Personalities Dictionary

Karma (Sanskrit). Physically, action: metaphysically, the LAW OF RETRIBUTION, the Law of cause and effect or Ethical Causation. Nemesis, only in one sense, that of bad Karma.

It is the eleventh Nidana in the concatenation of causes and effects in orthodox Buddhism ; yet it is the power that controls all things, the resultant of moral action, the meta physical Samskara, or the moral effect of an act committed for the attainment of something which gratifies a personal desire.

There is the Karma of merit and the Karma of demerit. Karma neither punishes nor rewards, it is simply the one Universal LAW which guides unerringly, and, so to say, blindly, all other laws productive of certain effects along the grooves of their respective causations.

When Buddhism teaches that "Karma is that moral kernel (of any being) which alone survives death and continues in transmigration ‘ or reincarnation, it simply means that there remains nought after each Personality but the causes produced by it ; causes which are undying, i.e., which cannot be eliminated from the Universe until replaced by their legitimate effects, and wiped out by them, so to speak, and such causes - unless compensated during the life of the person who produced them with adequate effects, will follow the reincarnated Ego, and reach it in its subsequent reincarnation until a harmony between effects and causes is fully reestablished. No "personality" - a mere bundle of material atoms and of instinctual and mental characteristics - can of course continue, as such, in the world of pure Spirit.

Only that which is immortal in its very nature and divine in its essence, namely, the Ego, can exist for ever. And as it is that Ego which chooses the personality it will inform, after each Devachan, and which receives through these personalities the effects of the Karmic causes produced, it is therefore the Ego, that self which is the "moral kernel" referred to and embodied karma, "which alone survives death."

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

Personality. In Occultism - which divides man into seven principles, considering him under the three aspects of the divine, the thinking or the rational, and the animal man - the lower quaternary or the purely astrophysical being; while by Individuality is meant the Higher Triad, considered as a Unity. Thus the Personality embraces all the characteristics and memories of one physical life, while the Individuality is the imperishable Ego which re-incarnates and clothes itself in one personality after another.

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

A Theosophical definition of Personality :

Personality

Theosophists draw a clear and sharp distinction, not of essence but of quality, between personality and individuality.

Personality comes from the Latin word persona, which means a mask, through which the actor, the spiritual individuality, speaks. The personality is all the lower man: all the psychical and astral and physical impulses and thoughts and tendencies, and what not. It is the reflection in matter of the individuality; but being a material thing it can lead us downwards, although it is in essence a reflection of the highest. Freeing ourselves from the domination of the person, the mask, the veil, through which the individuality acts, then we show forth all the spiritual and so-called superhuman qualities; and this will happen in the future, in the far distant aeons of the future, when every human being shall have become a buddha, a christ. Such is the destiny of the human race.

In occultism the distinction between the personality and the immortal individuality is that drawn between the lower quaternary or four lower principles of the human constitution and the three higher principles of the constitution or higher triad. The higher triad is the individuality; the personality is the lower quaternary. The combination of these two into a unity during a lifetime on earth produces what we now call the human being. The personality comprises within its range all the characteristics and memories and impulses and karmic attributes of one physical life; whereas the individuality is the aeonic ego, imperishable and deathless for the period of a solar manvantara. It is the individuality through its ray or human astral-vital monad which reincarnates time after time and thus clothes itself in one personality after another personality.

See also: Personality , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

Bach flower therapy (Bach flower essence method, Bach flower essence system):

 Homeopathic system of diagnosis and treatment developed in the 1930s by British physician Edward Bach (1886-1936). Bach put forth his philosophy in Heal Thyself: An Explanation of the Real Cause and Cure of Disease, first published in 1931. Therein he described five fundamental truths, in sum:

(1)           Souls, invincible and immortal sparks of the Almighty, are the real, Higher selves of humans.

(2)           Humanity's purpose is to develop virtues and wipe out all intrapersonal wrongs. Souls know what circumstances conduce to the perfection of human nature.

(3)           One's lifetime is a minuscule part of one's evolution.

(4)           When one's Soul and personality are in harmony, one is healthy and happy. The straying of the personality from the dictates of the Soul is the root cause of disease and unhappiness.

(5)           The Creator of all things is Love, and everything of which humans are conscious manifests the Creator.

Bach held that disease was essentially beneficial and that its design was to subject the personality to the Divine will of the Soul. He psychically discovered the specific healing effects of 38 wildflowers. The life force (soul quality or energy wavelength) of each of these flowers is transferable to water and thence to humans. Each of the so-called Bach flower remedies is a liquid that contains a soul quality with an affinity to a human soul quality; and each vegetable soul quality harmonizes its human counterpart with the Soul. The bases of classical diagnosis are conversation and intuition. Administration of the remedies is usually oral but may be external.

(See also: Bach flower therapy , Alternative Health, Body Mind and Soul)

God In its widest sense, the origin and root of all that is. Absolute being may be regarded perhaps as one equivalent expression, but even being itself may be regarded as a condition or attribute, and beyond it we must therefore postulate be-ness.

The idea of a root or origin sometimes connotes supreme power and governance; but such conception of a rootless root or infinite origin does not exist, for whatever is, or has been, or ever will be, must ultimately spring from the womb of boundless infinitude, and we can speak only of a power and governance in connection with the subordinate or minor -- however supernal or sublime they may be -- which spring forth from the Boundless in virtually infinite numbers through beginningless and endless duration.

Monotheists recognize but one God, conceived as a supreme personality and usually endowed with attributes pertaining to human personality, this mental image of God therefore being but a reflection of the human mind, with its inherent limitations and biases; yet even monotheists tacitly recognize other gods under the name of natural forces. Polytheism recognizes hierarchies of divine beings, and pantheism discerns divine power as everywhere and eternally present.

The human being also in essence is a divinity. The attribution of personality to God is justly regarded as an inadmissible limitation; but there is a lack of clearness as to the meaning of such words as personality, self, and individuality, which unfortunately leads some monotheistic minds to the fear that the denial of personality will reduce the conception of divinity to merely an empty abstraction. Yet our inability to conceive the inconceivable has nothing to do with our intuition and duty, nor with the vision of the inner god as the supreme guide in a human life.

See also PERSONAL GOD

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

REINCARNATION

Advanced minds seem to take reincarnation for granted: Plato, Emerson, Edison, Shaw, Jung -- even Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. All life transmigrates -- indeed, not just life, but everything "returns." Many find the latter idea hard to take -- as though there must be not only no mice in the Afterworld, but no machines! Yet, obviously, if one thing evolves, then everything evolves. Molecules of steel and granite cling tenaciously, as do we, to permanence and the spider chooses her life, even as we choose ours, because spiderdom is the acme of her aspirations. Where the will exists, there return exists.

Even if the evolution of life out of the inanimate does not indicate mind apart from brain, even if it demonstrates only the "accidental" fact that things must mutate "upward" or else dissolve downward into entropy, then "mind" or "purpose" is synonymous with or implicit in "accidence" itself. The one apodictic truth is that life and complexification have prevailed, whatever else has not, including the "content" of entropy.

The universe is mind, as we've pointed out elsewhere. The purpose of mind is to know itself, and knowing can succeed only through particularization.

One way to understand metempsychosis is to imagine our poor sublunary lives as pressings onto phonograph records, on the Akasha's etheric record. When the Atma particle, or Oversoul, incarnates, it shuffles off its generalized shell and starts to particularize. In so doing it may, under certain rare and privileged circumstances, find itself able to examine previous akashic recordings in which it formed similar particularizations. The Oversoul itself, however, is made up of all these countless recorded souls. With each experience it grows in metamorphic complexity. In the Oversoul the Whole is greater that its parts -- although when it separates individually the part is naturally greater than the Whole.

The Buddhists hold that there is no "immutable soul." Therefore reincarnation is simply a way of expressing the rebirth of unenlightened mind. Rebirth is then merely like the same sand pouring into different vessels: bucket, goblet, urn, etc. If death is the abandonment of personal self, then the dividing walls between us crumble and memory has access to all former lives. Most people tend to remember only the former lives of the more interesting or arresting personalities: kings, queens, martyrs, monsters, etc. That's why there are so many former Napoleons and Cleopatras and so few kitchenmaids and village idiots.

Finally, we must detach ourselves from the encapsulating Xtian belief in literal "Resurrection." We must understand that the "raising of the dead" is a metaphorical version, not of reincarnation, but of renewal within life. To be reborn of the flesh, of fire, of water and the spirit -- these are its tetramorphic aspects, to be sure, but resurrection, reincarnation and being "born again" are all symbols of the birth or rebirth of the spirit within the "dead" soul of materialistic greed. Rebirth begins before physical death and proceeds post-mortem into actual reincarnation. Reincarnation per se, however, is not acceptable to orthodox Xtianity in the slightest because it neutralizes Salvation.

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

Advaita-jnana - knowledge of non-duality. Although in the true sense this refers to the Supreme Absolute Personality of Godhead who is devoid of all duality, the Mayavada conception of advaitajnana is that the ultimate substance, brahma, is devoid of form, qualities, personality, and variegatedness.

(See also: Advaita-jnana , Bhakti, Bhakti Yoga, Bhakti Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

atman: (Sanskrit) "The soul; the breath; the principle of life and sensation." The soul in its entirety - as the soul body (anandamaya kosha) and its essence (Parashakti and Parasiva). One of Hinduism's most fundamental tenets is that we are the atman, not the physical body, emotions, external mind or personality. In Hindu scriptures, atman sometimes refers to the ego-personality, and its meaning must be determined according to context. The Atma Upanishad (13) describes atman, or purusha, as threefold: bahyatman, the outer or physical person; antaratman, the inner person, excluding the physical form, who perceives, thinks and cognizes; and Paramatman, the transcendent Self God within. See: Paramatman, kosha, soul.

(See also: Atman , Hinduism, 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.

ego

Self; feeling of I, me, mine. The consciousness in man, as in being aware of himself. Esoteric philosophy teaches the existence of two Egos in man, the mortal or personal, and the higher, the divine or impersonal, calling the former "personality," and the latter "individuality."

(See also: Ego , Body Mind and Soul)

integration

(Aurobindo) Yogic transmutation of the many personalities that constitute a person

(See also: Integration , Body Mind and Soul)

Adhyatmika:

Adhyatmika: From being the personality in possession of his senses [adhyatmika] He is as well the controlling deity [adhidaivika] as the person separate therefrom perceived as an other embodied living being [adhibhhautika]. The individual person possessing different instruments of senses is called the adhyatmic person, and the individual controlling deity of the senses is called adhidaivic. The embodiment seen on the eyeballs is called the adhibhautic person. [SB 2:10-8]

(See also: Adhyatmika , Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

GOD

Anything from a psychic projection to a full macrocosmic individual. Einstein, shunning Judeo-Xtian pleadings, defined God as the ultimate natural order. Deus est homo. Man is God. Indeed all beings are Gods or immortal entities. The Gods, as such, however, inhabit various levels of substantiality and, as superior entities, exist independently in their own right. And this is not just because strong personalities (as well as human society in general) create and batten projections and archetypes, but because semi-being actually wills itself to be born into that state between Matter and the Void. the Gods are being itself, rather than any particular substance. That is, they are pure substance or the conscious potentiality behind substance. Every mortal, Theosophy has pointed out, has his divine counterpart, his celestial doppelganger or heavenly prototype. It is this personal archetype that we call The Father (or Guardian Angel). Theophany is the rare union (in adepts) of the heavenly counterpart with its earth shadow-self. The divine archetypes are not confined to ordinary human beings, moreover, but ascend to ever more infinite celestial monads themselves. When we speak of The Gods or the God beyond the Gods, such as Allfather Odin or Zeus, Father of the Gods we refer to just these higher monads.

It is difficult to remember that all seemingly separate things -- all individuals -- created themselves out of the Original Void and go on forever creating themselves. Thus, spirit manifests itself through matter; we never cease to embody and demonstrate divinity -- sometimes wisely, more often not. It is the gravest error to reproduce and propagate life indiscriminately. Such attempts to reincarnate oneself on the merely material plane, to maintain the same identity perptually through the generation of progeny -- this form of lust vitiates the Spirit and greedily confines matter disproportionately to a single, inferior and separationist aim. That in turn results in premature entropy and the abortion of Cosmic Purpose.

We should distinguish between various divine synonyms. Daimon, for instance, did not, amongst the Greeks, have our sense of demon, but was rather a spirit or higher self. Socrates spoke often of his daimon who conversed with him. The Sanskrit deva, although translated god, amongst the Hindus means any God, but in the Zend Avesta it is always a malevolent spirit. In Buddhism deva refers to almost anything from a legendary hero to a hobgoblin, but pure Buddhism attaches no importance to Gods of any kind. It considers them to be illusions, like everything else.

Whether reflective of reality or not, it is easy enough to plot an origin for God in the singular, but whence the proliferation of multi-deities? In Egypt they were seen simply as the natures of things (neteru). Iamblichus asks of the Egyptians, however, what the cause of the distinction between them is and whether it is from their energies, or their passive motions, or from things that are consequent, or from their different arrangement with respect to bodies. By the latter, he goes on to say that he means, for example, that Gods inhabit the ethereal, that demons inhabit the air and that souls inhabit terrestrial bodies.

Of course, it is differentiation that being comes to be in the first place. Before differentiation there is nothing but tohu-bohu -- indeed between the Void and confusion (or chaos), there is little difference. With the utterance of the command Be! the zero is annihilated.

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

A Theosophical definition of Individuality :

Individuality

Theosophists draw a sharp and comprehensive distinction between individuality and personality. The individuality is the spiritual-intellectual and immortal part of us; deathless, at least for the duration of the kosmic manvantara  - the root, the very essence of us, the spiritual sun within, our inner god. The personality is the veil, the mask, composed of various sheaths of consciousness through which the individuality acts.

The word individuality means that which cannot be divided, that which is simple and pure in the philosophical sense, indivisible, uncompounded, original. It is not heterogeneous; it is not composite; it is not builded up of other elements; it is the thing in itself. Whereas, on the contrary, the intermediate nature and the lower nature are composite, and therefore mortal, being builded up of elements other than themselves. Strictly speaking, individuality and monad are identical, but the two words are convenient because of the distinctions of usage contained in them; just as consciousness and self-consciousness are fundamentally identical, but convenient as words on account of the distinctions contained in them. (See also Monad)

See also: Individuality , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

Maya (Sanskrit) [from the verbal root ma to measure, form]

Illusion, the non-eternal; in Brahmanical philosophy, the fabrication by the human mind of ideas derived from interior and exterior impressions, as it tries to interpret and understand the universe. While the exterior world exists -- or it could not be illusory -- we do not

See clearly and as they actually are that which our mind and senses present to us. A traditional Vedantic illustration says that at twilight a person sees a coiled rope on the ground and springs aside, thinking it is a snake; the rope is there, but no snake.

Thus maya means that our minds are blinded and perverted by our own preconceptions and imperfections, and so does not interpret the world as it is.

"Maya or illusion is an element which enters into all finite things, for everything that exists has only a relative, not an absolute, reality, since the appearance which the hidden noumenon assumes for any observer depends upon his power of cognition. . . . Nothing is permanent except the one hidden absolute existence which contains in itself the noumena of all realities. The existences belonging to every plane of being, up to the highest Dhyan-Chohans, are, in degree, of the nature of shadows cast by a magic lantern on a colourless screen; but all things are relatively real, for the cogniser is also a reflection, and the things cognised are therefore as real to him as himself.

Whatever reality things possess must be looked for in them before or after they have passed like a flash through the material world; but we cannot cognise any such existence directly, so long as we have sense-instruments which bring only material existence into the field of our consciousness. Whatever plane our consciousness may be acting in, both we and the things belonging to that plane are, for the time being, our only realities. As we rise in the scale of development we perceive that during the stages through which we have passed we mistook shadows for realities, and the upward progress of the Ego is a series of progressive awakenings, each advance bringing with it the idea that now, at last, we have reached 'reality'; but only when we shall have reached the absolute Consciousness, and blended our own with it, shall we be free from the delusions produced by Maya" (SD 1:39-40).

Though sometimes used as an equivalent for avidya, maya is properly applicable only to prakriti, which is doomed to disappear at the time of pralaya. It is thus prakriti and its productions or changes (vikaras) which, by reacting against the operations of the consciousness of a perceiving being, casts the perceiver into the bonds of illusions, out of which the deluded being has to strive in order to free himself from the maya with which he is surrounded.

"Just as milliards of bright sparks dance on the waters of an ocean above which one and the same moon is shining, so our evanescent personalities -- the illusive envelopes of the immortal monad-ego -- twinkle and dance on the waves of Maya. They last and appear, as the thousands of sparks produced by the moon-beams, only so long as the Queen of the Night radiates her lustre on the running waters of life: the period of a Manvantara; and then they disappear, the beams -- symbols of our eternal Spiritual Egos -- alone surviving, re-merged in, and being, as they were before, one with the Mother-Source" (SD 1:237).

(See also: Maya , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Manas (Sanskrit) [from the verbal root man to think]

The seat of mentation and egoic consciousness; the third principle in the descending scale of the sevenfold human constitution. Manas is the human person, the reincarnating ego, immortal in essence, enduring in its higher aspects through the entire manvantara. When imbodied, manas is dual, gravitating toward buddhi in its higher aspects and in its lower aspects toward kama. The first is intuitive mind, the second the animal, ratiocinative consciousness, the lower mentality and passions of the personality. " 'Manas is dual -- lunar in the lower, solar in its upper portion' . . . and herein is contained the mystery of an adept's as of a profane man's life, as also that of the post-mortem separation of the divine from the animal man" (SD 2:495-6).

At present manas is not fully developed in mankind, and kama or desire is still ascendant. In the fifth round, however, manas "will be fully active and developed in the entire race. Hence the people of the earth have not yet come to the point of making a conscious choice as to the path they will take; but when in the cycle referred to, Manas is active, all will then be compelled to consciously make the choice to right or left, the one leading to complete and conscious union with Atma, the other to the annihilation of those beings who prefer that path" (Ocean 59). Those human beings who cannot rise to the higher manasic and buddhic aspects of themselves in the fifth round will fall into their nirvanic rest for the remainder of this embodiment of the earth-chain, to re-emerge at the beginning of the next embodiment of the earth to pick up their evolutionary journey.

The annihilation of those who choose the left-hand or matter path occurs because they use their manasic faculty to its prostitution for selfish and evil purposes, which leads to a final rupture of the manasic links. When this rupture is complete, the entity being no longer attached to the higher triad sinks rapidly into the whirlpool of absolute matter and is finally disintegrated into its component life-atoms. The higher triad or monad thus freed from its downward-tending personality, after a period of rest in spiritual realms evolves a new lower garment in which to manifest in a later manvantara.

If the union between the lower or personal manas, and the individual reincarnating ego or higher manas, has not been effected during the course of past lives, then the former is left to share the fate of the lower animal, gradually to dissolve into its component life-atoms and to have its personality annihilated. But even then the spiritual ego remains of necessity a distinct being.

"The higher and the lower Manas are one . . . and yet they are not -- and that is the great mystery. The Higher Manas or Ego is essentially divine, and therefore pure; no stain can pollute it, as no punishment can reach it, per se, the more so since it is innocent of, and takes no part in, the deliberate transactions of its Lower Ego. Yet by the very fact that, though dual and during life the Higher is distinct from the Lower, 'the Father and Son' are one, and because that in reuniting with the parent Ego, the Lower Soul fastens upon and impresses upon it all its bad as well as good actions -- both have to suffer, the Higher Ego, though innocent and without blemish, has to bear the punishment of the misdeeds committed by the lower Self together with it in their future incarnation. The whole doctrine of atonement is built upon this old esoteric tenet; for the Higher Ego is the antitype of that which is on this earth the type, namely, the personality" (TBL 55-6).

Should the human personality be of a heavily gross and materialistic type so that very few spiritual impulses are gathered in after death by the higher triad, then this higher triad is reincarnated almost immediately because there was nothing in the life just lived to call for the devachan experience of the personality. There can be no devachan for the manasic personality unless this personality has had in the life just lived at least a modicum of spiritual thought, yearning, and impulse. It is the higher manas which experiences devachan because of the spiritual qualities inherent in this higher manas and to which it has given imperfect expression in the life just lived. It is in devachan that this higher manas has its field of spiritual-mental activity, where it receives its due compensation, its mead of reward, for all the spiritual disappointments, sufferings, and imperfect expressions which it had to bear during earth-life.

Mahat or universal mind is the source of manas: what manas is in the human constitution, mahat is in the cosmic constitution. Manas is thus a direct ray from the cosmic mahat. Manas is sometimes loosely called the kshetrajna or real incarnating and permanent spiritual ego, the individuality; but the kshetrajna strictly speaking is the buddhi-manas or higher manas.

(See also: Manas , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

MYSTICISM -

1. communication that God makes of his or her spiritual light of the depths of the human heart. (Dhu’n-Nun Misri)

2. absolute (Evelyn Underhill)

3. states characterized by ineffability, that of knowledge (William James)

4. feeling of union with all life.

5. awareness of a dazzling light that fills the mind and heart.

6. experience of being bathed in emotions of joy, awe, wonder.

7 intuitive flashes of awareness and understanding of the universe.

8. merging with the creation, creator, nature.

9. feeling of transcendental love and compassion for all living things.

10. renewed sense of energy and vitality and health.

11. sudden vanishing of suffering and fear of death.

12. enhanced appreciation of art and beauty and less attachment to material things.

13. appearance of ESP and enhanced intellect, gifts and powers.

14. renewed sense of purpose and mission in life.

15. Change in personality and inner radiance. (NAD)

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

Annihilation Complete destruction of consciousness is an impossibility in nature, for there can be no annihilation of the consciousness which makes the essential person. The universe is built of illimitable hosts of evolving entities existing in all-various grades of evolutionary unfoldment. All are passing through a continual series of changes -- comprising the shedding of sheath after sheath -- involving their essential consciousness.

These entities continuously modify the vehicles through which they express themselves on the various cosmic planes. When the elements forming a compound become dissociated, the compound as such ceases to exist, at least temporarily; but there still exists that which brought the elements into the compound union.

The human personality is constantly changing, even during a single life, and even more greatly through rebirth; indeed, the higher states of individualized consciousnesses, though they may endure for periods so vast as to seem to be everlasting, must disappear for a time during the kosmic pralaya. Even then, when the physical, psychic, and spiritual vehicles are reduced to unity, it is not annihilation any more than a person in dreamless sleep is annihilated while his higher self is in its original state of absolute consciousness, though it leaves no impression on the sleeping and therefore unconscious brain. "Nor is the individuality -- nor even the essence of the personality, if any be left behind -- lost, because re-absorbed. For, however limitless -- from a human standpoint -- the paranirvanic state, it has yet a limit in Eternity. Once reached, the same monad will re-emerge therefrom, as a still higher being, on a far higher plane, to recommence its cycle of perfected activity" (SD 1:266).

Nirvana, then, does not mean utter annihilation, nor did the Buddha teach utter annihilation or wiping out. Thus fundamental consciousness is uninterrupted from eternity to eternity, although undergoing continual change. But such change is not a difference of essence, but a continuously enlarging and ever greater unfolding of the inner essence.

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

ego: The external personality or sense of "I" and "mine." Broadly, individual identity. In Saiva Siddhanta and other schools, the ego is equated with the tattva of ahamkara, "Imaker," which bestows the sense of I-ness, individuality and separateness from God.

See: ahamkara, anava.

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

RISING SIGN - ascended; sign or the Easter horizon at the time of birth signifying the personality as viewed by others. (NAD)

(See also: RISING SIGN , Wiccan Pagan, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)