According to the theory of transmigration, even if the individual is to take another birth immediately after his death, the performance of Sraaddha adds to his happiness in his new birth. So it is the imperative duty of everybody to perform Sraaddha ceremony for his parents and forefathers.

This is an excerpt from the book What Becomes Of The Soul After Death by Sri Swami Sivananda.

Read more here: » Sraaddha And Prayer For The Dead: Importance Of Sraaddha Ceremony

Man takes birth in this world with a definite purpose. It is not for mere sensual enjoyment that man is born in this world. The goal of life is Self-realisation or God-consciousness. The various activities of life should ultimately lead to that ideal or goal; or else the life is wasted. There is no difference between the life of a beast and that of a man if he does not attempt to attain the goal of life.
In the Gita you will find: “Whosoever leaving the body goes forth remembering Me alone, at the time of death, he attains My being; there is no doubt about this.”

The death and dying and the life after death has always fascinated man. This is an excerpt from the book What Becomes Of The Soul After Death by Sri Swami Sivananda.

Read more here: » Sraaddha: Prayer For The Dead - Why Scriptures Are Read To A Dying Man?

The second question is of what, apart from the cessation of metabolism and the onset of physiological processes of decay, happens, especially to humans, during and after death (or "once dead", thinking of death as a permanent state). In particular, there is the question of what becomes of consciousness or the soul. Such questions are of long standing, and belief in an afterlife (such as an underworld), or in reincarnation, are common and ancient. The belief that any and all consciousness ceases to exist at death, and that death ("after-life" ...

See also:

Death, Death - Interpretations of death, Death - Criteria of human death: medical religious and legal, Death - When is a person dead?, Death - The process of dying, Death - Cell death, Death - Physiological changes during the process of dying, Death - Signs of approaching death, Death - When death is imminent, Death - When death occurs, Death - Causes of death in the United States, Death - Other notable causes of death in the United States 2002, Death - What happens to humans after death?, Death - Physiological consequences of human death, Death - Settlement of dead human bodies, Death - Personification of death, Death - Unwritten customs and superstitions

Read more here: » Death: Encyclopedia II - Death - What happens to humans after death?

The second question is of what, apart from the cessation of metabolism and the onset of physiological processes of decay, happens, especially to humans, during and after death (or "once dead", thinking of death as a permanent state). In particular, there is the question of what becomes of consciousness or the soul. Such questions are of long standing, and belief in an afterlife (such as an underworld), or in reincarnation, are common and ancient. The belief that any and all consciousness ceases to exist at death, and that death ("after-life" ...

See also:

Death, Death - Interpretations of death, Death - Criteria of human death: medical religious and legal, Death - When is a person dead?, Death - The process of dying, Death - Cell death, Death - Physiological changes during the process of dying, Death - Signs of approaching death, Death - When death is imminent, Death - When death occurs, Death - Most causal causes of death, Death - Other notable causes of death in the United States 2002, Death - What happens to humans after death?, Death - Physiological consequences of human death, Death - Settlement of dead human bodies, Death - Personification of death, Death - Unwritten customs and superstitions

Read more here: » Death: Encyclopedia II - Death - What happens to humans after death?

From the darkest of all realms, the Netherealm emerges the dark and evil Noob Saibot, who is considered by many to be the master of shadows. However, despite being a wraith, his origins show that he was something else before becoming what he is today. Before his death, he was the proud Lin Kuei warrior named Sub-Zero who contained a seed of evil within his soul. Before his death, he would be told by Quan Chi that he could become fully tainted to evil once he was killed, and true to his word, he was- after his death at the hands of the ninja ...

See also:

Noob Saibot, Noob Saibot - About Noob Saibot, Noob Saibot - Fighting styles, Noob Saibot - Allies and Enemies, Noob Saibot - Storyline, Noob Saibot - Noob-Saibot's True Identity, Noob Saibot - Noob sans Saibot, Noob Saibot - Game appearances, Noob Saibot - Trivia, Noob Saibot - Fatalities

Read more here: » Noob Saibot: Encyclopedia II - Noob Saibot - About Noob Saibot

A Theosophical definition of Kama-Rupa :

Kama-Rupa

(Sanskrit) A compound word signifying "desire body." It is that part of man's inner constitution in which dwell or inhere the various desires, affections, hates, loves  - in short, the various mental and psychical energies.

After death it becomes the vehicle in the astral worlds of the higher principles of the man that was. But these higher principles are nevertheless scarcely conscious of the fact, because the rupture of the golden cord of life at the moment of the physical death plunges the cognizing  personal entity into a merciful stupor of unconsciousness, in which stupor it remains a longer or shorter period depending upon its qualities of spirituality or materiality. The more spiritual the man was the longer the period of merciful unconsciousness lasts, and vice versa.

After death, as has been frequently stated elsewhere, there occurs what is called the second death, which is the separation of the immortal part of the second or intermediate duad from the lower portions of this duad, which lower portions remain as the kama-rupa in the etheric or higher astral spheres which are intermediate between the devachanic and the earthly spheres. In time this kama-rupa gradually fades out in its turn, its life-atoms at such dissolution passing on to their various and unceasing peregrinations.

It is this kama-rupa which legend and story in the various ancient world religions or philosophies speak of as the shade, and which it has been customary in the Occident to call the spook or ghost. It is, in short, all the mortal elements of the human soul that was. The kama-rupa is an exact astral duplicate, in appearance and mannerism, of the man who died; it is his eidolon or "image." (See also Second Death)

See also: Kama-Rupa, Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul)

Scarabeus, In Egypt, the symbol of resurrection, and also of rebirth; of resurrection for the mummy or rather of the highest aspects of the personality which animated it, and of rebirth for the Ego, the "spiritual body" of the lower, human Soul.

Egyptologists give us but half of the truth, when in speculating upon the meaning of certain inscriptions, they say, "the justified soul, once arrived at a certain period of its peregrinations (simply at the death of the physical body) should be united to its body (i.e., the Ego) never more to be separated from it ". (Rougé.) What is this so-called body? Can it be the mummy? Certainly not, for the emptied mummified corpse can never resurrect. It can only be the eternal, spiritual vestment, the EGO that never dies but gives immortality to whatsoever becomes united with it.

"The delivered Intelligence (which) retakes its luminous envelope and (re)becomes Da?mon ", as Prof. Maspero says, is the spiritual Ego; the personal Ego or Kama Manas, its direct ray, or the lower soul, is that which aspires to become Osirified, i.e., to unite itself with its "god "; and that portion of it which will succeed in so doing, will never more be separated from it (the god), not even when the latter incarnates again and again, descending periodically on earth in its pilgrimage, in search of further experiences and following the decrees of Karma. Khem, "the sower of seed ", is shown on a stele in a picture of Resurrection after physical death, as the creator and the sower of the grain of corn, which, after corruption, springs up afresh each time into a new ear, on which a scarab beetle is seen poised; and Deveria shows very justly that "Ptah is the inert, material form of Osiris, who will become Sokari (the eternal Ego) to be reborn, and afterwards be Harmachus ", or Horus in his transformation, the risen god.

The prayer so often found in the tumular inscriptions, "the wish for the resurrection in one’s living soul" or the Higher Ego, has ever a scarabeus at the end, standing for the personal soul. The scarabeus is the most honoured, as the most frequent and familiar, of all Egyptian symbols. No mummy is without several of them; the favourite ornament on engravings, house hold furniture and utensils is this sacred beetle, and Pierret pertinently shows in his Livre des Morts that the secret meaning of this hieroglyph is sufficiently explained in that the Egyptian name for the scarabeus Kheper signifies to be, to become, to build again.

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

A Theosophical definition of Manas :

Manas

(Sanskrit) The root of this word means "to think," "to cogitate," "to reflect"  - mental activity, in short. The center of the ego-consciousness in man and in any other quasi-self-conscious entity. The third substance-principle, counting downwards, of which man's constitution is composed.

Manas springs forth from buddhi (the second principle) as the fruit from the flower; but manas itself is mortal, goes to pieces at death  - insofar as its lower parts are concerned. All of it that lives after death is only what is spiritual in it and that can be squeezed out of it, so to say  - the "aroma" of the manas; somewhat as the chemist takes from the rose the attar or essence of roses. The monad or atma-buddhi thereupon takes that "all" with it into the devachan, after the second death has taken place. Atman, with buddhi and with the higher part of manas, becomes thereupon the spiritual monad of man. Strictly speaking, this is the divine monad within its vehicle  - atman and buddhi  - combined with the human ego in its higher manasic element; but they are joined into one after death, and are hence spoken of as the spiritual monad.

The three principles forming the upper triad exist each on its own plane in consciousness and power; and as human beings we continuously feel their influence despite the enshrouding veils of a psychical and astral-physical character. We know of each principle only what we have so far evolved forth of it. All we know, for instance, of the third principle (counting from the top), the manas, is what we have so far assimilated of it in this fourth round. The manas will not be fully developed in us until the end of the next round. What we now call our manas is a generalizing term for the reincarnating ego, the higher manas.

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

A Theosophical definition of Heaven and Hell :

Heaven and Hell

Every ancient exoteric religion taught that the so-called heavens are divided into steps or grades of ascending bliss and purity; and the so-called hells into steps or grades of increasing purgation or suffering. Now the esoteric doctrine or occultism teaches that the one is not a punishment, nor is the other strictly speaking a reward.

The teaching is, simply, that each entity after physical death is drawn to the appropriate sphere to which the karmic destiny of the entity and the entity's own character and impulses magnetically attract it. As a man works, as a man sows, in his life, that and that only shall he reap after death. Good seed produces good fruit; bad seed, tares  - and perhaps even nothing of value or of spiritual use follows a negative and colorless life.

After the second death, the human monad "goes" to devachan  - often called in theosophical literature the heaven-world. There are many degrees in devachan: the highest, the intermediate, and the lowest.

What becomes of the entity, on the other hand, the lower human soul, that is so befouled and weighted with earth thought and the lower instincts that it cannot rise? There may be enough in it of the spirit nature to hold it together as an entity and enable it to become a reincarnating being, but it is foul, it is heavy; its tendency is consequently downwards. Can it therefore rise into a heavenly felicity? Can it go even into the lower realms of devachan and there enjoy its modicum of the beatitude, bliss, of everything that is noble and beautiful? No. There is an appropriate sphere for every degree of development of the ego-soul, and it gravitates to that sphere and remains there until it is thoroughly purged, until the sin has been washed out, so to say.

These are the so-called hells, beneath even the lowest ranges of devachan; whereas the arupa heavens are the highest parts of the devachan. Nirvana is a very different thing from the heavens. (See also Kama-Loka, Avichi, Devachan, Nirvana)

See also: Heaven and Hell, Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul)

Immortality That which is not subject to death, deathlessness. Death is the dissolution of a compound entity, where the compound itself ceases to exist, though its elements do not perish. Nor does the ensouling entity perish because of the dissolution of its physical, astral, or other vehicle. Hence in a restricted sense certain elements can be said to be immortal, relative to the compound they form.

Theosophy teaches the constant rebirths of the identic spiritual-intellectual individuality throughout the manvantara; and that, even after union into paranirvana, the individuality, precisely because it is then on its own higher plane or sphere of life, is not lost and will reemerge at a new manvantara to pursue its own particular cycle. This eternal monad, the spiritual-intellectual individuality, is the real and truly immortal essence of the person; and within this supreme cycle of immortality are a series of less immortalities, each representing the life cycle of one of the imbodiments of the monad. Death therefore of necessity becomes a recurrent process, precisely like birth or rebirth, and of many degrees, and simply means the dissolution of some group of lower sheaths enclosing the individual in imbodiment.

Viewing the question from the consciousness aspect, death means the exchange of one mode of consciousness for others. We cannot say offhand that we are either mortal or immortal, since we contain various elements of both kinds. The essence of the individuality is unconditionally immortal, its sheaths or bodies are mortal in various and relative degrees.

Immortality is conditional for the human soul: if it aspires to its inner god and allies itself therewith, the human soul becomes immortal because it is at one with its spiritual parent, the upper triad or monad. But if the personal or human soul refuse to recognize its spiritual essence and allies itself with increasing fullness with the complex compound of the lower human nature, it loses its chance of immortality and becomes but a psychological mortal compound itself.

The Buddha's statement that "nothing composite endures and consequently that as man is a composite entity there is in him no immortal and unchanging 'soul,' is the key. The 'soul' of man is changing from instant to instant -- learning, growing, expanding, evolving -- so that at no two consecutive seconds of time or of experience is it the same. Therefore it is not immortal. For immortality means enduring continually as you are. If you evolve you change, and therefore you cannot be immortal in the part which evolves, because you are growing into something greater" (FSO 385). In this sense, portions of an entity may endure for long periods of time, and thus be called immortal; but they are not immortal in the sense of continuing to exist unchanged or in a state identical to what they are now.

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

Atom atomos (Greek) Indivisible, individual, a unit; among the Greek Atomists what in theosophy is called a monad. Atomic theories of the constitution of the universe or of matter are many and ancient. In modern physics the atom is a small particle once thought indivisible, but now resolved into component units. In some philosophies, as that of Leibniz, the atoms (which he calls monads) are psychological rather than physical units -- unitary beings of diverse kinds and grades, composing the universe.

In theosophy, atoms have to be considered in relation to monads; in The Secret Doctrine gods, monads, and atoms are a triad like spirit, soul, and body. A monad is a divine-spiritual life-atom, a living being, evolving on its own plane, and a life-atom is the vehicle of the monad which ensouls it, and in turn ensouls a physical atom. The ultimates of nature are atoms on the material side, monads on the energic side; monads are indivisible, atoms divisible (a departure from the etymological meaning). Thus there is a quaternary of gods, monads, life-atoms, and physical atoms. "An atom may be compared to (and is for the Occultist) the seventh principle of a body or rather of a molecule.

The physical or chemical molecule is composed of an infinity of finer molecules and these in their turn of innumerable and still finer molecules. Take for instance a molecule of iron and so resolve it that it becomes non-molecular; it is then, at once transformed into one of its seven principles, viz., its astral body; the seventh of these is the atom. The analogy between a molecule of iron, before it is broken up, and this same molecule after resolution, is the same as that between a physical body before and after death. The principle remains minus the body. Of course this is occult alchemy, not modern chemistry" (TBL 84).

(See also: Atom, atomos, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Kama-rupa (Sanskrit) (from kama desire + rupa body, form)

The desire body; the portion of the human inner constitution in which inhere the various mental and psychic energies. After death it becomes the vehicle in the kama-loka of the usually unconscious higher principles of the person that was.

"After death . . . there occurs what is called the 'second death,' which is the separation of the immortal part of the second or intermediate Duad from the lower portions of this Duad, which lower portions remain as the kama-rupa in the etheric or higher astral spheres which are intermediate between the devachanic and the earthly spheres. In time this kama-rupa gradually fades out in its turn, its life-atoms at such dissolution passing on to their various and unceasing peregrinations.

"It is this kama-rupa which legend and story in the various ancient world-religions or philosophies speak of as the 'shade,' and which it has been customary in the Occident to call the 'spook,' or 'ghost.' It is, in short, all the mortal elements of the human soul that was. The kama-rupa is an exact astral duplicate, in appearance and mannerism, of the man who died; it is his eidolon or 'image' " (OG 76-7).

"Bereft as it is of its higher mind, spirit and physical senses, if left alone to its own senseless devices, it will gradually fade out and disintegrate. But, if forcibly drawn back into the terrestrial sphere whether by the passionate desires and appeals of the surviving friends or by regular necromantic practices -- one of the most pernicious of which is mediumship -- the 'spook' may prevail for a period greatly exceeding the span of the natural life of its body. Once the Kamarupa has learnt the way back to living human bodies, it becomes a vampire, feeding on the vitality of those who are so anxious for its company. In India these eidolons are called Pisachas, and are much dreaded . . ." (TG 172).

(See also: Kama-rupa, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Scarab [from Latin scarabaeus cf Greek karabos a beetle, Sanskrit sarabha a locust, Egyptian khepera from kheper to become, come into being anew]

The Egyptian symbol of the god Khepera -- the urgent spiritual impulse of creation, or regenerative revolving and reimbodiment. In modern times applied to the beetle Scarabaeus sacer or aegyptorum -- the sacred scarab. Orientalists generally regard the scarab as the symbol of resurrection because the beetle rolls a ball of dung containing its eggs, which it leaves to be hatched by the sun's rays.

This is said to represent in the small what was believed to take place in the great, that the sun was moving across the heavens holding within itself the germs which in course of stellar time evolve forth and remanifest in the solar cosmos. "Khem, 'the sower of seed,' is shown on a stele in a picture of Resurrection after physical death, as the creator and the sower of the grain of corn, which, after corruption, springs up afresh each time into a new ear, on which a scarabaeus beetle is seen poised; and Deveria shows very justly that 'Ptah is the inert, material form of Osiris, who will become Sokari (the eternal Ego) to be reborn, and afterwards be Harmachus,' or Horus in his transformation, the risen god. The prayer so often found in the tumular inscriptions, 'the wish for the resurrection in one's living soul' or the Higher Ego, has ever a scarabaeus at the end, standing for the personal soul. The scarabaeus is the most honoured, as the most frequent and familiar, of all Egyptian symbols" (TG 293).

"This mystical symbol shows plainly that the Egyptians believed in reincarnation and the successive lives and existences of the Immortal entity. Being, however, an esoteric doctrine, revealed only during the mysteries by the priest-hierophants and the Kings-Initiates to the candidates, it was kept secret" (SD 2:552).

(See also: Scarab, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Anesthesia (from Greek anaisthesia no feeling)

Want of feeling; a condition of total or partial insensibility, particularly to touch. The many classical references to anesthetics indicate that the ancients knew much about the subject that has not been rediscovered. Blavatsky refers to the sacred beverage used by the hierophants in ceremonies to free the astral soul from the bonds of matter, so that the inner man might rise to the level of spirit (IU 2:117, 1:540).

Surgical patients suffering from fright and fear before or during the induction of an anesthetic take it with more difficulty, and feel more aftereffects, than those who meet it without anxiety. The first stage of general anesthesia, usually not unpleasant, ends with the loss of physical consciousness. Then begins the second, or stage of struggling more or less vigorously, evidently due to the automatic reaction of the physical body, from which its conscious astral soul is being dissociated. In the third stage, the muscles relax and the disturbed heart and lungs settle down to regular rhythm, controlled by the sympathetic nervous system, as in a deep, dreamless sleep. The self-conscious ego, thus withdrawing from its ordinary state of being, enters more or less deeply into the subjective realm of its inner life. It is in a state of what has been called, paradoxically, conscious unconsciousness. The danger here is that the soul may become so far separated from its body that it does not come back again, and then death results.

However insensible the person is of externals, he is conscious in some part of his composite nature, just as each principle of his being has its own range of awareness after death. Some people have brought back a more or less clear memory of a state of being transcending anything they had ever imagined on earth. Their first feeling is one of a delicious peace and liberation; then comes a mental clearness with majestic visions of perfect truth, and a realization of a self-existent "I" as a part of a universal whole. The spiritually-minded person may attain to an instant and complete buddhi-manasic vision of "things as they are." Such a one, at the moment of recovery, is often vividly sensible of being aroused from a state of superior existence, but is unable to recall what it was. Again, any gleams of knowledge that do survive the transit may be misinterpreted by the brain-mind from its preconceived philosophical or religious ideas. The average person, however, brings back little if any remembrance of his experience.

The anesthetized person may also be conscious of standing aside or looking down upon his own body under operation, and retains a vague memory of the out-of-body experience.

See also SOMA

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

A Theosophical definition of Involution :

Involution

The reverse process or procedure of evolution. As evolution means the unfolding, the unwrapping, the rolling forth, of what already exists and is latent, so involution means the inwrapping, the infolding, the ingoing of what previously exists or has been unfolded, etc. Involution and evolution never in any circumstances can be even conceived of properly as operative the one apart from the other: every act of evolution is an act of involution, and vice versa.

To illustrate, as spirit and matter are fundamentally one and yet eternally coactive and interactive, so involution and evolution are two names for two phases of the same procedure of growth, and are eternally coactive and interactive.

As an example, the so-called descent of the monads into matter means an involution or involving or infolding of spiritual potencies into material vehicles which coincidently and contemporaneously, through the compelling urge of the infolding energies, unfold their own latent capacities, unwrap them, roll them forth; and this is the evolution of matter. Thus what is the involution of spirit is contemporaneously and pari passu the evolution of matter. Contrariwise, on the ascending or luminous arc when the involved monadic essences begin to rise towards their primordial spiritual source they begin to unfold or unwrap themselves as previously on the descending arc they had infolded or inwrapped themselves. But this process of unfolding or evolution of the monadic essences is contemporaneous with and pari passu with the infolding and inwrapping, the involution, of the material energies and powers.

Human birth and death are outstanding illustrations or examples of the same thing. The child is born, and as it grows to its full efflorescence of power it evolves or rolls forth certain inherent characteristics or energies or faculties, all derived from the human being's svabhava or ego. Contrariwise, when the decline of human life begins, there is a slow infolding or inwrapping of these same facilities which thus seem gradually to diminish. These facilities and energies thus evolved forth in earth-life are the working of the innate spiritual and intellectual and psychical characteristics impelling and compelling the vehicular or body sides of the human constitution to express themselves as organs becoming more and more perfect as the child grows to maturity.

After death the process is exactly the reverse. The material or vehicular side of the being grows less and less strong and powerful, more and more involved, and becoming with every step in the process more dormant. But contemporaneously and coincidently the distinctly spiritual and intellectual powers and faculties themselves become released from the vehicles and begin to expand into ever larger efflorescence, attaining their maximum in the devachan. It is only the usual carelessness in accurate thinking that induces the idea that evolution is one distinct process acting alone, and that involution  - about which by the way very little is heard  - is another process acting alone. The two, as said above, are the two phases of activity of the evolving monads, and these phases exist contemporaneously at any moment, each of the two phases continually acting and interacting with the other phase. They are inseparable.

Just so with spirit and matter. Spirit is not something radically distinct from and utterly separate from matter. The two are fundamentally one, and the two are eternally coactive and interactive.

There are several terms in Sanskrit which correspond to what the theosophist means by evolution, but perhaps the best general term is pravritti, meaning to "revolve" or to "roll forwards," to unroll or to unwrap. Again, the reverse procedure or involution can probably best be expressed in Sanskrit by the term nivritti, meaning "rolling backwards" or "inwrapping" or "infolding." A term which is frequently interchangeable with evolution is emanation. (See also Evolution)

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

Yeheedah (Hebrew, Jewish). Lit., "Individuality "; esoterically, the highest individuality or Atma-Buddhi-Manas, when united in one.

This doctrine is in the Chaldean Book of Numbers, which teaches a septenary division of human "principles", so-called, as does the Kabalah in the Zohar, according to the Book of Solomon (iii.,Io4a so as translated in I. Myer’s Qabbalah). At the time of the conception, the Holy "sends a d’yook-nah, or the phantom of a shadow image" like the face of a man. it is designed and sculptured in the divine tzelem, i.e., the shadow image of the Elohim. " Elohim created man in his (their) tzelem " or image, says Genesis (i. 27). It is the tzelem that awaits the child and receives it at the moment of its conception, and this tzelem is our linga sharira. "

The Rua’h forms with the Nephesh the actual personality of the man ", and also his individuality, or, as expressed by the Kabbalist, the combination of the two is called, if he (man) deserves it, Yeheedah. This combination is that which the Theosophist calls the dual Manas, the Higher and the Lower Ego, united to Atma-Buddhi and become one. For as explained in the Zohar (i., 205b, 206a, Brody Ed.): "Neshamah, soul (Buddhi), comprises three degrees, and therefore she has three names, like the mystery above: that is, Nephesh, Rua’h, Neshamah ", or the Lower Manas, the Higher Ego, and Buddhi, the Divine Soul. "It is also to be noted that the Neshamah has three divisions;" says Myer’s Qabbalah, "the highest is the Ye-hee-dah " - or Atma-Buddhi-Manas, the latter once more as a unit; "the middle principle is Hay-yak " - or Buddhi and the dual Manas; "and the last and third, the Neshamah, properly speaking " - or Soul in general. "They manifest themselves in Ma’hshabah, thought, Tzelem, phantom of the image, Zurath, prototypes (mayavic forms, or rupas), and the D'yooknah, shadow of the phantom image.

The D’mooth, likeness or similitude (physical body), is a lower manifestation" (p. 392). Here then, we find the faithful echo of Esoteric science in the Zohar and other Kabbalistic works, a perfect Esoteric septenary division. Every Theosophist who has studied the doctrine sketched out first in Mr. Sinnett’s Occult World and Esoteric Buddhism, and later in the Theosophist, Lucifer, and other writings, will recognise them in the Zohar. Compare for instance what is taught in Theosophical works about the pre- and post-mortem states of the three higher and the four lower human principles, with the following from the Zohar: " Because all these three are one knot like the above, in the mystery of Nephesh, Rua’h, Neshamah, they are all one, and bound in one. Nephesh (Kama-Manas) has no light from her own substance; and it is for this reason that she is associated with the mystery of guff, the body, to procure enjoyment and food and everything which it needs.

Rua’h (the Spirit) is that which rides on that Nephesh (the lower soul) and rules over her and lights (supplies) her with everything she needs [ with the light of reason], and the Nephesh is the throne [ of that Ru’ah. Neshamah (Divine Soul) goes over to that Rua’h, and she rules over that Rua’h and lights to him with that Light of Life, and that Rua’h depends on the Neshamah and receives light from her, which illuminates him. . . When the ‘upper’ Neshamah ascends (after the death of the body), she goes to . . . the Ancient of the Ancient, the Hidden of all the Hidden, to receive Eternity. The Rua’h does not

[ go to Gan Eden [ because he is [ up with] Nephesh the Rua’h goes up to Eden, but not so high as the soul, and Nephesh [ animal principle, lower soul] remains in the grave below [ Kamaloka]

(Zohar, ii., 142a, Cremona Ed., ii., fol. 63b col. 252). It would be difficult not to recognise in the above our Atma (or the "upper" Neshamah), Buddhi (Neshamah),. Manas (Rua’h), and Kama-Manas (Nephesh) or the lower animal soul; the first of which goes after the death of man to join its integral whole, the second and the third proceeding to Devachan, and the last, or the Kamarupa, "remaining in its grave", called other wise the Kamaloka or Hades.

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

Zagreus, Zagreus-Dionysos (Greek) Dionysos was an earlier name for Bacchus. The mythos concerning Zagreus belongs to the cycle of teachings of the Orphic Mysteries rather than to mythology, so no references occur in the writings for the people, such as Homer and Hesiod. The references that have come down to our day occur principally in the manuscripts of the ancient Greek dramatists, poets, and in other ancient fragments.

As cosmic evolution was taught in the Orphic Mysteries by allegory, so was the evolution of the individual soul or microcosm, centering in the mythos of Zagreus, later Zagreus-Dionysos, the Greek savior, which the Greek Dionysian Mysteries sought to unfold in dramatic and veiled or symbolic literary form. "Dionysos is one with Osiris, with Krishna, and with Buddha (the heavenly wise), and with the coming (tenth) Avatar, the glorified Spiritual Christos . . ." (SD 2:420).

Zagreus has three distinct meanings: 1) the mighty hunter (the pilgrim-soul, hunting for the truth, its aeonic pilgrimage back to divinity); 2) he that takes many captives (the Lord of the Dead); and 3) the restorer or regenerator (King of the Reborn or initiates). Zagreus (later Bacchus or Iacchos) is the divine Son, the third of the Orphic Trinity, the other two being Zeus the Demiurge or divine All-father, and Demeter-Kore, the earth goddess in her twofold aspect as the divine Mother and the mortal maid.

The mythos relates that Zagreus, a favored son of Zeus, aroused the wrath of Hera, who plotted his destruction. First she released the dethroned titans from Tartaros to slay the newborn babe. They induced the child to give up the scepter and apple for the false toys which they held before him: a thyrsos or Bacchic wand (symbol of matter and rebirth into material life), a giddy spinning top, and a mirror (maya or illusion). As the child was gazing at himself in the mirror, they seized him, tore his body into seven or fourteen pieces (as in the Egyptian Mystery tale of Osiris); boiled and roasted and then devoured them. Discovered in this enormity by Zeus, the titans were blasted with his thunderbolt and from their ashes sprang the human race.

The titans with their false gifts symbolize the pursuing energies of the personal, material life, which enchain and delude the soul. They are earth powers which lead the soul from the path by the lure of things of sense. The dismembered body is first boiled in water -- symbol of the astral world; then roasted, "as gold is tried by fire," symbol of suffering and purification and the reascent of the victorious soul to bliss.

Apollo or the Muses, at the command of Zeus, gathered the scattered fragments and interred them near the Omphalos (navel of the earth) at Delphi. The coffin was inscribed: "Here lies dead, the body of Dionysos, son of Semele," as the Zagreus myth was known only to those initiated into the Orphic Mysteries; and the Semele myth was popularly known. The exoteric myth represents the divine Son as the son of Zeus by the mortal maid Semele, Demeter-Kore in the guise of a mortal woman, to whom the still beating heart of Zagreus was entrusted when he was slain, that she might become its mother-guardian.

Hera, however, poisoned the mind of Semele with suspicion when the new-forming body of Zagreus within her reached the seventh month of gestation, and Semele impelled Zeus to reveal himself to her in his true form, whereupon the mortal body of Semele was destroyed by the divine fire. The holy babe was saved from death by Zeus, who sewed the child up in his own thigh until "the life that formerly was Zagreus, was reborn as Dionysos," the risen Savior, at Easter (the spring equinox), while as Zagreus he had been born at Semele's death at the winter solstice. Here we

See the myth's solar significance.

The nymphs of Mount Nysa reared him safely in a cave, and when he reached manhood, Hera forced him to wander over the earth. He overcame all opposition and was successful in establishing Mystery schools wherever he went. After his triumph in the world of men, Dionysos descended into the underworld and led forth his mother, now rechristened as Semele-Thyone (Semele the Inspired), to take her place among the Olympian divinities as the divine mother and radiant queen, and later, with Dionysos, to ascend to heaven.

Zagreus as Dionysos is known as the god of many names, most of which refer to his twofold character as the suffering mortal Zagreus, and the immortal or reborn god-man. Many titles also refer to him as the mystic savior. He is the All-potent, the Permanent, the Life-blood of the World, the majesty in the forest, in fruit, in the hum of the bee, in the flowing of the stream, etc., the earth in its changes -- the list runs on indefinitely, and is strikingly similar to the passage in which Krishna, the Hindu avatara, instructs Arjuna how he shall know him completely: "I am the taste in water, the light in the sun and moon," etc. (BG ch 7).

The philosophers, dramatists, and historians who held the Dionysian mythos to be purely allegorical and symbolic take in the great names of antiquity, including Plato, Pythagoras, all the Neoplatonists, the greatest historians, and a few of the early Christian Fathers, notably Clement of Alexandria; Eusebius, Tertullian, Justin, and Augustine, also write of it.

The exoteric literature of Orphism is scanty, while the esoteric teachings were never committed to writing. Outside of the Orphic Tablets and Orphic Hymns, no original material has been discovered to date. Scholars judging from the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, have held that the Eleusinian Mystery-drama was based solely on the story of Persephone; but later researches indicate that, under the influence of Epimenides and Onomakritos, both deep students of Orphism, the Orphic Mystery tale of Zagreus-Dionysos was incorporated in the Eleusian ritual, the divine son Iacchos becoming thus identified with the Orphic god-man, Zagreus-Dionysos.

Cosmically this highly esoteric story refers to the cosmic Logos building the universe and becoming thereby not only its inspiriting and invigorating soul, but likewise the divinity guiding manifestation from Chaos to complete fullness of evolutionary grandeur; and in the case of mankind, the legend refers to the origin, peregrinations, and destiny of the human monad, itself a spiritual consciousness-center, from unself-consciousness as a god-spark, through the wanderings of destiny until becoming a fully self-conscious god. The key to the symbolism of Zagreus-Dionysos is given by Plato in the Cratylus: "The Spirit within us is the true image of Dionysos. He therefore who acts erroneously in regard to It . . . sins against Dionysos Himself," i.e., the inner god, the divinity in man. The legend thus contains not only past cosmic as well as human history, but contains as a prophecy what will come to pass in the distant future.

(See also: Zagreus, Zagreus-Dionysos, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Skandhas (Sanskrit) Bundles, groups of various attributes forming the compound constitution of the human being. They are the manifested qualities and attributes forming the human being on all six planes of Being, beneath the spiritual monad or atma-buddhi, making up the totality of the subjective and objective person.

They have to do with everything that is finite in the human being, and are therefore inapplicable to the relatively eternal and absolute. Every vibration of whatever kind, mental, emotional, or physical, that an individual has undergone or made, is derivative of and from one of the skandhas composing his constitution. Skandhas are the elements of limited existence.

The five skandhas of every human being are:

1)    rupa (form), the material properties or attributes;

2)    vedana (sensations, perceptions);

3)    sanjna (consciousness, abstract ideas);

4)    sanskara (action), tendencies both physical and mental;

5)    vijnana (knowledge), mental and moral predispositions.

Two further, unnamed skandhas "are connected with, and productive of Sakkayaditthi, the 'heresy or delusion of individuality' and of Attavada 'the doctrine of Self,' both of which (in the case of the fifth principle the soul) lead to the maya of heresy and belief in the efficacy of vain rites and ceremonies; in prayers and intercession"; "The 'old being' is the sole parent -- father and mother at once -- of the 'new being.' It is the former who is the creator and fashioner, of the latter, in reality; and far more so in plain truth, than any father in flesh. And once that you have well mastered the meaning of Skandhas you will

See what I mean" (ML 111). The human skandhas are the causal activities which by their action and interaction attract the reincarnating ego back to earth-life. The exoteric skandhas have to do with objective man; the esoteric with inner and subjective man.

At death the seeds of causes sown which have not yet been realized remain latent in our inner principles as "psychological impulse-seeds" awaiting expression in future lives. The skandhas "unite at the birth of man and constitute his personality. After the death of the body the Skandhas are separated and so remain until the Reincarnating Ego on its downward path into physical incarnation gathers them together again around itself, and thus reforms the human constitution considered as a unity" (OG 158).

Similarly with suns and planets: at pralaya, the lower principles of such a cosmic body exist latent in space in a laya-condition while its spiritual principles are active in higher realms. "When a laya-center is fired into action by the touch of wills and consciousnesses on their downward way, becoming the imbodying life of a solar system, or of a planet of a solar system, the center manifests first on its highest plane, and later on its lower plane. The Skandhas are awakened into life one after another: first the highest ones, next the intermediate ones, and lastly the inferior ones, cosmically and qualitatively speaking" (ibid.).

The skandhas are likewise closely connected with the karmic pictures in the astral light, which also is the medium as well as the register of impressions.

(See also: Skandhas, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Typhon (Egypt, Egyptian). An aspect or shadow of Osiris.

Typhon is not, as Plutarch asserts, the distinct " Evil Principle " or the Satan of the Jews; but rather the lower cosmic "principles " of the divine body of Osiris, the god in them - Osiris being the personified universe as an ideation, and Typhon as that same universe in its material realization.

The two in one are Vishnu-Siva. The true meaning of the Egyptian myth is that Typhon is the terrestrial and material envelope of Osiris, who is the indwelling spirit thereof. In chapter 42 of the Ritual (" Book of the Dead"), Typhon is described as "Set, formerly called Thoth".

Orientalists find themselves greatly perplexed by discovering Set-Typhon addressed in some papyri as "a great and good god ", and in others as the embodiment of evil. But is not Siva, one of the Hindu Trimurti, described in some places as "the best and most bountiful of gods ", and at other times, "a dark, black, destroying, terrible " and " fierce god"? Did not Loki, the Scandinavian Typhon, after having been described in earlier times as a beneficent being, as the god of fire, the presiding genius of the peaceful domestic hearth, suddenly lose caste and become forthwith a power of evil, a cold-hell Satan and a demon of the worst kind? There is a good reason for such an invariable transformation. So long as these dual gods, symbols of good and necessary evil, of light and darkness, keep closely allied, i.e., stand for a combination of differentiated human qualities, or of the element they represent - they are simply an embodiment of the average personal god.

No sooner, however, are they separated into two entities, each with its two characteristics, than they become respectively the two opposite poles of good and evil, of light and darkness ; they become in short, two independent and distinct entities or rather personalities. It is only by dint of sophistry that the Churches have succeeded to this day in preserving in the minds of the few the Jewish deity in his primeval integrity. Had they been logical they would have separated Christ from Jehovah, light and goodness from darkness and badness. And this was what happened to Osiris Typhon ;but no Orientalist has understood it, and thus their perplexity goes on increasing. Once accepted - as in the case of the Occultists -  as an integral part of Osiris, just as Ahriman is an inseparable part of Ahura Mazda, and the Serpent of Genesis the dark aspect of the Elohim, blended into our "Lord God " - every difficulty in the nature of Typhon disappears. Typhon is a later name of Set, later but ancient - as early in fact as the fourth Dynasty; for in the Ritual one reads: " 0 Typhon-Set ! I invoke thee, terrible, invisible, all-powerful god of gods, thou who destroyest and renderest desert ". Typhon belongs most decidedly to the same symbolical category as Siva the Destroyer, and Saturn - the "dark god ". In the Book of the Dead, Set, in his battle with Thoth (wisdom)_who is his spiritual counterpart  -  is emasculated as Saturn-Kronos was and Ouranos before him. As Siva is closely connected with the bull Nandi - an aspect of Brahma-Vishnu, the creative and preserving powers - so is Set-Typhon allied with the bull Apis, both bulls being sacred to, and allied with, their respective deities. As Typhon was originally worshipped as an upright stone, the phallus, so is Siva to this day represented and worshipped as a lingham. Siva is Saturn. Indeed, Typhon-Set seems to have served as a prototype for more than one god of the later ritualistic cycle, including even the god of the Jews, some of his ritualistic observances having passed bodily into the code of laws and the canon of religious rites of the "chosen people". Who of the Bible-worshippers knows the origin of the scape-goat (ez or aza) sent into the wilderness as an atonement ? Do they know that ages before the exodus of Moses the goat was sacred to Typhon, and that it is over the head of that Typhonic goat that the Egyptians confessed their sins, after which the animal was turned into the desert?

"And Aaron shall take the scapegoat (Azazel) and lay his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel . . . and shall send him away . . . into the wilderness" (Levit., xvi.). And as the goat of the Egyptians made an atonement with Typhon, so the goat of the Israelites "made an atonement before the Lord" (Ibid., v. 10). Thus, if one only remembers that every anthropomorphic creative god was with the philosophical ancients the "Life-giver" and the "Death-dealer " - Osiris and Typhon, Ahura Mazda and Ahriman, etc., etc. - it will be easy for him to comprehend the assertion made by the Occultists, that Typhon was but a symbol for the lower quaternary, the ever conflicting and turbulent principles of differentiated chaotic matter, whether in the Universe or in Man, while Osiris symbolized the higher spiritual triad. Typhon is accused in the Ritual of being one who "steals reason from the soul ". Hence, he is shown fighting with Osiris and cutting him into fourteen (twice seven) pieces, after which, left without his counterbalancing power of good and light, he remains steeped in evil and darkness. I

n this way the fable told by Plutarch becomes comprehensible as an allegory. He asserts that, overcome in his fight with Horus, Typhon "fled seven days on an ass, and escaping begat the boys Ierosolumos and Ioudaios ". Now as Typhon was worshipped at a later period under the form of an ass, and as the name of the ass is AO, or (phonetically) IAO, the vowels mimicking the braying of the animal, it becomes evident that Typhon was purposely blended with the name of the Jewish God, as the two names of Judea and Jerusalem, begotten by Typhon - sufficiently imply.

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

A Theosophical definition of Immortality :

Immortality

A term signifying continuous existence or being; but this understanding of the term is profoundly illogical and contrary to nature, for there is nothing throughout nature's endless and multifarious realms of being and existence which remains for two consecutive instants of time exactly the same. Consequently, immortality is a mere figment of the imagination, an illusory phantom of reality. When the student of the esoteric wisdom once realizes that continuous progress, i.e., continuous change in advancement, is nature's fundamental procedure, he recognizes instantly that continuous remaining in an unchanging or immutable state of consciousness or being is not only impossible, but in the last analysis is the last thing that is either desi

rable or comforting. Fancy continuing immortal in a state of imperfection such as we human beings exemplify  - which is exactly what the usual acceptance of this term immortality means. The highest god in highest heaven, although seemingly immortal to us imperfect human beings, is nevertheless an evolving, growing, progressing entity in its own sublime realms or spheres, and therefore as the ages pass leaves one condition or state to assume a succeeding condition or state of a nobler and higher type; precisely as the preceding condition or state had been the successor of another state before it.

Continuous or unending immutability of any condition or state of an evolving entity is obviously an impossibility in nature; and when once pondered over it becomes clear that the ordinary acceptance of immortality involves an impossibility. All nature is an unending series of changes, which means all the hosts or multitudes of beings composing nature, for every individual unit of these hosts is growing, evolving, i.e., continuously changing, therefore never immortal. Immortality and evolution are contradictions in terms. An evolving entity means a changing entity, signifying a continuous progress towards better things; and evolution therefore is a succession of state of consciousness and being after another state of consciousness and being, and thus throughout duration. The Occidental idea of static immortality or even mutable immortality is thus seen to be both repellent and impossible.

This doctrine is so difficult for the average Occidental easily to understand that it may be advisable once and for all to point out without mincing of words that just as complete death, that is to say, entire annihilation of consciousness, is an impossibility in nature, just so is continuous and unchanging consciousness in any one stage or phase of evolution likewise an impossibility, because progress or movement or growth is continuous throughout eternity. There are, however, periods more or less long of continuance in any stage or phase of consciousness that may be attained by an evolving entity; and the higher the being is in evolution, the more its spiritual and intellectual faculties have been evolved or evoked, the longer do these periods of continuous individual, or perhaps personal, quasi-immortality continue. There is, therefore, what may be called relative immortality, although this phrase is confessedly a misnomer.

Master KH in The Mahatma Letters, on pages 128-30, uses the phrase ``panaeonic immortality" to signify this same thing that I have just called relative immortality, an immortality  - falsely so called, however  - which lasts in the cases of certain highly evolved monadic egos for the entire period of a manvantara, but which of necessity ends with the succeeding pralaya of the solar system. Such a period of time of continuous self-consciousness of so highly evolved a monadic entity is to us humans actually a relative immortality; but strictly and logically speaking it is no more immortality than is the ephemeral existence of a butterfly. When the solar manvantara comes to an end and the solar pralaya begins, even such highly evolved monadic entities, full-blown gods, are swept out of manifested self-conscious existence like the sere and dried leaves at the end of the autumn; and the divine entities thus passing out enter into still higher realms of superdivine activity, to reappear at the end of the pralaya and at the dawn of the next or succeeding solar manvantara.

The entire matter is, therefore, a highly relative one. What seems immortal to us humans would seem to be but as a wink of the eye to the vision of super-kosmic entities; while, on the other hand, the span of the average human life would seem to be immortal to a self-conscious entity inhabiting one of the electrons of an atom of the human physical body.

The thing to remember in this series of observations is the wondrous fact that consciousness from eternity to eternity is uninterrupted, although by the very nature of things undergoing continuous and unceasing change of phases in realization throughout endless duration. What men call unconsciousness is merely a form of consciousness which is too subtle for our gross brain-minds to perceive or to sense or to grasp; and, secondly, strictly speaking, what men call death, whether of a universe or of their own physical bodies, is but the breaking up of worn-out vehicles and the transference of consciousness to a higher plane. It is important to seize the spirit of this marvelous teaching, and not allow the imperfect brain-mind to quibble over words, or to pause or hesitate at difficult terms.

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

Buddha Siddharta (Sanskrit) The name given to Gautama, the Prince of Kapilavastu, at his birth. It is an abbreviation of sarvartthasiddha and means, the "realization of all desires".

Gautama, which means, on earth (gau) the most victorious (tama) "was the sacerdotal name of the Sakya family, the kingly patronymic of the dynasty to which the father of Gautama, the King Suddhodhana of Kapilavastu, belonged. Kapilavastu was an ancient city, the birth-place of the Great Reformer and was destroyed during his life time. In the title Sakyamuni, the last component, muni, is rendered as meaning one mighty in charity, isolation and silence", and the former Sakya is the family name.

Every Orientalist or Pundit knows by heart the story of Gautama, the Buddha, the most perfect of mortal men that the world has ever seen, but none of them seem to suspect the esoteric meaning underlying his prenatal biography, i.e., the significance of the popular story. The Lalitavistura tells the tale, but abstains from hinting at the truth. The 5,000 jatakas, or the events of former births (re-incarnations) are taken literally instead of esoterically.

Gautama, the Buddha, would not have been a mortal man, had he not passed through hundreds and thousands of births previous to his last. Yet the detailed account of these, and the statement that during them he worked his way up through every stage of transmigration from the lowest animate and inanimate atom and insect, up to the highest - or man, contains simply the well-known occult aphorism: "a stone becomes a plant, a plant an animal, and an animal a man". Every human being who has ever existed, has passed through the same evolution. But the hidden symbolism in the sequence of these re-births (jataka) contains a perfect history of the evolution on this earth, pre and post human, and is a scientific exposition of natural facts. One truth not veiled but bare and open is found in their nomenclature, viz., that as soon as Gautama had reached the human form he began exhibiting in every personality the utmost unselfishness, self-sacrifice and charity.

Buddha Gautama, the fourth of the Sapta (Seven) Buddhas and Sapta Tathagatas was born according to Chinese Chronology in 1024 B.C; but according to the Singhalese chronicles, on the 8th day of the second (or fourth) moon in the year 621 before our era. He fled from his father’s palace to become an ascetic on the night of the 8th day of the second moon, 597 BC., and having passed six years in ascetic meditation at Gaya, and perceiving that physical self-torture was useless to bring enlightenment, be decided upon striking out a new path, until he reached the state of Bodhi. He became a full Buddha on the night of the 8th day of the twelfth moon, in the year 592, and finally entered Nirvana in the year 543 according to Southern Buddhism. The Orientalists, however, have decided upon several other dates. All the rest is allegorical. He attained the state of Bodhisattva on earth when in the personality called Prabhapala. Tushita stands for a place on this globe, not for a paradise in the invisible regions. The selection of the Sakya family and his mother Maya, as "the purest on earth," is in accordance with the model of the nativity of every Saviour, God or deified Reformer.

The tale about his entering his mother’s bosom in the shape of a white elephant is an allusion to his innate wisdom, the elephant of that colour being a symbol of every Bodhisattva. The statements that at Gautama’s birth, the newly born babe walked seven steps in four directions, that an Udumbara flower bloomed in all its rare beauty and that the Naga kings forthwith proceeded ‘‘to baptise him ", are all so many allegories in the phraseology of the Initiates and well-understood by every Eastern Occultist. The whole events of his noble life are given in occult numbers, and every so-called miraculous event - so deplored by Orientalists as confusing the narrative and making it impossible to extricate truth from fiction - is simply the allegorical veiling of the truth, it is as comprehensible to an Occultist learned in symbolism, as it is difficult to understand for a European scholar ignorant of Occultism.

Every detail of the narrative after his death and before cremation is a chapter of facts written in a language which must be studied before it is understood, otherwise its dead letter will lead one into absurd contradictions. For instance, having reminded his disciples of the immortality of Dharmakaya Buddha is said to have passed into Samadhi, and lost himself in Nirvana - from which none can return., and yet, notwithstanding this, the Buddha is shown bursting open the lid of the coffin, and stepping out of it ; saluting with folded hands his mother Maya who had suddenly appeared in the air, though she had died seven (days after his birth, &c., &c.

As Buddha. was a Chakravartti (he who turns the wheel of the Law), his body at its cremation could not be consumed by common fire. What happens Suddenly a jet of flame burst out of the Swastica on his breast, and reduced his body to ashes. Space prevents giving more instances. As to his being one of the true and undeniable Saviours of the World, suffice it to say that the most rabid orthodox missionary, unless he is hopelessly insane, or has not the least regard even for historical truth, cannot find one smallest accusation against the life and personal character of Gautama, the "Buddha".

Without any claim to divinity, allowing his followers to fall into atheism, rather than into the degrading superstition of deva or idol-worship, his walk in life is from the beginning to the end, holy and divine. During the years of his mission it is blameless and pure as that of a god - or as the latter should be. He is a perfect example of a divine, godly man. He reached Buddhaship - i.e., complete enlightenment - entirely by his own merit and owing to his own individual exertions, no god being supposed to have any personal merit in the exercise of goodness and holiness. Esoteric teachings claim that he renounced Nirvana and gave up the Dharmakaya vesture to remain a "Buddha of compassion" within the reach of the miseries of this world.

And the religious philosophy he left to it has produced for over 2,000 years generations of good and unselfish men. His is the only absolutely bloodless religion among all the existing religions tolerant and liberal, teaching universal compassion and charity, love and self-sacrifice, poverty and contentment with one’s lot, whatever it may he.

No persecutions, and enforcement of faith by fire and sword, have ever disgraced it. No thunder-and-lightning-vomiting god has interfered with its chaste commandments; and if the simple, humane and philosophical code of daily life left to us by the greatest Man-Reformer ever known, should ever come to he adopted by mankind at large, then indeed an era of bliss and peace would dawn on Humanity.

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

PERICHORESIS

The word is Greek, as you might imagine: peri "around" + choreio "dance." But for the Greeks "dancing" wasn't the aimless shuffling we do. It was more like ballet. "Choreography" is a lot closer to the idea -- in which particular movements are carefully planned and executed. Travel from one dimension to another occurs simultaneously on all levels of reality. We travel in and out of the astral during sleep every night and think nothing of it. And, as you know, when the shaman interfaces with the earth by taking narcotic mushrooms or cacti into his system, he's moving deliberately and consciously between universes.

Parallel worlds stretch horizontally from sinister to dexter, or rather, from increasing shades of darkness to increasing degrees of light. Beings entering from the darkside are perceived by us not as merely ignorant but as demonic, whereas the wisdom of the beings from the lightside stands so far beyond our recognition that we see them simply as angelic beings. Depending on the level of reality that we happen to occupy, the dark and light worlds are perceived as more or less similar to the world we currently inhabit. On some levels of reality, the transfiguration is reversed and we perceive them as inhabiting regions above and below a horizontal plane of reality that stretches into inaccessible temporal limits of Past and Future. In such a world, reality is a given that is perceived as revealing itself only at such Past and Future vanishing points -- Alpha and Omega.

Everywhere horizontal parallel plane meets vertical parallel levels and an Aeon is established, symbolized by a cross. If the cross, however is not circumscribed by a circle (the familiar symbol of cross in circle, representing "earth"), there is no cohesion and the center does not hold. The so-called "extremes," in fact, are not extremes at all, but merely their own opposites in a spinning circle.

Because of the nature of infinity, we have to recognize that we may never stand at any of the four extremities, but always only at the exact center of the omniverse.

Notice also that in any formal religious painting, the god or saint is always placed in the exact center. If he is raised too high from the center, the lower world is given undue importance and power, because, after all, in completely "secular" pictures, the God has been raised so high as to have been left out of the picture altogether! Placing the God too far down divests him of his divinity because his intensity looks, on our level, simply grotesque. Likewise, if the God is placed too far to the left or right, an imbalance is also created.

Thus, uncircumscribed, the ends of the cross stretch unchecked into the infinite four directions and an uncontrollable wickedness is set forth into all manifestations. Without the "earthing" of the cross, there is no manifestation. The extremities lead only into infinite "otherness" and delusion. It is the inner being at the solar plexus that is the heart of the universe. When we nail (i.e., Christianize) the higher spirit of man to an ancient quadratic event, the center is blocked and closed forever. Moreover, the center has been locked in the past, away from the Eternal Now. Until the nail (Xtianity) has been pulled out, no further evolution is possible and Death will prevail.

The way out is toward the central, innermost point.

The parallel world-planes are accessible at all times. We move in and out of them constantly, but are mostly unaware of having done so. Occasionally we get the feeling that "things are suddenly different" or that "something is about to happen" and that means we've inadvertently stepped into a new probable world that is much different from the ones we've hitherto occupied. You can move back into the world you've just left, only if you do so at once.

Whatever can be imagined, exists, will exist or has existed. Whatever has existed or will exist continues to exist now because time is one of the four real dimensions of things. Alongside this Reality there are an infinite number of co-existent realities of equal "solidity" and "substance." There are also an infinite number of "probable" realities and an infinite number of "possible" worlds. A moment's reflection will show that if this is so, then, obviously, available access to them must not be merely possible, but inevitable. Jane Robert's Seth describes the infinite "probable worlds" stretching out in either direction from this one. The closest ones being hardly distinguishable from this, as we progress outward, the probable worlds become stranger, increasingly incomprehensible and frighteningly unpredictable. In the fifth dimensional world, four dimensional objects have their own much more complete and solid "substance" which we cannot perceive so long as we inhabit lower planes of being.

You can, however, willingly and deliberately get up and walk from this world into the nearest adjacency and from there to the next, and the next. The only problem is that you're playing roulette. There's no way of telling what kind of world you are moving into.

If you are seeking to avoid some trouble in this world, be advised that things could be a lot worse in the world next door. Moreover, if you leave unsolved problem behind, your karma will continue to take you back there in future lives until eventually you are forced to solve them. On top of that, if you leave muddy footprints behind you as you run through world after world, you'll have added onto your present karma the extra burden of going back to mop them up.

Actual entrance/exit sites are a matter of intuitive perception. Dimensional doorways are not likely, for instance, to be found in your living room. They need to be places you've never crossed before (except as interdimensional thresholds). It's best to look for two pillars to pass between -- a couple of tall trees in a forest or park make excellent pillars. The more difficult the access the better. And the direction and angle of entrance are crucial. Select a "picture" framed by the trees as most nearly representing the world you want to leave behind you and before you a picture of what intuitively or esthetically looks to be an improvement of that. Make sure that nothing passes across your line of vision as you are actually walking through. If necessary, keep your eyes closed or look down at your feet.

At first the difference between adjacent worlds is scarcely discernible. Variations only become immediately evident at some distance. But if you are observant, you will eventually begin to notice tiny, subtle changes for the better (or worse). By the time these changes become evident, it's already too late to go back where you came from. The metaphors of artistic symbolism, religion and magic can also assist in perichoretic travel. With the enhanced ability to will and to imagine, the human mind can perceive parts of alternate realities with increasing clarity and may begin to see how to transform the reality we normally inhabit. In fact, so many are the pathways to alternate experience, it's a wonder anyone still believes that reality has but a single face!

There is, to be sure, ultimately only the One Plenum in which everything else transpires, but that sphere transcends experience in the Void of Nirvana.

Although, as we've seen above, there are relatively easy methods of interplanary travel (between planes), the ability to discover significant doorways into alternate dimensions, advanced perichoresis, not only requires an out-of-the-ordinary state of consciousness, but is a difficult technique in its own right, mastered properly only by experienced shamans. For instance, travel through time in the past requires us to move "forward" (i.e., towards the Beginning of Time) simply by ignoring vast areas of experience and being -- as we also do in the present -- in order to maintain a strict continuity of our own. Travel from the future (i.e., the End of Time), however, even though employing the same declination, creates an ever-thickening wall behind us, preventing all possibility of return to the starting point.

Kenneth Grant (Outside the Circles of Time) provides us with insights into the sexual avenue of interdimensional perichoresis and at the same time describes the procedure for creating a "moonchild." In his system, the door to our world opens inward in order for us to receive extratellurian immigrants.

Bipolar human sexuality, explains Grant, parallels cosmogenesis and the sacred void corresponds to the female vagina. Everything comes out of and falls back into this same eternal darkness. The creative light is sucked into its bottomless depths where it is swallowed up by vampiric blackness. Therefore, the doorway to the vacuum or zero of space is a priestess who has been chosen for her "master of the art of dream control." By allowing herself to become a mirror of impression-reception, she is able to generate illusions, "for all form is fantasy, and exists only in the dreaming mirror of the mind."

A material looking glass is placed above her, slanted to receive the starlight. Now, by her psychic ability she can project whatever star morph the magician requires onto the looking glass. A second mirror, creating an infinite regression reflection is placed 11 feet away, eleven being the number of the famous 11th Pathway of Black Magic. The circle of Daath is the corresponding doorway in the Qabalah.

Thereupon the priest uses his penis as the intergalactic conduit of the astro-seminal energy. His vibrations and invocations encourage the dream-manipulating priestess to focus the desired star-morph entity onto the mirrors. In the ultimate orgasm of priest, priestess and dream-entity, the eldolon rises briefly to life and erupts from the mirror as its starseed transmission runs down from the star to impregnate her. The zygote achieved by this cosmocopulation is a unique blend of human and extraterrestrial "genes."

According to most students, monstrous beings invisible to ordinary consciousness are entering our universe in unprecedented numbers, through this same interdimensional sexual doorway. (Apparently our time is a vector of unique significance.) The fantasy film, Ghostbusters, was a facetious rendering of this understanding, but revealed a good deal more than most viewers realized. Kenneth Grant teaches a heterosexual tantrism by which one may ride out again through the same door on the back of one of these demonic beasts and thereby escape. He calls this, again, the 11th Pathway. Others propose that there are homosexual and even solitary practices what serve this purpose equally well.

Sex and death are the two most common and well-known methods of conveyance between worlds, but such exclusively Scorpionic merkabahs are by no means the only ones. All of these methods follow the horizontal direction of planes to left and right, from darkness into light, or vice versa. There is also travel in the vertical direction from layers of reality and consciousness above and below. These cris-crossing horizontal and vertical planes endlessly extend out and recede into the vastnesses. Some of the planes are commonly thought, by the average person, to be "schizophrenic" because they appear to leave the traveller suspended in his "own little world." But such planes are of great importance to the magician or yogin. Reality, we must understand, is entirely a matter of the manipulation of illusion. The teacher, Gurdjieff, once pointed out that there is only one thing in the entire universe, but it is repeated endlessly in order to provide the illusion of "difference." Even chemistry and physics bear this out. The difference between each element is simply a difference in the number of their atomic electrons: Hydrogen 1, Helium 2, Lithium 3...

Some writers believe that there are denizens of other dimensions who use various perichoretic chariots that resemble the astral projections of those whose time and locality they visit. For Ezekiel and Daniel it was a fiery wheel bearing the tetramorph. For the Dogons it was a star ship. For our great grandfathers in the 19th Century it was frequently an airship. But they aren't just psychic experiences, say the witnesses, ufo's leave evidence behind ... a burned-out circle on the lawn, a map with indecipherable writing, MIBs, etc.

My own interdimensional visits to "the Other Side" have been neither A.D.E.'s nor OOBE's. They have occurred either through true-dreaming or by psychotropic methods, i.e., strictly via astral travel. In all, I have several times visited the "conventional" Astral Plane -- or abode of the (after-dead) spirits, three or four times encountered higher beings (although only at a distance), dwelt in the All-Consciousness of All-Phyla and once visited a previous time. Lately I have begun experimenting with ordinary consciousness as a routine means of perichoresis. The occult path I've travelled (until now) has always been the lonely one of the hermit. The beings I've encountered have been the traditional custodians of the pathways, that is to say, those archetypes hovering somewhere between being and non-being. Else they comprise the angels, Gods and daimones of pantheons we already know. But I have increasingly come under the purview of something more important: the existence of what seems to be an infinite number of Eternal Doorways between worlds. These doorways are available to us, of course, under very special circumstances -- that is to say, in altered psychic states lying clearly outside normal consciousness: Yoga, Tantra, sex magic, primitive rites of passage, repetitive rhythms (micro-events), sensory deprivation or stimulation, pain, extreme trauma, trance, all the multifarious REM/sleep/hypnotic states, rushes of adrenaline or fatigue intoxication, epilepsy, metamorphic anomaly, drug intoxication, illness, psychosis proper, thanatolepsy and death. (See SOLIPSISM.)

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