When ma has passed through mahat, ma will still be ma; but ma will be united with mahat, and be a mahat-ma.

—The Zodiac.

THE

WORD

ADEPTS, MASTERS AND MAHATMAS

(Continued)

THE physical body is the ground in which the new body from the seed of the mind begins to grow. The head of the physical is the heart of the new body and it lives throughout the physical body. It is not physical; it is not psychic; it is pure life and pure thought. During the early period which follows the growth and development of this body, the disciple will meet with masters and with adepts and see the places they frequent and the people whom they rule; but that with which the disciple’s thought is most concerned, is the new world which is opening to him.

In the school of the masters the disciple now learns of the states after death and before birth. He understands how after death the mind, which was incarnate, leaves the flesh of earth, throws off gradually the lurid cloaks of its desires and awakens to its heaven world; how, as the coils of fleshly desires fall away the excarnate mind becomes forgetful and unaware of them. The disciple understands the heaven world of the human mind; that the thoughts which were not of a fleshly or sensual nature which were held during life, are those of man’s heaven world and make up man’s heaven world; that those beings and persons who were connected with his ideals while the man was in the physical body, are with him in ideal in his heaven world; but only in so far as they were of the ideal and not of the flesh. He understands that the length of the period of the heaven world depends upon and is determined by the scope of the ideals and the amount of strength and thought which were given to the ideals by man while in the physical body; that with high ideals and strong desires for their attainment the heaven world lasts longer, while the lighter or shallower the ideal and the less strength given to it, the shorter is the heaven world. It is perceived that time of the heaven world is different from time in the astral desire world or time of the physical world. Time of the heaven world is of the nature of its thoughts. Time of the astral world is measured by the changes of desire. Whereas, time in the physical world is reckoned by the movement of the earth among the stars and the occurrence of events. He understands that the heaven of the excarnate mind does come to an end and must come to an end because the ideals are exhausted and because no new ideals can be there formulated, but only such are there as were held while man was in a physical body. The disciple comprehends how the mind leaves its plane; how it attracts the old tendencies and desires of physical life which had been resolved into something akin to seeds; how these old tendencies are drawn into the new form designed during its past life; how the form becomes associated with and enters through the breath the forms of the parents to be; how the form as a seed enters the matrix of the mother and how this formative seed passes across or grows up through the different kingdoms during the process of its gestation; how after assuming its human shape it is born into the world and how the mind incarnates into that form through the breath. All this the disciple sees, but not with his physical eyes nor with any clairvoyant sense of sight. This the disciple in the school of the masters sees by means of his mind and not by his senses. This the disciple understands because it is seen by and with the mind and not through the senses. To see this clairvoyantly would be as seeing it through a colored glass. All that is perceived and understood by the disciple is perceived while he is in his physical body and in possession of his normal faculties and senses.

The disciple now understands that what he thus perceives has been to some degree passed through by himself before his retirement from the busy world of men and he clearly understands that what the ordinary man experiences or passes through only after death, he must in future pass through while fully conscious in his physical body. In order to become a disciple he has passed through and experienced the astral desire world before leaving the world. He must now learn to live consciously in and operate from the heaven world of man in order to become a master. Experiencing the astral desire world does not mean that he lives consciously in the astral world, using clairvoyant or other psychic senses, in the same way as an adept or his disciple, but it means that he experiences the astral world with all of its forces, through certain temptations, attractions, pleasures, fears, hatreds, sorrows, which all disciples in the school of the masters must experience and overcome before they can be accepted and know of their acceptance as disciples in the school of the masters.

While still a disciple, the heaven world of man is not clear and distinct to him; this can only be realized fully by a master. But the disciple is informed by his master concerning the heaven world and the faculties which he must bring into use and perfect in order that he may be more than a learner in the heaven world.

The heaven world of man is the mental world into which the disciple is learning to enter consciously and in which a master lives consciously at all times. To live consciously in the mental world, the mind must build for itself a body of and suited to the mental world. This the disciple knows that he must do, and that only by the doing of it will he enter the mental world. As disciple he must have desire largely under his control. But as disciple only he has not mastered it nor learned how to direct it intelligently as a force distinct from himself and his thoughts. The coils of desire are still about him and prevent the full development and use of his mental faculties. As the mind separates from its desires after death in order to enter its heaven world, so now the disciple must grow out of desire by which he is surrounded or in which he, as a thinking entity, is immersed.

He now learns that at the time of becoming a disciple and during the moment or period of that calm ecstasy, there entered into the inner chambers of his brain a seed or germ of light which was really the cause of the quickening of his thoughts and the stilling of his body, and that at that time he had conceived of a new life and that from that conception is to be developed and born intelligently into the mental world the body which will make of him a master, the master body.

Like the disciple in the school of the adepts, he, too, passes through a period analogous to that of man and woman during foetal development. But though the process is similar the results are different. The woman is unconscious of the process and the laws connected with it. The disciple of the adepts is aware of the process; he must obey certain rules during his period of gestation and he is assisted in his birth by an adept.

The disciple of the masters is aware of the periods and processes but he has no rules given him. His thoughts are his rules. He must learn these himself. He judges these thoughts and their effects by calling into use the one thought which judges other thoughts impartially. He is aware of the gradual development of the body which will make him more than man and he is aware that he must be conscious of the stages of its development. Though woman and the disciple of the adepts may and do by their attitude assist in the development of the bodies to which they will give birth, yet these continue to develop by natural causes and influences and will be completely formed without their direct supervision. Not so with the disciple of the masters. He must himself bring the new body to its birth. This new body is not a physical body as is that born of the woman and which has physical organs, nor is it like the desire body of the adept which has no organs such as those used in the physical body for digestion, but which has the form of the physical though it is not physical, and has organs of sense such as the eye, or ear, though these, of course, are not physical.

The body of the master to be will not be physical, nor will it have a physical form. The master body has faculties, rather than senses and organs. The disciple becomes conscious of the body developing through him as he tries and is able to develop and to use his mental faculties. His body develops as he continues and learns to use his faculties intelligently. These faculties are not the senses nor are they connected with the senses, though they are analogous to the senses and are used in the mental world similarly as the senses are used in the astral world, and the organs in the physical world. The ordinary man uses his senses and faculties, but is ignorant as to what the senses are in themselves and what his mental faculties are and is quite unaware of how he thinks, what his thoughts are, how they are developed, and how his mental faculties act in connection with or through his senses and organs. The ordinary man makes no distinction between his many mental faculties. The disciple of the masters must be not only aware of the difference and distinctions between his mental faculties, but he must act with these as clearly and intelligently in the mental world as the ordinary man now acts through his sense organs in the physical world.

For each sense every man has a corresponding mental faculty, but only a disciple will know how to distinguish between the faculty and the sense and how to use his mental faculties independently of the senses. By trying to use his mental faculties independently of his senses, the disciple becomes disentangled from the world of desire in which he still is and from which he must pass. As he continues his efforts he learns the mental articulation of his faculties and sees definitely what these are. The disciple is shown that all things which are in the physical world and the astral desire world receive their ideal types in the mental world as emanations from the eternal ideas in the spiritual world. He understands that every subject in the mental world is only a connection of matter according to an idea in the spiritual world. He perceives that the senses by which a physical object or an astral object is seen are the astral mirror on which are reflected, through its physical organ, the physical objects which are seen, and that the object which is seen is appreciated only when the sense is receptive to and can also reflect the type in the mental world, of which the object in the physical world is a copy. This reflection from the mental world is had by means of a certain mental faculty which relates the object in the physical world with its type as subject in the mental world.

The disciple sees the objects and senses the things in the physical world, but he interprets them by using his respective mental faculties and by turning the faculties to the respective types of the objects of the physical world, instead of attempting to understand the objects of the senses by means of the senses. As his experiences continue he appreciates the being of mind as independent of the five senses and of sense perceptions. He knows that true knowledge of the senses can be had only by the faculties of the mind, and that the objects of the senses or the senses can never be known truly while the faculties of the mind function through the senses and their physical organs. He perceives truly that the knowledge of all things of the physical world and of the astral desire world is learned only in the mental world, and that this learning must take place in the mental world by calling into use the faculties of the mind independently of the physical body, and that these faculties of the mind are used consciously and with greater accuracy and precision than it is possible to use the physical sense organs and astral senses.

Confusion prevails in the many schools of philosophical speculation, which have attempted to explain the mind and its operations by sensuous perceptions. The disciple sees that it is impossible for a thinker to perceive the order of universal phenomena with their causes, because, although the speculator is often able to rise to the mental world through one of his mental faculties and there to apprehend one of the truths of existence, he is unable to maintain the unclouded use of the faculty until he is fully conscious of what he apprehends, though his apprehensions are so strong that he will always be of the opinion which is formed from such apprehensions. Further, that when this faculty is again active in his senses he tries to square what he has apprehended in the mental world by his mental faculties as they now act through their respective senses. The result is that what he may have truly apprehended in the mental world is contradicted or confused by the coloring, atmosphere, intervention and evidences of his senses.

The world has been and is to-day undecided as to what the mind is. Various opinions prevail as to whether the mind is prior to or the result of physical organization and action. Although there is no general agreement as to whether mind has separate entity and body, there is a definition which is usually accepted as a definition of the mind. This is its usual form: “Mind is the sum of the states of consciousness made up of thought, will, and feeling.” This definition seems to have settled the question for many thinkers, and to have relieved them of the need to define. Some have become so enchanted with the definition that they summon it to their defence or wield it as a magic formula to clear away the difficulties of any psychological subject which may arise. The definition is pleasing as a formula and familiar because of its customary sound, but insufficient as a definition. “Mind is the sum of the states of consciousness made up of thought, will and feeling,” charms the ear, but when the light of the enquiring mind is turned on it, the charm has gone, and in its place there is an empty form. The three factors are thought, will and feeling, and the mind is said to experience states of consciousness. What these factors are is not settled among those who accept the formula, and although the phrase “states of consciousness” is so frequently used, consciousness is not known in itself, and the states into which it is claimed that Consciousness is divided or apportioned have no reality as Consciousness. They are not Consciousness. Consciousness has no states. Consciousness is One. It is not to be divided or numbered by degree or classed by state or condition. Like lenses of different colors through which the one light is seen, so the faculties of the mind or the senses, according to their coloring and degree of development, apprehend Consciousness to be of the color or quality or development through which it is apprehended; whereas, irrespective of the coloring senses or qualities of mind, and though present through and in all things, Consciousness remains One, unchanged and without attributes. Although philosophers think, they do not know what thought is essentially nor the processes of thought, unless they can use the mental faculties independent of the senses. So that thought is not generally known nor its nature agreed upon by the philosophers of the schools. Will is a subject which has concerned philosophical minds. Will in its own state is farther removed and more obscure than thought, because will in its own state cannot be known until the mind has first developed all its faculties and become free from them. Feeling is one of the senses, and is not a faculty of the mind. The mind has a faculty which is related to and in the ordinary man operates through his sense of feeling, but feeling is not a faculty of the mind. It cannot be truly said that “Mind is the sum of the states of consciousness made up of thought, will and feeling.”

The disciple in the school of the masters does not concern himself with any of the speculations of the schools of philosophy. He may see by their teachings that the founders of some of the schools which are still known to the world, used their mental faculties independently of their senses, and used them freely in the mental world and could coördinate and use them through their senses. The disciple must come into knowledge through his own mental faculties and these he acquires gradually and by his own effort.

Every natural human now has seven senses, though he is supposed to have only five. These are the sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch, moral and “I” senses. The first four of these have as their respective organs of sense, the eye, ear, tongue and nose, and represent the order of involution into body. Touch or feeling is the fifth and is common to the senses. These five belong to the animal nature of man. The moral sense is the sixth sense and is used only by the mind; it is not of the animal. The “I” sense, or sense of Ego, is the mind sensing itself. These last three, touch, moral and I senses, represent the evolution and the developing of the mind of the animal. The animal is prompted to the use of its five senses, as sight, hearing, tasting, smelling and touching, by natural impulse and without regard to any moral sense, which it has not, unless it is a domestic animal and under the influence of the human mind, which to some degree it may reflect. The I sense becomes manifest through the moral sense. The I sense is the sensing of the mind in and by the body. The touch, moral and I senses act in connection with the other four and with the body as a whole rather than with any part or organ of the body. Although there are organs through which they may act, yet so far no organs have become specialized, which can be used intelligently by their respective senses.

Corresponding to the senses are the faculties of the mind. The faculties of the mind may be called the light, time, image, focus, dark, motive and I-am faculties. Every human has these faculties and uses them in a more or less indistinct and immature way.

No man can have any mental perception without his light faculty. Movement and order, change and rhythm cannot be understood nor used without the time faculty. Figure and color and matter can not be conceived, related and pictured without the image faculty. No body or picture or color or movement or problem can be approximated or grasped without the focus faculty. Contact, union, concealment, obscuration and transformation cannot be effected without the dark faculty. Progress, development, ambition, competition, aspiration, would be impossible without the motive faculty. Identity, continuity, permanence would have no meaning, and knowledge could not be acquired without the I-am faculty. Without the I-am faculty there would be no power of reflection, no purpose in life, no strength nor beauty nor proportion in forms, no grasp of conditions and environments nor the power to change them, for man would be an animal only.

Man uses these faculties though he is not aware of how or to what degree he uses them. In some men one or several of the faculties are more developed than the others, which remain dormant. Seldom is there a man who has or tries to have an even development of his faculties. Those who devote their energies to specialize in one or two of the faculties without regard to the others will, in the course of time, be geniuses of the faculties specialized, though their other faculties may be stunted and dwarfed. The man who has due regard for all the faculties of his mind may seem backward in development as compared with those who excel in specialties, but while he continues his development evenly and steadily these special geniuses will be found to be mentally unbalanced and unfit to meet the requirements on the path of attainment.

The disciple in the school of the masters understands that he should develop his faculties evenly and orderly, though he, too, has the choice of specializing in some and disregarding others. So he may disregard the image and dark faculties and develop the others; in that case he would disappear from the world of men. Or he might disregard all faculties except the light and I-am and focus faculties; in that case he would develop an overmastering egotism and blend the focus faculty in the light and I-am faculties and disappear from the world of men and the ideal mental world, and remain throughout the evolution in the spiritual world. He may develop one or more of the faculties, singly or in combination, and act in the world or worlds corresponding to the faculty or faculties of his choice. It is made plain to the disciple that his particular faculty through which he will become from a disciple in the school of the masters, a master, is the motive faculty. By the motive faculty he will declare himself. Of all things motives are the most important.

During his experience and through his duties in the world the disciple has learned much of the course of development through which he must pass. But as disciple retired from the world and living alone or in a community in which there are other disciples, he begins to do that which he had apprehended or about which he had been informed while in the world. The reality of himself is more evident to him. He is aware of the reality of his faculties, but he has not yet realized the full and free use of these and the identity of himself. That which entered into him on becoming a disciple, that is, the seed and the process of its development, is becoming evident to him. As it becomes evident the faculties are used more freely. If the disciple chooses a development in conformity with universal law and without the motive for development for himself alone, then all the faculties unfold and develop naturally and orderly.

While in his physical body, the disciple learns gradually of the potential power of the I-am faculty within. This is learned by calling into use the light faculty. The power of the I-am faculty is learned through the power of the light faculty. But it is learned only as the disciple develops and is able to use his focus faculty. With the continued use of the focus faculty, the I-am and the light powers vivify the motive and the time faculties. The exercise of the motive faculty develops quality and purpose in the I-am faculty. The time faculty gives movement and growth. The focus faculty adjusts the powers of the motive and time faculties to the I-am faculty in its light power, which becomes more evident. The dark faculty tends to disrupt, envelop, confuse and obscure the light faculty as it, the dark faculty, is awakened or called into use. But as the focus faculty is exercised, the dark faculty acts with the image faculty, and the image faculty causes to come into a body the I-am in its light power. By the use of the focus faculty the other faculties are adjusted into a body. With his faculties awakened and acting harmoniously, the disciple, in proportion as that which is developing within comes into being, learns respecting the knowledge of the worlds in which or through which they operate.

The light faculty makes known a limitless sphere of light. What this light is, is not at once known. By the use of the light faculty all things are resolved into light. By the use of the light faculty all things are made known to or through the other faculties.

The time faculty reports matter in its revolutions, combinations, separations and changes. Through the time faculty is made clear the nature of matter; the measure of all bodies and the dimension or dimensions of each, the measure of their existence and their relationship to each other. The time faculty measures the ultimate divisions of matter, or the ultimate divisions of time. Through the time faculty is made plain that the ultimate divisions of matter are the ultimate divisions of time.

Through the image faculty, matter takes form. The image faculty intercepts particles of matter which it coördinates, shapes and holds. By the use of the image faculty unformed nature is brought into form and species are preserved.

The focus faculty gathers, adjusts, relates and centralizes things. By means of the focus faculty duality becomes unity.

The dark faculty is a sleeping power. When aroused, the dark faculty is restless and energetic and opposed to order. The dark faculty is a sleep producing power. The dark faculty is aroused by the use of other faculties which it negatives and resists. The dark faculty blindly interferes with and obscures all other faculties and things.

The motive faculty chooses, decides and directs by its decision. Through the motive faculty, silent orders are given which are the causes of the coming into existence of all things. The motive faculty gives direction to the particles of matter which are compelled to come into form according to the direction given them. The use of the motive faculty is the cause of every result in any world, however remote. The use of the motive faculty puts into operation all the causes which bring about and determine all results in the phenomenal and any other worlds. By use of the motive faculty the degree and attainment of all beings of intelligence is determined. Motive is the creative cause of every action.

The I-am faculty is that by which all things are known, it is the knowing faculty. The I-am faculty is that by which the identity of the I-am is known and by which its identity is made distinct from other intelligences. By means of the I-am faculty identity is given to matter. The I-am faculty is the faculty of being conscious of self.

The disciple becomes aware of these faculties and the uses to which they may be put. Then he begins the exercise and training of them. The course of exercising and training these faculties is carried on while the disciple is in the physical body, and by that training and development he regulates, adapts and adjusts the faculties into the body which is coming into being through him, and on the development and birth of which he will become a master. The disciple is conscious of the light faculty, of the I-am faculty, of the time faculty, of the motive faculty, of the image faculty, of the dark faculty, but as disciple he must begin his work by and through the focus faculty.

(To be continued)