ORGANISM

Whitehead's vision (as shared by Shaw in Back to Methuselah) that life pervades nature, not as Bergson's "vitalism" did (by squeezing into matter osmotically from outside), but by definition: Nature is alive: "bodies" are alive, and the mind is more alive still. All nature (including inorganic matter) is a single organism, one living body composed of biological cells (that is, events). This is not hylism, on the contrary, but pneumism or spiritism.

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

Sex As applied to the organism as a whole, the differentiation of the reproductive function and the character of being male and female.

Organisms reproduce their kind in various ways: fission, gemmation, parthenogenesis, hermaphrodite reproduction, and sexual reproduction. In the course of evolution, organisms pass from one method to another; the passage from the hermaphrodite method to the one in which the sexes are in separate individuals took place in the animals in the third root-race of this round on this globe, and shortly afterwards in humanity (SD 2:184), the latter then being in the fifth subrace of the third root-race.

The process of separation did not occur suddenly, but slowly. This is often called the Fall, and is so in one sense, since it is a descent from spirit toward matter, and was an initiation of the beasts. "THEY (the animals) BEGAN TO BREED. The TWOFOLD MAN (then) SEPARATED ALSO. HE (man) SAID: "LET US AS THEY: LET US UNITE AND MAKE CREATURES.' THEY DID" (ibid.). But from another viewpoint, it was simply a following of the natural course of unfolding progress in evolution. The separation is symbolized by a circle with a vertical diameter.

The hermaphroditic state is repeated in the developing embryo where the organs of both sexes arise from the same germinal layer of cells, and the differentiation does not occur until near the middle of the viable period of fetal life. Today, the orderly unfolding of embryonic cells into a human form is due to following the invisible model which, in keeping with the imbodying ego's karma, is directed by creative spiritual entities and forces.

"Before man could become male and female physically, his prototype, the creating Elohim, had to arrange his Form on this sexual plane astrally. That is to say, the atoms and the organic forces, descending into the plane of the given differentiation, had to be marshaled in the order intended by Nature, so as to be ever carrying out, in an immaculate way, that law which the Kabala calls the balance, through which everything that exists does so as male and female in its final perfection, in this present stage of materiality. Chochmah, Wisdom, the Male Sephiroth, had to diffuse itself in, and through, Binah, intelligent Nature, or Understanding" (SD 2:84). After the separation, the third eye began to disappear, and death as we now understand it was not known until then.

Thus the primeval polarity of all things differentiated on the material plane -- including sexual humanity -- was of immaculate origin and purpose. This sublime ancient teaching has been degraded generally in theological interpretations of cosmic sex symbols in crude physiological terms, such as the substitution of a Jehovistic god of generation for an ineffable, unknown deity.

The originating causes of sex are not rooted in the higher principles or elements of the human composite constitution. It is the effect of former thought-deposits, of emotional and mental tendencies and biases given way to in preceding lives on earth. "The predominating and it may perhaps truly be said that the main cause of sex-change in incarnation is strong attraction to the opposite sex during the few -- or in rare cases it may be a fairly large number -- preceding lives on earth. This attraction, which is the instrumental cause of the tendencies and biases spoken of, arising out of thought and emotional energy, feminizes the life-atoms, or masculinizes them, as the individual case may be, and the natural consequence is incarnation in a body of the sex to which attraction leads" (ET 666). Thus a reincarnating ego may have several incarnations in bodies of one sex, and then incarnate in bodies of the opposite sex for a number of times in succeeding incarnations. How many times, therefore, a reincarnating ego may imbody in a male or a female body is not subject to any arbitrary rule but depends solely upon the karmic impulse laid aside in the treasury of psychomental experiences.

Though the distinction of sex is biologically regarded as a profound and nearly universal attribute of organized beings, yet knowledge of composite human nature shows that it does not reach into the roots of the human constitution. Its causes go no deeper than the lower part of the human ego or soul, the psychophysiological nature. It is an evolutionary condition or cycle of the reincarnating ego's development in this present stage of materiality. Therefore, it is a transitory event in its bipolar earthly experience. As sex has been nature's plan for the race for some 18 million years, it will continue to be the natural plan for some ages to come. Some ages hence, sex differentiation will have given way to the activities of impersonal, spiritual creative energies.

(See also: Sex , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Evolution (from Latin evolutio unrolling, opening)

The unfolding or bringing into manifestation of the inherent, already inwardly existing characteristics of a being; it is therefore growth from within, development. The process is universal, since the universe consists of living beings, all of which are growing because unfolding. Evolution presupposes two main factors: the entity which is evolving, and the form which is evolved. These two are related as spirit to matter, as the monad to its organism.

Every one of the countless beings which constitute the universe is essentially a spark of the universal divine fire, life, or spirit; and at any time is at one stage or another of a continuous career of unfolding growth. Every spark creates for itself a succession of forms by which it expresses more or less of its inherent qualities. The physical vehicles are merely the physical end-products; before these physical imbodiments are engendered, there are other imbodiments made of subtler grades of matter or consciousness-substance on intermediate planes, and astral stuff on the lower plane close to the physical. Evolution is a continual reaction between what is within and what is without: environment modifies growth; but without the urge of the indwelling monad, there could be no action upon environment, nor any reaction by environment.

Evolution is not a process of accretion from without; such accretion could not produce an organism unless the full plan of that organism existed already latently in ideation. Nor is evolution in the vegetable and animal kingdoms a process of mere transformism by which one physical organism changes into another. The changes take place because of the unfolding growth of the indwelling entity, each new evolutional enfoldment of the latter impacting on the body, and therefore more or less modifying it; and this indwelling entity in this manner builds for itself new forms suitable to its own changed or more largely unfolded states.

Theosophy does not hold to the idea of a single-track, end-on evolution from a protoplasmic speck to human being, without inner astral, mental, and spiritual urge from within. Rather, the plan of evolution as represented by the different classes and orders of beings on earth may be represented by a tree, whose main trunk is the human stem, from which (so far as this manvantara is concerned) the various animal types have issued like branches, each of them then entering upon a special unfolding development and differentiation of its own. Indeed, the same observation applies with equal force to the vegetable and mineral kingdoms, although their root-types issued from the human stem long aeons before the animal types appeared on earth.

Evolution is an ancient and cardinal tenet of the archaic wisdom and was formerly called emanation. In mankind, three distinct, principal lines of evolution take place and converge; the spiritual, the mental or manasic, and the astral-vital-physical. The manasic factor is derived from the perfected humanity of a previous manvantara, whose entrance into the human stock of the third root-race brought about the union of the heavenly and the terrestrial so as to make a complete self-conscious being who thereafter mirrors every plane in nature. In humankind, the divine monad, a spark of the universal spirit, emanates from itself its first vehicle, and thus is formed the spiritual monad, atma-buddhi. This monad, emanating from itself in its turn another vehicle, becomes the higher human soul or reimbodying ego; and the emanational process is continued throughout the human constitution by the formation of the astral-vital soul which in its turn emanates or oozes forth the physical body.

The process of evolution cannot be considered as ending. Just as below human beings there are less evolved kingdoms, so above are beings in whom fuller self-consciousness has been achieved than we have yet achieved, and still more of the divine potentialities realized. All evolution beneath humankind tends towards humanhood as its objective; but humanity itself has ever greater heights still before it to attain in the future.

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

Vastu Shastra is the Indian science of space and architecture and how we may create spaces and environment that supports physical & spiritual health and prosperity.
Vastu Shastra evolved during Vedic times in India. The concepts of Vastu Shastra was transferred to Tibet, South East Asia and finally to China and Japan where it provided the base for the development of what is now known as Feng Shui.
Vastu Shastra is the art and science of designing houses, offices, temples etc that swirl with good energy. Indian Maharajas and Moghul Emperors used Vastu Shastra when they built their symmetrical palaces, artificial lakes, and geometric courtyards that thirstily absorbed positive energy.

Read more here: » Vastu Shastra: What is Vastu Shastra?

Human Kingdom One of the great kingdoms or divisions of monads on earth. Below it are the animal, plant, mineral, and also three elemental kingdoms; above are kingdoms of dhyanis or highly evolved human beings and gods. One of the critical points in evolution, at which self-consciousness is attained, although by no means fully developed. Here the spiritual and the material meet: the spiritual self finds its house in the organism built up of lower elements, and the two-natured human being of earth is thus formed. See MAN; ROOT-RACES

(See also: Human Kingdom , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Variation Used in Darwinian theory as complementary to heredity, representing the tendencies towards variety of forms in living organisms, while heredity tends to perpetuate fixed types. Darwin held that species denotes merely a temporal cross section through a continuously flowing stream of gradual variation; but further study has shown that there is no such continual, uniform, and unidirectional flow of variation, but that there are reversions to original type and comparatively sudden emergence of new types.

The causes assigned by Darwin for variation, though he premises the existence within the organism of a susceptibility to variation, are physical, being responses to environment. Such causes, purposeless and chaotic, could not produce ordered results; the facts indicate an intricate design and manifold purposes in nature, originating in spiritual and ethereal entities belonging to nature's hierarchical structure.

Nature in fact is composed of living beings, and the ultimate cause of variation is to be sought in the operations of cosmic ideation, which reproduce their effects finally in physical organisms throughout nature.

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

Bioelectromagnetics:

the scientific study of interactions between living organisms and electromagnetic fields, forces, energies, currents, and charges. The range of interactions studied includes atomic, molecular, intracellular, up to the entire organism.

(See also: Bioelectromagnetics , Alternative Medicine, Body Mind and Soul)

nonhuman birth: The phenomenon of the soul being born as nonhuman life forms, explained in various scriptures.

For example, Saint Manikkavasagar's famous hymn (Tiruvasagam 8.14):

"I became grass and herbs, worm and tree. I became many beasts, bird and snake. I became stone and man, goblins and sundry celestials. I became mighty demons, silent sages and the Gods. Taken form in life, moveable and immovable, born in all, I am weary of birth, my Great Lord."

The Upanishads, too, describe the soul's course after death and later taking a higher or lower birth according to its merit or demerit of the last life (Kaush. U. 1.2, ‚hand. U. 5.35.10, Brihad. U. 6.2).

These statements are sometimes misunderstood to mean that each soul must slowly, in sequential order incarnate as successively higher beings, beginning with the lowest organism, to finally obtain a human birth. In fact, as the Upanishads explain, after death the soul, reaching the inner worlds, reaps the harvest of its deeds, is tested and then takes on the appropriate incarnation - be it human or nonhuman - according to its merit or demerit.

Souls destined for human evolution are human-like from the moment of their creation in the Sivaloka. This is given outer expression in the Antarloka and Bhuloka, on earth or other similar planets, as the appropriate sheaths are developed. However, not all souls are human souls. There are many kinds of souls, such as genies, elementals and certain Gods, who evolve toward God through different patterns of evolution than do humans.

One cause of unclarity is to confuse the previously mentioned scriptural passages with the theory of biological evolution developed by Charles Darwin (1809 -1882), which states that plant and animal species develop or evolve from earlier forms due to hereditary transmission of variations that enhance the organism's adaptability and chances of survival. These principles are now considered the kernel of biology. Modern scientists thus argue that the human form is a development from earlier primates, including apes and monkeys.

The Darwinian theory is reasonable but incomplete as it is based in a materialistic conception of reality that does not encompass the existence of the soul. While the Upanishadic evolutionary vision speaks of the soul's development and progress through reincarnation, the Darwinian theory focuses on evolution of the biological organism, with no relation to a soul or individual being.

See: evolution of the soul, kosha, reincarnation, soul.

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

Invisible Worlds Theosophy teaches that the universe is a living organism, composed of an infinite number of minor organisms of all-various degrees of expression in both spirit and matter. These groups of minor organisms or worlds are separated from each other in consciousness, not in space, by planes. All the beings of any one plane have senses relating to that plane and are therefore usually unconscious of other planes by first perception. Further, these planes are of such different ranges of matter and therefore of vibration, that the entities within them intermingle without mutual interference.

The suns and planets, therefore, of any one plane interpenetrate our physical sphere, and permeate it, so that in our own daily affairs we actually pass through the worlds, through the very beings, it may be, of the entities dwelling in these realms invisible to us. These invisible realms are made of matter just as is our physical world, but it is of matter more ethereal or gross than ours. We do not cognize them with our physical senses because of the different rates of vibration of the different planes.

Although our senses tell us nothing of these innumerable other planes, yet the inner and invisible higher spheres are inexpressibly important because they are the causal realms of which our physical universe is but the phenomenal production. But while these higher planes are the fountainhead, ultimately, of all the energies and matters of the whole physical world, yet to an entity inhabiting these inner and invisible worlds, these latter are as substantial and real to that entity as our physical world is to us. Just as we know in our physical world various grades or conditions of energy and matter, from the grossest to the most ethereal, so do the inhabitants of these other worlds know and cognize their own grossest and also most ethereal substances and energies.

The theosophical teaching about invisible worlds has no connection or parallel with the Summerland of the Spiritualists.

(See also: Invisible Worlds , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Atavism (from Latin atavus ancestor)

In biology, the reappearance of the characteristics of a remoter ancestor in its descendant; reversion to type; delayed heredity. A manifestation of the activities of life or the life-atoms collectively, which in building new forms "copies family resemblances as well as those it finds impressed in the aura of the generators of every future human being" (SD 1:261). Weismann approached the truth in his theory of the germ-plasm, or aggregate of life-atoms which are transmitted unchanged through generations; but the atom is the vehicle of a jiva or monad -- on whatever plane -- and is therefore endowed with spirit and soul and, in consequence, memory.

Certain morbid growths in the human body, such as cancer, indicate a reversion of the life-atoms that animate the cells to a pristine habit; for there was a time when the human organism reproduced itself by that method of budding now seen only in far lowlier organisms. The psychic equivalent of this is a loss of control by the directing will and intelligence over the instinctual and emotional elements which normally are subordinate factors in the human make-up.

The tendency of specialized animal or plant species to revert to their primitive racial type conflicts with the Darwinian idea that changes result from the gradual accretion of small differentiations. Scientists see heredity as a string of beads, connected one to the other without any thread running through the whole; whereas the theosophical philosophy regards each bead as springing from the connecting vital thread or line, so that the characteristics of all ancestors may be transmitted in latency, ready to appear at any time, should circumstances favor it.

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

A dictionary of Parapsycology. Please note that words in grey are hyperlinked to a corresponding archive with articles related to that particular topic.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seed The essence or germ of an entity, imbodying its svabhava (essential nature) and determining the forms produced from it, partly by the accretion of various elements but mainly by the emanating stream working from within outwards or above downwards.

The seed of a plant is a globule of physical matter, but the actual seed is ultra-physical. All seeds strictly speaking are the vital life-forces working in and through the physical germs, and hence these true seeds are ethereal organisms, structures composed of a higher order of matter (SD 1:201). Thus there is a succession of vital seeds pertaining to one individual entity, each such seed being the ultimate unit of that organism on a particular plane.

There is the physical seed of a plant, containing the astral seed -- a unit on its own plane containing a still subtler seed belonging to a higher plane, and so forth. Ultimately a seed is a life-atom, in itself the expression on a particular plane of a monad which is a thought in divine ideation.

(See also: Seed , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Pralaya (Sanskrit) [from pra away + the verbal root li to dissolve]

Dissolving away, death, dissolution, as when one pours water upon a cube of salt or sugar: the cube of salt or sugar vanishes in the water, dissolves, and changes its form. So during a pralaya, matter crumbles or vanishes away into something else which is yet in it, surrounds it, and interpenetrates it. Pralaya is often defined as the state of latency or rest between two manvantaras of great life cycles. During pralaya, everything differentiated, every unit, disappears from the phenomenal universe and is transferred into the noumenal essence which periodically throughout eternity gives birth to all the phenomena of nature. Pralaya is dissolution of the visible into the invisible, the heterogeneous into the homogeneous, relatively or absolutely -- the objective universe returns into its one primal and eternally productive Cause, to reappear at the following cosmic dawn. To our finite minds, pralaya is like a state of nonbeing -- and so it is for all existences and beings on the lower material planes.

A mahapralaya (great pralaya) is an absolute pralaya of a solar system or kosmos; a minor pralaya is a partial dissolution of some part of the solar system or cosmos, such as a planetary chain or a globe. After an absolute pralaya, when the preexisting manifested material consists of but one element, and breath "is everywhere," the creation process acts from without inwardly; but after a minor pralaya, which involves the destruction of the corporeal vehicles of things, the inner vital essences remaining untouched, the celestial bodies begin at the first flutter of manvantara their resurrection to manifested cosmic life from within outwardly.

A pralaya is not the same as an obscuration, because an obscuration means the passage of a life-wave from a globe or equivalent celestial body to a globe on another plane. During such an obscuration the globe thus abandoned by the life-wave remains in statu quo -- in a refrigerated condition, so to say -- awaiting the influx of the succeeding life-wave. In the case of obscuration the vehicle remains dormant; yet this does not signify that the body is without movement, vital or psychic, of any kind. A person, for instance, when asleep is in obscuration, and it is obvious that his physical body is still alive and active after the manner of sleeping organisms.

"It is not the physical organisms that remain in statu quo, least of all their psychical principles, during the great Cosmic or even Solar pralayas, but only their Akasic or astral 'photographs.' But during the minor pralayas, once over-taken by 'Night,' the planets remain intact, though dead, as a huge animal, caught and embedded in the polar ice, remains the same for ages" (SD 1:18n).

Theosophy divides the pralayas into several kinds: the paurusha pralaya (dissolution or death of an individual person); the atyantika pralaya (nirvana of a jivanmukta); the obscuration or individual pralaya of each globe, as a life-wave passes on to the next globe; the round-obscurations or minor pralayas of the planetary chain after each round; the bhaumika pralaya (planetary pralaya) which occurs when the seven rounds of our earth-chain are completed, also called the naimittika pralaya (dissolution during the Night of Brahma); the saurya pralaya (solar pralaya) when the whole solar system is at an end; the universal mahapralaya or Brahma pralaya, usually called the prakritika pralaya or dissolution of the cosmos at the close of an Age or Life of Brahma; and the nitya pralaya or constant, incessant evolutionary changes that take place throughout the universe and therefore affect all its parts.

"When the great period of the universal kosmic pralaya occurs, and the universe is indrawn (following the Oriental metaphor) into the bosom of Parabrahman, what then happens? The spiritual entities then enter into their paranirvana, which means exactly for them what is meant for us when we speak of the death of the human being. They are drawn by their spiritual gravitational attractions into still higher hierarchies of being, into still higher spiritual realms, therein still higher rising and growing and learning and living; while the lower elements of the kosmos, the body of the universe (even as does our physical body when the change called death comes . . .), follow their own particular gravitational attractions: the physical body to dust; the vital breath to the vital breath of the kosmos; dust to dust, breath to breath. So with the other kosmic principles, as with man's principles at his decease: the kama of our nature to the universal reservoir of the kamic organism; our manas into its dhyan-chohanic rest; our monads into their own higher life. Then when the clock of eternity points once again for the kosmos to the hour of 'coming forth into light' -- which is 'death' for the spiritual being, as death for us is life for the inner man -- when the manvantara of material life comes around again (the period of spiritual death for the kosmos is the material life of manifestation), then in the distant abysms of space and time the kosmic life-centers are aroused into activity once more . . ." (Fund 183).

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

Mysteria Specialia [from mysteria mystery + specialia particular, specific]

Particular mystery; used by European Medieval alchemico-mystical philosophers, such as Paracelsus. Mysterium is used by Paracelsus to denote the germinal state of a being, which is afterwards produced in the differentiated state; thus the seed is the mysterium of the future plant. Specialia implies that each organism pre-exists in its own special mysterium. Thus is indicated an intermediate state of differentiation, between the condition of undifferentiated chaos and that of separate and developed organisms.

(See also: Mysteria Specialia , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Psi-Mediated Instrumental Response, PMIR:

Theory put forward by Rex Stanford that Psi activity is used to serve an organism's needs.

(See also: Psi-Mediated Instrumental Response, PMIR , Psychic, Psychic Dictionary, Parapsychology, Parapsychology Dictionary)

Shakers A sect called the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, founded by Ann Lee in England, which afterwards spread to the United States. Their asceticism and religious emotionalism often led to their being seized with violent tremblings, like those of the early Quakers or of the Convulsionnaires among the French Jansenists.

In themselves, such exterior physical phenomena are due to a one-sided emotional development, and to the evoking of genuine and powerful forces within a physical organism not properly and duly prepared to deal with and sustain them. Such conditions often lead to reactions which both physically and mentally are dangerous, and in the most extreme cases may render the physical organism peculiarly subject to being influenced by excarnate astral entities.

(See also: Shakers , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Table-turning The spiritualistic or astral phenomenon of motion produced in a table when the sitters at a seance hold their hands over or on it, and varying from risings into the air and movings around the room, to giving tilts in answer to code-questions.

Ordinary Occidental intelligence seems incapable of imagining anything between a purely mechanical action and a full-blown human intelligence. The phenomena are usually supposed to be either due to tricks or some kind of unconscious muscular action on the part of the sitters, or to be spirits of the departed. But there are a variety of degrees between physical mechanism and self-conscious volition, just as there are multitudes of living beings in widely differing states of materiality filling the gap between physical organisms and the spirits of the departed.

The astral light is filled with an enormous variety of beings, mostly of a low type, not using physical bodies, not human in their nature, but having a sort of consciousness of their own; and the conditions provided by the vitality of the medium and sitters may vitalize, stimulate, and to a certain extent direct, these beings and thus at times cause them to become active in the production of physical phenomena.

Again, the human organism in all its ranges itself is composed of a vast number of elements, physical, astral, etc., which in normal life are held together in a unit and in subordination to the general life of the person. Some of these elements may become temporarily extruded, especially in natural mediums or those who have cultivated mediumship; and thus the phenomena may be caused unintelligently or ignorantly by the sitters themselves -- and just here is the instrumental cause of nearly all the physical phenomena produced by mediums, or mediums and sitters together.

(See also: Table-turning , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Death:

Generally understood to be the extinction of an organism's life. Many doctrines assert some form of mental or spiritual survival of physical death.

See also Deathbed Experience, Haunting, Mediumship, Near-Death Experience, and Reincarnation.

(See also: Death , Psychic, Psychic Dictionary, Parapsychology, Parapsychology Dictionary)

According to Ayurveda everything in life is composed of the Panchamahabhutas – Akash (Space), Vayu (Air), Jal (Water), Agni (Fire) and Prithvi (Earth). Omnipresent, they are mixed in an infinite variety of relative proportions such that each form of matter is distinctly unique. Although each element has a range of attributes, only some get evident in particular situations. Constantly changing and interacting with each other, they create a situation of dynamic flux that keeps the world going.

Within a simple, single living cell for example the earth element predominates by giving structure to the cell. The water element is present in the cytoplasm or the liquid within the cell membrane. The fire element regulates the metabolic processes regulating the cell. While the air element predominates the gases therein. The space occupied by the cell denoting the last of the elements.

In the case of a complex, multi-cellular organism as a human being for instance, akash corresponds to spaces within the body (mouth, nostrils, abdomen etc.); vayu denotes the movement (essentially muscular); agni controls the functioning of enzymes (intelligence, digestive system, metabolism); jal is in all body fluids (as plasma, saliva, digestive juices); and prithvi manifests itself in the solid structure of the body (bones, teeth, flesh, hair et al).

The Panchmahabhutas therefore serve as the foundation of all diagnosis & treatment modalities in Ayurveda and has served as a most valuable theory for physicians to detect and treat illness of the body and mind successfully.

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