AS we have found order, law, and system throughout the Kosmos, there must be order, underlying Mme. Blavatsky’s seeming denial of it, in the numbering of the human principles. Her statement is true in the sense that the vehicle most highly developed is the most prominent one in the individual, and its color overshadows all other.
Now, if we think of the predominant sheaths as representing the tonics of a scale, the septenary beginning with the Tonic, the C-scale man would number from his Tonic, C, and the F sharp man from F sharp, and color and Principle would vary correspondingly.
Among the repeated references to this variability of type changing the order of Principles, Mme. Blavatsky says: ” The human principles elude enumeration because each man differs from every other, just as no two blades of grass on the earth are alike.” She also says : ” Every man being born under a certain planet, there will always be a predominance of that planet’s color in him, be-cause that principle’ will rule in him which has its origin in the Hierarchy in question.”
The speech of man preserves the record of time-honored recognition of this fact. We say : ” He has a martial bearing.” ” His is a fiery tempera-ment.” ” She was always a little luny “ meaning not crazy at all, but fanciful, imaginative. The very word lunatic, however, expresses the baleful effects of the moon’s excessive and malign influence. ” Even as a child he had a lordly way.” That is, Jupiterian, commanding. ” A Saturnine disposition ” has its happy contrast in a ” sunny ” one. And thus, ” A man of iron,” ” She is as good as gold,” ” He has no sand,” these all are significant of elemental constitution. Pages could be filled with examples of this graphic symbology which has enriched all languages; and remember that all symbology is the expression of facts and truths. In losing sight of this, the moderns have suffered much.
At first the mind refuses to accept this mere pre-eminence of a sheath as changing its relations in kind or quality to the other Principles ; but it be-comes possible when we realize, to use Mrs. Besant’s words, that ” the sheaths are not divisible one from another,” and that ” there are but three Upadhis in which these different principles work; ” that is, considered as planes of consciousness correlating man with the astral and physical, the psychic and mental, and the upper triadic or spiritual realms. Thus the physical body and its Etheric double are connected with the right eye, the positive center of vision dominating the senses. The Kama-rupa and Lower Manas, with the brain; and the higher triad, with the heart. The Occult signification of this is, that the Spirit Atma establishes centers of union for these closely allied sheaths in these organs, and the development of consciousness in the various sheaths proceeds from these centers. But this must not be considered as contradicting the fact that there are seven states of consciousness. There is neither sameness nor monotony, but varying degrees everywhere.
Lack of order exists also in the sense that none of the sheaths are above or below one another, for they interpenetrate and intermingle. Thus there is really no higher nor lower, but an eternal withinness. An example from physics will explain this most clearly. A cubic-inch of water expands into a cubic-foot of steam. In a glass globe of a cubic-foot’s capacity filled with steam, not only can boiling water be added but also alcohol which will expand into just as much vapor as if no steam were present. After this, as much ether may be poured into the globe as if the space were not already occupied by steam and alcohol-vapor. A. familiar experiment with solids is to fill a bowl with peas, scatter over it mustard-seed or other fine grain to fill the vacant spaces, then add salt and sugar. Just in this manner the atoms of the various human sheaths, varied by conditions of vibrating form and color, mingle together.
Annie Besant says : “Every sphere is around us, the astral, the mental, the buddhic, the nirvanic, and worlds higher yet, the life of the supreme God; we need not stir to find them for they are here ; but our dull unreceptivity shuts them out more effectively than millions of miles of mere space ” (Ancient Wisdom). But granted all these irregularities and blendings one with another, there yet must be a standard correspondence of Principles with Tattvas, colors, tones, and numbers. To ignore it, is to lose sight of the profound influence and significance of number, to forget that it was and is through the rhythm of vibrations an unchangeable factor, with unchanging relations to the Hierarchies and the Principles emanating therefrom, because numerical relation is inherent in form.
In the sense of progression from the coarse vibrations of the physical plane to the inconceivably subtle ones of the spiritual plane, we have a mental concept in which the numbers of the sheaths must be unvarying. When we deal with involution, we may begin with Âtma as one and count down to seven. But our immediate concern is with the evolution of the soul in its conquest of the realm of matter. We are seeking to develop its freedom and power, seeking to free our real selves from the tyranny of uncontrolled sheaths of mat-ter, and necessarily we must begin with the lower or coarsest vehicles. Therefore, we should logically count from one upward to seven, and the lowest sheath should be the most completely dominant or perfected of the physical principles.
The ” Path ” now is a spiral progression upward and outward; involution was a descent downward and inward. Our task is to release this inward power, not from, but through its gross material vehicles, that it may be active in all; and we must seek it within. To do this we must understand the sheaths in which the power is involved. Therefore the important point is to know them by association with their corresponding centers of physical activity, which are invariable, and with their normal colors and their tones or sounds. We must learn the separate tones first before we can combine them into harmonious chords and evolve melodies.
Remember that the sounds are seen, not heard on the physical plane. Mme. Blavatsky cites Exodus, xx. 1 8., in support of this, and says, when correctly translated the passage would read: ” And the people saw the Voices, and these Voices, or Sounds, are the Sephiroth.” Spiritual man corresponds with the higher circles, ” the Divine Prism which emanates from the One Infinite White Circle; the ultra-octaves of color and tone; while physical man, ” emanating from the Sephiroth,” corresponds with the lower octave of visible color with ” the objective sounds that are seen, not heard.”
Want of agreement exists wherever many minds have attempted to formulate a part of this law of correspondences without bringing all into harmony. But this very failure is evidence of the infinite variety in the permutations of the Tattvas and their alternating phases omnipresent duality and of the varying hues that every thought imparts to the atoms transmitting that thought or created by it; as also of different stages of development of the clairvoyant who describes the colors of these thought-and-sound forms. A clairvoyant may be able to see lower sheaths in an aura and not the higher ones. The lesson to us is to ignore unimportant differences differences which are yet mere matters of intellectual guessing and con-fine our attention to the facts which affect life and happiness.
The scheme of correspondences I have prepared is offered tentatively, because no authority can be quoted for it as a whole, but after much study and thought and comparing all authorities, it is the only one evolved from the tangle of discrepancies which appeals to me as logical and rational. The fundamental correspondence must be that of vibrations, and upon the coarseness or fineness of these all associations must be based.
When we speak of coarseness in this connection, and especially in reference to color, it must be understood in a comparative sense. Thus, red vibrations, the largest waves of visible light, are so small that 39,000 of them grouped side by side cover only one inch of space. The agreement of red with the fundamental tone in music was early recognized, each being the coarsest vibration of its kind; and in the procession of octaves of both color and sound, it was found that the closest ratio of like progression existed between the Tonic chord, or first, third, and fifth, and the triad of colors, red, yellow, and blue. The earnest student of the Tattvas must already have perceived that this triad, predominating in the solar plexus, exercises a pre-eminent influence upon the functions of life.
Now, Nature has taken such care to prove the agreement between tone and color that she has not left us to depend solely upon the psychic vision of the clairvoyant who sees the colors of tones and voices, but through remarkable cases of sense abnormalities has furnished us with indisputable corroboration of these relations.
In Berlin an operation was performed upon a man’s brain which required the severing of both the auditory and the visual nerves. When the nerves were reunited they were mismated, the up-per portions of the optic nerves being joined to the under sections of the auditory nerves, and vice versa. The result of this distressing blunder is that the man sees sounds and hears colors. Looking at a red object he heard a deep base tone, and when blue was shown, the sound was like the tinkle of electric bells. But the ringing of an electric call-bell produced the sensation of blue light, and listening to Beethoven’s ” Pastoral Symphony ” caused a vision of green meadows and waving corn.
The celebrated Italian scientist, Professor Lombroso, had an ” hysterical ” patient who lost her eyesight completely, but was able to read with the tip of her ear. As a test, the rays of the sun were focused upon her ear through a lens, and they dazzled her as if turned upon normal eyes, causing a sensation of being blinded by unbearable light.
Still more puzzling to Professor Lombroso was the fact that her sense of taste was transferred to her knees, and that of smell to her toes. This abnormality is very simple to the knower of the Tattvas, who recognizes these locations as centers of great activity for the Tattvas corresponding with these senses; that is, A pas in the knees, and Prithivi in the feet.
Corresponding with the above-mentioned triads of color and of tone, there is a triad of form, the triangle, cube, and sphere, or circle; and the chemical elements recognized as most closely related to these triads are respectively hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen. But they are none of them simple Tattvic forms; that is, hydrogen, recognized by Babbitt as ” the champion heat atom of the world,” is a Prithivic form of Tejas; carbon, a Prithivic-Prithivi; and oxygen, a Prithivic-Pâyu. Mrs. Besant says the scientist has as yet discovered no atoms that are not of this physical or terrestrial form,all are Prithivic states of matter. He has as yet no conception of the six “higher atoms that stretch beyond.” But the scientific view of the atom is rapidly changing as we have before this had occasion to notice. Already it is recognized that the atom is a complex not simple unit. A single atom of radium contains 160,000 electrons or corpuscles !
Science is fast taking down the walls between the visible and invisible, and ere another decade is marked off on the spiral of Time the materialist will be recognized as the true degenerate. All atoms of recognized chemical elements so-called admit of four dissociations, or separations, to simpler, more subtle states before the ” ultimate atom is reached. Students, who are interested to pursue the subject farther are advised to study Annie Besant’s Occult Chemistry; and the work of Dr. Babbitt, previously mentioned.
With regard to the ether (Akâsha) which pervades all space, science has at last come to this very rational conclusion, as Robert Kennedy Dun-can puts it: ” How much we ourselves are matter and how much ether is, in these days, a very moot question ” (The New Knowledge). Science has discovered also that absolute immobility rest is non-existent; that every particle, every atom of the most solid-seeming matter is in an incessant quiver, and that the velocity of the motion is constantly changing. Is not this corroboration of the Tattvic Law, which alone can explain the phenomenon?
Think not that these details are a digression from our subject. They are, on the contrary, intimately connected therewith; for it is most important as a preparation for understanding the subtle sheaths of the body that the reader’s imagination be wonted to faring forth into this marvellous world of the infinitesimally small, a clear conception of which is so much more difficult to form than of the vastness of the Universe.