Organism Dictionary

The Tridoshas

The Tridoshas (tri meaning three and doshas being the basic physical energies) are the primary and essential factors of the human body that govern our entire physical structure and function. Derived from the Panchmahabhutas, each dosha – which like the elements cannot be detected with our senses but their qualities can be – is a combination of any two of the five bhutas with the predominance of one. Called Vata, Pitta and Kapha in Sanskrit, these three are responsible for all the physiological and psychological processes within the body and mind – dynamic forces that determine growth and decay. Every physical characteristic, mental capacity and the emotional tendency of a human being can therefore be explained in terms of the tridoshas.

Most of the physical phenomena ascribed to the nervous system by modern physiology for example, can be identified with Vata. Just as the entire chemical process operating in the human body can be attributed to Pitta, including enzymes, hormones and the complete nutritional system. And the activities of the skeletal and the anabolic system, actually the entire physical volume of an organism, can be considered as Kapha.

Each dosha thus shares a quality with another (although there remain slight differences in the nature of shared quality), the third having just the opposite quality. Also, each has an inherent ability to regulate and balance itself, coming from the antagonistic qualities that arise from the doshas constituent elements.

When the doshas are in balance i.e. in a state of equilibrium, we remain healthy. As Charaka, the great ayurvedic sage, explained: "Vata, pitta and kapha maintain the integrity of the living human organism in their normal state and combine so as to make the man a complete being with his indriyas (sense organs) possessed of strength, good complexion and assured of longevity." It is only when that there is imbalance within the three that disease is caused. And since it is the strongest dosha in the constitution that usually has the greatest tendency to increase, one is most susceptible to illnesses associated with an increase of the same.

It is important to realise that these three are forces and not substances. Kapha is not mucus; it is the force that causes mucus to arise. Similarly pitta is not bile; but that which causes bile to be produced. And they are called doshas – literally meaning `faults’ or `out of whack’- as they indicate the fault lines along which the system can become imbalanced.

It is equally important to understand that the three doshas within any person keep changing constantly, due to the doshic qualities of specific lifestyle and environment, such as time and season. And that these three are not separate energies but different aspects of the same energy, present together in an infinite variety of combinations, wherein their qualities overlap and interrelate.

Ayurveda however considers only three types of constitution – in monotypes just one dosha predominates, in duo types two have near similar strength, and in the very rarely found third type all three are equally powerful. Within this broad classification, there are in the first category various sub-types that are listed below for easier reference.

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

Darwin's theory: Theory of evolution developed by Charles Darwin (18091882) stating 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.

See: evolution of the soul, nonhuman birth.

(See also: Darwin's theory , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

Positivism In general, a philosophy based on physical phenomena and ignoring underlying antecedent causes; specifically, the system of Auguste Comte (1798-1857), miscalled the Religion of Humanity. He held that all speculative thought passes through three phases -- theological, metaphysical, positive: in the first, living beings having individual free will are regarded as the cause of phenomena; in the next, unverifiable abstractions are resorted to; positivism contents itself with a general description of phenomena.

The universe is not composed of individuals with volition, but of an ordered organism -- humanity -- governed by necessary laws. The civilized community is a true organism, a great being, and should be an object of worship. In conformity with the last, Positivist churches continue to exist, with definite organization and procedure. As stated in Isis Unveiled (1:79), negativism might be a better term, since the system denies more than it affirms. Its rejection of individuals in favor of humanity certainly is a lapse into the rejected metaphysical stage of speculation, which Comte showed he had no true comprehension of.

As a philosophy, holding that knowledge is based exclusively on the methods and discoveries of physical or positive science, it labors under great disadvantages. That speculation does pass through these and other stages is evident from the history of philosophy; but that positivism represents more than a passing phase is impossible to believe. It is one of the subtle forms of materialistic European philosophy so popular -- and among certain minds still in vogue -- during the 18th and 19th centuries.

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

Nebular Theory A theory of the origin of the solar system of Laplace, Herschel, and others, much in favor during the earlier part of the 19th century, but since fallen into disfavor. The hypothesis was devised to explain certain facts, especially that the planets all revolve in the same direction, that their satellites (except those of Uranus and Neptune) revolve around their primaries in this same direction, and that the planets so far as we know rotate in this same direction. The theory assumes the sun to have started as a very diffused, tenuous gas or nebula, extending much farther than its present volume.

The combined influence of gravitation and of contraction by cooling resulted, in accordance with dynamic laws, in the separation of parts of the mass into rings, and these rings afterwards coalesced severally into planets; and their motions of revolution and rotation are thus according to this theory explained.

Better knowledge of the dynamic principles concerned has discredited the theory in its details; it conflicts particularly with the principle of the conservation of the moment of inertia and with the kinetic theory of gases. Moreover, the solar system is now seen to be more complex than had been supposed, the planetoids for instance having very eccentric motions.

In The Secret Doctrine Blavatsky credits the theory's authors with a great intuitional perception of certain cosmogonical facts, and to a certain extent approves the theory in its broad outline but not in its details. Any theory which attempts to explain the universe on purely mechanical principles can be no more than one of a number of possible systems of graphic representation. The attempt to abstract the physical universe from the universe in general, while useful for special practical purposes, does not conduct us to the truth; and this is preeminently the case with such a subject as the origin of the solar system and the motions of its parts. Yet the nebular hypothesis in certain of its main elements is in accord with theosophic teachings, insofar, for instance, as it glimpses the gradual condensation of matter from a tenuous condition, in its segregation around centers, and in the essentially circular character of motion.

In the theosophic view, not only the galaxy itself is alive -- an animate organism -- but likewise each and every solar system comprised in it is likewise alive and therefore an organism. The term alive comprises mind or intelligence and spirit. Thus not only is the sun alive, because it is the body of a divinity, but likewise every one of the planets (excepting the moons) in the solar system is likewise an individual living entity, of which only the grossest or physical globe is apparent to our vision. The solar system, therefore, is a composite unit, formed of component individuals.

The nebular hypothesis was mainly rejected by the Masters and Blavatsky because of its typical materialistic and mechanical character. It is a fact that the solar system was originally formed from a vast nebula consolidating into the physical world from inner worlds -- astral matter becoming physical matter -- but guided by innate mind and life; and the various motions within the solar system arise from the innate vitality within it. Furthermore, although the planetary chains were originally born from this nebula, their respective life times are far shorter than that of the solar system itself, so that these planetary chains have their many reimbodiments during the life period of the solar system. Comets, if they survive, are usually destined to become planetary bodies in the solar system in their turn, running their life period, and then dying, to reappear as comets again after long ages of rest in inner worlds.

(See also: Nebular Theory , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Phylogeny [from Greek phylo race + geneia producing]

The racial history of an organism, as contrasted with ontogeny or the individual history. Phylogenesis is applicable to the process. This branch of biology takes into account the racial affinities of an organism, and forms an important part of the science of evolution.

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

A Theosophical definition of Man :

Man

Man is in his essence a spark of the central kosmic spiritual fire. Man being an inseparable part of the universe of which he is the child  - the organism of graded consciousness and substance which the human constitution contains or rather is  - is a copy of the graded organism of consciousnesses and substances of the universe in its various planes of being, inner and outer, especially inner as being by far the more important and larger, because causal.

Human beings are one class of "young gods" incarnated in bodies of flesh at the present stage of their own particular evolutionary journey. The human stage of evolution is about halfway between the undeveloped life-atom and the fully developed kosmic spirit or god.

From another point of view, man is a sheaf or bundle of forces or energies. Force and matter, or spirit and substance being fundamentally one, hence, man is de facto a sheaf or bundle of matters of various and differing grades of ethereality, or of substantiality; and so are all other entities and things everywhere.

Man's nature, and the nature of the universe likewise, of which man is a reflection or microcosm or "little world," is composite of seven stages or grades or degrees of ethereality or of substantiality; or, kosmically speaking, of three generally inclusive degrees: gods, monads, and atoms. And so far as man is concerned, we may take the New Testament division of the Christians, which gives the same triform conception of man, that he is composed of spirit, soul, body  - remembering, however, that all these three words are generalizing terms.

Man stands at the midway point of the evolutionary ladder of life: below him are the hosts of beings less than he is; above him are other hosts greater than he is only because older in experience, riper in wisdom, stronger in spiritual and in intellectual fiber and power. And these beings are such as they are because of the evolutionary unfoldment of the inherent faculties and powers immanent in the individuality of the inner god  - the ever-living, inner, individualized spirit.

Man, then, like everything else  - entity or what is called "thing"  - is, to use the modern terminology of philosophical scientists, an "event," that is to say, the expression of a central consciousness-center or monad passing through one or another particular phase of its long, long pilgrimage over and through infinity, and through eternity. This, therefore, is the reason why the theosophist often speaks of the monadic consciousness-center as the pilgrim of eternity.

Man can be considered as a being composed of three essential upadhis or bases: first, the monadic or divine-spiritual; second, that which is supplied by the Lords of Light, the so-called manasa-dhyanis, meaning the intellectual and intuitive side of man, the element-principle that makes man Man; and the third upadhi we may call the vital-astral-physical.

These three bases spring from three different lines of evolution, from three different and separate hierarchies of being. This is the reason why man is composite. He is not one sole and unmixed entity; he is a composite entity, a "thing" built up of various elements, and hence his principles are to a certain extent separable. Any one of these three bases can be temporarily separated from the two others without bringing about the death of the man physically. But the elements that go to form any one of these bases cannot be separated without bringing about physical dissolution or inner dissolution.

These three lines of evolution, these three aspects or qualities of man, come from three different hierarchies or states, often spoken of as three different planes of being. The lowest comes from the vital-astral-physical earth, ultimately from the moon, our cosmogonic mother. The middle, the manasic or intellectualintuitional, from the sun. The monadic from the monad of monads, the supreme flower or acme, or rather the supreme seed of the universal hierarchy which forms our kosmical universe or universal kosmos.

See also: Man , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

Embryo In general, the vitalized germ of an organism in its earlier stages, and sometimes applied to it until it leaves the egg or womb covering. The fertilization of the germ-cell in plant or animal is an everyday working of the universal law by which spirit incubates matter for the purpose of differentiating on the objective planes, in order to manifest the subjective monadic life. Thus the reincarnating ego, in beginning to make a new body for itself, with the division of the fertilized microscopic egg cell, is analogous to the world-germ awakening in a laya-center to begin another galactic, solar, or planetary existence.

"This desire for a sentient life shows itself in everything, from an atom to a sun, and is a reflection of the Divine Thought propelled into objective existence" (SD 1:44).

In the unfolding marvel of the embryonic germ-cell, both in the human and subhuman kingdoms, each kind manifests its own essential selfhood or svabhava, and its own degree of evolution. In the unfolding growth of the human embryo it rapidly epitomizes the aeon-long history of the imbodiments of the race, as it also repeats its individual course through all the forms of matter -- a process often referred to as recapitulation. It goes back to past manvantaras of manifestation in mineral form, for "the cell-germinating substance (the cytoblastema) and the mother-lye from which crystals originate, are one and the same essence, save in differentiation for purposes" (SD 2:256n).

Back of all the orderly unfolding of the embryonic cells -- usually ascribed to nature -- is the subconscious directing influence of the monadic ego born from and bathing in the cosmic intelligence. In human beings the reincarnating ego is a ray of a spiritual monad, whose self-consciousness and activity takes in the solar system. This monad is karmically bound to oversee the evolving career of the human ego; and this celestial parentage in the cosmic hierarchy makes humans literally children of the sun. Here, then, is the solution of the biological mystery of unfolding purpose which is so harmoniously worked out by the reproductive material of a single cell. This intelligent influence acts upon the embryo through the directive power of "the astral fluid, working through and in conjunction with the vital capacities and potentialities of the cell . . ." (MIE 217-8).

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

EARTH -

1. the nest of humanity. (Dante)

2. third planet from the Sun, generally represented in world mythology as a feminine being of high consciousness, through a masculine being in Egyptian tradition.

3. Grandmother or Mother of all beings (Sioux and other traditional Peoples)

4. Gaia (the Greek Goddess of the Earth), a living self regulating organism.

5. planet for our training our playground in preparation for the next life in the vibrational world. (Michio Kushi).

6. the primary scientist, the primary educator, healer and technologist, the primary manifestation of the ultimate mystery of things. (Thomas Berry) (NAD)

(See also: EARTH , Wiccan Pagan, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

Morphic Resonance:

A term coined by Rupert Sheldrake to refer to the way in which the "morpho genetic field" underlying form of an object or organism may influence distant fields.

(See also: Morphic Resonance , Psychic, Psychic Dictionary, Parapsychology, Parapsychology Dictionary)

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

Procreation The progressive series of methods by which the human life-wave has reproduced its kind on earth is closely related to the unfolding of composite human nature, and is also a part of the evolutionary history of the rounds and races.

The reimbodying ego manifested its composite nature in the degree corresponding to the various gradations of matter in and through which it slowly descended, plane after plane, to the present state of things. Evidences of this series of former kinds of racial imbodiments, and of the progressive modes of reproduction are found repeated in the development of the human embryo, in the persistence of vestigial organs in adults, and in reproductive methods which still prevail in the lower kingdoms of plant and animal life.

The histologist, in watching the division of cells, sees a microscopic review of the age-old history of mankind's series of imbodiments. He observes, in the lowest forms of life, a homogeneous speck of protoplasm dividing into two. Next, in a nucleated cell, the cell nucleus splits into two subnuclei which develop within the cell wall, or burst through to multiply outside into independent entities. This fission is a copy of the reproductive method of the first root-race.

The next type of cell division is budding, where a portion of the parent swells out at the surface, finally to separate and to grow into a full-sized individual, as in many vegetables, the sea anemone, etc. This repeats the way in which the primeval human race merged out of its first reproductive method. At the next step in biology, the parent organism throws off a single cell which develops into a multicellular organism like the parent, as in bacteria and mosses.

The formation of these spores is followed by a type of intermediate hermaphroditism with the bisexual organs inhering in the same individual, as in plants. Corresponding to this, about the middle of the second root-race, the "buds" grew more numerous and became what zoologists would call human spores or seeds, or what Blavatsky described as vital sweat. Thus many of these buds at certain seasons when the parent entity had become mature, would leave it, as do the spores or seeds of plants today. These seeds were taken care of by nature and developed in the proper environment. At present, the exceptional cases of multiple human births hint at this long-past condition in procreation.

After several millions of years, the second root-race gradually developed into the early third root-race, when the then human individuals became androgynous. These produced a fertile germ which was cast off as an egg, somewhat as takes place in birds and certain reptiles today. These human eggs slowly matured, and finally the infant issued forth unaided much as the chick does now. The hermaphrodite early third root-race, under the impulse or urging of inherent laws of emanation or evolution, gradually began to separate the sexes in their prenatal eggs, so that as this race, in its turn, moved towards its merging into the fourth root-race, children were born in ever increasing numbers from the womb as they are today.

Not only have the series of reproductive methods been in keeping with the changing conditions of the rounds and races, but this is seen now in those races whose time is nearly run, where their end is hastened by an unusual sterility in the women, not otherwise explained. Furthermore, the present method of procreation, like all the preceding ones, is a passing phase of human reimbodiment and will in time become human evolutionary history, and other methods, already foreshadowed, will have taken its place. As man, evolving upon the ascending arc, brings forth his higher nature, his progeny will be brought forth from himself as generating source by his voluntary spiritual and intellectual creative powers.

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

Transformism Adopted from the French, it is the process of evolution as understood by Lamarck and Darwin, as distinguished from evolution in its true etymological sense as used in theosophy. It means the supposed transformation of one kind of organism into another kind of organism, by purely physical processes.

Evolution means that a living monad or soul unfolds itself from within outwards, thus producing the forms by which it manifests itself on the physical planes; and clothing itself in a graduating and constantly improving succession of forms, according to changes in its own growth and requirements.

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

Reich Blood Test: Ostensibly diagnostic component of orgonomic medicine (orgone therapy). The Reich Blood Test is a means of ascertaining overall energetic health.

Its principle is that the morphology of erythrocytes indicates the energetic state of an organism at the time of their removal. , red blood cells with bions (which resemble blue beads) at their center are abnormal. Proponents characterize bions as semi-living, bacterium-sized, vesicular manifestations of orgone and as the building blocks of cells.

(See also: Reich Blood Test , Body Mind and Soul, Alternative Health, Alternative Health Dictionary)

Survival of the Fittest According to Darwin, the most important factor in organic evolution was natural selection, operating on small casual variations in the organisms whose peculiarities were best adapted to their environment would have the best chance of surviving and, their superiority being transmitted to their offspring, the net result would be a survival of the fittest and an elimination of the unfit.

Modern biologists attach much less importance to this principle as a factor in evolution, cite facts which cannot be explained by it, and dispute whether acquired characteristics are transmitted. The general tendency is to attach more importance to hereditary influences than to environment. In any case, environment could produce no effect except in response to an urge arising within the organism itself: the phrase is descriptive of a process and does not stand for an agent. Again, the theory of the survival of the fittest by no means signifies the survival of the best or most evolved.

(See also: Survival of the Fittest , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

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

Disease Broadly stated, disease is a disordered or inharmonious vital state of the organism, with more of less excess, defect, or perversion of functional activity. The condition may be some chemical or mechanical wrong which renders the body unable to respond naturally to the psychoelectric and other forces which play through and sustain the physical person.

Moreover, the material and immaterial elements of the human constitution react upon each other for health or disease, because the mind and emotions on the one hand, and the organs and their functions on the other, are interrelated parts of the same entity. As a rule, this interplay between the material and the conscious person becomes a vicious circle in disease. Mental or emotional shock or strain can so affect function as to result in organic disease. Long continued selfish emotions cause a distorted and inharmonious interaction of the pranic or vital currents of the body, resulting in one or another disorder, according to the type of the emotions and the individual karma.

In view of the electric nature of matter, physical disorder may be regarded as an electrical disharmony or wrong, since disease always changes the polarity of the body, more or less. The vital currents of human electricity connect the conscious person with his body by the living wires of nerves. The rhythmic motion or natural harmony vibrating in each cell and organ at its own rate, is responsive to the universal vibration or Great Breath which in other modes of motion manifests as heat, light, sound, density, etc. But beyond the electrical and vibrational states of the body, and above the mental influence, is the essential self, the source of all harmony or rhythmic procedures in all below it, keyed to harmony and striving to raise the lower nature to act in unison with its finer and greater powers. When the instinct of the animal body, the mental reasoning faculties, and the reimbodying ego's intuition are functioning together, the person is keyed to health, sanity, and wisdom. Otherwise, the real inner conflict manifests in some form of disorder.

As the human being, then, is a dynamo of balanced forces, some disorder in their operation is the basic wrong in human diseases. Moreover, as all matter is alive, conscious in some degree, and vibrationally responsive to the laws of nature, the same general principle applies also to disease in the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms. In mankind, the organic vital fluid of the reimbodying ego is the cohering factor for the entire constitution, dominating over all minor vital expressions of the life-atoms. The intense and ceaseless activity of these life-atoms builds and composes the body, and as age comes on, and the physical vehicle naturally and normally weakens, the uninterrupted activity of the vital power becomes too strong to be held in check by the gripping influence of the vital-electrical field. Thus the atomic forces, really the vital energies, continuing unabated within the body structure, slowly weaken it and finally destroy it, and this is death.

"It is likewise these internal vital activities of the life-atoms held in insufficient check by the organic vitality which bring 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 813n).

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

Lodur, Lodurr, Lodurr (Icelandic, Scandinavian) In the Norse Edda, one of the creative divine trinity who endowed nascent humanity with their own properties, thus creating a thinking kingdom of beings out of the ashtree and the alder. Lodurr's gifts were la and laeti (skill and manner, also translated as blood and keen senses), while his brother deities Odin and Honer gave them respectively spirit and discernment.

There is an analogy between Odin (spirit) and air; between Honer (intelligence) and water; and between Lodurr (vitality) and fire or vital heat in any organism.

(See also: Lodur, Lodurr, Lodurr , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

bioform

A living organism of varying size and shape appearing to exist in outer space (UFO)

(See also: Bioform , Body Mind and Soul)

Physical Body [cf Sanskrit sthula-sarira, annamaya-kosa]

The most material sheath or instrument used by the forces manifesting as the human composite nature. This body is the evolutionary product of the inner man's experience during vast ages of time in and through all the kingdoms of nature. Thus the reimbodying ego, having acquired knowledge of the earth's manifesting forms and forces, combines or correlates the principles and products of the mineral and vegetal life-atoms in its animal body, while evolving through its human incarnations. The atoms of a person's body which are dispersed on earth at death, are karmically drawn to him again in the next life. As the quality of his own thought and feeling has been impressed upon these atoms, their automatic magnetic return to him insures the justice of his self-made physical heredity.

The continuous interchange of the physical material of the earth itself and that of everything upon it, provides for the body's nutrition, endurance, and renewal. The similarity of material, chemically and otherwise, in the earth and in man has prevailed from the time when the filmy presentments of early root-races appeared on the then condensing globe. When the earth reached its depth of materiality during the middle of the Atlantean or fourth root-race, the physical bodies of the Atlanteans were the grossest and coarsest of any before or after this long period. Since then, everything having begun the turn on the upward or luminous arc, matter and man are slowly radiating finer qualities of substance and of force. This progressive refinement of matter reflecting humanity's mental and spiritual evolution, will continue until, in the far distant future, the human encasement will be "relatively transparent, or diaphanous and luminous -- an ethereal body of actually condensed light" (ET 65).

The human body has "Manasic as well as Kamic organs," so that the cells answer to physical, mental, and spiritual impulses. The higher ego cannot act directly on the body, as its consciousness belongs to another plane of ideation; it has to act through its alter ego -- the personal self (BCW 12:368-9; or St in Oc 90-1). The inert physical body is built, cell for cell, upon the invisible substance of the astral model-body or linga-sarira. The latter contains the real organs of the senses and sensations, and it transmits the mental, emotional, and instinctual impulses to which the physical body reacts.

The lower mind acts upon the physical organs and their cells; but only the higher mind can influence the atoms in these cells, and arouse the brain to a mental conception of spiritual ideas. That is to say, ideal, mental, and physiological wholeness depend upon the dominance of the atomic, spiritual impulses over the desires of the selfish kama-manasic nature. The personal nature is limited in action to the material, molecular cell. This subtle but practical interplay of his physical and superphysical nature points to the natural unity of purpose in the trend of ethics and physiology.

With power to know good and evil, and free will to choose, man is responsible for refining and perfecting his material, personal nature into becoming a responsive and powerful medium for manifesting his spiritual and higher intellectual individuality. The inner man is ever acting with the cosmic evolutionary urge toward perfection of type. It is this reincarnating ego which directs the atomic life of the fertilized germ-cells in upbuilding the body according to pattern; this is the mysterious organizer which eludes all analyses of biological researchers. Likewise, the morally and intellectually irresponsible entities evolving in the lower kingdoms are impulsed, in addition to the urge of each individual entity's monad, by the instinctual phase of the universal mind which is directed by celestial beings acting with the so-called laws of nature.

The universe being a living organism functioning throughout consciously, has its analogy in the physiological operation of the human body. Hence, biological scientists who tamper with the natural arrangements of chromosomes or artificially combine different embryonic elements, instead of solving the problem of life, are only dealing with the matter which is manifesting the conscious creative powers of ideation.

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

Chain Used in modern theosophy to designate the visible and invisible globes which form the interior and exterior structure of any celestial body. The kosmos as a whole is a living organism, subdivided into almost innumerable subordinate series of hierarchical units; hence the kosmos is an assemblage of beings of many kinds, each of which is a compound unit, and in order to signify that the elements composing each such unit are linked together as an individual, the word chain is applied to celestial bodies.

The teaching is that every celestial body whatever, visible or invisible, forms a unity with companion globes on invisible planes. When referring to the chains of globes forming a solar system, it is customary to call them planetary chains; thus we have the earth-chain, the lunar chain, the Mercury-chain, etc., each consisting of seven such globes on the manifested plane, to which the letters A, B, C, D, E, F, and G are applied.

The globes of a chain are said to be in coadunation but not in consubstantiality, which means that, though of different grades of materiality, they form a catenary unit. Although each chain consists of seven or twelve globes, the only one visible to the human eye on earth is that which is on the same plane of materiality. Of the twelve globes to each chain, seven belong to the manifested worlds and five to the unmanifested. The seven manifested globes are distributed on four planes, and the twelve globes on seven planes, as shown in the diagram.

The left-hand side of the diagram represents the descending or shadowy arc of evolution, the right side the ascending or luminous arc. Our universe is also described as one of a cosmic chain of universes.

In other particular uses of the word, the Hermetic Chain is the succession of teachers of the esoteric wisdom who preserve and pass on the sacred knowledge from generation to generation.

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