1. Atman is the Universal Self, the One Self in All, the Real Self. All else are reflections on heaving seas. 2. Atman is the soul of the spiritual man lit by its own light, the Nous Augoeides of the Neo-Platonists. 3. Woe for the living Dead, their glorious Augoeides have left them forever. 4. Atman is one with Paramatman. Buddhi, Atman’s vehicle, is part and parcel of the Dhyani-Chohanic Essence. 5. Contrary to current materialistic views, evolution proceeds along triple lines: Spiritual, Psychic, and Physical. 6. The key to the mystery of marriage is the union of Atman-Buddhi with Manas. Profane marriage is unholy and unworthy of the name. 7. Semitic Cosmogony materialises the mysteries of nature; the Aryan, spiritualizes matter while its physiology is always subservient to metaphysics. 8. No single rung of the ladder leading to Inner Wisdom can be skipped. No personality can ever reach or bring herself into communication with Atman, except through Buddhi-Manas. 9. Atman, our Lord and Protector, will show his full power only to those who can hear the “still small voice.” 10. When the bud of personality is crushed out, and the worm of sense destroyed past resurrection, the Lernaean Hydra of Separateness will vanish into thin air.
Sphinx is Imagination lighting up our blind senses. She corresponds to Aether, or Spiritual Insight (Buddhi-Manas) opened up. There are two Oedipodes, a Divine Oedipus, being a ray of pure mind self-exiled from its celestial abode. And a Worldly Oedipus, a reflection of the same ray imprisoned in an impure body. Both are sentenced to suffer conjointly on earth. Inspired by the Imagination and Will of Divine Oedipus, animal man begins awakening his higher faculties. If he succeeds, he will ascend from star to star, from one world to another, circling onward to rebecome the once pure planetary Spirit that he had started from. Bereft of Ariadne’s thread of philosophy, Worldly Oedipus remains spiritually blind and unlearned, unable to escape from the labyrinth of matter. Enmeshed in the darkness of duality, his unmastered passions condemn him to involuntary exile from the solidarity of the One — a perfect recipe for drama. Sphinx is the greatest mystery of past, present, and future initiations. How the tetrad changing into a duad is explained by the triad. Man’s clinging to the form allowed the idea to be forgotten. Sphinx is the living palladium of humanity. But she devours only blind interpreters.
Septenary man is the synthesis of a triple emanation of the Unintelligible Divine Essence, and the lower quaternary, which is the vehicle of life. Upon death, the earth conceals the flesh; the shade flits round the tomb; the underworld receives the image; the spirit seeks the stars.
The head is the most divine part of the body and ruler of all other parts. The gods endowed the front of the head with organs informing the forethought of the soul. First they constructed light-bearing eyes so that the pure fire within us, which is akin to that of day, flows through the eyes in a smooth and dense stream — from within without. In daylight, a fire-stream issuing from the eye meets a fire-stream coming from the object of vision, i.e., it flows out like unto like and, coalescing therewith, it forms one kindred substance along the path of the eyes’ vision. And this substance, having all become similar in its properties because of its similar nature, distributes the motions of every object it touches, or is touched, throughout the body and informs the soul thus bringing about that sensation which we now term “seeing.” The soul when looking outwardly see the shadows and images of other souls. But when she looks inwardly, she evolves her own essence and the reasons which she contains. At first, she sees herself. When she penetrates deeper into the knowledge of herself, she finds within herself both intellect, and the orders of beings. When she proceeds even deeper, she perceives with eyes closed the celestial hierarchies and the essential unity of being. Love is its own act and harvests the spectacle of celestial beauty. Love is the eye of the desirer. By its power, the lover can see the beloved. Sight sees out of time, in an instant. The other senses function in time. My eye and God’s eye is one eye, one sight, one knowledge, one love. If the soul shall see with the right eye into eternity, then the left eye must be as though it were dead. Brahma moves about, becoming manifold within the heart, where the arteries meet, like the spokes fastened in the nave of a chariot wheel. Iris is the chariot wheel. The aperture of the eye is the axle hole.
The after-death experiences of the souls of the dead and their subsequent return to earth-life will depend upon which of Seven Virgins they have to face in the Hall of Judgment. Thrice blessed is he who, clad in the Vesture of Glory, can pass by the Guardians of every threshold.
The propensity to seek defects in natural beauty is not proof of taste, but evidence of its absence. Who can possible know his Self, while living in the mephitic atmosphere of the material world? Sinnett weaves seamlessly lucid metaphysical insights in a prosaic story of everyday life. The real and the illusive aspects of our being are always next to each other, like twin parallel lines, but they never meet unless the animal tendencies created by selfishness are conquered, and the devil of the duad annihilated. Two spirits were finally united in the limited nirvanic state of devachan, from whence no traveller returns.
Dreams are images of hopes and fears. Somnambulism, premonitions, and second sight are a disposition, energised by the power of the imagination, to perceive and guess by intuition reflections from the Astral Light. In sense dreams the mind is always asleep. The sensual tendencies of the dreamer are readily impressed by pictures from the Astral Light, and thus the direction of such dreams is always towards the animal plane. We should therefore train ourselves to wake up when a sense dream occurs; and the instantaneous rejection of impure thoughts during the period of waking consciousness will tend to set up a habit of rejection, which will act automatically in sleep. There is no simple answer to the question “what is it that dreams?” for it depends entirely on each individual, what principle will be the chief motor in dreams, and whether they will be remembered or forgotten. When the material man dreams, all he sees with his eyes shut, and in or through his mind, is of course subjective. But the Inner Man, who is the silent spectator of the life of the dreamer, all he sees is as objective as he is himself to himself. The dream state is common not only to all men, but also to all animals, from the highest mammalia to the smallest birds, and even insects. Every being endowed with a physical brain, or organs approximating thereto, must dream. Human dreams do not differ much from those of the animals. But that which is entirely terra incognita for science is the real dreams and experiences of the immortal Ego overshadowing mortal man, which thinks and acts independently of the physical body. What we often regard as dreams or idle fancies may be stray pages torn out from the life and experiences of the Inner Man, the dim recollection of which at the moment of awakening becomes more or less distorted by our physical memory. Every night, when the Inner Man is freed from the trammels of matter, he lives a separate life within his prison of clay. But the outer man cannot be conscious of the Inner Man, for his brain and thinking apparatus are paralyzed more or less completely. Ordinary dreams are caused by sensuously desirous consciousness awakened into chaotic activity by the slumbering reminiscences of the lower mind. The combined action of desires and animal soul is purely mechanical. It is instinct, not reason, which is active in them. But, as a rule, our memory registers only the fugitive and distorted impressions which the brain receives at the moment of awakening. Among the vast number of meaningless dreams there are some in which presages are given of coming events. When such dreams come true, they may be termed prophetic. In the case of individuals who have truly prophetic dreams, it is because their physical brains and memory are in closer relation and sympathy with their Higher Ego than in the generality of men. The Adept, however, does not dream, he just paralyzes his lower self during sleep, and becomes perfectly free. Dreams are illusions and the Adept is beyond illusion. Imagination is the best guide of our blind senses. We see through our imagination, and that is the natural aspect of the miracle. But we also see actual and true things, and it is in this that lies the marvel of the natural phenomenon. Those of a nervous temperament, whose sight is weak and imagination vivid, are the fittest persons for this kind of divination. The stronger the spirituality of the dreamer, the easier it will be for the Higher Ego to impress on the brain a vivid picture of the dream. In the materialistic man, in one whose proclivities and passions have severed his astral soul from her spiritual counterpart and master, in him whose labour has so worn out the body as to render him temporarily insensible to the voice of his soul — such persons rarely, if ever, will have any dreams at all. On the other hand, highly spiritual people will see visions and dreams when asleep, and even in their hours of wakefulness. Messages sent by one soul to another are perceived as premonitions, dreams, and visions. Facts are generally inverted in dreams, and this can be explained by the law of introverted mental vision. The Higher Ego does not think as its evanescent personality does. Its thoughts are vivid pictures and visions of past and future scenes, of wonderful living acts and heroic deeds, which are all present in the eternal now — even as they were when speech expressed in sounds did not exist, when thoughts were things, and men did not need to express them in speeches, for they instantly realised themselves in action by the power of Kriyashakti, that mysterious power which transforms instantaneously ideas into visible forms. In persons of a very materialistic mind, because the Ego is so trammelled by matter, it can hardly give all its attention to one’s actions, even though the latter may commit sins for which that Ego will have to suffer conjointly in future. True dreams, being actions of the Higher Ego, they produce effects which are recorded on their own plane. Ordinary dreams, by and large, are the waking and hazy recollections of such actions. Between the inner man and the physical brain there is a kind of conscious telegraphic communication going on incessantly, day and night. When the brain is asleep, the physical memory and imagination are also asleep, and all cognitive functions are at rest. Our mundane life is a “dream” to the Higher Ego, while the inner life, or what we call the “dream plane,” is the real life for it. The will of the common man is dormant in dreams and therefore inactive. A sick person, especially just before death, is very likely to see in dream, or vision, those whom he loves and is continually thinking of; and so also is a person awake, but intensely thinking of a person who is asleep at the time. In cases of consumption, or other emaciating diseases, dreams become pleasant because the astral soul of the patient has begun detaching from the physical body, and therefore becomes more clairvoyant in proportion. As death approaches, the body wastes away and ceases to be an impediment or barrier between the brain of the ailing man and his Higher Ego. In Black Magic it is no rare thing to evoke the “spirit” of a sleeping person. Thus the sorcerer may learn from the apparition any secret he chooses, while the sleeper remains ignorant of what is going on. A nightmare arises from oppression and difficulty in breathing; and the latter will always create a feeling of oppression and a sensation of impending calamity. By cultivating the power of dreaming, clairvoyance is developed. But only one’s clairvoyant faculty, aided by spiritual intuition, can interpret one’s dreams. The only one who profits from a dream book is its author. If you could remember your dreams in deep sleep, when the spiritual consciousness is active, you would be able to remember all your past incarnations. That exalted state of remembrance is the “Memory of the Heart”; and the capacity to impress itself on the brain, so that it becomes part of its consciousness, marks the opening of the Third Eye.
The lymphatic cells issuing from nests of adipose tissue, and squeezing themselves through the epithelium cells up to the surface of the intestines, absorb therein the drops of fat and loaded with their prey, travel homeward to the lymphatic canals. This faculty of selecting their special food, of assimilating the useful, and of rejecting the useless and the harmful, is common to all the unicellular organisms. Latin Lymph comes from the Greek Nymph, an inferior Goddess. The Muses were sometimes called nymphs by the poets. Hence, all persons in a state of rapture, whether seers, poets, madmen, etc., is said to be caught by nymphs. In India, Lymph-Nymph is the Goddess of Moisture fabled to be born from the pores of an aquatic deity, whether the Ocean God, Varuna, or some minor River God. The Jews consulted demons through small golden statues, shaped as nymphs. When invoked, the nymphs showed them their tasks from hour to hour. Sylphs, Gnomes, Nymphs, and Salamanders, by the alliance which they may contract with man, might be made partakers of immortality. Certain mediums boast of “spirit” husbands and wives. (Consultation and deliberation with “spirits” spells the end of wisdom.) Every Principle in the Constitution of Man has its seven aspects, and every cell and organ, its seven components. A Principle may be related to an organ of the Body. However, the visible Body is not a Principle, it is the medium of every Principle and Aspect. The Liver and the Spleen cells are the most subservient to the action of our personal mind. The Heart is the organ through which the Higher Ego acts through the Lower Self. Liver and Stomach correspond to Kama-Desire. Liver is the General; Spleen, the Aide-de-camp. The Spleen is the abode of Protean model of the gross physical body, and its subtle counterpart. It is closely linked with Kama-Prana, and inseparable from it.
