Bundahish or Bundahis (Pahlavi) (from bun root, origin + dah to create)

Origin of creation; a Zoroastrian mythologico-theological work treating of cosmogony, the government of the world, and its end. Its present form is of later date than the Avesta, but the material contained in it is of distinctly archaic character and runs far back into the night of early Persian history.

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Bur (Icelandic) (from burdr birth)

Emanation of Buri, primeval root of being in the Norse Eddas. From Bur sprang the creative trinity: Odin (Allfather), Vile (divine will), and Vi or Ve (awe, sanctity). These three forces produce the systems of worlds where the gods feast at the stellar and planetary tables on mead (experience of life).

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Burham-i-Kati. See Borhan Quatiu {SD 2:366-7}

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Buri, Bore (Icelandic, Swedish) (from burdr birth)

Primeval progenitor of cosmic life in the Norse Eddas. During the "frost giant" (long ages of nonlife) the cow Audhumla (symbol of fertility) licked salt from the blocks of ice which were all that existed in the Great Void (Ginnungagap). She uncovered the head of Buri, first divine being. From him emanated Bur (which corresponds to the Second Logos of Greek thought), and he in turn gave rise to the trinity of creators -- Odin, Vile, and Vi -- who brought the worlds into being.

In Scandinavian lands King Bore or Buri still symbolizes the cold which reigns during the long winter.

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Buddhas of Contemplation. See DHYANI-BUDDHA

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Buddhaphala (Sanskrit) (from buddha enlightened + phala fruit)

The fruit of the Buddha, which is won when the arhat has attained the fruition of arhatship (arhattvaphala).

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Buddha-Siddhartha. See GAUTAMA

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Buddhi (Sanskrit) (from the verbal root budh to awaken, enlighten, know)

The spiritual soul, the faculty of discriminating, the channel through which streams divine inspiration from the atman to the ego, and therefore that faculty which enables us to discern between good and evil -- spiritual conscience. The qualities of the buddhic principle when awakened are higher judgment, instant understanding, discrimination, intuition, love that has no bounds, and consequent universal forgiveness.

In the theosophical scheme, it is the sixth principle counting upwards in the human constitution: the vehicle of pure, universal spirit, hence an inseparable garment or vehicle of atman. In its essence of the highest plane of akasa or alaya, buddhi stands in the same relation to atman as, on the cosmic scale, mulaprakriti does to parabrahman.

Buddhi uses manas as its garment, and in the former are likewise stored the fruitages of the many incarnations on earth; hence buddhi is often called both the seed and flower of manas. Buddhi is truly the center of spiritual consciousness and therefore its qualities are enduring. The purer and higher part of manas must awaken, by rising to it, this essential energy that inherently resides in buddhi so that the latter may become active in a person's life. Buddha and Christ are examples of sages who had become human imbodiments of the usually latent qualities of buddhi. Buddhi becomes more or less conscious on this plane by the flowerings it draws from manas after every incarnation of the ego. "Buddhi would remain only an impersonal spirit without this element which it borrows from the human soul, which conditions and makes of it, in this illusive Universe, as it were something separate from the universal soul for the whole period of the cycle of incarnation" (Key 159-60).

"No purely spiritual Buddhi (divine Soul) can have an independent (conscious) existence before the spark which issued from the pure Essence of the Universal Sixth principle, -- or the over-soul, -- has (a) passed through every elemental form of the phenomenal world of that Manvantara, and (b) acquired individuality, first by natural impulse, and then by self-induced and self-devised efforts (checked by its Karma), thus ascending through all the degrees of intelligence, from the lowest to the highest Manas, from mineral and plant, up to the holiest archangel (Dhyani-Buddha)" (SD 1:17).

In the human constitution buddhi is a ray from the cosmic principle mahabuddhi or adi-buddhi, a synonym for alaya, pradhana, or the Second Logos, while akasa in its higher reaches is identic with alaya.

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

Buddhi-manas (Sanskrit) (from buddhi spiritual soul + manas intellect)

The higher ego, the principle of essential self-consciousness, especially when considered as over-enlightened by the atman or self per se. Buddhi-manas is the karana-sarira (causal body), hence the immortal or spiritual self which passes intact from one incarnation to another. This higher self or ego is formed of the indissoluble union of buddhi, the sixth principle counting upwards, and the spiritual efflorescence of manas, the fifth principle. Buddhi-manas is the divine individual soul infilled with the light of the ray from the atman, and hence includes human intellect and egoic self-consciousness, in addition to all the spiritual faculties and powers inherent in the ray itself.

See also ATMA-BUDDHI-MANAS

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Buddhindriyas (Sanskrit) In Hindu philosophy, one of the three main divisions of the human being according to the indriyas (instruments, organs); the "organs or means of spiritual consciousness, apperception, sense and action" {FSO 275}.

See also INDRIYA

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Buddhism {}

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Buddhi-taijasi (Sanskrit) In relation to the human principles, used to express the state of manas when it is bathed in the radiance of buddhi, the spiritual soul; yet its more exact significance is the radiance of buddhi itself: buddhi when actively radiating its own buddhic svabhava or characteristic. When manas becomes irradiated with buddhi-taijasi, then the human manasic faculty, the intellect, becomes suffused and infilled with spiritual discrimination and vision. It is the human soul "illuminated by the radiance of the divine soul. Therefore, Manas-taijasi may be described as radiant mind; the human reason lit by the light of the spirit; and Buddhi-Manas is the revelation of the divine plus human intellect and self-consciousness" (Key 159n).

See also TAIJASA

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Buddhochinga Buddhocinga (Sanskrit) "The name of a great Indian Arhat who went to China in the 4th century to propagate Buddhism and converted masses of people by means of miracles and most wonderful magic feats" (TG 68).

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Budding or Gemmation A form a asexual reproduction in which the new individual is developed from a protuberance on the body of the parent, the new individual either remaining attached, as in polyzoa and most corals, or separating, as in hydra.

This process is used as an analogy to convey the method of reproduction followed by the humanity of the second root-race. The bodies were more ethereal and also differed in certain reproductive processes from what takes place in humans today, so that it is not now easy to give a complete picture of the process of budding as it then was.

The development of the germ-cell and its extrusion of polar cells furnish additional clues, both to this process and the allied process of fission. Besides a survival of analogous methods of reproduction in some of the present lower forms of life, there are also similar instances in the power which some creatures have of reproducing lost limbs, and in the power of cicatrization of wounds in the higher mammalia.

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Burning Bush (of Moses) {SD 1:121, 338n}.

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Buru Bonga (Kolararian) "The 'Spirit of the Hills.' This Dryadic deity is worshipped by the Kolarian tribes of Central India with great ceremonies and magical display" (TG 69).

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Buthon. See BYTHOS

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Butterfly The butterfly, because of its short life, its physical beauty, and its fluttering from flower to flower seeking nectar, has among many ancient peoples been regarded as an emblem of the impermanent, unstable characteristics of the lower human soul. For it is through the merely human soul that the person learns and gathers into the reincarnating ego the nectar or honey of wisdom through experience.

Likewise the psyche in occult Greek philosophy was the organ or vehicle of the nous, the higher ego or reimbodying monad. The caterpillar lives its period, making for itself a chrysalis, which after a stage of dormancy is broken by the emerging butterfly. This suggests the idea of the less becoming the greater, of an earthy entity becoming aerial. These thoughts led the ancient Greeks to use the butterfly as a symbol of the human soul (psyche); and in their mythology Psyche was in consequence represented in art with butterfly wings.

This process of nature is applied to humanity (SD 1:159): its peregrinations through the first three rounds is likened to a series of imbodiments through the caterpillar and chrysalis stages; only during the fourth round does mankind attain its first status of true humanity, more particularly during the latter part of the third root-race when human mind is enlightened by the manasaputras.

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Byang-khog. See JANG-KHOG

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Bythus, Bythos (Greek) The depth; chaos, the primeval deep, frequently used by the Gnostics. For example, with Valentinus it was the cosmic source whence emanated two by two the series of aeons. Sometimes it was considered as one member of a primordial cosmic mystic square -- sige (silence), bythos (depth), nous (intellect), and aletheia (truth); sometimes bythos was paired by Gnostics with sige as composing a primordial cosmic binary.

See also ABYSS

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Brothers of the Shadow. See LEFT-HAND PATH

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