Mysticism Glossary - P

psychic: "Of the psyche or soul."

Sensitive to spiritual processes and energies. Inwardly or intuitively aware of nonphysical realities; able to use powers such as clairvoyance, clairaudience and precognition. Nonphysical, subtle; pertaining to the deeper aspects of man.

See: mysticism, odic.

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

Cosmic Egg. See EGG; HIRANYAGARBHA

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Agni Bhuvah (Sanskrit). Lit., "born of fire", the term is applied to the four races of Kshatriyas (the second or warrior caste) whose ancestors are said to have sprung from fire. Agni Bhuvah is the son of Agni, the God of Fire; Agni Bhuvah being the same as Kartti-keya, the God of War. (See Sec.Doct., Vol. II., p. 550.)

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Agra-Sandhani (Sanskrit). The "Assessors" or Recorders who read at the judgment of a disembodied Soul the record of its life in the heart of that "Soul". The same almost as the Lipikas of the Secret Doctrine. (See Sec.Doct., Vol. I., p. 105.)

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Annedotus (Ancient Greek). The generic name for the Dragons or Men-Fishes, of which there were five. The historian Berosus narrates that there rose out of the Erythrean Sea on several occasions a semi-demon named Oannes or Annedotus, who although part animal yet taught the Chaldeans useful arts and everything that could humanise them. (See Lenormant Chaldean Magic, p. 203, and also "Oannes".)

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Ambhamsi (Sanskrit). A name of the chief of the Kumaras Sanat-Sujata, signifying the "waters". This epithet will become more comprehensible when we remember that the later type of Sanat-Sujata was Michael, the Archangel, who is called in the Talmud "the Prince of Waters", and in the Roman Catholic Church is regarded as the patron of gulfs and promontories. Sanat-Sujata is the immaculate son of the immaculate mother (Amba or Aditi, chaos and space) or the "waters" of limitless space.

(See Secret Doctrine-, Vol. I., p. 460.)

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Oviform, Ovoid Humanity.

See ROOT-RACE, FIRST

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Good. See EVIL; AGATHON, TO

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Heart, Sacred. See SACRED HEART

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Instructors, Divine. See DYNASTIES

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Horsusi. See HARPOCRATES; HORUS

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

Future. See TIME; PREVISION

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Abif, Hiram. See HIRAM ABIF

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Existence (from Latin exsisto standing forth, emerging)

Although often used interchangeably with being, in theosophy being refers to abstract continuity in spirit, while existence means the phenomenal manifestation of an entity in the phenomenal worlds. Therefore being is the noumenon and existence is the phenomenon. Hence one can speak of the causes of existence (nidanas), or of all existences being dissolved. The Absolute, a cosmic hierarch, is defined with equal appropriateness as absolute existence and as non-existence.

Non-existence is described as absolute being, existence, and consciousness (SD 1:39). Fichte makes a proper distinction between being (Seyn) and existence (Daseyn), the former being the noumenal One, and the latter the phenomenal manifold through which the One is known.

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

Xenocrates (395?-314 BC) Greek philosopher and poet; "founder of the Eleatic philosophy and of pantheism, inasmuch as he combated the anthropomorphic view of the gods dominant in Homer and Hesiod, and in the popular belief in general.

He asserted the doctrine of a one all-ruling divinity, who, as true existence, opposed to appearance or non-existence, as the One and the All, the Whole, undivided, unmoved, and eternal, underlies the universe and is identical with it" (Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, p. 700). {SD 2:55; BCW 6:207-9, 14:413}

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

Deep. See ABYSS; BYTHOS; SPACE

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Am 'em (Hebrew) Mother; occasionally any female ancestor; also a mother-city, and by the same metaphor occasionally the earth as the common mother of all.

See also AIMA; 'IMMA' `ILLA'AH

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

Angels of Darkness The fallen angels, corresponding to the Hindu asuras, whose darkness is that of absolute light. Blavatsky identifies them with the kumaras and other celestial entities who refused to create because they were too spiritual (SD 1:457; 2:489, 506).

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Agent, Universal. See PHILOSOPHER'S STONE

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Now A fundamental concept of the theosophical philosophy is the Eternal Now. The past lingers in the memory and the future is ever vanishing from the present into the past: only Now eternally exists.

In the case of man, at any given moment he is the result of what he has fashioned himself to be out of all preceding moments; his future will therefore be the working out of his previous thoughts and actions, and one by one these disappear into what to us is the past, and yet is always present. These philosophical reflections apply universally.

"The three periods -- the Present, the Past, and the Future -- are in the esoteric philosophy a compound time; for the three are a composite number only in relation to the phenomenal plane, but in the realm of noumena have no abstract validity" (SD 1:43).

"Time is only an illusion produced by the succession of our states of consciousness as we travel through eternal duration, and it does not exist where no consciousness exists in which the illusion can be produced; but 'lies asleep.' The present is only a mathematical line which divides that part of eternal duration which we call the future, from that part which we call the past. Nothing on earth has real duration, for nothing remains without change -- or the same -- for the billionth part of a second; and the sensation we have of the actuality of the division of 'time' known as the present, comes from the blurring of that momentary glimpse, or succession of glimpses, of things that our senses give us, as those things pass from the region of ideals which we call the future, to the region of memories that we name the past" (SD 1:37).

(See also: Now , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Indwellers. A name or the substitute for the right Sanskrit esoteric name, given to our "inner enemies", which are seven in the esoteric philosophy. The early Christian Church called them the "seven capital Sins ‘: the Nazarene Gnostics named them, the "seven badly disposed Stellars", and so on. Hindu exoteric teachings speak only of the "six enemies" and under the term Arishadwarga enumerate them as follows:

(1) Personal desire, lust or any passion (Kama);

(2) Hatred or malice (Krodha); ( Avarice or cupidity (Lobha); ( Ignorance (Moha); ( Pride or arrogance (Mada);

(6) Jealousy, envy (Matcharya); forgetting the seventh, which is the "unpardonable sin", and the worst of all in Occultism.

(See Theosophist, May, 1890, p. 431.)

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