Masonic, Occult and Esoteric Online Library
The Seven Principles Of Man
By A Besant
An Ancient Basis for a New Psychology
The final test of any idea lies in its power of practical application to the difficulties of human life. Can it help us to develop and strengthen character? Will it lead us into more satisfactory human relationships, giving a greater understanding of our fellows with consequent capacity to help them? Will it give us a larger power to control environment and direct our own destiny? Theosophy answers that the knowledge it confers of the composite nature of man puts into our hands the practical means which enable us to do all these things. And thus it gives us the basis of a sound and workable psychology.
Psychology is one of the most popular subjects in our present-day world. Its uses and implications are evident even to the thoughtless. Such expressions as "the psychology of salesmanship," "mass psychology," etc., indicate how widely spread is the perception of the importance, for success in any field, of understanding the basic principles of human nature. And the use of every form of commercial or political slogan to create consumer or voter psychology illustrates this point. If a person will study himself but for one day he will be amazed to see the wide range of moods, impulses, and character trends that his thoughts and actions will exhibit. And he will also be astonished to find how very little he knows about what goes on in his inner self. He will come to realize that he is almost completely at the mercy of these shifting currents of consciousness upon which he is more or less dangerously drifting — dangerous because of his ignorance of the source or the meaning of these contradictions within himself.
In fact, it is the almost universal discontinuity of human nature that shows how composite we are. And this rather highbrow statement means that the inability of the average person to hold one line of thought or feeling or willing for any considerable length of time indicates that there are different and opposing elements in his make-up. These prevent him from continuing in the same frame of mind or feeling for very long at one time. Obviously, then, until we master these opposing elements — bring them into harmony and learn to direct them — they will continue to run amuck in our lives. But to be able to master them, must we not begin by knowing what and where they are?
Then we go a step farther and examine the dual personality — how it works, how to understand it and direct its energies. For here in this dual personality is where the battle is waged in the evolution of the human being into something higher. It is in the struggle between the personal and the divine.
This struggle, as already pointed out in Chapter 5, centers in the dual personality. And this personality is dragged down now by its alliance with kama, and now uplifted and purified by its union with higher manas. H. P. Blavatsky in The Key to Theosophy gives us a very clear and complete analysis of this dual psychology in human nature. At one point she tells us of the essential, inherent, characteristic, heaven-aspiring mind (higher Manas) and . . . the human quality of thinking, or animal cogitation, rationalised owing to the superiority of the human brain, the Kama-tending or lower Manas. — p. 184
We must get a practical conception of these two elements in ourselves. We must learn how to recognize each element in its workings in our daily lives; how to cultivate the higher manas and how to transform its lower kama-manasic side into an instrument or vehicle for the use of the higher manas. Until we have this knowledge and can put it into self-conscious operation, we will be at the mercy, not only of our moods and weaknesses, but will also react injuriously to the moods and weaknesses of others.
Self-consciousness means self-recognition. It is the power of manas as the thinker to realize itself as a separate individual being, different in character and capacities from all other beings. From this follows a recognition of our relationship with others and to our environment — what these mean to us and how to react to them.
It is in this field of self-consciousness that free will in man first arises. Through his recognition of himself in relation to others and to his environment there comes home to him a realization of his power to develop himself and use his circumstances and relationships to further his own desires and aims. But it is here in this field of self-consciousness that the struggle of duality in his nature takes place. Recognizing these facts, man can apply them to the selfish personal ends of the animal nature below, or he can subject his personal will to the silent but ever present demands of the higher manas. Here at this point, as said, the struggle of human evolution concentrates.
As man progresses he learns to control and to dedicate the lower kamic nature to the service of the higher manas. If he fails to do this, he deteriorates. If he uses his self-conscious free will to injure others — or even only for his own personal ends — he makes the kind of karma that produces sufferings and failure. Yet, even so, through these sufferings and failures he slowly learns and develops. And at last through many lives the personality is brought to realize that only the alliance with higher manas can bring peace and happiness.
When we reach this point we first know true freedom. Knowledge of the spiritual psychology taught by theosophy convinces us that only when the will voluntarily subjects itself to the good of others does it become really free. A person acting entirely from selfish animal instinct is merely willful. And he suffers as a slave to fear and envy and every form of personal frustration. He only imagines himself to be free.
We may use an extreme case to illustrate this important point. Compare the man of civic virtue, who willingly lives in entire conformity with the equitable laws of his community, with the hunted existence of the habitual law-breaker. Most criminals pass the greater part of their lives in prison, while the more notorious ones who may escape imprisonment live under the heel of some petty criminal dictator who, like themselves, is generally short lived. But the man who obeys the ethical dictates of brotherhood and gladly adjusts his life to the laws of his country enjoys freedom of body, mind, and spirit.
Moreover, in exact proportion as we consciously discipline our free will by conforming to the good of others do we expand in consciousness. For this attitude means that we are turning the personality to the light and power of higher manas, and are thus opening our whole lower nature to the divine.
The reason why in following this course we are expanding our daily consciousness and opening our lower selves to the divine, lies in the nature of buddhi and atman. Atman, as already explained, is the ray of the cosmic universal self which dwells at the innermost center of each of us. It is identical in us all, being therefore the root of universal brotherhood. Atman is pure divine consciousness at one with the universal source from which it springs.
Buddhi is the divine vehicle of universal consciousness. It is emanated from atman. Buddhi therefore partakes of the universal nature of atman. Within buddhi lie all the universal potencies of atman — impersonal love of all creatures, genius in its highest and divine expression, intelligence in its most glorious and abstract power.
Thinking this over we see that when any personality strongly turns to higher manas and obeys its mandates of love and compassion and self-dedication to the universal and the real, it brings itself under the quickening power of the buddhic radiance. For this buddhic radiance broods like a divine presence over the nature and activities of higher manas. This radiance is always there. But most personalities are so saturated and obscured in a fog of selfishness and petty personal interests that the pure rays of the buddhic splendor cannot penetrate to their brain-minds.
But when, through deliberate self-discipline, these fogs are cleared away, then manas is free to ally itself with buddhi without hindrance. It is no longer preoccupied with the effort to control the distracting struggles of the kama-manas. When this happy time arrives, then the buddhic power of impersonal love, the stimulation of divine and creative intellect, will quicken all the lower man. Unsuspected faculties and powers will begin to unfold in the hitherto limited personality. It will grow almost daily in peace and happiness and the ability to help and bless those with whom it lives.
This is why virtue and unselfishness are truly and literally their own reward. And this too is why the practice of brotherhood and the spiritual discipline of the human will can lead to a magnificent expansion of consciousness. Such people, living under the glory of the buddhic splendor, are on the way to becoming gods in human form.
If the student will compare this system of truly spiritual psychology with the other systems in vogue today, he will see how much farther it goes in explaining himself to himself and in throwing light upon the complex world of people about him.
The following passage from G. de Purucker's Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy will be illuminating in this connection. He tells us that the word psychology
is ordinarily used to signify in our days and in the seats of learning in the Occident a study more or less cloudy, mostly beclouded with doubts and hypotheses, actual guesswork, meaning little more than a kind of mental physiology, practically nothing more than the working of the brain-mind in the lowest astral-psychical apparatus of the human mind. But in our philosophy the word psychology is used to mean something very different, and of a nobler character: we might call it pneumatology, or the science or the study of spirit, because all the inner faculties and powers of man ultimately spring from his spirit. But as this word pneumatology is an unusual one and might cause confusion, let us retain the word psychology. We mean by it the study of the inner economy of man, the interconnection of his principles, so to speak, or centers of energy or force — what the man really is inwardly. —
