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The Seven Principles Of Man
By A Besant
We Are Rooted in a Sevenfold Universe
The sevenfold nature of the universe has already been referred to. One of the most important teachings of theosophy tells us that all we see of the real universe is but its outermost or physical parts. The other six parts are invisible to us. They are built of more ethereal matters than physical and move to higher and finer rates of vibration. We cannot sense them because we have not yet developed the etheric sense organs or the finer perceptions which could reveal them to us. So that six-sevenths of the great organism of Mother Nature is hidden from us at present, just as in the structure of light there are ranges of vibration beginning with the ultraviolet at one end and the infrared at the other. These are either too rapid or too slow to be perceived by our organ of vision, but they nevertheless have a very marked effect upon our health and in other departments of the world of physical causes.
The fact that all things are moved and motivated by inner invisible energies and their living urges, we see around us even in our physical world. A flower or a tree — is not its life of distributing sap, of color transmutation and growth, unseen by us in all but its effects? And a rock is held together by the attractions and repulsions of the atoms and electrons which form the imperceptible side of its structure. This fact of the physical and exterior being "worked from within" is what we call a law, being universal throughout nature.
Thus these inner and invisible realms are the causal or creative worlds. They produce the physical universe. Nature as we see it around us is but the multifold physical organism through which these inner realms of creative evolution work. But nature is much more than this. It should properly be called universal nature, "nature spiritual and material with all the countless hierarchical ranges between." (The Esoteric Tradition, 3rd & rev. ed., p. 2)
The foregoing will be easier to grasp if we think of it as exemplified in our own human experience. Take our nearest and dearest. All that we can see of them is their physical appearance and activities. But that is the very least of their meaning to us. It is their inner complex invisible selves that we love — their sympathy, intellectual or temperamental fascination, or their moral beauty. These are the person. Someone who at first acquaintance may have seemed physically ugly to us becomes at last beautiful because of a noble or loving character. Or another who at first sight charmed because of physical beauty may end in being actually ugly to us when the real nature is discovered to be selfish or cruel. So with the world around us. It is made up of inner forces and invisible creative energies which are the reality of which physical nature is but the face and form.
There is a direct relationship between the invisible six-sevenths of human beings and the invisible six-sevenths of nature. In either case the physical aspect is the lowest or seventh principle, the body or sthula-sarira. And as we derive our bodies from the earth and our vitality indirectly from the physical sun, so we derive our invisible six principles from the six invisible principles of universal nature.
"But," someone perhaps objects here, "it has already been said that we derive all of our principles from the monad. The monad, you have told us, emanates buddhi, its envelope or garment of spiritual intelligent substance. Then buddhi produces manas, manas unfolds kama, and so on down the sevenfold ladder of being. But now you say that man derives his principles from the seven principles of nature. There seems to be a contradiction here."
No, because it is just as we see it in human experience. How often we hear the query as to character and environment. Which is the more powerful in shaping a person's life — his inborn character or the environment into which he is born? In the last analysis we must agree that while environment is tremendously important, character must actually lead in formative power. Otherwise we should never see those cases of people born in poverty who have raised themselves to the pinnacles of achievement. The wellknown phrase, a self-made man, has sprung from this fact — that the real directing power of a person's life is within himself. When strong enough it cannot be nullified by his surroundings.
Our own characteristic principles spring from our spiritual individuality, the monad. But these principles of ours are also acted upon by the external principles of nature. An acorn will produce only an oak tree. But the acorn is fed by water from the air and chemicals in the soil. It later draws in solar vitality to build up its cells and produce color in its leaves and blossoms. Man likewise, the divine seed of the universe, draws sustenance from the surrounding seven principles of nature. The astral body cannot be fed from the earth, only by its own elements contained in the lower levels of the ether. And so on up the scale. Each principle draws its sustenance from higher and higher levels of the invisible six higher principles of nature.
All our principles are dual. Not dual in the sense of being in two parts like a box and its cover, but two in action in the same way that the electric magnet has a positive and a negative pole. Every principle has an energic, that is a positive consciousness side, and a substance or negative side. And it is through this latter that the consciousness which derives from the monad is able to work on the lower planes of being. The consciousness side is spiritual electricity derived from the life-force of the monad. The material side is drawn by the magnetic attractions of this life force from the reservoirs of life-atoms of the corresponding principles in sevenfold nature.
We must also remember that the monad itself is an integral part of spiritual nature. It is an emanation of the root-consciousness of our universe, the cosmic self, and expresses its homogeneous energy through its immediate vehicle buddhi. So that we realize that just as we derive our physical energy indirectly from the sun, we derive our spiritual life indirectly through the monad from the spiritual energies of universal nature. It might be added here that the sun and all the planets are likewise sevenfold. And it is these inner principles of the solar system to which theosophy refers when it speaks of the inner worlds. It is in the relation of our seven principles to the seven principles of the sun and some of its planets that the explanation of this whole matter lies.
This subject is one of the most fascinating of all the theosophical teachings, involving the glorious destiny of mankind with its experiences and adventures in the inner worlds. But it is too wide-reaching and important to be dealt with adequately here.
