SELF AND IT'S SHEATHS

BY
ANNIE BESANT

1912
 Self and It's Sheaths By Annie Besant.

This edition was created and published by Global Grey

©GlobalGrey 2018

globalgreyebooks.com
CONTENTS
Preface
The Self And Its Sheaths
The Body Of Action
The Body Of Feeling
The Object Of The Sheaths
 1

PREFACE

THE following lectures form a second series, delivered at Adyar, the first
series having been delivered there in 1893, on “The Building of the
Kosmos”, on “Symbolism”, and on “Yoga”. The system adopted and
explained in the first series has been carried on in the second, so that the
preface to the volume of last year may well serve for this.

ANNIE BESANT

Benares, 1895.
 2

THE SELF AND ITS SHEATHS

To know man is to know God. To know God is to know man. To study the
universe is to learn both God and man; for the universe is the expression
of the Divine Thought, and the universe is mirrored in man. Speaking to
you last year I spoke of the Cosmos and its building, and speaking to you
this year I take the same thought in its essence, but in a new present-
ment. This time I speak to you of the “SELF and Its Sheaths,” of that,
which understood makes all problems soluble, that which realised clears
all difficulties away, that which known brings us to the Supreme Peace,
that beyond which there is nothing, and in knowing which we know
everything that is or can be.

In these Convention meetings of ours you must remember there is a

double purpose; we are here for the work of the Theosophical Society,
that presently in our hands must be accomplished; and also we are here
for the spiritual side of that mighty movement, for the understanding of
ourselves and of the world, in order that by knowledge we may help, by
understanding we may guide; and in these mornings, apart from the
business portion of our work, we are to consider this mighty problem of
the SELF, to try to gain some glimpses as to the SELF in the sheaths in
which It is clothed, so that thus studying we may learn the Supreme
Secret, and knowing the Supreme Secret may do our duty in the battle of
the outer world. For so taught us Shri Krshna at Kurukshetra; there the
Bhagavad Gita was spoken, there the Supreme Secret was unveiled - not
to the hermit, not to the recluse, not to the man apart from the haunts of
men, but to Arjuna the prince and the warrior, to Arjuna the worker and
the struggler; to him for his guidance was the supreme knowledge given;
to him for his helping ere the battle, the truth about the SELF was told.

Last year I pointed out to you three lines of study, three rays of light
which, brought together to a single point, illuminated what was obscure,
made clear what was difficult. The first of those rays of light came from
the Shastras, came from the spiritual teachings, came from the Supreme
World that is the spiritual source of knowledge; then I pointed out to you
that those great Teachers of the past, who had given the Shastras for the
guiding of the people, had in these latter days sent a Messenger to deal
 3

with these same questions in different fashion, and in philosophical and

intellectual language to give us the key that had been lost, to give us once
more the solutions that had largely disappeared; and then I showed you
also that from western Science, with its observation of the physical
universe, with its record of physical phenomena, we might gain another
ray of light, and joining this to the other two, taking side by side the
spiritual teachings that are the holiest, the intellectual explanations that
are necessary for the day, and the science which in scrutinising the
physical universe translates by way of the senses the word of the
Supreme Life, that in that way we might gain a knowledge more
accurate, an understanding more complete than if we rejected any one of
the three, than if we confined ourselves to the light shed by any one of
the rays. I follow the same plan this year. I take as the source of the
spiritual teaching those books that are most ancient and most
sacred, those books that are the very ‘Word’ given to man; that Science
of Brahman which is hidden for us in the Upanishads, and is there, if we
can find it, for the guiding of our feet. I take to help us in our study the
writings of H. P. Blavatsky, who based herself on those ancient
teachings, and cast light upon them from the Secret Knowledge; and I
take also to aid us those discoveries of western Science that give us in
concrete form the abstract truth, so that understanding the universe on
its physical side we may catch something of the Divine Word, of the truth
of ourselves and of the all; and thus I hope to help you, I hope to lead you
into some understanding of the SELF, some comprehension of the
sheaths in which It is enwrapped. And let me say, that no
misunderstanding may arise, why I go back to the ancient writings
instead of to the later philosophical schools. There is a mighty name in
Indian literature, the name of Shri Shankaracharya that no man can
name without reverence for the subtlety of his intellect, for the vast
range of his intelligence. What was his work? He came in the Kaliyuga,
he came when the world was losing or had lost most of its spiritual light,
he came to build up round the Science of Brahman the buttress of the
intellect, the walls of subtle argumentation, the defences that should be
strong and mighty, on which the intellect of the world might break its
teeth in vain. And he did it in order that behind that wall of intellectual
subtlety, behind that fortress of keen intellectual argument, the Supreme
Truth might remain unoutraged by assault, might remain for those who
were worthy, might be protected for the spiritual mind. If you take as an
 4

example the Brahma Sutras, with the commentary upon them of

Shankaracharya, you will see exactly what I mean. In his commentary
there is the most refined hair-splitting; in his commentary the most
subtle distinctions; in his commentary the most careful guarding of
language, and the shading of every possible delicacy of thought;
and behind all that commentary the Sutras themselves. If you want to
gain their inner essence, if you want them not for intellectual arguments
outside, but for the feeding of the Soul within, then take the Sutras alone
in their original tongue, in their own unadorned form, and in silent
meditation, when the senses are quiet and when the mind is tranquil,
when the light of the SELF is shining - then take a Sutra and listen to it
in its own words alone, and you will learn a spiritual truth that no
argument may avail to reach.

And now let us try and look backward into what to us is the past; let us
go to the beginning of a universe, and try to realise what is meant by the
SELF; for the SELF of the universe and the SELF of man are one, and in
knowing the SELF we know That which is at the root of the universe and
of man alike. Thus travelling, backward to the beginning, we come to an
infinite Darkness where there is no thought, no language, where nothing
human or limited may be. It has no name, no words may describe It;
nothing that can be said of THAT but is utterly mistaken; and when the
writers of old had gone backwards and backwards, when they had
reached Brahman, Who is without origin, Who is the One and the All,
then in face of the silence beyond and the darkness, they used one
epithet only to describe It; It is beyond Brahman, It is Supreme
Brahman, Parabrahman! and there all voice is silent, all thought falls
dead.

But as we try in thought to watch the Darkness before the universe is

born, by an effort of the imagination placing ourselves where there is
nothing, where everything is as it were emptiness and space, then as
standing in the darkness of the night and looking skyward into the
darkness, there might glimmer through the darkness a light which is
formless, we know not whence it comes nor how, save that where there
was blackness of darkness there now is a glimmering that foretells the
coming of the sun - so in that emptiness which is all-fulness, in that
darkness indescribable by us, there is a glimmer, there is light without
form, says the Scripture, luminousness that has no shape, light that is
 5

only light without limitation, and on that glimmering light for a moment
our thought may rest, for there is the first point where thought is
possible at all; and then we hear sounding forth those sublime words of
the Mundakopanishad:

Luminous without form ... without origin, without life, without mind. 1

Without life? without mind? what mean these strange words of the
Origin of all life and mind? He has nothing; nay, He is nothing; He, out
of Whom springs the root of all that shall be, out of THAT which has and
is nothing - no special thing just because it is the source of all the not yet
unfolded possibilities of everything that shall be - out of THAT a
universe is to be builded out of THAT all that shall be is to come. But
there is no mind - why not? Because mind implies more than the One,
and THAT is one; because mind implies separation, and here there is no
separateness; because mind implies some one that is thinking, and
something that is thought of, and there is as yet but the One in Whom is
enfolded all that may be thought but has not yet come into
manifestation. Therefore rightly and wisely in dealing with this subject,
and in throwing it into the intellectual form which is necessary if our
thought is to be in any sense understood on earth, therefore rightly and
wisely, Madame Blavatsky - in dealing with this which is beyond all
consciousness, with this which is beyond mind, with this which is beyond
thought, not because it is less but because it is so much more, because it
is deeper, wider, all-embracing - says:

Being Absolute Consciousness and Absolute Motion - to the limited

senses of those who describe this indescribable - it is unconsciousness
and immovableness. Concrete consciousness cannot be predicated of
abstract consciousness, any more than the quality wet can be predicated
of water-wetness being its own attribute, and the cause of the wet quality
in other things. Consciousness implies limitations and qualifications;
something to be conscious of and some one to be conscious of it ... We

1 ii, 2.
 6

call Absolute Consciousness ‘unconsciousness’, because it seems to us

that it must necessarily be so, just as we call the Absolute ‘Darkness’,
because to our finite understanding it appears quite impenetrable; yet we
recognise fully that our perception of such things does not do them
justice. We involuntarily distinguish in our minds, for instance, between
unconscious Absolute Consciousness and unconsciousness, by secretly
endowing the former with some indefinite quality that corresponds, on a
higher plane than our thoughts can reach, with what we know as
consciousness in ourselves. But this is not any kind of consciousness that
we can manage to distinguish from what appears to us as
unconsciousness. 2

So again she quotes from the Divine Pymander:

God is not a mind, but the cause that the Mind is; not a spirit, but the
cause that the Spirit is; not light, but the cause that the Light is. 3

Let us try to realise what this means. The mind of man thinks, but in
order to think it must remember the Past, it must realise the Present, it
must look forward to the Future. But in Brahman there is no Past, nor
Present, nor Future; there is one eternal Now, and no distinguishment of
time, of place, of succession of states. Therefore a great Teacher is
quoted in this connection, as baffled by the limitations of human thought
and language:

As said in the Scriptures: “The Past Time is the Present Time, as also the
Future, which though it has not come into existence still is” … Our ideas,
in short, on duration and time are all derived from our sensations
according to the laws of association. Inextricably bound up with the
relativity of human knowledge, they nevertheless can have no existence
except in the experience of the individual Ego, and perish when its

2 The Secret Doctrine, vol. i., pp. 86, 87.

3 Ibid, p. 305.
 7

evolutionary march dispels the Maya of phenomenal existence. What is

time, for instance, but the panoramic succession of our states of
consciousness? In the words of a Master: “I feel irritated at having to use
these three clumsy words - Past, Present and Future; miserable concepts
of the objective phases of the subjective whole, they are about as ill-
adapted for the purpose as an axe for fine carving”. 4

In that eternal Now, no thought, as we know thought, is possible; in that

eternal Present, no distinctions as we make them can exist; and
therefore Brahman is “without mind”, because He is above it. And then
the Scripture goes on to say that out of Him come life and mind and all;
so that that First and Supreme, the One out of Which everything is to be
builded, that is Brahman, the SELF of the Universe, it is Ishvara, the
Lord.

And now what is the next step? Again from the Sacred Writings, I take
the words that are to guide us:

It willed: I will multiply. 5

There is the beginning of the universe; there the commencement of

differentiation; and it is an internal differentiation; and not an external
expansion; it is not a change of nature, but a change of condition; it is
not an alteration of substance, but of variety within the One, due to the
word, “I will multiply”; and the very first stage of this internal
differentiation is that which shows itself as Life, said by the Scripture to
be “concealed in Name and Form”, and then from the Life concealed in
Name and Form the Mind comes forth; so speaks the Scripture. Now let
us take it for a moment in the explanation that is given us in The Secret
Doctrine, and then in Science, which will throw so startling a light on
this marvellous far-off stage that you will realise how true it is that the
universe is the expression of the Divine Thought. Intellectually put, this
differentiation is within the One; this internal preparation for a universe

4 Ibid, p. 75.
5 Chhandogyopanishad, II, vi, 3.
 8

is put in the form of the three Logoi. I have no time to dilate upon Them,
I can only mention Them. The First is the essence of life and the cause of
all. The Second is double, spirit-matter, positive-negative, or call it what
you like. The Third is Divine Ideation, or power of thought. If you want
the details you must go back to the last year’s lectures. I have not the
time to repeat them.

Now come to Science. Suppose you took a microscope in hand, and

suppose that looking through the microscope you took the first germ of
living matter out of which a plant or an animal was to grow, you would
see beneath your eyes under the microscope a tiny speck of matter, and
in that speck of matter a single spot; as you watched the speck of matter
and the central spot within it, you would slowly become conscious - you
could not say when it began, you would be unable to say exactly when
first you were able to see it - but by slow change imperceptible in the
beginning and only becoming perceptible gradually, as you watch
through the great magnifying power of the glass, you would see in the
central spot a separation, and you would see towards each end of the
speck of matter two spots appearing; you would see within this one speck
of matter and the central spot a slow strange gathering together of the
material substance, until this change would appear when complete; that
instead of one you had two, and these two apart at the two poles, as they
are called, of this little mass of matter. So that you would have two
separate distinct spots, duality where there had been unity, separation
internally where there had been none. You would see the two poles
within one mass. Those poles are different though they look the same.
Out of the same substance - for there was only one - by internal
differentiation two separate and yet not separated bodies have formed.
How do I know they are different, you may ask. Because action takes
place between them; because between those two poles lines are set up,
shapes appear; because between the two poles of the speck of matter
there is alteration, there is variety, there is differentiation, there are
more and more distinct marks of interchanging action; thus it comes to
pass that the one is recognised as positive, the other is recognised as
negative; and between the two everything formative occurs, and there is
built up the germ of the coming plant; then the plant grows and
differentiates further, and develops into three, and you have your root,
your stock and your leaves; but all these formed in germ between the two
 9

poles that were one and then two. Most marvellous picture in the
concrete of the differentiation in the Supreme. Between the two poles a
universe is builded, and out of duality the whole variety comes forth;
therefore it is that we read that after the One has given birth to the Two,
after the Life has become Name and Form, then comes the Mind, then
comes Ideation, then comes the Divine Thought, the picture of all that
shall be, and the image of the universe that not yet has come to the birth.
For this is the womb of Brahman of which Shri Krshna, speak. This is the
eternal womb from which the universe shall proceed and the Third -
Mahat, if you call it so, the Third Logos if you call it so, Shri Krshna if
you call it so - is the eternal Father, that puts the seed within the womb
out of which all else shall come. This is the manifestation of the universe
within the Divine Form, and therefore you read in the eleventh portion
of Bhagavad-Gita of the time when the four-armed Krshna appeared in
His Divine Form stretching from earth to sky, blazing as a thousand
suns, before the dazzled eyes of Arjuna, and when Arjuna - gifted with
the divine eye that alone might gaze into that splendour that no mortal
eye could face, no mortal mind might grasp - cried out in his ecstasy: “In
thy body I see all the Gods, and all the gradations of living things”. For
all is within the Divine Thought as Idea, before it is born, as Form, and
before it comes into manifestation it is stored in the treasure-house of
the Universal Mind.

Therefore is it written that for the sake of the SELF everything is dear:
not for the outer shape but for the inner SELF - the lowest as well as the
highest, the speck of dirt as well as the loftiest Deva. Brahman is in all,
pervades all; everything is there. Face the imperfection of the universe,
and there you will find the supreme consolation. If there is to be a
universe, there must be limitation; if there is limitation, there must be
less than perfection, i.e., imperfection; if there is imperfection, then only
you can have variety; but the separated things cannot be perfect, since
perfection belongs to the unlimited and the all. Then if a universe is to be
built at all, imperfection must appear. The limits of the imperfection are
the limits of the variety. That means, in our mortal words, that there
must be evil as well as good. Evil is only imperfection, and where
limitation is, evil, as we call it, must needs exist. Give the separated
things self-moving power and there will be the striking of one against
another, till each obeys the law of the whole; and because in a universe
 10

there must be variety, therefore Shri Krshna said: “I am the dice of the
gambler”, - as much as He is the purity of the righteous. You cannot
separate one single thing from the Supreme; It is the SELF of all, and
exists in all, and is all. Then, indeed, further differentiation; then,
indeed, though all be Itself, all becomes apparently separate and even in
conflict. Strange paradox! Let me see if again from Science I can gain an
analogy which may help you. When the solar system is going to be built a
great nebula appears - a mist of fire. That fire-mist has in it everything
that in the solar system is going to be gradually evolved; within that fire--
mist is everything in essence that the system can show. Presently a mass
of fiery vapour is hurled from the central mass. It is a planet, it is a future
world, and as this process goes on, planet after planet is hurled from the
central mass yet continues to revolve around it, until at last you have a
sun in the centre and planets circling all round. They are the same as the
sun in their essence; all are of the whirling fire-mist that was un-
separated in the beginning; but now it has become a sun that gives light
to separated planets; although they are all the same in essence, there is a
difference in condition. The analogy is not perfect, but it may help us,
and so it is written that as one sun illuminates the whole world, so one
Self is in every separated body. 6 But all is Itself.

You remember the story of Uddalaka, who taught his son by salt
dissolved in water. You remember how he made the boy: take the salt
and put it into the water, and how the next day he asked for it back:
again, and the boy said he could not find it. Then the father said: “Taste
from the top of the water”; and the son said: “It is saltish”; and the father
said: “Taste from the middle of the water”, and the son said: “It is
saltish”; and the father said: “Taste from the bottom of the water”, and
the son said: “It is saltish”. Then the father told his son that as the salt
which could not be seen yet pervaded all, so it was with Brahman, the
Universal Soul. All-pervading, omnipresent, eternal, the root, the life, the
essence, the substance of all, one and indivisible in substance, separate
in the manifested sheaths that It is going of Its own substance to evolve;
whatever is exists and lives by It, the SELF of the universe, THAT from
which everything proceeds. And then Uddalaka gave a bridge from the
One to the many. He had taught his son that the salt was everywhere in
the water though it had disappeared from sight; he had taught him that

6 The Bhagavad Gita, xiii, 33.

 11

the universe was pervaded by the One. And then he spake the words: “It
is the Universal SELF. O Svetaketu! thou art THAT.” There is our bridge:
thou art Atma, and Atma and Brahman are one. In the heart of men
there is a cavity, and there is Brahman to be found hidden, the SELF of
man, the SELF of the universe. If we speak of the SELF of man, we
sometimes say Atma, then we say Paramatma of the SELF of all; if we
say of man Purusha, then we say Purushottama of the SELF of all. But It
is one and the same everywhere, in the great and in the small; there is no
difference, there is no separation, there is one eternal undying and
ancient SELF, and that SELF is the SELF in you and in me. There may be
difference in condition, in manifestation, but the essence and the nature
is one and the same; and therefore is it written in that most marvellous
of all Upanishats, the Chhandogya, the mightiest and most mystical of
all, the hardest to unravel and to understand; therefore is it written in
the Chhandogyopanishat that Atma is the bridge.

Crossing that bridge the blind no longer are blind, the wounded no
longer are wounded, the sorrowful no longer sorrow. Therefore
crossing that bridge, nights verily become as days Eternally radiant is
that place of Brahman. 7

And so again is it written in the Mundakopanishad:

Cease from words; He is the bridge to immortality. 8

Now ‘He’ is Brahman, dwelling in the secret place, in the cavity of the
heart, for Atma and Brahman are one, and in finding the SELF we find
Brahman.

Let us take our next stage. I turn to the same great Scripture. I take from
it further words, for our next step is so difficult, so little understood, that
out of the want of understanding grow the many controversies of the

7 viii, IV, 1, 2.
8 ii, 5.
 12

schools, and the continual arguments which divide intellect from

intellect. Let us then take the simple words first, and then let us work
them out. It is written in the same Chhandogyopanishat:

He who willeth, ‘I shall smell’, He is Atma, desiring to smell odours; He

who willeth, ‘I shall speak’, He is Atma, desiring to utter words; He who
willeth, ‘I shall hear’, He is Atma, desiring to hear sounds; He who
willeth, ‘I shall think’, He is Atma; Manas is the divine eye. 9

Yet again we remember how we have read that desire awaked in the
bosom of the Eternal and gave birth to manifestation, 10 and again that
the “nature of Purusha is desire”. 11 How shall we reconcile the paradox?
How shall we understand the seeming contradiction that Atma is at once
the witness and the agent - is at once quiescent and active - is at once not
doing and doing - is at once the changeless, immutable, and yet the only
agents in the universe of manifested things? If we can understand this,
ah! then our road opens before us. Here the crux of our difficulty - here
the great problem that we must now endeavour to solve. As Atma, Atma
is quiescent; as Atma, Atma is immovable; as Atma, Atma is the witness;
as Atma, Atma does nothing, and acts not. What then means the Scrip-
ture - when it says that Atma doeth all these things? As Atma - other
than Which there is nothing - wills within Itself, so does It make out of
Its own substance that which we call the sheaths. Those sheaths are
Itself, for there is naught else, but they are differentiations within Itself,
changed conditions due to Its own will: “I will multiply,” in which It is
active and in which It does the many things of which the Scripture
speaks. In Its own nature; changeless, unacting, in the sheaths It is the
actor; not out of the sheath, but in the sheath; not separated from the
sheath, but working in the sheath; so that while in Itself it moveth not, in
the sheaths It moveth everything that is - in the sheath, that for the
purpose It hath brought out of Itself into manifestation. Therefore do we
speak of all as Maya, because there is but the One Reality, out of Which
by thought everything proceeds, because out of Itself by will all goes

9 viii, XII, 4, 5.
10 The Secret Doctrine, vol. II, p. 185.
11 Brhadaranyakopanishat (Bombay Edition), iv, IV, 5.
 13

forth. But to you and to me who look from the outside, that is from the
sheath, there is difference, because we see the sheath and see not the
Atma, that is concealed by Name and Form; for in one sheath It is will, in
another sheath It is desire, in another sheath It is living activity, in
another sheath It is chemical attraction and repulsion, and It is all the
wondrous forces in the universe; but the difference is in the sheath and
not in the One that is; in the changed conditions of manifestation, and
not in the manifesting Life. If I take a current of electricity and if I send it
through water charged with a solution of silver, down will fall the silver,
and that falling will be the result of the invisible current; and if I carry
the current onward into a narrow wire - a thin wire - out of the wire will
shine the light, and that will be the effect of the same current; in the one
case the difference of condition throws down a solid; in another case the
difference of condition gives forth a light. It is one electric force in both
the cases, and the difference of manifestation lies in, that in which it is
working and not in itself. The analogy is imperfect, as it must be; it may
yet help us to understand how one may be manifested in many ways,
how there is one Atma in substance, but multiplicity by changed
conditions that we call sheaths.

It is again written12 that though the body be mortal, it is the dwelling-

place of Atma, and that in the sheaths Atma comes into contact with
desirable and repulsive objects, while out of the sheaths It comes not
into touch with aught; and because while in the sheaths It comes into
contact with all that is around, It becomes subject to these contacts. The
outgoing energy is Atma; the sheath makes the difference in
manifestation. Thus we shall begin to understand.

This is the point at which I shall have to leave my subject this morning to
take it up tomorrow; this is the point I want you now to realise and carry
away, because on this depends the understanding of everything that
follows: Atma, giving out of Itself everything that is to be, works in these
differentiated selves in different ways. It works to make the material of a
material universe; in the atom It works to build up the physical
substratum (which is Itself), works to bring about a particular result; so
that one line of this manifesting energy is going to be the building up of
physical atoms which are to be used for the physical universe, for the

12 Chhandogya, vii, xii, 1.

 14

physical body of man, for the whole line of prakrtic evolution, in this and
every region of the universe. That is the evolution of form, of everything
that has extension; it may be physical, it may be astral, it may belong to
the world of kama, desire, it may belong to the world of manas, thought.
Nay, it may belong to the very region of Buddhi, and yet it will be a
sheath - that is it will have form, it will have as it were extension; that is,
it will serve for the purpose of manifestation, which necessitates the
existence of form. And you will remember that five sheaths are given: the
highest is anandamayakosha, bliss sheath, buddhi; then coming
downwards there is the sheath for higher manas, the vignanamayakosha;
then for lower manas and kama, the manomayakosha, for all
manifestations of working intellect and desire; and yet another for prana
and another the food sheath, the annamayakosha, which is made of the
physical material of the universe. These are the sheaths and all have to
be builded by the One. In the building of the sheaths lies difference of
manifestation. In that the change of forms; in that the activity which is
going to make the whole sheath-side of the universe and of man. But that
is not all; there is another side of the activity which goes to the building
up, by means of the sheath, of the individual man; no longer now only
the Atma in essence, that is the One; no longer now only the sheath in its
separable materials of the Form side; there is the Name, the inner man,
the individual, that which is going to pass from birth to birth, that which
is going to gather experience, that which is going to learn, and by
learning know; that which is going to become the individual mind of
man, which is going to be built up by life and death, by birth and decay,
by passing into svarga and by coming back from svarga into new birth;
by these births and deaths is going to be built up into a mirror of the All;
it is going to become the individual Self which is and shall be, which has
its own knowledge and has its own distinguishment; it is that of which
Shri Krshna said: “It is unborn and constant and eternal,” because in its
essence it is Atma Itself, and yet it is also that which experienced births
and deaths, though itself neither born nor dying. Shri Krshna looking
back knew all His former births and remembered the events of each;
Arjuna had been born many times although he knew it not. And you and
I have been born many times before, and before us also births and deaths
may spread. That is the building up of the individual. That is the building
up by the sheaths, which is slowly accomplished. So that we leave it at
this point: One SELF, Atma, in Itself inactive; sheaths of Its substance in
 15

which It is going to act, sheaths builded by It along one line of evolution;

and then Atma working within the sheaths to build up the individual, the
Ego, the self-conscious I - which shall know itself separate in mani-
festation, although rooted by its origin in the One and the All. Carried on
into further detail, this thought will lead us through this tangle, a clue to
guide our puzzled steps out of the apparent contradictions of the One
and the many, the All which is at once one and manifold; keep that
thought for this morning and we will follow it whither it leads us in the
mornings that lie in front. But grasp that clearly and everything else will
become simple and definite, and we shall learn how our bodies today are
built of atoms, how these atoms by change shall be built into the living
man, how the man of this manvantara shall become the deva of another,
how step by step this growth is ever proceeding, how in every universe
there is Ishvara, how in every one He weaves out of Himself the material
basis, how out of the elaborated material basis of past universes He
builds the living Egos of men, how out of these He builds the Devas of
another universe, and ultimately unites them in Himself, that is the All.
Such is the mighty subject on which we are to think for these four
mornings of our meeting, the Supreme Secret of the Master, by knowing
which all things are known.
 16

THE BODY OF ACTION

MY BROTHERS: Let me remind you at the outset, of the three rays of

light which we are going to use in order to illuminate the very difficult
subject which lies before us. First, we take the ray of spiritual light which
comes to us from the ancient Scriptures, from the Shrutis, and, with
limitations, from the Smrtis. Then we take the ray of intellectual light
which comes to us through H.P.B., giving us the intellectual ladder by
which we may rise to the higher region. And then we take the ray that
comes from western science, examining the physical universe, and
bearing record to the facts that it observes. These are the three, you will
remember, that I said yesterday were to be the rays of light converging to
a single focus, to illuminate the obscurity that we are trying to pierce.
And let me say on science this; that the thing that we find to-day of
opposition between science and spiritual knowledge is a plant of modern
growth and does not come from the ancient world. Science in the old
days was the hand-maiden of religion and was not its opponent, and I
hope it will be one of the glories of Theosophy to bring back science to its
real duty, as showing on the sensuous plane what religion shows on the
spiritual; once more the child and the servant, once more the helper and
the buttress of the Wisdom-Religion of old.

Now the section of the subject that today we have to deal with is, first of
all, the object of the sheaths - not worked out; that will be done in my
last lecture; but a word or two on the object - in order to show to you
how and why there should be sheaths at all. Then something on the be-
coming of a universe, for by studying the becoming of the universe that
now is, we shall understand both what the present inherits from the
past, and also what it is preparing to bequeath to the future. For in every
universe there is a preparation of that which in the next universe shall
serve as material. In each universe there is an inheritance from the past
of what in the previous universes was prepared for the present. You
cannot separate one universe from another, nor deal with a single
manifestation as though it were isolated from the rest. There is ever an
out-breathing from the One, in-breathing again into the One when a
manvantara is over; out-breathing for a fresh manvantara, in-breathing
 17

again when that also is concluded; but all the out-breathings and the in-
breathings are connected. And the out-breathing of today has in it results
of the in-breathings that have preceded it in time, and therefore to
understand we must remember that in every universe we look backwards
for its inheritance, and we look forwards to see what it will lead to; we
study the present universe because it is the nearest, and here we can best
learn to, understand the process of becoming. Then - finishing this brief
description of the outline of what I have to say - I shall deal in detail with
two of the sheaths, the two lower sheaths, that of annam or food, and
that of prana or life. Tomorrow morning I shall deal with the two sheaths
that belong to the mental and emotional activities, with the
manomayakosha and gnanamayakosha, leaving myself for the last
discourse to say the little that can be said on the highest sheath - the
anandamayakosha, and then dealing in detail with the object of the
sheaths and the final result which comes out of the whole.

In taking now at once the first division that I have thus sketched of
today's work - the object of the sheaths - let me remind you, taking up
what is written in the Mundakopanishat which I quoted yesterday, as to
Brahman being “without life, without mind”, that then in the very next
shloka it is written:

From Him are produced Life, Mind, and all the organs, ether, air, light,
water, earth. 13

Purposely - let me say, in parenthesis – I am translating. I am not using

here a distinct quotation in Samskrt from the Sacred Books and I will tell
you frankly my reason. Shlokas which come from the Vedas have in them
a mantric force which may not be used in a mixed assemblage, and may
not be raised among the conflicting magnetisms which are gathered
together without distinction and without separation. I am using the
teaching; I am not using the Samskrt tongue in the definite order of its
syllables, which gives them the force of mantrams. Every quotation that I
intend to give to you this morning, I have taken myself in the Samskrt, so
that I may be sure that I am giving the meaning accurately. I am not in
13 ii, I, 3.
 18

any one case going to quote the original, because I will not take on
myself the responsibility of repeating the mantram-form in the mixed
audience that I address now.

It is written in the Mundakopanishat that from Brahman the One - I

need not repeat to you today, that which I addressed to you yesterday -
comes Life - Prana is the word used. I shall show you presently that
Prana is Atma in its outgoing activity; then Mind, Manas, that is the
second; then the five elements as we know them - ether, air, fire, water
and earth; seven in all. These are the seven regions of the universe; the
seven sheaths of Brahman, as the SELF of the All; corresponding to
those in man are the sheaths with which we have now to deal; and the
object of the sheaths in man is to come into contact with each
corresponding region in the universe. So that Atma which in itself is pure
Sat and therefore quiescent, so that Atma which cannot as Atma deal
with these different regions by way of contact, may through the
sheaths come into contact with everything, and so gradually build up an
individual self-consciousness, many individual self-consciousnesses; the
building of these individuals is the object of the universe, and at the end
of the manvantara, of the universe, there is the existence of these
separate self-consciousnesses which were not existent as self-
consciousnesses at the beginning, but only existent potentially in the
Atma, which is the root of the possibility of all.

Then we come first to our material universe, as we call it. Let us realise
that in this material universe, in the widest sense of the term, prakrti, we
have the seven-fold division to which I have just alluded, and that the
essence of matter, not matter as we have it down here, but the essence of
matter, is eternal. Prakrti, says Shri Krshna, is eternal; not in its
manifestation but in its essence; not in its manifestation but in its root;
the root of matter not yet in manifestation, that is eternal in Brahman, or
otherwise never could it be. For once again says the Divine Teacher:

The non-existent cannot become, neither can the existent cease to be.

You must hold firm to the principle that if a thing be true, the outer and
superficial difficulties are things to be conquered, without letting go the
 19

fundamental truth that you have. Have faith enough in truth to hold to
fact when you have it, and believe that if a thing be a fact it must come
into co-ordination with all other truths, and as knowledge increases all
superficial difficulties will gradually vanish away. Now this matter, or
prakrti, which is without beginning in its essence, never can be
separated from that which is co-eternal with it; that which comes with it
into manifestation, and abides with it for evermore. For you cannot talk
of Matter alone. If you say Matter, you must say Spirit. If you say Prakrti,
you must say Purusha. They are the two sides of the one existence, and
are never to be separated from each other in fact, although in thought we
distinguish them by quality, in order that we may be able to think at all.
But in manifestation they are never apart. There is no such thing as dead
Matter. There is no such thing as Spirit, or force, or life, without Matter
by which it takes its form, by which it shows its energy. Wherever there is
Name there is Form, wherever there is Form there is Name. Life is
hedged round by the two, and they are never separated in manifestation.

Now H. P. Blavatsky in dealing with this, points out that,

matter becomes, and she quotes the teachings of a mighty Egyptian who
drew his knowledge from the Rshis of old, and gave out through Egypt to
Greece, and so onwards to the western world, the eastern teaching,
which is the source of all our knowledge on these subjects. And this great
Egyptian, Hermes, saying exactly as he had been taught, declared:

Oh, my son, Matter becomes; formerly it was; for Matter is the vehicle of
becoming.

Realise that idea; matter is a “vehicle of becoming”; and no universe may

be without this vehicle of becoming, as well as the force that informs.
And then taking it still more clearly - and here doing us one of those
great services that should make her name to be held ever in honour and
in respect amongst us - she explains to us what this means. Everything
that is, that was, that will be, eternally is. Even the countless forms in the
universe are finite and perishable only in their objective, and never in
their ideal form; they exist as Ideas in the eternity; when they vanish as
forms they still exist as reflections. If you realise that, you will
 20

understand the links that unite the universes together. Nothing that ever
has been can perish. It exists for ever in the Eternal Thought. Objective
existence perishes; the ideal form remains for ever, and is handed on
from manvantara to manvantara. The objective forms of today will be
handed on to the next universe as ideal forms; they are to govern the line
of evolution, so that each successive universe inherits the karma of the
past, as it modifies and builds the karma of all the universes yet to be.

Now an atom is at once the form and the force of life. In every universe
the atom is the basis which in that universe se is built for the lowest
types of manifestation on every plane; that is, it is the form of every
plane. In those seven that I spoke of - the five great Elements, Prana and
Manas - you have in each of these planes this basis of the atom, modified
as we come down lower and lower into more and more objective forms,
but ever present as the form-side of the region. And this building up of
the form-side in the atom is repeated in every universe, and the atom of
one universe passes on as ideal form to take its place as the life of the
line of evolution of the next. Try to realise that, for it is the key to the
puzzle in every universe of forms involving, and instinct with, life;
through the universe the process of becoming, then passing into the ideal
and remaining as reflection in the Eternal One that is, and coming forth
in the next universe to be the informing life of the atoms of the next. So
that in each case that which in one universe is, to use a clumsy phrase, an
outer form becomes in the next an informing life; and the atom of the
one is the mind and the energy of the next; and so each universe is
builded and linked to those that in time lie behind.

Now let us see the atom as a form and a force; the Atma and in addition
the sheath which Atma differentiates within Itself for the manifestation
of Its own energy; and so it is written in an Esoteric Scripture that

The Jivas are the Souls of the atoms. 14

Again, I say, try to realise that thought: Jiva is another name for Atma in
manifestation; Jiva is the soul of the atom - that is, that in every atom

14 The Secret Doctrine, vol. i., p. 679.

 21

you have this duality; the Atma that informs and the differentiated Atma
which makes Itself the sheath. This is the work of building the Prakrtic
side, as it were, of Atma.

Again turning to H. P. Blavatsky, we learn that these atoms are “visible

complex units” and act from within - a point of enormous importance, as
you will see when in a moment I pass to what science tells us about them.
For H. P. B. writing on these atoms said, as we have seen, that there are
souls to these atoms, that they are informed with Jiva. And then she goes
on to say that these atoms fill the immensity of space, that within the
atoms is all the activity, and that the atoms become complex units - note
the phrase “every atom becomes a complex unit” - that they propel the
molecules into activity from within. 15

Now turn to science. Science deals with atoms in chemical form and also,
of course, in the physical. The chemical form is the one that throws most
light on the occult side of Nature. The physical deals more with the outer
manifestation; the chemical deals more with the forces that mould the
outer manifestation. Now western science dealing chemically with the
atom gives us certain facts, and they are very strange. I will take one
form of atom in order that what I may say may be distinct, and let me say
that if this is difficult to follow, as I know it is, you will have it presently
in print, and you can study, the technicalities that I cannot avoid when I
am dealing with a highly instructed audience, as I have the right to
expect this audience to be. I have not the time to explain as I should do
to a popular audience. I will take carbon, an atom of carbon, in the
mineral kingdom. It is a simple thing. It joins other elements and enters
into combinations, and it has the power of joining by a four-fold link. If I
may appeal for the moment to your imagination, think that you see a
carbon atom; think of a ball, and into that ball four hooked sticks are
struck, so that they leave outside their four hooks. Thus you will have a
ball with four hooks sticking out. That is the chemical atom of carbon in
the mineral kingdom. By each of these hooks it can join on to a hook of
another chemical atom, so that it can join with four other atoms
provided that each of these four atoms has only one hook of its own. In
the mineral kingdom you may follow that right through, and you may get
a number of compounds of different chemical elements in which carbon

15 Ibid, pp. 679 and 649.

 22

plays its part, in which it joins itself, with one or the other, in which it
unites itself by these hooks-stretching out its hooks as it were, and
grasping other elements - but always simple in its combinations, hooking
on to two atoms of an element that has two hooks, to four of an element
that has one hook, and so on. For when an atom is working in the
building of this most material part of the universe, it is beginning in the
simplest way; by a changing of the inner constitution of the atom, it
gradually becomes able to enter into more and more complex com-
binations. Follow on our carbon atom remembering it is Atma plus form
- and follow it out from the mineral into the vegetable and animal
kingdoms. What is the difference? The difference is that in this carbon
atom there is developed a power of combination in more and more
complex ways, so that at last, in what is called organic chemistry
technically, you get numbers of compounds in which the carbon atoms
unite in what are called technically ‘closed rings’, instead of in lines as in
the mineral kingdom. These closed rings of carbon atoms make up the
most complicated combinations of every character, and these are never
found in the mineral kingdom, but only when that has been
accomplished, and the further evolution has been followed. So that in
this working we can see that in the atom there is evolution, in the atom
there is change, in the atom there is the differentiating life; the working
of Atma in this lower kingdom is to inform this atom, to differentiate it
within, to make it more and more complex in its inner powers, so that it
may manifest more and more of life, until at last, built through mineral,
vegetable and animal kingdoms, it shall be ready to be built into the
sheaths of the man, and there, in combination with other similar atoms,
make the sheath which Atma can use gradually for the building of an
individual self-consciousness. Thus the atomic building, and the
combination of atoms into molecules, and of the molecules then again
into cells, and of cells into the sheath, give us the food - sheath that is
necessary for contact with the lowest region of the universe; and by this
process brings Atma into contact, as we shall see later, with the
subtle sheaths of the mind, into physical contact with the material
universe for the gathering of experience, by contact, by attraction, by
repulsion, by pleasure and by pain.

Now supposing that you have been able to follow that, we can come to
our first sheath, that of food - the annamayakosha, the body that we use,
 23

the body that we wear. I am not my body. I need not tell you that this
body is not me; this is a thing that I use for certain purposes; but it is I
who use it.

There is a double activity in this sheath of ours that we call our body.
First there is the activity of the atoms and the molecules and the cells of
the body. This is not your activity but theirs. Not your activity, but the
activity of the Atma in the atoms and the molecules and the cells of the
body. It is not Atma's activity in the sheaths as the Self of the sheath, but
Atma's activity in the constituent particles as the Self of the particles
which is necessary for their existence. How can I prove that to you? By
science once more. See how I can use this western science for purposes
they dream not of who observe for us the facts. But see how useful is
their work! They observe the facts and give them to the world; granted
they do not know what the facts imply; granted they do not see the
underlying verities. But they see the physical truths and speak the
physical truths; and we who are taught by the ancient Teachers can take
the physical fact and illuminate it by the Divine Light, and understand
the ‘why’ as well as the ‘how’, the cause as well as the effect. So I turn to
my science. The cells in the body, says the great German Materialist,
Haeckel, the cells have souls. Our great Materialist, Haeckel, has struck
on a strange and occult truth. There is, he says, a soul of the cell. Why
does he say this? Because he finds in the separate cells of the body there
is a cell-activity that is not the activity of the body as a whole. He finds
that the separate cells of the body exercise particular functions of their
own, without regard to the general actions of the body. They select, they
choose, they accept, they reject, each cell according to its own impulse,
each cell according to its own work. But there is this strange peculiarity:
that the so to speak independent action of the cell is limited to its own
narrow interest, and while it is subordinated in its normal activity to the
general welfare of the body of which it forms a part - as you will see when
we come to Prana - none the less is it true that it will sometimes act
against the general welfare, following out the law of its own activity and
unconscious of the greater use which it serves in the little universe of
the body. Take a cut; you may get a wound in the body. What will the
cells do? They will set to work at once; without any thought of your
brain, without any consciousness of yours, without any directing force of
your intelligence, they will bring to that place where matter has been cut
 24

away the new supplies that are wanted for the filling up of the hole in the
body that has been left. They will build and build and build; and they will
build without the intelligence which should subordinate their building to
the whole; for they will make a scar, they will build more than is wanted.
For what the physiologists call the “unconscious memory of the cell”
makes the building go on, building and building and building beyond the
point that is necessary, following out their individual activity by the law
of their own nature, and not conscious of the needs of the greater one
that they are clothing. So that you get your scar which you cannot get rid
of. So also you get continually built matter which then is flung away, and
the whole activity of the outer cells of your body is continually building
matter that then is thrown off again. For they build and build and build
according to the law of their own activity, by the Atma in the cell,
building the cell, and not considering the need of the sheath as a
complicated whole.

But here is an important thing to learn. There is an ‘I’ as well as a sheath,

and the ‘I’ uses this sheath for its own purpose. The ‘I’ in me wants to
write. Myself, I, write. My hand holds the pen and dips it into the ink,
and traces it on the paper. When this sheath of mine was very young and
was training for my use, it was taught to write, and one part of the sheath
learned to take the pen in a particular way, to hold it in a particular way;
and always when the ‘I’ wanted to write it was to do this duty, without
which the mind, the ‘I’ could not write on the material plane. The ‘I’
might think as much as it liked. It could not produce the material result
so that other people might see it and use it, without the help of the
sheath. Without this it would be un-provided with any instrument on the
lowest plane of the universe, and so could not work. Atma plus manas
would be helpless down here unless this sheath can be made into an
instrument and taught to produce on its own plane, under orders, what
was wanted here for the work. So it was taught and had to learn its
lesson, but note this: that when it has once learned it, it continues to do
it in the same way, and if I want to change the way of writing,
the holding of my pen in the hand, I have got to take a lot of trouble to
change the automatic activity of the cells of the sheath, which are
independent of my consciousness; when once I have moulded it to my
purpose it does what I taught it to do, and it goes on doing it, and if I
want to change it, if I mean to change it, I must set to work by repeated
 25

efforts, repeated volitions, and I must undo with much pains that which
I with much pains before impressed upon the sheath, and I must set it
going along the new line, the new direction, that I impose. You see then
the automatic action of the sheath, and you see how the sheath has a life
of its own, and that this may help or hinder the life which is expressed
through it by the ‘I’. If your sheath is to be a help and not a hindrance, if
your sheath is to serve you and to be useful to you, you must be its
master not its servant; you must be its ruler, not its slave. For it is a
karma that you have made; this karma is the method of automatic-action
by the body, and it limits you when you want to express yourselves; you
have to work within the karmic limitations that you have made. You are
there; you can change them, you can alter them, you can subdue them to
the new will that you impose; but you have got to do it step by step, you
have got to do it by toil and by effort. Law is Law in every region of the
universe, and you cannot escape its working in the body-sheath any
more than anywhere else in the realm of life.

There is a link which I can only just allude to, by which co-ordinated
action takes place in the food-sheath; you know what are called the
nerves; you know what are called the nervous centres; you know the
pillar of nerve matter that goes down the centre of the backbone from the
nervous matter of the brain, the threads of nerve matter that go out to
every part of the body, and the double nature of the nervous system, one
part under the immediate control of the will and the other automatically
acting, carrying on life processes; these indeed are largely the result of
the past action of the will, which has made this vehicle for itself. Now
Prana acts on these centres, and there is the co-ordinating power, there
is the force that is going to make the sheath the vehicle of the ‘I’, and not
merely a combination of a number of independent cells and molecules.
Not in the sheath of food but in the sheath of Prana lies the co-ordinating
energy, and the food-sheath supplies the nervous centres on which Prana
acts directly as the co-ordinating and controlling energy, so that it may
make the food-sheath obedient, and fashion it for the purposes which the
higher intelligence demands. But remember this outside sheath is
wanted for contact, is necessary to collect experience. Remember it is
only a receiver. As a sheath it does not feel. Does that seem strange?
When you say a blow struck you, you feel. Do you think you feel at the
spot where the blow touches you? Western science tells you that it is not
 26

so. Even science says that the centres of sensation are in the brain, and
we know that if we break the bridge of nervous matter, we may burn the
living flesh and no feeling of pain is experienced. Feeling is not in the
food-sheath; not in the cells of the body lie the power of feeling pleasure
and pain. It only receives the contact and transmits it inwards by prana.
It has its own feeling in the cells, but you do not share that. True, sense-
organs are not the senses; true, sight and the eye must be distinguished;
true, feeling and the skin and the nerves must be separated; but the
sheath has its own feeling. There are certain ‘massive’ feelings, as they
are technically called - general fatigue and so on - that are dull
sensations of the separate cells transmitting up to the brain what they
feel, and coming vaguely into the consciousness of man; not acute, not
sharp, not keen, but massive and vague and general; that is the
consciousness of the cells; that goes through part of the sheath, passes
on as a vague statement of the cells to the consciousness which is within
the sheath, which moulds it and controls. And this activity of the cells is
the activity of the Atma in the matter of the body. This activity in the
cells is the Atma working in the atoms, working in the molecules,
working in the cells. That is the place; so to speak - it is a wrong phrase,
but I can use no other - the place of Atma as regards these individual
cells of the body; not working in the sheath as a whole but in every
constituent part; for Brahman is omnipresent, all-pervading, as the salt
in the water, and can be absent from no spot in space.

Next we come to prana, the sheath of prana, pranamayakosha. Now here

from the Kaushitakopanishat we can find what prana really is. It is the
outgoing energy of Atma. Indra - and the name Indra designates, as you
know, the Lord of the atmosphere and the Lord of all the lower world -
Indra says:

I am prana . . . prana, is life. 16

That is the exoteric form, and the separate name is given of the great
Head of the Life-hierarchy of the lower world, that great Entity, who is
known as the Deva Indra - not an object of worship for those that can go
16 iii, 2.
 27

beyond, not an object of worship for the spiritually enlightened man, but
a mighty Deva, working in the lower worlds, distributing as it were the
Essence of the ONE through all the forms of the lower life of things. Now
Shankara tells us that this prana is kriyashakti - the shakti of doing and
not of knowing - and there is a distinction of enormous importance. This
sheath which is the sheath of prana is the sheath of activity, not of
knowledge, the sheath which is to actively gather everything, and hand it
on to the receptacle which lies within. But it is not the Knower. It is the
outgoing energy of Atma for action, not for thought. And this works in
what is called astral or ethereal, matter, in the matter that science calls
ether; and by this it works, and brings all parts into connection, and
controls the whole of these lower cells that we have been speaking of, co-
ordinating them to make up the food-body of man. This subtler sheath,
in which Atma as prana is working, controls and holds together the
whole of the lower matter as sheath. There could be no sheath of food, no
physical body, if it were not for prana; which co-ordinates all the sepa-
rated cells and makes them into one complex and orderly whole. That is
the function of this pranic sheath. Prana works in the subtler matter, in
what we sometimes call an astral body. It is not that which in Indian
literature is called by this name, the subtle body that we know as
sukshma sharira. Do not confuse them together. Nor is it the linga
sharira of the Hindu books, though called by its name. This is an
awkwardness of nomenclature that we must keep clear in our minds. It is
the lower astral, an essential part of the sthulopadhi and not of the
sukshmopadhi. That is necessary to remember, for the astral body that
you read of in Theosophical works is nothing more than the pranic
sheath. It is the form-side of pranic activity, without which prana could
not act, that is, without which the outgoing energy of Atma would not be
able to coordinate the physical molecules of the external body. We are
told in the same Kaushitakopanishat that speech, sight, hearing and
everything else are dependent on prana in the body. Sight is not the eye;
hearing is not the ear; taste is not the tongue; smell is not the nose; touch
is not the skin. It is the prana in every case which gives the sense-activity
to the organs, and which is the transmitter of the outer vibration to the
sense-centres which lie in kama, in the sheath which is next to that of
prana, the manomayakosha.
 28

Now understanding that, the next point is that prana divides itself into
five pranas, “five-fold dividing itself”, says the scripture, in order that it
may uphold and support every part of the body, carry on every vital
activity, carry on every function of the body, carry on everything which is
necessary for the maintenance of the physical life of the body; and prana
five-fold dividing itself becomes the five pranas that are familiar to every
one of you. But remember that five is exoteric, and seven is the esoteric
number of pranas, and in the Mundakopanishat and in
thePrashnopanishat prana divides itself into seven, not only into five.
Five for the outer world, because we are now in the Fifth Race, because
we have at present five senses, and only five pranas are in manifestation.
But there is a sixth that is going to evolve its sense, and a seventh that
must be formed ere yet man is perfect. And so it is true that prana is five-
fold in man in manifestation today although seven-fold in its essence
; and that is why in both the Upanishats just named you will find the
seven-fold flame of prana, not explained but only mentioned, as though
to remind every one with intuition that there is a mystery that
lies behind, and that the five-fold that is given to the world is not the
whole of the pranic activity, either in man or the universe And then we
learn another great truth. It is written:

From Atma this prana is born. 17

Atma is prana, and prana is only Atma in activity. Realise that great
truth. I quote the words of the scripture repeating them again,
translating word for word:

From Atma this prana is born.

It is the outgoing energy of Atma. It is the energy of the body. Atma in

itself cannot work. I repeat it, because, of the enormous importance that
the thought shall be clear. Atma in itself cannot work. It is Sat, quiescent,
immovable, unchangeable. The outgoing energy is prana: therefore it is
written that from Atma prana is born.

17 Prashnopanishat, iii, 3.
 29

Science tells us in its own way something of the same strange story; tells
us how in every part of the world and of the body electric currents work.
It proves this by the use of the delicate apparatus it invents that it may
observe more minutely than by the unassisted senses. Take your brain.
Whenever there is thought, electric currents are running through it, and
if you test the brain, the instrument answers to the current, and the tiny
needle gives a sweep which shows the passage of the current, and proves
physically that this electrical action is there. You find the same all over
the body, in the contracting muscle and so on. You find electric currents
in every part of the body where any functional activity is being carried
on. Use your instrument and electricity shows itself, and electricity is
only a western word for one form of pranic activity. Science further tells
you that wherever electricity is there is ether, and without ether
electricity cannot manifest. I translate this into the older phrases:
wherever prana is there also is akasha, and without akasha prana cannot
show itself. Thus prana is the organiser and controller of the
annamayakosha of man, holding together the complicated aggregation.

Man's constitution should now be becoming a little clearer as to its

constituent parts, and the study of life explains ‘death’. For what will
death be? It will be the drawing away of this outgoing energy of Atma
from the sheath of the physical body. It does not, of course, take away
Atma from the cells of the body, but it takes away Atma as prana, as the
co-ordinating energy of the sheath. The cells of the body break away
from each other; each cell acts in its own way, shows its own life, its own
activity, but there is no longer co-ordinated action. In the corpse you find
the hairs growing, for instance; then there is life; yet it is not life in the
sheath of the body, but it is life in the constituent cells, which are no
longer controlled by the pranamayakosha of man. Think that out at
leisure and you will see how these sheaths are going to be used, and how
we shall be able to work out their object and their utility, when the whole
of them are understood and grasped. We have now got hold of two
sheaths, the sheath of food and the sheath of prana; the food-sheath that
receives from the outer world, the prana-sheath which transmits, that
outgoing energy which controls and co-ordinates, keeps the body
together and subordinates it to the ‘I’ that is going gradually to be built
up, the self-conscious intelligence of man. You find that prana is the
great transmitter, transmitting outwards the moving energy, gathering
 30

and transmitting inwards all the contacts from the outer universe;
gathering them inwards always, and therefore a bridge between all the
sheaths of man. For this pranic activity plays through every sheath and
gathering from the outermost carries inwards to the innermost.
The Kaushitakopanishat tells us that, when death comes, prana gathers
everything together, and withdrawing from the body hands everything
onwards to the Knower, that is the receptacle of all. 18

Now these two sheaths that we have dealt with this morning form
together the lowest upadhi of Atma. These two koshas together form
what we know as the sthulopadhi. If you ask me why I draw your
attention to that, my answer is this that while there are five sheaths,
there are only three upadhis, and that in yoga, in practical knowledge,
consciousness is going to work separately in each upadhi. 19 There are
only three upadhis in which consciousness, in which Atma can work, and
the highest Adept can separate only these three upadhis and cannot
separate the constituents of man any further. Raja Yoga is, as you know,
the way in which this is learned. Raja Yoga teaches us how we may
separate the three upadhis one from the other, and how thus may be
visited the three regions of the universe, the sensuous, the intellectual
and the spiritual. The three upadhis are correlated to these regions,
while the sheaths are correlated to the separate prakrtis, to the different
kinds of matter. And H. P. Blavatsky in this connection has said that to
whatever nationality the yogi may belong - whether he be Hindu or
Buddhist or Muhammadan or anything else in his outer faith it makes no
difference - before he can become an Adept, a Mahatma, a Rshi, he must
go through the school of Raja Yoga, and learn this lesson without which
Adept-ship is impossible. Do not forget that that is true. On this side of
the Himalayas or the other, there is but one school of Raja Yoga, only
one and none other, the Eastern School. From time immemorial it has
existed, to time immemorial it will stretch, unchanged and immutable,
one and the same. The Vedas came forth through it to the Aryan Race,
every great Rshi belongs to it, and today none may rise to the heights of
Adept-ship unless he pass through that School. Here there may be no
confusion as to different schools, no quarrelling as to eastern and
western, and all the rest of these follies that divide the external world. H.

18 iii, 3, 4.
19 See The Secret Doctrine, vol. I, pp. 181, 182.
 31

P. B. says, the Messenger of the great Teachers proclaimed, that there is

no Adept known to the Great Lodge save Those who learned in and
passed through the Raja Yoga School, and studied there; nowhere else
may they learn the separation of the upadhis, and the conquest of the
universe by knowing that last word of the Science of the Soul.

And therefore it is that I am trying to make you understand - though

fettered by the necessary brevity which time-limit puts upon me - I am
trying to make you see how all these truths are linked and how while the
sheaths I dealt with must be understood, the upadhis must not be left
out; for without a knowledge of them no practical Occultism is possible,
although theoretical Occultism may be understood.

Here I leave it for this morning, taking tomorrow the next two sheaths in
which the Self is enwrapped, the sheaths which feel and which are the
receptacle, the sheaths which are to hold experience, where building of
the individual goes on, and where self-consciousness is gradually
evolved.
 32

THE BODY OF FEELING

If we take the division of man which is used by Manu, 20 we shall find

that that division, though varying in its names, is practically identical
with that to which we referred as the division of the Raja Yoga School,
that of the three upadhis as distinguished from that of the five sheaths or
koshas. The two sheaths referred to yesterday are sometimes classed
together, and are classed together by Manu, as making the bhutatman or
elemental self, that is the self which is acting, for he so defines it. He
speaks of it as the self which acts, the corporeal self, as it is translated
sometimes into English. The main point, to which I want to draw your
attention in passing, is that these two sheaths, with which we yesterday
dealt, are the two sheaths of action and are related essentially to the ele-
ments; are related to the external universe in those regions familiar to us
as the regions of the elements. And in leaving these aside now we pass in
a very real sense from the external to the internal world; we pass in a
very real sense from the world that we regard as made up of vibrations,
atomic and molecular, to the world which essentially consists in the
recognition by the SELF, the translations through the sheath employed
by the SELF, of those external vibrations and contacts, into what we will
for a moment call sensations and ideas. That is, we pass from a world in
which the things external to the man are going on, to a world which to
the man is internal, and in which everything he considers is no longer a
looking outward and receiving from the outside, but a dealing with that
which he has received, the manipulating, the elaboration, the working
upon materials, by the forces which come to him from the innermost life
of all. And so we pass from that body which Manu speaks of as the body
of action to the one which he speaks of as the body of feeling. You may
remember that he gives it the name Jiva, which is a little unusual, and
you may require to read the commentary with it in order to avoid
possible confusion; because the way in which Manu uses the word Jiva
is not that which connects it with prana as prana. He defines it as that
body in which the knower, the Kshetragna, becomes sensible of
pleasures and of pains. It is essentially this body in which the knower

20 xii, 12, 13, 14.

 33

becomes conscious of pleasures and of pains that we have to deal with

today.

In their external relations the two sheaths that comprise it, especially the
lower of these sheaths, the manomayakosha, are related to the deva
world. I want that point to be very clearly grasped. If you turn to
the Aitereyopanishat, you will find that after the devas were formed, the
animals were formed and also man. You may remember that the devas
refused to be satisfied with the animals, but when man appeared they
said: “This is good”, and entered into him. Now that entering in of the
devas is further described as the entering in of the presiding deities of
the elements, and those presiding deities of the elements give rise to
sensations in man, receiving from the different elements their suitable
vibrations and performing the work of changing the contacts from
without into what are called sensations, or the recognition of the
contacts, from within. This is essentially a deva action. This is essentially
the work which is done in the making and building of, in the evolution
of, the manomayakosha. It has in it those devas that belongs to the
elemental kingdoms. Here comes the link of man with all those lower
devas, the link which, when supreme control has been obtained, makes
man the master in every region of the universe. For the great Adept
Himself would be unable to manipulate the lower worlds of matter, the
lower worlds of sensation, if it were not that He possesses these sheaths
co-ordinated into perfect harmony and perfect subordination, which
none the less connect him with the external universe; inasmuch as these
belong to the devas, he having the devas subject to him, has subject to
him also every region of the external universe that they control. Great
then is the importance of this sheath, and the two together which we
have to consider are the most important sheaths of the whole. This
manomayakosha is the one that we will take first, and in that we shall
find we have got together the elements which will make the basis of the
individual self-consciousness which gradually is to be evolved - not Self-
consciousness, but the materials on which consciousness is going to
work and which, ideally reflected into itself, will make the true individual
Self-consciousness possible. How difficult and how complicated the
subject is, you will realise even from this suggestion. I can only hope that
in putting it to you I may give - probably to those who have not studied it
for themselves - not a complete idea but the materials, so to speak, on
 34

which you may afterwards yourselves work, and so out of the materials
make up for yourself a completer and fuller realisation.

Now, for a moment I must ask you to think of the animal world; because
in the animal world we get, not the manomayakosha, but some of the
elements that enter into it, that which is really only the germ of the
higher; that in which and by means of which, the higher will later be
developed. And just as I asked you yesterday to realise the internal
changes of the atoms, by which the atoms become differentiated from
within, and built through the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms,
gain a peculiar additional capability and increasing complexity which
enable them to form more elaborate combinations, so in dealing with
these sheaths, which are connected in the lower part with the animal
kingdom, I must ask you to realise the changes that occur in connection
with what we know as feeling in animals. That which only exists in the
germ, not in the vegetable but in the animal kingdom, is developed, and
becomes what we know as the human power of sensation, the higher
feelings of pleasure and of pain. Not that man is evolved from the animal
as such - that is the western blunder - but that the materials which go to
build the manomayakosha in man have been evolved in the animal king-
dom, and these materials carry on the results of their evolution, and are
therefore available for the building of man. You notice the point of
difference: it is not that man is directly evolved from the brute, as
Darwin teaches; it is that the materials which have been elaborated in
the animal kingdom are then used for the building of Man. Quite a
different thing from the purely physical succession, and introducing a
different idea; this may show you what underlies and forms the strength
of the Darwinian theory, for it is the truth that gives it the strength,
although there is also the blunder which comes from studying from
without instead of from within, by looking at everything from the
standpoint of the external pole of Matter instead of from the internal
pole of Spirit.

Now let me, having guarded myself for the sake of clearness of
conception, see what we have in the animal kingdom of this power of
sensating pleasures and pains. We notice in animals what we have
spoken of as desire: that is an outward-going attraction towards objects
that are external, so that when contact is experienced what is called
pleasure is felt. We notice also that this outward-going energy comes into
 35

contact sometimes with objects which do not by contact give pleasure

but pain, and we then notice that repulsion is the result. Attraction by
contact, which inwardly is translated into pleasure. Repulsion from con-
tact, which inwardly is translated into pain. Not that pleasure and pain
are in the external object, but that contact between the outer and inner is
either a contact of harmony and, therefore, is pleasure to the feeler, or is
a contact of discord and by the feeler is translated as pain. That is really
the essence which underlies these words. Vibrations meet each other;
some are harmonious -pleasure; some are discordant -pain.

But pleasure and pain cannot exist either in one set of vibrations alone or
in the other. They exist in the contact between the two. Leave those
vibrations outside and they are harmonious in themselves; there is
neither pleasure nor pain, but there is motion. Take the inner; there also
there are vibrations; but these are not pleasurable nor painful. They are
in, and in connection only with, the knower. But when the two come into
contact, and come against each other, they are either harmonious or
discordant; then by contact arises pleasure or pain, which is harmony or
discord at the point of contact of the vibrations. That, if you think it out,
will enable you to realise how it is possible to overcome pleasure or pain,
and how the vibrations from outside may continue and may be realised
in thought - after experience has been gained - while by the severing of
absolute contact it will no longer be the discord or harmony which we
know as pleasure or pain reflected on the inner sheath.

Now in the animal there is this to notice ere we leave it. That pleasure
and pain in animals are very brief. There may be a feeling of pain arising
from a discordant contact, say a blow, but it is brief. An animal, say with
a broken leg from a fall will, when the agony of the contact is over, turn
and eat food. It will eat and enjoy - provided it has not come much into
contact with man. That is a strange point to keep in your minds and
which needs to be explained. The wild animal, evolved along the line of
nature un-interfered with by the consciousness of man, does not suffer in
the same sense as the domesticated animal suffers. Its pleasure and pain
are very brief, its pleasure and pain have not the same element of
continuity. The wild animal, which falling has injured itself, is even
found eating calmly with a broken limb. It is a strange fact to notice, and
a fact which throws much light on the evolution of the inner
consciousness. But that is not all; the animal does go one step further,
 36

but very, very, very slowly. Realise that it takes the step, because
otherwise you will be forgetting that in Atma is every possibility.
Although It be involved in all these lower stages, It is there enfolding all
possibilities, It is there enfolding all potentialities; and in the lower
animals we find the germ, as it were, which when we come to deal with
the further elaboration of these materials in the human being, we find
developed into the possibility of thought. And what is the essence? It is a
connection between the outer object and the inner sensation, and the
recognition of this connection, the recognition that the two things are
joined together, that when one occurs the other will follow - this is the
beginning of thought, making the link between the outer object and the
inner sensation. Very, very, very slowly is that made, and very
imperfectly in the lower animals. Let me give you one instance to show
exactly what this means, an experiment. There was a fish, a pike, kept in
a large, glass case of water. In the West they are very fond of keeping ani-
mals to look at, and there are aquariums in which water-creatures are
preserved, so that they may be studied and kept under view. In one of
these there was a fish, a pike, and between the place where the pike was
and the next box of water there was the glass wall, of course invisible.
This fish naturally going onwards as animals will and pursuing fish in
the adjoining compartment constantly struck its nose against the glass
which it could not see. Over and over and over again that went on. Week
after week, month after month; no connection recognised between the
blow and anything external, no link of thought, until at last the repetition
of this vibration, coming from without and felt as shock, formed a dull
link between that particular spot and the impossibility of going forward,
and the fish turned before it touched the glass. Then the glass was taken
away; but to the pike the impossibility of going forward remained, and it
invariably turned when it reached that place where the glass had been,
having slowly made the connection between external object and internal
sensation, which is the germ of thought. This connection between the
external object and the internal sensation persisted after the object was
removed, because the thought-power was germinal, because the thought-
power was not elaborated; so when the external object was removed the
connection ideally remained, and the creature turned when nothing
stopped it, merely because there was in the pike the beginning of thought
without the power of being able to carry it further and adapt it to the
varying conditions. Now supposing that you realise that, you will
 37

understand what is meant by instinct. It means the tendency to repeat

continually that which has been felt. To repeat it unconsciously, as we
say, that is without previous volition and distinct recognition. The
instinct of animals is in that stage, corresponding to the automatic action
of the lower sheaths of which I spoke. Presently we shall find we have:
automatic action, then instinct, then we shall find memory, unconscious
almost or partial, then gradually active, then complete. For this is all part
of the great law of Rhythm which works in every region of the universe.
Now I can leave my animal. I was obliged to make this digression; it was
necessary in order that you might realise the complicated nature of what
we mean by the manomayakosha. I was obliged to show you how in the
animal kingdom the response to pleasure and pain has been evolved. In
order that man might be builded it was necessary that the materials of
the sheath should be ready to be co-ordinated together.

And next we shall also perceive that there is a limit to the upward
working of Atma from the lowest stage of the physical, that there is a
point where no further progress is possible unless there is the co-
operation of another factor evolved in a past universe, in a past
Manvantara. All evolution is not only, a becoming for the present, but
also the preparation for a future Manvantara. All evolution, as we shall
see in a moment, is carried on by co-operation. From the results of the
past there is going to be a further process of becoming, which in its turn
will help in the next universe that is evolved. For thus we shall begin to
realise what we are doing and what we evolve, how we are being helped
by the evolution of the past and how we shall help in the evolution of the
future. And by ‘past’ I mean a past universe, and by ‘future’ I mean a
future universe, separated from this by pralaya, separated from us by a
long period of repose, but linked to us by that unbroken law of karma
which is of the Essence of the Supreme and is, like It, without beginning
and without end. Co-operation, I say, is wanted. And how? Now there is
going to be evolved what we call mind -the power of thought. It must be
evolved by the cooperation of the minds that have been evolved and
perfected in a previous universe. Take the Aitereyopanishat again: you
will remember there is something more than the entering in of the devas.
Paramatma said: “How shall I enter in?” There is to be something more
than these sheaths which are made as it were along the primary line of
evolution. Now we must seek the minds that have been already evolved,
 38

the Sons of Mind we call them. We have now to come to the building of
man, the making possible of a new humanity.

And now I must turn for a moment to my western science and give you a
microscope to help in the understanding of this next stage. Suppose you
take a germ developed in, we will say, a plant - it does not matter a bit
whether we take a plant, an animal or man, for the purpose of my
argument - a germ-cell in a plant, say a flower; pulling the flower to
pieces, throw aside the calyx and the petals, which are simply protective;
throw aside the male organs, for we do not need them yet; and going into
the very centre, the very middle of the flower, we find there a sheath, and
when we open this sheath, little bodies like seeds. When we open these
little bodies, we then want to help our eyes with some magnifying power,
that we may see further and thus examine these bodies, or ovules. I find
a cell within the ovule, a cell that is called the germinal cell. And going
further still within that even I find the nucleus, as it is called; and then
still further the nucleolus. Is it not strange that in modern science we are
doing exactly the same as Uddalaka did when he taught his son and
made him take a seed and open case after case to find the germ of the
future tree within the seed; Uddalaka did it just for the same purpose
that I am turning to this morning, that we may understand the power of
Brahman the invisible, and that within the seed there lay enfolded the
future material tree. But I am doing this by way of science, so we are
quite respectable. Within my tiny germ what do I find? Possibility. But
one side of possibility only and not the whole. For if that germ be left to
itself nothing more will happen. Everything has been done that can be
done by the female side to make the germ ready for future growth and
the development of a new individual. But the individual is not there: only
the preparation. The female side of Nature can do nothing but prepare
the receptacle, wherein shall be assembled together everything that is
necessary for the nourishing of the future individual, but something
more is wanted ere further evolution can take place. Within that germ
there are possibilities, but there is as yet no individual. For the making of
that new individual there needs the junction of two forces and not the
growth of one alone. And although the germ be there, and the tracing of
the future, there is no possibility of growth unless from outside some
new force shall arise. How does it come? It comes from that which I
threw aside in my first dissection of the flower; from those male organs
 39

which for the moment I did not require. And from these there comes the
force enwrapped in the form which is the other side of the dual evolution
with which we are now familiar - the invigorating, the vitalising, the
fertilising energy, which by itself can do nothing, which by itself is sterile,
as that other also is barren; but which coming to the other, meeting the
other, will give rise to a new individual. That is the point that I want you
to grasp. For mind you, there is one Law and one Life everywhere, and
that which in material nature you can see with your eyes, you can see
with your mind in the higher regions of the universe. For Brahman is one
and His works everywhere show the same nature, and the sameness is
felt through the difference of the materials. The principle of evolution is
the same everywhere, for Brahman alone is the energising force, and His
nature is the Law by which everything is evolved. When this union has
taken place, then only growth begins; when this union has occurred, then
only a new individual is slowly and gradually formed. The beginning of
the individual is at the point of junction; although the essence be eternal,
the junction is a point in time; where the junction occurs, there is the
beginning of the individual as individual, although the essence of which
he is formed is eternal, undying, and knows neither ending nor
beginning.

Now we have the materials to enable us to understand the coming of the

Sons of Mind, evolved in a past manvantara by the processes that we are
undergoing in the present. And the coming of these Sons of Mind to the
helping, as it were, of the lower nature is exactly parallel to the coming
from the stamen of the invigorating energy which shall vitalise the germ
within the seed and give birth to the new individual. And so in those
wonderful stanzas that come to us from the far side of the Himalayas, in
those ancient, most ancient, stanzas, it is written:

FROM THEIR OWN RUPA THEY FILLED THE KAMA. 21

From Their own Rupa They filled the receptacle which had been slowly
prepared for the filling:

21 The Secret Doctrine, vol, ii, p. 20.

 40

SOME PROJECTED A SPARK. 22

That spark is as it were the plasm of mind; coming from those in whom
mind had been evolved in a previous manvantara, and filling with its
energising and vitalising force what I will call the female germ in the
receptacle of which we have been speaking, it gives the possibility of a
new individual, a Self-consciousness, an Ego, an Ego to be slowly
evolved, but none the less taking its start from the union which now is
accomplished. For the spark projected from the Flame of Mind is to fire
the material upon which it has fallen, and from that a new Flame will
arise, identical in its essence with that which generated it, but separated
in its individuality for purposes of manifestation. And this is why it is
said that you may light a thousand candles from a single flame, and the
flame is never diminished, although a thousand flames are visible where
only one was visible before.

Now we shall be able to understand, I hope, our manomayakosha. For

what now will occur? You have now the beginning of the sheath which is
able not only to receive contact from without, but, by this impulse which
has been thrown into it by the generating Mind, will become able to
complete the power of connecting the outer object and the internal
sensation, of which we saw the unfolding possibility in the animal but
which is the characteristic of the mind in man. And this recognition of
the connection, this understanding and taking into consciousness in an
ideal form of the constant link between the external object and the inner
feeling is the beginning of the working of mind in man, and is the
peculiar function of the sheath with which we are concerned. For by
feeling - the power, that is, of answering to the impressions from without
- it gains those contacts through the outer sheaths which are necessary in
order that Self-consciousness may be made gradually possible and then,
having translated the outer contact into sensation - that is the first stage
- it transforms the sensation into the idea; that is, it changes it by a
process of elaboration; it changes the contact which gave rise to the
sensation into an ideal form, which it then preserves as material. These

22 Ibid.
 41

ideal forms are what we call percepts, technically, or the thoughts that
are to be the material on which the knower is to work, elaborating them
into concepts, and building up gradually the individual that is self-
conscious and is to be ultimately all-knowing. The manomayakosha,
then, collects all these sensations and turns them into percepts, that is,
the connection between the outer object and the internal sensation; and
then elaborates the percepts into concepts, that is, changes the
recognition of the connection into the ideal form which is capable of
preservation and is the material for all possibility of future thought. And
this is in truth the process of thinking. The internal image, as it is
technically called, is the ideal form of the sensation which has been
rendered possible by the contact that I have explained; and the work of
the manomayakosha is to do this elaboration. It is just like the crucible of
the chemist into which he throws different materials and a new
combination comes out - not new in its essential elements, but new in its
combined existence. He puts them in, but working on each other they
bring about a combination which is the outcome of the interaction
between them, not of the separate action of each. You must realise that
just as there is a difference between the threads of cotton separate and
the cloth into which those threads of cotton are woven, so there is a
difference between the separated sensations and the elaborated ideas
woven out of them by the mind, or, if we take our chemical illustration,
which are gradually elaborated in the crucible by the interaction of the
forces of attraction and repulsion. When that is accomplished the
beginning of self-consciousness is present.

Consciousness is everywhere; how shall we distinguish it? It is so hard,

because we only know self-consciousness, and are not sufficiently
advanced to take from each sheath its own material in the state of
elaboration brought about by the sheath, and study the result. But dimly,
I think, I can put it to you. Consciousness may be taken as the response
of a gradually separating centre to that which is around it - the mere
response; self-consciousness is when in addition to the response there is
the recognition of the ‘I’ that responds. Not the response only, but the
knowledge of the response; not the response only, but the recognition of
the response. For the ‘I’ is builded by the memory that links all these
percepts and concepts together, and so really gives that continuing con-
 42

sciousness which makes the recognition of an ‘I’ as apart from that

which is ‘not-I’.

Now let me take still a step further. It is said in the Mundakopanishat:

The organ of thinking of every creature is pervaded by the senses. 23

This emphasises the double action of the manomayakosha. It is in truth

the organ of thinking, but is also pervaded by the senses; that is, you
have this double action going on in it always, the receipt from without
and the elaboration from within. And that is why this sheath is so
difficult to understand; that is why so much depends on
the understanding; that is why you cannot master it until you begin to
understand. And that is why knowledge is necessary if the SELF would
become free and know Itself as Itself alone. For here is the element of
confusion, here the element of contact, here the function from without
and from within, and hence the strongly illusory ‘I’ that I shall want to
deal with more fully when we come tomorrow to speak of the use and
control of this sheath. For the moment I must leave it with that great
statement of the Mundakopanishat:

The organ of thinking is pervaded by the senses; that organ purified,

Atma manifests Itself.

We shall see why that is when we deal with the purified organ and the
changes that result.

Now at death there is a separation in this sheath; all the lower deva
element passes from it; all the deva element, which joins man to the
world of devas becomes separated from the next sheath, and from the
manomayakosha. For here is the rending that is caused by death, and
this part waits, as the devas wait in devaloka, to bring the SELF back to
earth and bind it to the necessity of rebirth. There lie the chains, there lie

23 iii, 9.
 43

the bonds, there the links of desire which keep the SELF imprisoned and
tie it to the wheel of births and of deaths. When death occurs every
particle is set free, but the links remain to bind It, until by Its own
deliberate action they are cut.

But I must take the other sheath, which is very easy to understand and
grasp; the real subtle difficulties lie in the understanding of the one that
we now for the moment leave. I take the discriminating sheath, that
which is called the vignanamayakosha - the particle vi implying the
discriminating, separating and arranging of things - the
vignanamayakosha which is to be the sheath of the SELF by which the
lower sheaths are to be mastered. Into that sheath experiences are
reflected from the manomayakosha as ideal concepts; into it is reflected
everything which in the manomayakosha is collected. The one is the
collector and elaborator, the other is going to arrange and to discrimi-
nate, to have the whole of this elaborated collection as material to work
on, the whole of this as material by which it is going to gain higher
consciousness and a more perfect cognition of the individual SELF. For
what is the process of Atma in this sheath? It works on the internal
images, it works on those ideal and elaborated forms reflected into it
from the other sheaths; it works on them and elaborates them further,
and it has its special work, what we call abstract reasoning of the loftiest
kind; no longer sensations, no longer perceptions, no longer the making
of ideas, or the elaboration of ideas, but the discriminating between
them, then the arranging of them, and then the reasoning from them. So
that the special work in this sheath is the work of abstract reasoning,
dealing with pure ideas, separated from the concrete presentations, the
realm of truth, no longer so illusory as the other. For here we have the
abstract and not the concrete, the pure internal working no longer
confused by the senses, nor in any way interfered with by the outer
world; there is pure intelligence, clear vision, intelligence unmoved by
the senses, intelligence tranquil, strong, serene. That sheath must be
realised, that sheath must be understood, for there lies the creative
power of meditation, there lie all the energies that grow out of one-
pointed contemplation. There is the creative sheath of man, as in the
Kosmos Divine Ideation is the creative sheath whence all comes forth;
for just as in the first lecture I reminded you that in the divine form of
Shri Krshna as shown to Arjuna, the divine eye when given to Arjuna saw
 44

all forms of living things which in the Universe could exist, so in this
sheath of man, in ideal reality, there exist all forms that can come forth,
to which objective reality may be given by this creative power. That is the
force of Atma in the sheath with which I am dealing, for the outgoing
energy of Atma in this vignanamayakosha is the force which dominates
and moulds everything that is external to it, from which the creative
energy of Atma can work through the lower sheaths when they are
purified.

We can now take another problem, so easy once we have reached this
point that one wonders why it was so confusing and difficult before we
reached it. That with which we have to deal are Will and Desire. What is
Desire? desire is the outgoing energy of Atma, working in the mano-
mayakosha, and attracted by external objects. That is, desire is outward-
going energy attracted from without, and its direction governed from
without. What is will? Will is the outgoing energy of Atma working in his
vignanamayakosha, and dealing no longer with choice directed from
without but with choice initiated from within, moulded on the internal
images by a process of discriminative reflection. So that the outgoing
energy is guided from within in its direction, whereas in desire it is
attracted from without. The direction in one case comes from the
external object, in the other from the inner Life that chooses and wills.
Hence what you call strong and weak will in men. What is weak will in
man? A man with a weak will is the man that is always drawn by desire
towards external objects that attract him and goes after them. He is weak
in will. Why? Because he does not rule himself, choosing his road by the
power of memory, reason, judgment, and discrimination, and everything
that should make him steady in the midst of a moving universe. He
is drawn out by the external object and goes out after everything that
attracts him by a desire for contact, and he goes as circumstances attract
him. If he be surrounded by temptations, if he sees something pleasant,
he desires to obtain it; if he sees beauty he desires to enjoy it; so he is at
the mercy of external circumstances, and we say that the man is weak
and we never know what he is going to do. But the strong-willed man is
the man who having gathered together all these experiences and having
translated them into ideal forms, compares them and arranges them,
and discriminating between them and understanding the connection
between pleasure and pain, and understanding the sequence which
 45

sometimes makes a momentary pleasure the womb of a future pain, he,

knowing all this and remembering, chooses from the inner standpoint;
and the outer circumstances may be exactly what they like, the inner
man stands unmoved and chooses as he knows.

Here I find I must leave the subject for this morning. In truth these two
sheaths are completed, as far as in so brief a space I may complete them.
And I need only in closing say this morning that this inner man passes
from birth to birth, carries on his memory life after life. These ideal
forms persist in the sheath; these ideal forms brought out of one life are
carried on into another, and so are continually growing, until the highly
evolved Ego begins to be master of the lower sheaths, and the creative
force that resides within comes forth, and he is no longer guided from
without. For the process of evolution leads to the controlling of the lower
by the higher, the less differentiated by the more highly evolved. So that
in this sheath sovereignty shall at last be centred, and all shall be
obedient to the impulse of the One within; coming back to birth, it picks
up the lower deva-elements it left for a while, and it has to bring them
back time after time until they are absolutely subject to its will. It
contains all the essence of all experiences. It contains the very inner
quality of everything through which it has passed on earth.

Now you will see why it is written that as the wind passes through a
garden of flowers and does not pick the flowers but takes the fragrance
from them and goes on fragrance-laden, so also Atma passing over the
garden of experience gathers, not the facts, sensations and phenomena,
but as it were the fragrance, the ideal form of each, and goes on with all
this aroma of experience fragrance-laden into the bosom of its God.
 46

THE OBJECT OF THE SHEATHS

We have studied during the last three mornings the question of Atma
manifesting through certain sheaths, and we have dwelt at some length
and with some care on the two outer sheaths whose special work is that
of collection; then with the two inner sheaths whose special work is that
of elaborating that which has been collected from without and
transmitting the results, and that of assimilating that which has been
collected and transmitted. Today we have to deal with the last of the
sheaths, and then I purpose to sketch for you, very imperfectly, the
method of the working and the use of the sheaths, so that we may thus
complete our subject and have it - however rough and poor in its outline,
yet that outline complete - and then by further study for ourselves and
above all by further meditation we may succeed in filling in the details
that are lacking and come to a real understanding of the whole. Now the
great difficulty that lies before us this morning in trying to gain any idea
at all of the nature of the anandamayakosha is that a state of
consciousness which has not been experienced by a person is a state
which that person is unable to conceive or to understand. There are
many states of consciousness in the Universe as various as the various
kinds of living things - and all is life. Professor Huxley, for instance,
dealing with this difficulty, has pointed out, that there is nothing
contrary to the analogy of nature in conceiving that there are states of
consciousness higher than ours; that as there are many lower than the
human, so there may be many states of consciousness that rise above
that which we speak of as the human, that there may range above us,
stage after stage, grade after grade, consciousness after consciousness,
becoming loftier and loftier, greater and greater, wider and wider in
limits, consciousness ever expanding, until it is possible to imagine,
although not to understand, the consciousness that shall include
everything that exists; and then he (Professor Huxley) points out that
such a consciousness would be as much higher than ours as the human
consciousness would be incomprehensible say to the consciousness of a
black-beetle - and we may add, as incomprehensible to us in its workings
as ours to the black-beetle. This is a thing necessary to realise; otherwise
we limit everything by our own limitations, and fall into the error of
 47

imagining that because we cannot conceive therefore that which to us is

inconceivable has no existence in fact. Try to realise, for instance, how
incapable we are of understanding a lower state of consciousness. That of
a creeper as example, which spreading over a wall sends out tiny tendrils
and pushes a tendril into a hole in the wall in order that it may grasp it
and find support in the roughness within; and then withdraws the tendril
finding the hole unsuitable, and travels over the surface of the wall until
it finds another and testing the other finds that perchance suitable to its
needs. How can we translate in though the consciousness of, that
vegetable creeper? How can we realise in our consciousness - so different
- what is the impulse that makes it follow its path, that makes it go into a
particular hole, enables it to know that it is unsuitable, and to search for
another which is suitable wherein it remains? What dim, vague and
strange consciousness is it which thus communicates what is necessary
for the growth of the plant, and yet shows us nothing that we realise as
consciousness in action, in feeling, in anything that we can identify with
our own? And then conceive again for a moment - for I want you to
realise this, ere I put what I know will be so difficult even to sense - try
and think what it would be if some lower animal, some insect or fish or
quadruped, seeing a philosopher sitting in abstract contemplation, trying
to deal with some mighty intellectual problem, insensitive to outer
impressions, concentrated within the realm of mind, if that lower
creature tried to understand the working of the mental consciousness of
the philosopher, and to judge whether he was wise in his method,
whether he was wasting his time or no. You can realise how foolish
would be the attempt; you can realise how incompetent would be the
judgment. Try then for a moment to realise that there may be above you
more than there is below you, a condition of consciousness as much
mightier than that you know in the brain, as yours is mightier than the
consciousness of the plant, of the insect, of the fish or of the quadruped;
and then, not so much thinking, but, if you will, trying to sense and to
feel, follow consciousness inwards and feel that which cannot be
translated into words, try and sense a possibility, where Atma, clad but
in the anandamayakosha, begins in that last sheath to come face to face
with Itself which is Brahman, that sheath making a delicate film of
separation which still will preserve the duality necessary for the recogni-
tion, and at the same time being so thin, so delicate, and so subtle, that it
seems well-nigh as though the knower and the known were one. The one
 48

sheath remains, for without a sheath no manifestation. Without a sheath

there would be unity, and then all thought as we know it ceases, our form
of consciousness is impossible. Brahman cannot act without the sheath
of the universe that He makes for himself. Brahman cannot act in
manifestation without the sheath which makes manifestation possible.
Having, as it were, centred all life and energy within the last sheath, the
sheath of bliss - anandamayakosha - then let us listen for a moment to
the sacred words which give some glimpse of the glory, and may lead us
into some dim sense of that which lies beyond the veil; it is written:

He, all-wise, all-knowing, glorious in the world, in the divine town of

Brahman, placed in the ether, standeth Atma; of the nature of mind,
ruler of Prana, of the body, of food. Concentrated in the heart, by the
knowledge of THAT, the wise behold the Radiant, whose body is bliss,
immortal. 24

There are moments, supreme and rare moments, that come to the life of
the pure and the spiritual, when every sheath is still and harmonious,
when the senses are tranquil, quiet, insensitive, when the mind is serene,
calm, and unchanging; when fixed in meditation the whole being is
steady and nothing that is without may avail to disturb; when love has
permeated every fibre; when devotion has illuminated, so that the whole
nature is translucent; there is a Silence, and in the silence there is a
sudden change; no words may tell it, no syllables may utter it, but the
change is there. All limitations have fallen away. Every limit of every
kind has vanished; as stars swing in boundless space, the Self is in
limitless Life, and knows no limit and realises no bounds: light in
wisdom, consciousness of perfect light that knows no shadow, and
therefore knows not itself as light; when the thinker has become the
knower; when all reason has vanished and wisdom takes its place; who
shall say what it is save that it is bliss? Who shall try to utter that which
is unutterable in mortal speech - but it is true and it exists. That is the
anandamayakosha where the Atma knows Itself; its nature is bliss; all

24 Mundakopanishat, ii, II, 7.

 49

the spheres have ceased; 25 all else has gone; none but the pure may
reach it; none but the devotee may know it; none but the wise may enter
into it; for, once again, it is said that:

Steadfastly by truth, by austerity, by perfect wisdom, by Brahmacharya-

practice, is this Atma attained. In the midst of the body, clad in light, He
whom the sinless and subdued behold is pure. 26

It is Brahman. It is the Logos of the Soul. It is the Atma conscious of

Itself. But on that the fewest words are the best, and though I may not
leave the stage unspoken of, I leave it quickly, because to reach it there
must be yearning to aspire; because truth, wisdom, devotion and purity
are asked for the vision, and this must be won by many a struggle, ere
the Pure shall see the Pure. We are told that it is bliss. The end of pain is
bliss. Here, there is struggle and agony and friction, but at the end is
bliss, and bliss unspeakable. So that in all the trial of life, and in all the
anguish and misery that may overwhelm the soul of man, in the struggle
that leads it well-nigh to despair, those, who once have known, know for
evermore, and in the worst of agony the centre in the heart is calm, for it
knows that the end shall be in peace and that harmony shall be the close
of strife. Let us, thus realising, come to regions where our foot is surer,
regions more fitted for your feet and mine, that still are in the mire of
earth and that must learn to tread the path of which the end is bliss
unutterable.

Let us now come back to a lowlier study, having caught a glimpse from a
mountain top as it were, of a land that lies beyond, into valleys of earth
where our lot is cast, and let us realise how that end shall be gained, the
path that leads to it and the methods that shall guide us towards it; for
while it may be well for a moment to realise the goal, it is still more
important to find the road that leads to it and to begin, not in mere hope
and yearning, mighty as those are, not only in aspiration and in desire,
to achieve it here, in the life that we lead here, in the place in which we
learn how we may set our feet on the Path and by knowledge wedded

25 Mandukyopanishat, 12.
26 Mnndakopanishat, iii, I, 5.
 50

with devotion may find our way at last. So, I come to the working of the
sheaths. Before I conclude with their use I want you to see the working,
because by the realisation of the way in which they work, we shall solve
so many of the problems that puzzle us every day, problems that hinder
our growth, problems that are, as it were, like fetters which prevent us
from walking freely; which make things so difficult to understand, that
we grow discouraged and sometimes fall back into lack of belief, unable
to grasp the belief which it is so difficult to understand. The first result of
the working of Atma in these many sheaths is the setting up of a number
of illusory ‘I’s’, apparently conscious entities, and we find in ourselves
when we look inwards, a struggle, a conflict and a war, as though we
consisted of many ‘I’s’, instead of one, many Egos instead of one Ego.
Self-consciousness must be a unit; none the less we are confused by this
apparent multiplicity, and these ‘I’s’ that yet are not the ‘I’, are a constant
source of disturbance, of mental confusion, and of moral mistake. Let us
then try and understand what they are, and how they come to be. Let us
see how far they are illusory, and what it is that makes them seem real.
For mind you, the conflict to us is real enough whether the combatants
are illusory or are not.

We understand that Atma is working in all the sheaths. We have

conceived, taking sheath by sheath, something of the nature of, and the
working in, each; and it is very easy to realise that if we stand outside
and look at them from without, we shall not see the one worker but the
moving sheath, and that the moving sheath as different from another
moving sheath will at once give an apparent individuality, an apparent
separation, and therefore place for conflict. If, for instance, looking from
without, I sea the body which is at work, and then I trace the activity of
prana, and then I see the passions carrying a man away, and then see the
mind interfering and pulling him back again - studying like that from
without I see all these different things warring the one against the other,
because I am looking from the side of differentiated objects and not from
a centre where the unity of action might be perceived; and just as you
may go into a room full of machinery and see many whirling wheels, and
see many apparently independent bars swinging from side to side, as the
engineer might take you and show you the one point at which all the
force was generated and from which the whole was moved and
controlled, so by wisdom may we place ourselves in the centre, and see
 51

the one outgoing energy which is differentiated in the sheath and not in
Itself, so that the actor is really one, although that in which he is acting
gives this apparent diversity But there is more. That is not a full
explanation. Take the body: not only have we learned that the atoms and
molecules and the cells of the body have their independent life, and are
living as atom, as molecule, as cell, but we have also learned that they are
co-ordinated into the food sheath, they actas a sheath. That is, they act
together under the co-ordinated energy; they act, ruled by the common
life, as sheath; and we have further learned that thus acting, there is
what we call automatism produced. That is to say, when a sheath has
acted along a particular line over and over and over again, that then its
inherent energy - which is also of course Atma but Atma in the sheath -
its inherent energy tends to reproduce, without the direction of the
central consciousness, the actions which it has continually practised; so
that automatic action is set up in which the central Self-consciousness
takes no longer any active part. Two things cause this: first the habit of
repetition of that which is caused originally by purposive action. I
pointed out to you that when you learned to write, it was by deliberate
effort, by well-concentrated endeavour; that a child’s hand is trained to
write and traces line after line, all the words that it desires to form. The
Thinker is working there and moulding the child’s hand to its own
purpose as an instrument. When it is taught and trained, it can do it over
and over and over again without conscious effort; then the sheath takes
up the work and repeats the accustomed motions; it is continuing
automatically what was a purposive action at the beginning; automatic
action repeats that to which the body has been trained, and if you want
to change it, you must bring the will to bear on the change;
otherwise repetition is the law of the sheath’s action, the great law of
rhythm, the universal law, everywhere working, of a tendency to repeat:
the night and the day; the light and the darkness; the ebb and flow of the
ocean; all the revolutions of moon, of sun, of stars - all regularly,
rhythmically repeated. That is the law of the Great Breath, and
everything is dominated by it, whether it be atom or central sun in space.
Therefore it of course rules the sheath of the body, the food sheath; and
this tendency to repeat what once has been impressed upon it, is the law
of rhythm working in a particular sheath, and repeating without the
active consciousness of the Ego, all actions repeatedly imposed upon it
previously by that purposive will. So, again you get in the third sheath
 52

inwards what we call ‘instinct’. I need not work that out similarly in
detail. It is automatic action plus feeling; but it is exactly on the same
lines. Acts which have been done over and over and over again are
repeated unconsciously as we see. Coming on then still further, you find
the beginning of the third ‘I’, partly conscious of itself, because it
remembers partially. That is the brain consciousness which has memory,
although a fragmentary one, of the life during which it has been working.
You get in every one of us this brain consciousness of the ‘I’ which is
based on a partial memory, that is the memory of the life during which it
has been the organ of the Thinker. And then there is the real ‘I’, whose
consciousness is able to stretch back to every life behind it, and that
contains as receptacle every experience that in myriads of lives has been
gathered. Thus all these ‘I’s’ are there, and only one is the real. ‘I’, but
when a sheath reflects its illusory ‘I’ on to the real one, then the real ‘I’
lends its own self - consciousness to the reflection thrown on to it by the
sheath, and so you have this apparent reality which is illusory, and is lent
by the one consciousness, which transfers to that which it looks on as
separate its own individuality, and gives to the reflection within itself the
apparent and deceptive reality of life. So might you take an image in a
mirror for the real man. If a mirror is so placed that it does not show
itself as a mirror, say, at the end of a passage, you may think that the
reflections that are there are objects that lie further on, and that you will
find as external objects as you advance; thus every sheath reflects on to
the consciousness its own image and to this self-consciousness is
erroneously attributed by the Ego that receives them all.

Now you will find that a light is thrown on our limitations, our individual
karma, by this view. See how the self-conscious Ego must be limited by
the working of the sheaths; see how that which in the past it has done,
and which comes back to it as the automatic action of the body and the
astral, which comes back to it in the manomayakosha, as feelings, as
emotions, as instincts, every one which it has gathered in its pilgrimage
through many lives; how all these must govern, limit and control it;
when it comes into these sheaths for any particular life. You cannot
separate one life from another. You cannot deal with human lives as
though they were separate individuals, for they are not. The life that you
are in now is to the Ego but as a day. Death is as the night which closes it.
Birth comes with the dawning, and that is as another day of life. And the
 53

next death is as the night in which you lie down to slumber. Can you
separate today from tomorrow? Can you get rid tomorrow of all the
obligations that you have entered into today? Will the night get rid of
them and set you free from them? or, are you held crippled and
controlled by them, and have to work them out bit by bit, piece by piece,
not freely, because you have bound yourselves, and because one day is
conditioned by the days that have gone before? So with lives. These lives
are days, and these deaths are nights, and they are bound one to another,
and the Sutratma, the Thread-Soul, passes through them all. Thus you
begin to see why you are bound. You begin to realise the reality of the
karma that limits you; but in recognising the limitation, forget not the
freedom. In recognising the sheath that limits you, forget not the Atma
that permeates the sheath, and moulds it in the permeating. You are
Atma, “Thou art That”. Thou, being Brahman, art never crippled so as to
be unable to move. There is the paradox of at once our slavery and our
freedom. Bound by the doings of our past, but remaining Brahman in the
centre, that knows no limit and that is moved by Its own Nature alone.
When then will harmony come out of the conflict? Clearly when they all
are subordinated to the One Life, and when everything comes from the
vibration from within. There is the end of strife. When the SELF has
permeated and dominated everything, and in the higher sheaths has
gained Self-consciousness, and gradually Self-consciousness on every
plane, then inasmuch as all the vibrations will come from within, and
none outside will have power of spreading disturbance, then there will
be perfect harmony and co-ordination between sheath and sheath. That
is why the true yogi knows no disturbance. That is why the true yogi is
ever harmonious and serene. Though the sheaths are there, no outer
vibration may avail to make disturbance; though the sheaths are there,
they will not answer to anything that comes from without. They know
their master. They recognise the hand that holds them. They are like the
well-broken horses of a chariot, answering only to the hand of the driver,
which no longer is rigid but light and easy as the hand of a child. Then
there is perfect harmony and peace and bliss.

We have to study the use of the sheaths, our last point. Why all this
conflict and work? Why all these many sheaths, and these, myriads of
lives, and these millenniums of years? Why these countless successions
of lives and deaths? Why this endless procession, as it were, of the days
 54

and nights of Brahma? Why all these? Let us see if we cannot

understand. Let us see now if, with the knowledge that we have been
trying to gather together, we cannot understand something of the
purpose of the universe, something of the outcome which makes it worth
while that a universe should be. We have seen that there is the gathering
of knowledge. But to what purpose? for mere gathering is not sufficient.
The gathering of knowledge by each sheath is for this purpose: namely,
that the knowledge may remain for use, while that which is its material
shall be powerless for disturbance. We have seen that the outside
universe shows itself to our senses by way of vibration, and that these
vibrations shake the sheath. We have seen further that while knowledge
is gained by these vibrations in the sheath that thus answers to the
vibrations from without, in the progress and the growth of the Ego, the
Individual, all this knowledge becomes reflected in an ideal form, and is
finally realised by the Ego, not as affecting itself, but as having been
gathered for the purpose of use. The whole process of development
consists in this; that you learn to touch, that you learn to feel, that you
learn to know, and then, gathering that up, you possess the whole of it
for utility, while it has lost its power to disturb you and so to fetter you to
the acts that you perform. Easily I think, in a few phrases, can I show
you the steps of this growth. Cast your mind back to that point of
junction that I spoke of yesterday, where the baby Ego, so to speak, was
born by the joining of the two lives. That Ego knows nothing of the world
into which it has come, literally a baby soul, unconscious of law, ignorant
of everything that surrounds it. There is only in it desire, outward-going
energy. It goes out, attracted. Sometimes it enjoys. It goes out again.
Sometimes it suffers. It shrinks back. On and on it goes like this,
through, the whole of the life, aye, through many lives, and after a
considerable time, it begins, as I hinted to you yesterday, to make the
connecting link between the sensation of pleasure or of pain and the
outer object, and that is the first thought; that thought being a
perception, i.e., the connection that joins together the object and the
sensation, and so makes the material on which reasoning may be
possible. Thus gradually going on, the baby Ego begins to gather
experience, and learns that there is law. The result of all this feeling of
pleasure and pain, and of joining together the pleasures and pains with
outer objects, of the reasoning upon them, all this teaches this child-Ego
growing out from babyhood to childhood - teaches it that it is in a world
 55

of law, and that wherever there is pain it has struck itself against the law;
teaches it that only by obedience to the law can it avoid pain and find the
harmony that is pleasure. Many hundreds of lives are needed to learn
this perfectly; many hundreds of lives, as we count lives - to the SELF
they are but one. During each of these, lessons are learned. Just as in the
present human life we went to school, and just as we passed from class to
class as we learned more and more and became worthy to go higher, and
from school to college and from college into the outer life of the world, so
it is with this Ego, this Individual, that is growing in many lives, passes
from one life to another, passes from one stage to another; then
gathering knowledge in each life it comes back wiser than it was before,
until it gains its manhood and has something of the knowledge of the
world in which it is to live and work; and then it gains something more.
Using the sheaths in this way, it kills out desire by experience; for, it
learns that, although there are many desires that, being in harmony with
law, give pleasure, nevertheless, they sometimes turn into wombs of
pain, by the great law that is impressed on all that is not Brahman as
Reality, the Law of Change, the Law of Weariness. You enjoy a legitimate
enjoyment, and you get tired of it. When you have enjoyed it to the full,
you are worn out and you get a feeling of disgust and you are weary of it.
You eat legitimate food and enjoy, and the appetite is satisfied, and it
turns aside from that which attracted it. So with every material
satisfaction. You enjoy it, yes; but it cloys. You become satiated and
weary. That is the only way of finally getting rid of desire. Desire
vanishes when you realise that all desires that are not directed to the
Permanent have in them the element of pain. When you find that time
after time the joy is followed by weariness, you say: “Of what avail is it to
enjoy for a moment and then to be weary? Let me seek joy where joy is
permanent, and where, the more I have, the deeper shall be enjoyment
and peace and happiness”. For there is this difference between material
and spiritual bliss; the one cloys and disgusts, while the other increases
with every new consumption. With every increase there is still more in-
crease that lies beyond. That is the difference between the life of the
divine and the material, between the life of the inner SELF and the life of
these outer sheaths. Never shall desire be dead till that lesson is learned,
and the SELF turns inwards to Its own centre, which is infinite, in which
bliss can never be exhausted nor lost. And so, the use of the sheaths is
not only to gather knowledge, and not only to learn the law of pleasure
 56

and pain, but also to get rid of the root of desire, without which there
never can be peace and bliss unspeakable.

And then there is the third use which I was going to say is the most
important of all. I say it is the most important, because it deals with all
men and not with the individual. It deals with humanity and not with the
single man. The third use of the sheath is that in the sheath you may feel,
and feeling you may learn sympathy, and learning sympathy you may
take succour to those who are in pain; for remember, the life of the God
is the life of giving. Do you remember what Shri Krshna said? That there
was nothing He need do. He acts, not for Himself, but because if He did
not, the whole world would stop. There then is a higher teaching still
than yet we have reached. The use of the sheaths is that we may learn
sympathy by suffering, and knowing what it is to be in anguish may carry
help to our fellow, who has not learnt the lesson. We feel in the sheath.
How shall we sympathise? Sympathy is only perfect when pain is felt in
the sheath, vibrating to every throb of agony from the outside world, but
when the SELF knows Itself as separate from the sheath, and realises the
pain, feels it in the sheath, but is not disturbed in Itself by the vibration
that is agonising the sheath in which It is clothed. Try to follow the
thought. It is possible to feel pain with the uttermost anguish. It is
possible to feel the whole of your outer world throbbing with agony and
with anguish that needs your whole will to master it. It is possible that
the manomayakosha shall be full of pain and every fibre strained almost
to the breaking point, and yet that the Self within, knowing the pain and
feeling it by reflection, and entirely conscious of every throb of agony, is
yet absolutely still, calm and unshaken. No pain touches It, though the
pain is felt in the sheath, and It can act with perfect steadiness, with
perfect wisdom, unblinded by the pain and unshaken by the anguish,
and therefore absolutely at human service with every expanding energy
and with every force that It possesses. There is the triumph.

When man by myriad lives has reached a certain point, when man by
myriad lives has reached the entrance of what is technically called the
Path, then the Guru comes forward to take that man in hand, to lead him
along the Path of discipleship and give him the final lessons in the
understanding of the sheaths and of the SELF; and then along that Path,
with the Guru, who guides him, he goes for still a few more lives learning
these final lessons, and having learned them, and being there within the
 57

sheaths, and yet, in a strange kind of fashion, separated, then there

comes at last the point where the Soul, the individualised Self, absolutely
free from all desires and yet dwelling within the sheaths, stands where It
may go onwards into freedom, or turn backwards to help the world. If it
wills, It has a right to go onward, onward into bliss, onward into All--
consciousness, onward, having conquered all the regions of the universe,
into the One, the Unlimited, the All. Or it may, if It wills, turn back: not
again to be in bonds, not again to be fettered, not again that desire shall
grip It and tie It to birth and death; but by a voluntary choice, by a self--
made decision It says: “I will not have final peace till my brothers share
It; I will not have final liberty that is not shared by my brothers, and
enjoyment which is not theirs. I will not take Nirvana for myself and
leave my brothers in the bonds of birth and death, in their ignorance and
in their darkness, in their helplessness and in their folly. If I have won
wisdom, I have won it for their enlightening. If I have won strength, I
have won it for their service. If I have learned to vibrate in agony for man
what avail is it then to throw aside the sheaths and go on where no agony
is useful? I will stay where I am and will work for man. Every pain of
man shall strike me. Every agony of man shall touch me, and shall wring
my heart. Every folly of man shall be my folly by identification with
humanity, and every sin and crime of theirs my suffering until the whole
of us are free.” Such is what we call the Master. Such is the Mahatma of
the Hindu, the Asekha of the Buddhist, the Supreme and the liberated
SELF that remains voluntarily within the sheaths as long as Its brethren
are in bondage, and puts Itself at human service by the supreme act of
renunciation, to remain in bondage till the whole are free, and to go into
Nirvana when all can go hand in hand with Him.

There is the purpose of the sheaths; there is the sublime triumph; there
is the glorious ending. When the manvantara is over, there shall be
myriads of individuals as the results of that manvantara, and at their
head, these triumphant Ones who have led them onward, have taken
them onward into rest, into Nirvana, of which no words may speak, to
the Place of Peace and Rest and All-consciousness, that is in store for
humanity. And then on the other side Those who have triumphed bring
back Their memory, Their individuality, and Their knowledge, to the
building of a new universe, to the making of a new race. They are the
Sons of Mind that I spoke of yesterday, who came to the help of the
 58

world, so that the baby-Egos might be formed and the new individuals
might start. Thus do the Mahatmas of the past manvantara come back,
as it were, as Gods for the building of the worlds. That is the possibility
for all who choose the whole instead of the individual, who choose love
instead of selfishness, and service instead of gain. We must begin it
today. We must begin it in our lives, in duty to wife, to child, to nation, to
humanity. Never is a great One made save where the smaller duties are
first accomplished and that which in the end is a Mahatma, at the
beginning was a self-sacrificing Grhastha in the home.