A Theosophical definition of Brahma :

Brahma

(Sanskrit) A word of which the root, brih, means "expansion." It stands for the spiritual energy-consciousness side of our solar universe, i.e., our solar system, and the Egg of Brahma is that solar system.

A Day of Brahma or a maha-manvantara is composed of seven rounds, a period of 4,320,000,000 terrestrial years; this period is also called a kalpa. A Night of Brahma, the planetary rest period, which is also called the parinirvanic period, is of equal length.

Seven Days of Brahma make one solar kalpa; or, in other words, seven planetary cycles, each cycle consisting of seven rounds (or seven planetary manvantaras), form one solar manvantara.

One Year of Brahma consists of 360 Divine Days, each day being the duration of a planet's life, i.e., of a planetary chain of seven globes. The Life of Brahma (or the life of the universal system) consists of one hundred Divine Years, i.e., 4,320,000,000 years times 36,000 x 2.

The Life of Brahma is half ended: that is, fifty of his years are gone  - a period of 155,520,000,000,000 of our years have passed away since our solar system, with its sun, first began its manvantaric course. There remain, therefore, fifty more such Years of Brahma before the system sinks into rest or pralaya. As only half of the evolutionary journey is accomplished, we are, therefore, at the bottom of the kosmic cycle, i.e., on the lowest plane.

See also: Brahma, Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul)

A Theosophical definition of Brahman :

Brahman

(Sanskrit) A word of which the root, brih, means "expansion." It is that part of the celestial being which first initiates manifestation through the various Brahmas, the expansion of the one into the many. It is what is called the unmanifest Logos. It may also be called the impersonal and uncognizable principle of the universe, and must be sharply distinguished from the masculine Brahma of which there are many in a universe.

Note: In early theosophical literature, as well as in translations of the Hindu writings, Brahman is sometimes spelled Brahma or even Brahm; but this should not be confused with Brahma. (See also Parabrahman, Brahma)

See also: Brahman, Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul)

A Theosophical definition of Brahmana :

Brahmana

(Sanskrit) A word having several meanings in Hindu sacred literature. Brahmana is both noun and adjective, as noun signifying a member of the first of the four Vedic classes, and as adjective signifying what belongs to a Brahmana or what is Brahmanical. Secondly, it signifies one of the portions of the Vedic literature, containing rules for the proper usage of the mantras or hymns at sacrifices, explanations in detail of what these sacrifices are, illustrated by legends and old stories.

Another adjective with closely similar meaning is Brahma. An old-fashioned English way of spelling Brahmana is Brahmin.

See also: Brahmana, Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul)

A Theosophical definition of Buddha :

Buddha

(Sanskrit) The past participle of the root budh, meaning "to perceive," "to become cognizant of," also "to awaken," and "to recover consciousness." It signifies one who is spiritually awakened, no longer living "the living death" of ordinary men, but awakened to the spiritual influence from within or from "above." When man has awakened from the living death in which ordinary mortals live, when he has cast off the toils of both mind and flesh and, to use the old Christian term, has put on the garments of eternity, then he has awakened, he is a buddha. He has become one with  - not "absorbed" as is constantly translated but has become one with  - the Self of selves, with the paramatman, the Supreme Self. (See also Bodhi, Buddhi)

A buddha in the esoteric teaching is one whose higher principles can learn nothing more in this manvantara; they have reached nirvana and remain there. This does not mean, however, that the lower centers of consciousness of a buddha are in nirvana, for the contrary is true; and it is this fact that enables a Buddha of Compassion to remain in the lower realms of being as mankind's supreme guide and instructor, living usually as a nirmanakaya.

See also: Buddha, Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul)

A Theosophical definition of Buddhi :

Buddhi

(Sanskrit) Buddhi comes from a Sanskrit root budh, commonly translated "to enlighten," but a better translation is "to perceive," "to cognize," "to recover consciousness," hence "to awaken," and therefore "to understand." The second counting downwards, or the sixth counting upwards, of the seven principles of man. Buddhi is the principle or organ in man which gives to him spiritual consciousness, and is the vehicle of the most high part of man  - the atman  - the faculty which manifests as understanding, judgment, discrimination, an inseparable veil or garment of the atman.

From another point of view, buddhi may truly be said to be both the seed and the fruit of manas.

Man's ordinary consciousness in life in his present stage of evolution is almost wholly in the lower or intermediate duad (manas-kama) of his constitution; when he raises his consciousness through personal effort to become permanently one with the higher duad (atma-buddhi), he becomes a mahatma, a master. At the death of the human being, this higher duad carries away with it all the spiritual essence, all the spiritual and intellectual aroma, of the lower or intermediate duad. Maha-buddhi is one of the names given to the kosmic principle mahat.

(See also Alaya)

See also: Buddhi, Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul)

A Theosophical definition of Buddhism :

Buddhism

The teachings of Gautama the Buddha. Buddhism today is divided into two branches, the Northern and the Southern. The Southern still retains the teachings of the "Buddha's brain," the "eye doctrine," that is to say his outer philosophy for the general world, sometimes inadequately called the doctrine of forms and ceremonies. The Northern still retains his "heart doctrine"  - that which is hid, the inner life, the heart-blood, of the religion: the doctrine of the inner heart of the teaching.

The religious philosophy of the Buddha-Sakyamuni is incomparably nearer to the ancient wisdom, the esoteric philosophy of the archaic ages, than is Christianity. Its main fault today is that teachers later than the Buddha himself carried its doctrines too far along merely formal or exoteric lines; yet, with all that, to this day it remains the purest and holiest of the exoteric religions on earth, and its teachings even exoterically are true  - once they are properly understood. They need but the esoteric key in interpretation of them. As a matter of fact, the same may be said of all the great ancient world religions. Christianity, Brahmanism, Taoism, and others all have the same esoteric wisdom behind the outward veil of the exoteric formal faith. See: exoteric. esoteric

See also: Buddhism, Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul)

A Theosophical definition of Aura :

Aura

An extremely subtle and therefore invisible essence or fluid that emanates from and surrounds not only human beings and beasts, but as a matter of fact plants and minerals also. The aura is one of the aspects of the auric egg and therefore the human aura partakes of all the qualities that the human constitution contains. It is at once magneto-mental and electrovital, suffused with the energies of mind and spirit  - the quality in each case coming from an organ or center of the human constitution whence it flows. The aura is the source of the sympathies and antipathies that we are conscious of.

Under the control of the human will the aura can be both life-giving and healing, or death-dealing; and when the human will is passive the aura has an action of its own which is automatic and follows the laws of character and latent impulses of the being from whom it emanates.

Sensitives have frequently described the aura in more or less vague terms as a light flowing from the eyes or the heart or the tips of the fingers or from other parts of the body. Sometimes this fluid, instead of being colorless light, manifests itself by flashing and scintillating changes of color  - the color or colors in each case depending not only upon the varying moods of the human individual, but also possessing a background equivalent to the character or nature of the individual. Animals are extremely sensitive to auras, and some beasts even descry the human being surrounded with the aura as with a cloud or veil. In fact, everything has its aura surrounding it with a light or play of color, and especially is this the case with so-called animated beings.

The essential nature of the aura usually seen is astral and electrovital. The magnificent phenomena of radiation that astronomers can discern at times of eclipse, long streamers with rosy and other colored light flashing forth from the body of the sun, are not flames nor anything of the sort, but are simply the electrovital aura of the solar body  - a manifestation of solar vitality, for the sun in occultism is a living being, as indeed everything else is.

See also: Aura, Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul)

A Theosophical definition of Avalokitesvara :

Avalokitesvara

(Sanskrit) A compound word: avalokita, "perceived," "seen"; Isvara, "lord"; hence "the Lord who is perceived or cognized," i.e., the spiritual entity, whether in the kosmos or in the human being, whose influence is perceived and felt; the higher self.

This is a term commonly employed in Buddhism, and concerning which a number of intricate and not easily understood teachings exist. The esoteric or occult interpretation, however, sees in Avalokitesvara what Occidental philosophy calls the Third Logos, both celestial and human. In the solar system it is the Third Logos thereof; and in the human being it is the higher self, a direct and active ray of the divine monad.

Technically Avalokitesvara is the dhyani-bodhisattva of Amitabha-Buddha  - Amitabha-Buddha is the kosmic divine monad of which the dhyani-bodhisattva is the individualized spiritual ray, and of this latter again the manushya-buddha or human buddha is a ray or offspring.

See also: Avalokitesvara, Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul)

A Theosophical definition of Avatara :

Avatara

(Sanskrit) The noun-form derived from a compound of two words: ava, prepositional prefix meaning "down," and tri, verb-root meaning to "cross over," to "pass"; thus, avatri  - to "pass down," or to "descend." Hence the word signifies the passing down of a celestial energy or of an individualized complex of celestial energies, which is equivalent to saying a celestial being, in order to overshadow and illuminate some human being  - but a human being who, at the time of such connection of "heaven with earth," of divinity with matter, possesses no karmically intermediate or connecting link between the overshadowing entity and the physical body: in other words, no human soul karmically destined to be the inner master of the body thus born.

The intermediate link necessary, so that the human being-to-be may have the human intermediate or psychological apparatus fit to express the invisible splendor of this celestial descent, is supplied by the deliberate and voluntary entrance into the unborn child  - and coincidently with the overshadowing of the celestial power  - of the psychological or intermediate principle of one of the Greater Ones, who thus "completes" what is to be the pure and lofty human channel through which the "descending" divinity may manifest, this divinity finding in this high psychological principle a sufficiently evolved link enabling it to express itself in human form upon earth.

Hence an avatara is one who has a combination of three elements in his being: an inspiring divinity; a highly evolved intermediate nature or soul, which is loaned to him and is the channel of that inspiring divinity; and a pure, clean, physical body.

See also: Avatara, Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul)

A Theosophical definition of Avichi :

Avichi

(Sanskrit) A word, the general meaning of which is "waveless," having no waves or movement, suggesting the stagnation of life and being in immobility; it also means "without happiness" or "without repose."

A generalized term for places of evil realizations, but not of punishment in the Christian sense; where the will for evil, and the unsatisfied evil longings for pure selfishness, find their chance for expansion  - and final extinction of the entity itself. Avichi has many degrees or grades. Nature has all things in her; if she has heavens where good and true men find rest and peace and bliss, so has she other spheres and states where gravitate those who must find an outlet for the evil passions burning within. They, at the end of their avichi, go to pieces and are ground over and over, and vanish away finally like a shadow before the sunlight in the air  - ground over in nature's laboratory. (See also Eighth Sphere)

See also: Avichi, Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul)

A Theosophical definition of Avidya :

Avidya

(Sanskrit) A compound word: a, "not"; vidya, "knowledge"; hence nonknowledge, ignorance  - perhaps a better translation would be nescience  - ignorance or rather lack of knowledge of reality, produced by illusion or maya.

See also: Avidya, Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul)

A Theosophical definition of Bija :

Bija (sometimes Vija)

(Sanskrit) This word signifies "seed" or "life-germ," whether of animals or of plants. But esoterically its signification is far wider and incomparably more abstruse, and therefore difficult to understand without proper study.

The term is used in esotericism to designate the original or causal source and vahana or "vehicle" of the mystic impulse or urge of life, or of lives, to express itself or themselves when the time for such self-expression arrives after a pralaya, or after an obscuration, or again, indeed, during manvantara. Whether it be a kosmos or universe, or the reappearance of god, deva, man, animal, plant, mineral, or elemental, the seed or life-germ from and out of which any one of these arises is technically called bija, and the reference here is almost as much to the life-germ or vehicle itself as it is to the self-urge for manifestation working through the seed or life-germ.

Mystically and psychologically, the appearance of an avatara, for instance, is due to an impulse arising in Maha-Siva, or in Maha-Vishnu (according to circumstances), to manifest a portion of the divine essence, in either case, when the appropriate world period arrives for the appearance of an avatara. Or again, when from the chela is born the initiate during the dread trials of initiation, the newly-arisen Master is said to have been born from the mystic bija or seed within his own being. The doctrine connected with this word bija in its occult and esoteric aspects is far too profound to receive more than a cursory and superficial treatment.

See also: Bija, Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul)

A Theosophical definition of Asana :

Asana according to Theosophy

(Sanskrit) "A word derived from the verbal root as, signifying "to sit quietly." Asana, therefore, technically signifies one of the peculiar postures adopted by Hindu ascetics, mostly of the hatha yoga school. Five of these postures are usually enumerated, but nearly ninety have been noted by students of the subject.

A great deal of quasi-magical and mystical literature may be found devoted to these various postures and collateral topics, and their supposed or actual psychological value when assumed by devotees; but, as a matter of fact, a great deal of this writing is superficial and has very little indeed to do with the actual occult and esoteric training of genuine occultists. One is instinctively reminded of other quasi-mystical practices, as, for instance, certain genuflections or postures followed in the worship of the Christian Church, to which particular values are sometimes ascribed by fanatic devotees.

Providing that the position of the body be comfortable so that the mind is least distracted, genuine meditation and spiritual and actual introspection can be readily and successfully attained by any earnest student without the slightest attention being paid to these various postures. A man sitting quietly in his armchair, or lying in his bed at night, or sitting or lying on the grass in a forest, can more readily enter the inner worlds than by adopting and following any one or more of these various asanas, which at the best are physiological aids of relatively small value." (See also Samadhi)

See also: Asana, Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul)

A Theosophical definition of Asat :

Asat

(Sanskrit) A term meaning the "unreal" or the manifested universe; in contrast with sat , the real. In another and even more mystical sense, asat means even beyond or higher than sat, and therefore asat  - "not sat." In this significance, which is profoundly occult and deeply mystical, asat really signifies the unevolved or rather unmanifested nature of parabrahman  - far higher than sat, which is the reality of manifested existence.

See also: Asat, Mysticism, 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 Astrology :

Astrology

The astrology of the ancients was indeed a great and noble science. It is a term which means the "science of the celestial bodies." Modern astrology is but the tattered and rejected outer coating of real, ancient astrology; for that truly sublime science was the doctrine of the origin, of the nature, of the being, and of the destiny of the solar bodies, of the planetary bodies, and of the beings who dwell on them. It also taught the science of the relations of the parts of kosmic nature among themselves, and more particularly as applied to man and his destiny as forecast by the celestial orbs. From that great and noble science sprang up an exoteric pseudo-science, derived from the Mediterranean and Asian practice, eventuating in the modern scheme called astrology  - a tattered remnant of ancient wisdom.

In actual fact, genuine archaic astrology was one of the branches of the ancient Mysteries, and was studied to perfection in the ancient Mystery schools. It had throughout all ancient time the unqualified approval and devotion of the noblest men and of the greatest sages. Instead of limiting itself as modern so-called astrology does to a system based practically entirely upon certain branches of mathematics, in archaic days the main body of doctrine which astrology then contained was transcendental metaphysics, dealing with the greatest and most abstruse problems concerning the universe and man. The celestial bodies of the physical universe were considered in the archaic astrology to be not merely time markers, or to have vague relations of a psychomagnetic quality as among themselves  - although indeed this is true  - but to be the vehicles of starry spirits, bright and living gods, whose very existence and characteristics, individually as well as collectively, made them the governors and expositors of destiny.

See also: Astrology, Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul)

A Theosophical definition of Asvattha :

Asvattha

(Sanskrit) The mystical tree of knowledge, the mystical tree of kosmical life and being, represented as growing in a reversed position: the branches extending downwards and the roots upwards. The branches typify the visible kosmical universe, the roots the invisible world of spirit.

The universe among the ancients of many nations was portrayed or figurated under the symbol of a tree, of which the roots sprang from the divine heart of things, and the trunk and the branches and the branchlets and the leaves were the various planes and worlds and spheres of the kosmos. The fruit of this kosmic tree contained the seeds of future "trees," being the entities which had attained through evolution the end of their evolutionary journey, such as men and the gods  - themselves universes in the small, and destined in the future to become kosmic entities when the cycling wheel of time shall have turned through long aeons on its majestic round. In fact, every living thing, and so-called inanimate things also, are trees of life, with their roots above in the spiritual realms, with their trunks passing through the intermediate spheres, and their branches manifesting in the physical realms.

See also: Asvattha, Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul)

A Theosophical definition of Atman :

Atman

(Sanskrit) The root of atman is hardly known; its origin is uncertain, but the general meaning is that of "self." The highest part of man  - self, pure consciousness per se. The essential and radical power or faculty in man which gives to him, and indeed to every other entity or thing, its knowledge or sentient consciousness of selfhood. This is not the ego.

This principle (atman) is a universal one; but during incarnations its lowest parts take on attributes, because it is linked with the buddhi, as the buddhi is linked with the manas, as the manas is linked to the kama, and so on down the scale.

Atman is also sometimes used of the universal self or spirit which is called in the Sanskrit writings Brahman (neuter), and the Brahman or universal spirit is also called the paramatman.

Man is rooted in the kosmos surrounding him by three principles, which can hardly be said to be above the first or atman, but are, so to say, that same atman's highest and most glorious parts.

The inmost link with the Unutterable was called in ancient India by the term ``self,'' which has often been mistranslated "soul." The Sanskrit word is atman and applies, in psychology, to the human entity. The upper end of the link, so to speak, was called paramatman, or the ``self beyond,'' i.e., the permanent SELF  - words which describe neatly and clearly to those who have studied this wonderful philosophy, somewhat of the nature and essence of the being which man is, and the source from which, in beginningless and endless duration, he sprang. Child of earth and child of heaven, he contains both in himself.

We say that the atman is universal, and so it is. It is the universal selfhood, that feeling or consciousness of selfhood which is the same in every human being, and even in all the inferior beings of the hierarchy, even in those of the beast kingdom under us, and dimly perceptible in the plant world, and which is latent even in the minerals. This is the pure cognition, the abstract idea, of self. It differs not at all throughout the hierarchy, except in degree of self-recognition. Though universal, it belongs (so far as we are concerned in our present stage of evolution) to the fourth kosmic plane, though it is our seventh principle counting upwards.

See also: Atman, Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul)

A Theosophical definition of Atom :

Atom

This word comes to us from the ancient Greek philosophers Democritus, Leucippus, and Epicurus, and the hundreds of great men who followed their lead in this respect and who were therefore also atomists  - such, for instance, as the two Latin poets Ennius and Lucretius. This school taught that atoms were the foundation-bricks of the universe, for atom in the original etymological sense of the word means something that cannot be cut or divided, and therefore as being equivalent to particles of what theosophists call homogeneous substance. But modern scientists do not use the word atom in that sense any longer. Some time ago the orthodox scientific doctrine concerning the atom was basically that enunciated by Dalton, to the general effect that physical atoms were hard little particles of matter, ultimate particles of matter, and therefore indivisible and indestructible.

But modern science [1933] has a totally new view of the physical atom, for it knows now that the atom is not such, but is composite, builded of particles still more minute, called electrons or charges of negative electricity, and of other particles called protons or charges of positive electricity, which protons are supposed to form the nucleus or core of the atomic structure. A frequent picture of atomic structure is that of an atomic solar system, the protons being the atomic sun and the electrons being its planets, the latter in extremely rapid revolution around the central sun. This conception is purely theosophical in idea, and adumbrates what occultism teaches, though occultism goes much farther than does modern science.

One of the fundamental postulates of the teachings of theosophy is that the ultimates of nature are atoms on the material side and monads on the energy side. These two are respectively material and spiritual primates or ultimates, the spiritual ones or monads being indivisibles, and the atoms being divisibles  - things that can be divided into composite parts.

It becomes obvious from what precedes that the philosophical idea which formed the core of the teaching of the ancient initiated atomists was that their atoms or "indivisibles" are pretty close to what theosophical occultism calls monads; and this is what Democritus and Leucippus and others of their school had in mind.

These monads, as is obvious, are therefore divine-spiritual life-atoms, and are actually beings living and evolving on their own planes. Rays from them are the highest parts of the constitution of beings in the material realms.

See also: Atom, Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul)

A Theosophical definition of Cosmos :

Cosmos vs Kosmos

Whenever a theosophist speaks of the cosmos or the universe, he by no means refers only to the physical sphere or world or cross section of the boundless All in which we humans live, but more particularly to the invisible worlds and planes and spheres inhabited by their countless hosts of vitalized or animate beings.

In order to avoid redundancy of words and often confusing repetitions in the midst of an explanation dealing with other matters, since H. P. Blavatsky's time it has been customary among careful theosophical writers to draw a distinction of fact between cosmos and kosmos.

• The solar universe or solar system is frequently referred to as cosmos or solar cosmos;
• and the galactic universe or our own home-universe it has been customary to refer to as the kosmos.

This distinction, however, does not always hold, because sometimes in dealing with abstract questions where the application of the thought can be indifferently made either to the galactic or to the solar universe, the two forms of spelling may be used interchangeably. (See also Kosmos, Kosmic Life)

See also: Cosmos, 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)

A Theosophical definition of Death :

Death

Death occurs when a general break-up of the constitution of man takes place; nor is this break-up a matter of sudden occurrence, with the exceptions of course of such cases as mortal accidents or suicides. Death is always preceded, varying in each individual case, by a certain time spent in the withdrawal of the monadic individuality from an incarnation, and this withdrawal of course takes place coincidently with a decay of the seven-principle being which man is in physical incarnation. This decay precedes physical dissolution, and is a preparation of and by the consciousness-center for the forthcoming existence in the invisible realms. This withdrawal actually is a preparation for the life to come in invisible realms, and as the septenary entity on this earth so decays, it may truly be said to be approaching rebirth in the next sphere.

Death occurs, physically speaking, with the cessation of activity of the pulsating heart. There is the last beat, and this is followed by immediate, instantaneous unconsciousness, for nature is very merciful in these things. But death is not yet complete, for the brain is the last organ of the physical body really to die, and for some time after the heart has ceased beating, the brain and its memory still remain active and, although unconsciously so, the human ego for this short length of time, passes in review every event of the preceding life. This great or small panoramic picture of the past is purely automatic, so to say; yet the soul-consciousness of the reincarnating ego watches this wonderful review incident by incident, a review which includes the entire course of thought and action of the life just closed. The entity is, for the time being, entirely unconscious of everything else except this. Temporarily it lives in the past, and memory dislodges from the akasic record, so to speak, event after event, to the smallest detail: passes them all in review, and in regular order from the beginning to the end, and thus sees all its past life as an all-inclusive panorama of picture succeeding picture.

There are very definite ethical and psychological reasons inhering in this process, for this process forms a reconstruction of both the good and the evil done in the past life, and imprints this strongly as a record on the fabric of the spiritual memory of the passing being. Then the mortal and material portions sink into oblivion, while the reincarnating ego carries the best and noblest parts of these memories into the devachan or heaven-world of postmortem rest and recuperation. Thus comes the end called death; and unconsciousness, complete and undisturbed, succeeds, until there occurs what the ancients called the second death.

The lower triad (prana, linga-sarira, sthula-sarira) is now definitely cast off, and the remaining quaternary is free. The physical body of the lower triad follows the course of natural decay, and its various hosts of life-atoms proceed whither their natural attractions draw them. The linga-sarira or model-body remains in the astral realms, and finally fades out. The life-atoms of the prana, or electrical field, fly instantly back at the moment of physical dissolution to the natural pranic reservoirs of the planet.

This leaves man, therefore, no longer a heptad or septenary entity, but a quaternary consisting of the upper duad (atma-buddhi) and the intermediate duad (manas-kama). The second death then takes place.

Death and the adjective dead are mere words by which the human mind seeks to express thoughts which it gathers from a more or less consistent observation of the phenomena of the material world. Death is dissolution of a component entity or thing. The dead, therefore, are merely dissolving bodies  - entities which have reached their term on this our physical plane. Dissolution is common to all things, because all physical things are composite: they are not absolute things. They are born; they grow; they reach maturity; they enjoy, as the expression runs, a certain term of life in the full bloom of their powers; then they "die." That is the ordinary way of expressing what men call death; and the corresponding adjective is dead, when we say that such things or entities are dead.

Do you find death per se anywhere? No. You find nothing but action; you find nothing but movement; you find nothing but change. Nothing stands still or is annihilated. What is called death itself shouts forth to us the fact of movement and change. Absolute inertia is unknown in nature or in the human mind; it does not exist.

See also: Death, Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul)