Book Description

1. The human manas is pure and impure: divided on earth, united in heaven. The immortal Manas or Higher Ego is an emanation from the Supreme Spirit. Its reflection on earth, fashioned by the creative and intelligent forces in nature, is but a temporary vehicle of its divine parent on earth. The Higher Ego, at incarnation, shoots out a Ray — the lower ego or manas. That portion of the Lower Manas, which is one with the Higher is termed Antahkarana. On it are impressed all good and noble aspirations, and in it are the upward energies of the Lower Manas. The whole fate of an incarnation depends on whether this pure essence, Antahkarana, can restrain Kama-Manas or not. It is the only salvation. Break this and you become an animal. Ahamkara is the perception of “I,” or the sense of one’s personal individuality, typified by the term Egotism. When Manas or Ahamkara thins out the guna “rope” into a single thread, that of Sattva or Purity, it becomes one with the “unevolved evolver” and wins immortality or eternal conscious existence. Shankaracharya renders Sattva or Understanding as Antahkarana, refined by sacrifices and other sanctifying operations. 2. Esoteric overview of Manas: Its potency, functions, and potential. When the lower manas begins to bring forth the green clusters of the philosophical vine for the Husbandman, the “Father” or Higher Ego, the merging process with its higher counterpart also begins. But the danger is not quite over, for the Antahkarana is not yet destroyed. Let us imagine a bright lamp casting its light upon the wall. Let the lamp represent the divine Ego, and the light thrown on the wall the lower Manas, and let the wall stand for the body. The atmosphere which transmits the ray from the lamp to the wall represents the Antahkarana. In an Eastern parable the divine Ego is likened to the Master who sends out his labourers to till the ground and gather in the harvest, and who is content to keep the field so long as it can yield even the smallest return. But when the ground becomes sterile, not only is it abandoned, but the labourer also (the lower Manas) perishes. When Esoteric Teachings allude to the “second death,” they refer to the terrible possibility of the death of the Astral Soul, that is, its severance from the Higher Ego during a person’s lifetime. Only Occultists of the White Lodge, by explaining the circumstances that can lead a soul to its demise, can protect mankind from falling into such a dreadful pitfall. If the Antahkarana is destroyed before the lower had an opportunity of aligning with the Higher Manas, the selfish man ends up living as a “soulless” creature. Brain is the organ of Consciousness but only on the objective plane of the Lower Manas. The “Seven Harmonies” are the Seven Cavities of the brain. Brain perception is located in the aura of the Pineal Gland, the chief organ of spirituality in the brain, while the Pineal Gland itself, when illuminated, corresponds with Divine Thought. The former is associated with the spiritual fiery emanation that proceeds from the blood. Pure psychic vision is caused by the molecular motion of the Pituitary Body, which is directly connected with the optic nerve, and thus affects the sight and gives rise to hallucinations. Its motion may cause flashes of light seen within the head, similar to those that may be obtained on pressing the eyeballs, and so causing molecular motion in the optic nerve. The seven steps of Antahkarana correspond with the seven Lokas, i.e., are material places or spheres, however, of a spiritual character. 3. Higher Manas is the Voice of Wisdom crying in the wilderness of matter. The Voice urges Antahkarana, his lower counterpart, to purify itself inwardly, and to fear no one and nought, save the tribunal of his own conscience. “Personality,” being the illusion of separateness, is the root cause of all selfishness and evil in the world. It has to be conquered and crushed before the human mind is united with its divine parent. Loss of mind is due to the paralysis of the higher functions of Kama-Manas, the physical mind; and in cases of incurable insanity, to the destruction of Antahkarana itself (i.e., the severance of the lower from the Higher Ego during a person’s lifetime), thus preventing their reunion. When one falls into a love of self and love of the world, with all its pleasures, losing the divine love of God and of the neighbour, he falls from the shadows of life and fear of death to real death. The higher principles, which constituted the essential elements of his humanity being withdrawn, he now lives on the lower plane of his faculties. Manas or Antahkarana, being the organ of self-consciousness or “personality,” is material hence mortal. At death, when the ray from Higher Manas withdraws, the “personality,” no matter how illustrious it was, perishes along with the physical body. Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas! At death, the higher triad, drawn by its affinity to those triads it loved most, with Manas in its highest aspect of self-consciousness, is disconnected from Antahkarana, the path of communication between soul and body. Then, the energies and tendencies of Antahkarana become spiritual experiences in the Devachanic period between incarnations, as they were during life on earth. 4. Manas is the Jewel of the Universe. In order to understand that which follows, note that the upper Indigo Manas is connected with the lower Green Manas by a thin line which binds the two together. This is the Antahkarana, a path or bridge of communication, which serves as a link between the personal being, whose physical brain is under the sway of the animal mind, and the reincarnating Individuality or the Spiritual Ego, the “Divine Man.” Look at the Drawing again. Observe the divine Ego tending with its point upwards towards Buddhi, and the human ego gravitating downwards, immersed in matter and connected with its higher, divine parent, only by that thin line of Antahkarana. Four distinct features of Antahkarana and an all-important difference between exoteric and esoteric teaching: 1. In dreams the personality is only half awake, therefore Antahkarana is said to be drunk or insane during sleep. 2. Let the student view the lower Manas as the personal ego during the waking state, and as Antahkarana only during those moments when it aspires towards its higher counterpart, and thus becomes the medium of communication between the two. 3. As when a limb or physical organ is left in disuse, it becomes weak and finally atrophies, so also is it with any mental faculty — hence the atrophy of Antahkarana permits those shamelessly materialistic and depraved minds to degrade themselves even further. 4. As long as the personal “I” (Ahamkara) or selfishness is not completely crushed out, and the lower mind not as yet merged with the Higher (Buddhi-Manas), it stands to reason that to destroy Antahkarana is like destroying a bridge over an impassable chasm: the traveller can never reach the goal on the other shore. Exoteric Vedanta teaches that so long as the lower manas clings through Antahkarana to Buddhi-Manas, it is impossible for it to acquire true spiritual Wisdom, and that this can only be attained by seeking to resonate with Atman, the Universal Soul and, in fact, it is by circumventing the Higher Manas altogether that one reaches Raja-Yoga. We say that it is not so. No single rung of the ladder leading to Inner Knowledge can be skipped. No personality can ever reach or bring itself into communication with Atman, except through Buddhi-Manas. If we destroy Antahkarana before the personal is absolutely under the control and guidance of the impersonal Ego, we risk to be permanently disconnected from It, unless we hasten to re-establish the communication by a supreme and final effort. It is only when we are indissolubly linked with the essence of the Divine Self within, that we have to destroy Antahkarana. Expelled forever from the Aegis of their Divine Self, those who had hitherto sat alone in haughty seclusion and bare selfishness are immediately reincarnated, only in a lower and still more abject creatures — human beings only in form, doomed to endless karmic torments and punishment before final annihilation. 5. When the mind is finally freed from its finite consciousness, it merges with and becomes one with the Infinite.