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Again, Kara may be taken to represent the projecting triangles of the
five-pointed star. This figure may also be called a kind of regular
pentagon (see Todhunter's "Spherical Trigonometry," p. 143). If this
interpretation is accepted, the Rasi or sign in question represents the
"microcosm." But the "microcosm" or the world of thought is really
represented by Vrischika. From an objective point of view the
"microcosm" is represented by the human body. Makaram may be taken to
represent simultaneously both the microcosm and the macrocosm, as
external objects of perception.

In connection with this sign I shall state a few important facts which I
beg to submit for the consideration of those who are interested in
examining the ancient occult sciences of India. It is generally held by
the ancient philosophers that the macrocosm is similar to the microcosm
in having a Sthula Sariram and a Suksma Sariram. The visible universe
is the Sthula Sariram of Viswam; the ancient philosophers held that as
a substratum for this visible universe, there is another universe--
perhaps we may call it the universe of Astral Light--the real universe
of Noumena, the soul as it were of this visible universe. It is darkly
hinted in certain passages of the Veda and the Upanishads that this
hidden universe of Astral Light is to be represented by an Icosahedron.
The connection between an Icosahedron and a Dodecahedron is something
very peculiar and interesting, though the figures seem to be so very
dissimilar to each other. The connection may be understood by the
under-mentioned geometrical construction. Describe a Sphere about an
Icosahedron; let perpendiculars be drawn from the centre of the Sphere
on its faces and produced to meet the surface of the Sphere. Now, if
the points of intersection be joined, a Dodecahedron is formed within
the Sphere. By a similar process an Icosahedron may be constructed from
a Dodecahedron. (See Todhunter's "Spherical Trigonometry," p. 141, art.
193). The figure constructed as above described will represent the
universe of matter and the universe of Astral Light as they actually
exist. I shall not now, however, proceed to show how the universe of
Astral Light may be considered under the symbol of an Icosahedron. I
shall only state that this conception of the Aryan philosophers is not
to be looked upon as mere "theological twaddle" or as the outcome of
wild fancy. The real significance of the conception in question can, I
believe, be explained by reference to the psychology and the physical
science of the ancients. But I must stop here and proceed to consider
the meaning of the remaining two signs.

XI. Kumbha (or Aquarius).--When represented by numbers, the word is
equivalent to 14. It can be easily perceived then that the division in
question is intended to represent the "Chaturdasa Bhuvanam," or the 14
lokas spoken of in Sanskrit writings.

XII. Mina (or Pisces).--This word again is represented by 5 when written
in numbers, and is evidently intended to convey the idea of
Panchamahabhutams or the 5 elements. The sign also suggests that water
(not the ordinary water, but the universal solvent of the ancient
alchemists) is the most important amongst the said elements.

I have now finished the task which I have set to myself in this article.
My purpose is not to explain the ancient theory of evolution itself, but
to show the connection between that theory and the Zodiacal divisions.
I have herein brought to light but a very small portion of the
philosophy imbedded in these signs. The veil that was dexterously thrown
over certain portions of the mystery connected with these signs by the
ancient philosophers will never be lifted up for the amusement or
edification of the uninitiated public.

Now to summarize the facts stated in this article, the contents of the
first chapter of the history of this universe are as follows:

1. The self-existent, eternal Brahmam.

2. Pranava (Aum).

3. The androgyne Brahma, or the bisexual Sephira-Adam Kadmon.

4. The Sacred Tetragram--the four matras of Pranava--the four
avasthas--the four states of Brahma--the Sacred Dharaka.

5. The five Brahmas--the five Buddhas representing in their totality
the Jivatma.

6. The Astral Light--the holy Virgin--the six forces in Nature.

7. The thirty-six Tatwams born of Avidya.

8. The universe in thought--the Swapna Avastha--the microcosm looked at
from a subjective point of view.

9. The nine Prajapatis--the assistants of the Demiurgus.*

10. The shape of the material universe in the mind of the Demiurgus--
the DODECAHEDRON.

11. The fourteen lokas.

12. The five elements.

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* The nine Kabalistic Sephiroths emanated from Sephira the 10th and the
head Sephiroth are identical. Three trinities or triads with their
emanative principle form the Pythagorean mystic Decad, the sum of all
which represents the whole Kosmos.--Ed. Theos.
--------

The history of creation and of this world from its beginning up to the
present time is composed of seven chapters. The seventh chapter is not
yet completed.

--T. Subba Row
Triplicane, Madras, September 14, 1881




The Sishal and Bhukailas Yogis

We are indebted to the kindness of the learned President of the Adi
Brahmo Samaji for the following accounts of two Yogis, of whom one
performed the extraordinary feats of raising his body by will power, and
keeping it suspended in the air without visible support. The Yoga
posture for meditation or concentration of the mind upon spiritual
things is called Asana. There are various of these modes of sitting,
such as Padmasan, &c. &c. Babu Rajnarain Bose translated this narrative
from a very old number of the Tatwabodhini Patrika, the Calcutta organ
of the Brahmo Samaj. The writer was Babu Akkhaya Kumar Dalta, then
editor of the Patrika, of whom Babu Rajnarain speaks in the following
high terms--"A very truth-loving and painstaking man; very fond of
observing strict accuracy in the details of a description."

Sishal Yogi

A few years ago, a Deccan Yogi, named Sishal, was seen at Madras, by
many Hindus and Englishmen, to raise his Asana, or seat, up into the
air. The picture of the Yogi, showing his mode of seating, and other
particulars connected with him, may be found in the Saturday Magazine on
page 28.

His whole body seated in air, only his right hand lightly touched a deer
skin, rolled up in the form of a tube, and attached to a brazen rod
which was firmly stuck into a wooden board resting on four legs. In
this position the Yogi used to perform his japa (mystical meditation),
with his eyes half shut. At the time of his ascending to his aerial
seat, and also when he descended from it, his disciples used to cover
him with a blanket. The Tatwabodhini Patrika, Chaitra, 1768 Sakabda,
corresponding to March 1847.


The Bhukailas Yogi

The extraordinary character of the holy man who was brought to
Bhukailas, in Kidderpore, about 14 years ago, may still be remembered by
many. In the month of Asar, 1754 Sakabda (1834 A.C.), he was brought to
Bhukailas from Shirpur, where he was under the charge of Hari Singh, the
durwan (porter) of Mr. Jones. He kept his eyes closed, and went without
food and drink, for three consecutive days, after which a small quantity
of milk was forcibly poured down his throat. He never took any food
that was not forced upon him. He seemed always without external
consciousness. To remove this condition Dr. Graham applied ammonia to
his nostrils; but it only produced tremblings in the body, and did not
break his Yoga state. Three days passed before he could be made to
speak. He said that his name was Dulla Nabab, and when annoyed, he
uttered a single word, from which it was inferred that he was a Punjabi.
When he was laid up with gout Dr. Graham attended him, but he refused to
take medicine, either in the form of powder or mixture. He was cured of
the disease only by the application of ointments and liniments
prescribed by the doctor. He died in the month of Chaitra 1755 Sakabda,
of a choleric affection.*--The Tatwabodhini Patrika, Chaitra, 1768
Sakabda, corresponding to March, 1847 A.C.

--------
* The above particulars of this holy man have been obtained on
unexceptionable testimony.--Ed. T.B.P.
--------------------


PHILOSOPHICAL



True and False Personality


The title prefixed to the following observations may well have suggested
a more metaphysical treatment of the subject than can be attempted on
the present occasion. The doctrine of the trinity, or trichotomy of
man, which distinguishes soul from spirit, comes to us with such
weighty, venerable, and even sacred authority, that we may well be
content, for the moment, with confirmations that should be intelligible
to all, forbearing the abstruser questions which have divided minds of
the highest philosophical capacity. We will not now inquire whether the
difference is one of states or of entities; whether the phenomenal or
mind consciousness is merely the external condition of one indivisible
Ego, or has its origin and nature in an altogether different principle;
the Spirit, or immortal part of us, being of Divine birth, while the
senses and understanding, with the consciousness--Ahankara--thereto
appertaining, are from an Anima Mundi, or what in the Sankhya philosophy
is called Prakriti. My utmost expectations will have been exceeded if
it should happen that any considerations here offered should throw even
a faint suggestive light upon the bearings of this great problem. It
may be that the mere irreconcilability of all that is characteristic of
the temporal Ego with the conditions of the superior life--if that can
be made apparent--will incline you to regard the latter rather as the
Redeemer, that has indeed to be born within us for our salvation and our
immortality, than as the inmost, central, and inseparable principle of
our phenomenal life. It may be that by the light of such reflections
the sense of identity will present no insuperable difficulty to the
conception of its contingency, or to the recognition that the mere
consciousness which fails to attach itself to a higher principle is no
guarantee of an eternal individuality.

It is only by a survey of individuality, regarded as the source of all
our affections, thoughts, and actions, that we can realize its intrinsic
worthlessness; and only when we have brought ourselves to a real and
felt acknowledgment of that fact, can we accept with full understanding
those "hard sayings" of sacred authority which bid us "die to
ourselves," and which proclaim the necessity of a veritable new birth.
This mystic death and birth is the key-note of all profound religious
teaching; and that which distinguishes the ordinary religious mind from
spiritual insight is just the tendency to interpret these expressions as
merely figurative, or, indeed, to overlook them altogether.

Of all the reproaches which modern Spiritualism, with the prospect it is
thought to hold out of an individual temporal immortality, has had to
encounter, there is none that we can less afford to neglect than that
which represents it as an ideal essentially egotistical and borne. True
it is that our critics do us injustice through ignorance of the enlarged
views as to the progress of the soul in which the speculations of
individual Spiritualists coincide with many remarkable spirit teachings.
These are, undoubtedly, a great advance upon popular theological
opinions, while some of them go far to satisfy the claim of Spiritualism
to be regarded as a religion. Nevertheless, that slight estimate of
individuality, as we know it, which in one view too easily allies itself
to materialism, is also the attitude of spiritual idealism, and is
seemingly at variance with the excessive value placed by Spiritualists
on the discovery of our mere psychic survival. The idealist may
recognise this survival; but, whether he does so or not, he occupies a
post of vantage when he tells us that it is of no ultimate importance.
For he, like the Spiritualist who proclaims his "proof palpable of
immortality," is thinking of the mere temporal, self-regarding
consciousness--its sensibilities, desires, gratifications, and
affections--which are unimportant absolutely, that is to say, their
importance is relative solely to the individual. There is, indeed, no
more characteristic outbirth of materialism than that which makes a
teleological centre of the individual. Ideas have become mere
abstractions; the only reality is the infinitely little. Thus
utilitarianism can see in the State only a collection of individuals
whose "greatest happiness," mutually limited by nice adjustment to the
requirements of "the greatest numbers," becomes the supreme end of
government and law. And it cannot, I think, be pretended that
Spiritualists in general have advanced beyond this substitution of a
relative for an absolute standard. Their "glad tidings of great joy"
are not truly religious. They have regard to the perpetuation in time
of that lower consciousness whose manifestations, delights, and activity
are in time, and of time alone. Their glorious message is not
essentially different from that which we can conceive as brought to us
by some great alchemist, who had discovered the secret of conferring
upon us and upon our friends a mundane perpetuity of youth and health.
Its highest religious claim is that it enlarges the horizon of our
opportunities. As such, then, let us hail it with gratitude and relief;
but, on peril of our salvation, if I may not say of our immortality, let
us not repose upon a prospect which is, at best, one of renewed labours,
and trials, and efforts to be free even of that very life whose only
value is opportunity.

To estimate the value of individuality, we cannot do better than regard
man in his several mundane relations, supposing that either of these
might become the central, actuating focus of his being--his "ruling
love," as Swedenborg would call it--displacing his mere egoism, or
self-love, thrusting that more to the circumference, and identifying
him, so to speak, with that circle of interests to which all his
energies and affections relate. Outside this substituted Ego we are to
suppose that he has no conscience, no desire, no will. Just as the
entirely selfish man views the whole of life, so far as it can really
interest him solely in relation to his individual well-being, so our
supposed man of a family, of a society, of a Church, or a State, has no
eye for any truth or any interest more abstract or more individual than
that of which he may be rightly termed the incarnation. History shows
approximations to this ideal man. Such a one, for instance, I conceive
to have been Loyola; such another, possibly, is Bismarck. Now these
men have ceased to be individuals in their own eyes, so far as concerns
any value attaching to their own special individualities. They are
devotees. A certain "conversion" has been effected, by which from mere
individuals they have become "representative" men. And we--the
individuals--esteem them precisely in proportion to the remoteness from
individualism of the spirit that actuates them. As the circle of
interests to which they are "devoted" enlarges--that is to say, as the
dross of individualism is purged away--we accord them indulgence,
respect, admiration and love. From self to the family, from the family
to the sect or society, from the sect or society to the Church (in no
denominational sense) and State, there is the ascending scale and
widening circle, the successive transitions which make the worth of an
individual depend on the more or less complete subversion of his
individuality by a more comprehensive soul or spirit. The very modesty
which suppresses, as far as possible, the personal pronoun in our
addresses to others, testifies to our sense that we are hiding away some
utterly insignificant and unworthy thing; a thing that has no business
even to be, except in that utter privacy which is rather a sleep and a
rest than living. Well, but in the above instances, even those most
remote from sordid individuality, we have fallen far short of that ideal
in which the very conception of the partial, the atomic, is lost in the
abstraction of universal being, transfigured in the glory of a Divine
personality. You are familiar with Swedenborg's distinction between
discrete and continuous degrees. Hitherto we have seen how man--the
individual--may rise continuously by throwing himself heart and soul
into the living interests of the world, and lose his own limitations by
adoption of a larger mundane spirit. But still he has but ascended
nearer to his own mundane source, that soul of the world, or Prakriti,
to which, if I must not too literally insist on it, I may still resort
as a convenient figure. To transcend it, he must advance by the
discrete degree. No simple "bettering" of the ordinary self, which
leaves it alive, as the focus--the French word "foyer" is the more
expressive--of his thoughts and actions; not even that identification
with higher interests in the world's plane just spoken of, is, or can
progressively become, in the least adequate to the realization of his
Divine ideal. This "bettering" of our present nature, it alone being
recognized as essential, albeit capable of "improvement," is a
commonplace, and to use a now familiar term a "Philistine," conception.
It is the substitution of the continuous for the discrete degree. It is
a compromise with our dear old familiar selves. "And Saul and the
people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of
the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not
utterly destroy them; but everything that was vile and refuse, that
they destroyed utterly." We know how little acceptable that compromise
was to the God of Israel; and no illustration can be more apt than this
narrative, which we may well, as we would fain, believe to be rather
typical than historical. Typical of that indiscriminate and radical
sacrifice, or "vastation," of our lower nature, which is insisted upon
as the one thing needful by all, or nearly all,* the great religions of
the world. No language could seem more purposely chosen to indicate
that it is the individual nature itself, and not merely its accidental
evils, that has to be abandoned and annihilated. It is not denied that
what was spared was good; there is no suggestion of a universal
infection of physical or moral evil; it is simply that what is good and
useful relatively to a lower state of being must perish with it if the
latter is to make way for something better. And the illustration is the
more suitable in that the purpose of this paper is not ethical, but
points to a metaphysical conclusion, though without any attempt at
metaphysical exposition. There is no question here of moral
distinctions; they are neither denied nor affirmed. According to the
highest moral standard, 'A' may be a most virtuous and estimable person.
According to the lowest, 'B' may be exactly the reverse. The moral
interval between the two is within what I have called, following
Swedenborg, the "continuous degree." And perhaps the distinction can be
still better expressed by another reference to that Book which we
theosophical students do not less regard, because we are disposed to
protest against all exclusive pretensions of religious systems.

--------
* Of the higher religious teachings of Mohammedanism I know next to
nothing, and therefore cannot say if it should be excepted from the
statement.
--------

The good man who has, however, not yet attained his "son-ship of God" is
"under the law"--that moral law which is educational and preparatory,
"the schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ," our own Divine spirit, or
higher personality. To conceive the difference between these two states
is to apprehend exactly what is here meant by the false, temporal, and
the true, eternal personality, and the sense in which the word
personality is here intended to be understood. We do not know whether,
when that great change has come over us, when that great work* of our
lives has been accomplished--here or hereafter--we shall or shall not
retain a sense of identity with our past, and forever discarded selves.
In philosophical parlance, the "matter" will have gone, and the very
"form" will have been changed. Our transcendental identity with the 'A'
or 'B' that now is** must depend on that question, already disclaimed in
this paper, whether the Divine spirit is our originally central
essential being, or is an hypostasis. Now, being "under the law" implies
that we do not act directly from our own will, but indirectly, that is,
in willing obedience to another will.

--------
* The "great work," so often mentioned by the hermetic philosophers, and
which is exactly typified by the operation of alchemy, the conversion of
the base metals to gold, is now well understood to refer to the
analogous spiritual conversion. There is also good reason to believe
that the material process was a real one.

** "A person may have won his immortal life, and remained the same inner
self he was on earth, through eternity; but this does not imply
necessarily that he must either remain the Mr. Smith or Brown he was on
earth, or lose his individuality."--Isis Unveiled, vol. 1. p. 316.
----------

The will from which we should naturally act--our own will--is of course
to be understood not as mere volition, but as our nature--our "ruling
love," which makes such and such things agreeable to us, and others the
reverse. As "under the law," this nature is kept in suspension, and
because it is suspended only as to its activity and manifestation, and
by no means abrogated, is the law--the substitution of a foreign will--
necessary for us. Our own will or nature is still central; that which
we obey by effort and resistance to ourselves is more circumferential or
hypostatic. Constancy in this obedience and resistance tends to draw
the circumferential will more and more to the centre, till there ensues
that "explosion," as St. Martin called it, by which our natural will is
for ever dispersed and annihilated by contact with the divine, and the
latter henceforth becomes our very own. Thus has "the schoolmaster"
brought us unto "Christ," and if by "Christ" we understand no
historically divine individual, but the logos, word, or manifestation of
God in us--then we have, I believe, the essential truth that was taught
in the Vedanta, by Kapila, by Buddha, by Confucius, by Plato, and by
Jesus. There is another presentation of possibly the same truth, for a
reference to which I am indebted to our brother J.W. Farquhar. It is
from Swedenborg, in the "Apocalypse Explained," No. 57:--"Every man has
an inferior or exterior mind, and a mind superior or interior. These
two minds are altogether distinct. By the inferior mind man is in the
natural world together with men there; but by the superior mind he is
in the spiritual world with the angels there. These two minds are so
distinct that man so long as he lives in the world does not know what is
performing within himself in his superior mind; but when he becomes a
spirit, which is immediately after death, he does not know what is
performing in his mind." The consciousness of the "superior mind," as
the result of mere separation from the earthly body, certainly does not
suggest that sublime condition which implies separation from so much
more than the outer garment of flesh, but otherwise the distinction
between the two lives, or minds, seems to correspond with that now under
consideration.

What is it that strikes us especially about this substitution of the
divine-human for the human-natural personality? Is it not the loss of
individualism? (Individualism, pray observe, not individuality.) There
are certain sayings of Jesus which have probably offended many in their
hearts, though they may not have dared to acknowledge such a feeling to
themselves: "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" and those other
disclaimers of special ties and relationships which mar the perfect
sympathy of our reverence. There is something awful and
incomprehensible to us in this repudiation of individualism, even in its
most amiable relations. But it is in the Aryan philosophies that we see
this negation of all that we associate with individual life most
emphatically and explicitly insisted on. It is, indeed, the
impossibility of otherwise than thus negatively characterizing the soul
that has attained Moksha (deliverance from bonds) which has caused the
Hindu consummation to be regarded as the loss of individuality and
conscious existence. It is just because we cannot easily dissociate
individuality from individualism that we turn from the sublime
conception of primitive philosophy as from what concerns us as little as
the ceaseless activity and germination in other brains of thought once
thrown off and severed from the thinking source, which is the
immortality promised by Mr. Frederick Harrison to the select specimens
of humanity whose thoughts have any reproductive power. It is not a
mere preference of nothingness, or unconscious absorption, to limitation
that inspires the intense yearning of the Hindu mind for Nirvana. Even
in the Upanishads there are many evidences of a contrary belief, while
in the Sankhya the aphorisms of Kapila unmistakably vindicate the
individuality of soul (spirit). Individual consciousness is maintained,
perhaps infinitely intensified, but its "matter" is no longer personal.
Only try to realize what "freedom from desire," the favourite phrase in
which individualism is negated in these systems, implies. Even in that
form of devotion which consists in action, the soul is warned in the
Bhagavad-Gita that it must be indifferent to results.

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