Masonic, Occult and Esoteric Online Library
The Seven Principles Of Man
By A Besant
Kama Manas The Personality
The everyday self which we live with and imagine that we know thoroughly is called the personality. But it is precisely this personality of whose elements we are so ignorant. And this is true not only of the man in the street but even of the professor of the modern so-called science of psychology. For some of the most popular explanations of the human psychological nature are delvings into what we have already spoken of as the cellar regions, the lower physiological side, of the human psyche or soul.
The whole drama of human life, made up of the struggle within us between the forces of good and evil, centers around the personality. Why is this? If you look at the diagram you will see. It is because the personality is dual, twofold. It is a compound, a resultant of the mingling of the nature of manas, the thinking ego, with kama. It may do no harm to repeat that the kind of kama exhibited by the ordinary person is selfish passional desire. It is only the rarest human beings who know much about the higher aspects of kama, such as divine desire, although there are many men and women whose compassionate humanitarian interests and activities are lifting them slowly to those highest planes of desire. Therefore the technical name in theosophy for the personality is kama-manas. And as humanity is at present constituted, this name is more expressive than manas-kama, there being as said but very few in whom the thinker takes precedence over selfish emotions, or reason over impulse.
Kama-manas or the personality is the instrument, the vehicle, by which the monad with its spiritual urges and energies is brought into remote control of this mental-material world. All evolution is produced by original monadic urges and energies poured down or outward through our less spiritual principles. If the monad were to withdraw its presence, as it does at death, the principles would fall apart and the man would disappear from this physical world. This personality of ours has been built up in its kamic parts by the monad in its passage or pilgrimages through the lower stages or kingdoms of nature, as already explained. During that time it fashioned what is sometimes called the animal soul, another name for our kamic nature. And then when this kamic soul was ready, it was touched into self-consciousness, awakened to humanhood, by the infusion of the divine intellectual fire of the manasaputras. Thus kama-manas came into action. It is the combination of the animal soul and the thinking, self-conscious nature in the human constitution.
This personality then began to reincarnate as the vehicle for its higher manas. It took human form again and again, life after life on this earth. But all this time while man has been developing his faculties of will power, imagination, reason, creative intellect, and the like, the instincts and desires of the animal or kamic self have been strengthening and developing too, by the very reason of their dynamic alliance with manas. They have become strong, self-centered, and self-demanding. Thus the two forces in human nature, the spiritual and the animal, have been at war all down the ages. The lower kama-manasic self always urges to passion, strife, and selfishness; the higher manasic ego, inspired by atmabuddhi, slowly through innumerable incarnations has been striving for spiritual mastery.
In this way the lower and material principles are inspired or urged forward in self-unfoldment and are thus slowly transformed and developed from material into spiritual energies. For this is the purpose of life and the object of evolution — to raise the mortal into immortality.
So that today we see our nature hovering upon the point of balance between self-indulgence and self-mastery, the animal and godlike in human nature. And this condition in the individual is naturally reflected in the mass. The present condition of our world well illustrates the situation. Nations, on the one hand, are urged by ideals of peace, international fraternity, and cooperation. On the other hand, they are goaded by greed, ignorance, and the clamor of selfish national interests. It was this very condition which was foreseen by the great teachers, the mahatmas who through the work of H. P. Blavatsky founded the Theosophical Society. At the same time they restored to us the knowledge which will enable the spirit-soul working through our higher nature, both in the individual and in the mass, to win the final victory over selfishness and hatred.
Katherine Tingley once wrote, "Impersonal love is the secret of life." It is the cure for all present evils, both individual and collective. By "impersonal" is meant self-forgetful love. Even more, it means love for all beings, no matter whether base or noble, no matter how different or hostile to us or dear and close to our hearts. By silencing the kama-manas, the selfish demanding personality, we begin to understand, to love, and to know in a wonderful new way, bringing us happiness and peace. Becoming quick to love, and so to understand and forgive, irritation and criticism and resentment fall away from us. No matter what happens we shall then never hinder or be unkind but always try to help. Ultimately we shall go farther still and come to understand and forgive our enemies — the happiest state of all. Broadening then gradually our sympathies, we extend our love to include all nations as well as our own beloved land. And thus we eventually become a power for universal good.
There are truly magical powers wrapped up in our higher nature — creative powers which are even now feebly illustrated by intuitive imagination and disciplined will; with the unselfish impulses of our deepest hearts which lead to grand humanitarian activities; and all our dreams and visions and urges towards that spiritual genius which is beginning to unfold in humanity even today. But these seeds of magical powers will not sprout — they cannot — while our whole attention and desires are concentrated merely upon business interests, selfish self-evasive pleasures, and the race to keep up with or get ahead of everyone else. We are not expected of course to neglect or abandon necessary material pursuits; but in changing our inner objective we seize our present opportunity to develop the aspect of kama already referred to as divine desire.
The impulse to bless with unselfish service our family or friends, to take an honorable part in civic or national betterment, to give help and consolation to those in sorrow or need — these impulses spring from our spiritual monad, atma-buddhi. Under this magic sunshine the dark side of the kamic principle will wither away; divine kama will come into action and coalesce with lower manas. Duality will disappear and the two will become welded into a perfect vehicle, a luminous personality, through which the spiritual monad, our inner god, may pour its divine energies into our human hearts. Such men were Jesus the Christ and Gautama the Buddha.
