divided into seven Dhyanas, still more abstract and formless, for this "World" is without any form or desire whatever. It is the highest region of the post mortem Trailokya; and as it is the abode of those who are almost ready for Nirvana and is, in fact, the very threshold of the Nirvanic state, it stands to reason that in Arupadhatu (or Arupavachara) there can be neither form nor sensation, nor any feeling connected with our three dimensional Universe.

(See also: Trailokya, Trilokya , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

soul: The real being of man, as distinguished from body, mind and emotions. The soul - known as atman or purusha - is the sum of its two aspects, the form or body of the soul and the essence of the soul (though many texts use the word soul to refer to the essence only). -

-       essence or nucleus of the soul: Man's innermost and unchanging being - Pure Consciousness (Parashakti or Satchidananda) and Absolute Reality (Parasiva). This essence was never created, does not change or evolve and is eternally identical with God Siva's perfections of Parashakti and Parasiva.

-       soul body: anandamaya kosha ("sheath of bliss"), also referred to as the "causal body" (karana sharira), "innermost sheath" and "body of light." Body of the soul, or soul body, names the soul's manifest nature as an individual being - an effulgent, human-like form composed of light (quantums).

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It is the emanational creation of God Siva, destined to one day merge back into Him. During its evolution, the soul functions through four types of outer sheaths that envelope the soul form - mental, instinctive-intellectual, vital and physical - and employs the mental faculties of manas, buddhi and ahamkara, as well as the five agents of perception (jnanendriyas), and five agents of action (karmendriyas).

 The "soul body" is not a body in sense of a case, a vessel, vehicle or enclosure for something else. The soul body is the soul itself - a radiant, self-effulgent, human-like, super-intelligent being. Its very composition is Satchidananda in various subtle levels of manifestation. It is the finest of subatomic forms, on the quantum level.

The soul form evolves as its consciousness evolves, becoming more and more refined until finally it is the same intensity or refinement as the Primal Soul, Parameshvara. The experiences of life, in all the various planes of consciousness, are "food for the soul," reaping lessons that actually raise the level of intelligence and divine love. Thus, very refined souls, whether embodied or in the disembodied, ajiva, state, are like walking intelligences with inventive creativeness and powers of preservation, beaming with love and luminosity in their self-effulgent bodies of quantum light particles.

See: atman, evolution of the soul, indriya, kosha, Parashakti, Parasiva, purusha, quantum, Satchidananda, spiritual unfoldment.

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

Self Theosophical literature distinguishes between self and ego: self is a purely spiritual unit, divine in essence, the same in every being, expressed as "I am"; egos are many, different in different beings, and expressed as "I am I."

Egos are indirect or reflected consciousnesses, seeing themselves as apart from other egos, each having its own individualized characteristics. But the self or atman is the purest and strongest intuition of being as a universal principle and as the summit of the hierarchy called man. It is pure consciousness, the essential principle which gives to every person knowledge of selfhood. As it has no egoic consciousness, it seems to our reason to be unconsciousness. To become self-conscious, a vehicle is needed, so that the self may see itself reflected as in a mirror.

In humans what is called the personal self is a compound, in which the true selfhood or atmic ray shines dimly through many screens. This causes our various mental states to be regarded as pertaining to our own individuality, though they are actually influences which flow into and out of the mind, and to which we attribute a false sense of ownership, as when we say, "I am angry," instead of "I am experiencing anger." The path of liberation frees us progressively from these false selves; we abandon the heresy of separateness, and at last

See the true self within us as being identical with that self in all beings.

(See also: Self , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION

In the mid-nineteenth century, a man was born into the “Tradition of Masters” in India, and who later became a guiding light in the proliferation of knowledge of the cosmos. He was affectionately known as Guru Dev, and according to this tradition, after he had attained illumination, he was Master to a number of disciples, amongst whom was His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

In 1958 Maharishi was directed by Guru Dev to teach Transcendental Meditation in the West, and so began a marvelous odyssey of one man to help bring peace to the world through this remarkable, formal technique of deep meditation. It is now believed that more than eight million people have learned this technique all over the world, and which has been rigorously subjected to more than five hundred research studies also all over the world, and by some of the world’s most prestigious medical establishments. And so has Transcendental Meditation been supported with all this scientific research, to show that a simple, easy, natural, and effortless mental technique can produce such remarkable physiological, mental and emotional responses.

By practicing Transcendental Meditation twice daily for twenty minutes each time, you can expect to feel relaxed, calm, energetic, dynamic, mentally alert, peaceful, efficient, and a sense of well being. The list is endless, but suffice it to say that this technique is one of the most powerful means we have to eliminate stress easily, naturally and effectively.

(See also: TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION , Alternative Health, Holistic Health, Body Mind and Soul)