SECTION THREE

Chapter XIII

PRINCIPLES AND ELEMENTS

The Universe is so complex that one feels a sense of bewilderment when he essays to expand the teachings about the fundamental constituents of the many planes of being.  The best that one can do is to outline the teachings in the broadest possible manner and hope that the time will come when further details may be filled in.  We cannot hope to do otherwise.

When we echo the words, “All things are composite,” just what do we mean?  In the simplest terms, do we not refer to the fact that everything is compounded of a certain number of elements, and that all compounds can be reduced to their most elemental substances?  Science itself teaches that all known chemical compounds may be so reduced to their simple chemical elements, which combine to make the substances what they are.  However, this concept goes far beyond a consideration of material things alone.  When we study either the Universe or Man, we are dealing with non-material factors which, to be sure, seek material expression; but that physical expression is but one factor among many of equal if not greater importance.  Clearly we must come to realize that there are very potent elemental substances of which either a universe or an individual human being is composed, and it is with these that this chapter will deal.

In some ways it is more advantageous to go from the general to the particular, that is, from the Macrocosm to the Microcosm.  However, since the teaching about the seven principles of man is quite well known to theosophical students, it would be better to approach the study from the human, and then go on to the universal.

We shall first of all enumerate these Seven Principles, with their Sanskrit as well as their English names:

This classification of the seven principles of man is generally considered as a higher triad consisting of Âtman, Buddhi and Manas, and a lower quaternary, consisting of Kâma, Prâna, Linga-Sarîra and Sthûla-Sarîra.  This division is used largely in order to clarify the teachings concerning the process of Death, which may be briefly summarized thus: starting with the lowest on our list, the various principles are cast off one by one until the entire Lower Quaternary has been cast off.  During this process the entity experiences the Kâma-loka or separation of the ties that bind him to the Earth.  When this separation is completed, the Higher Manas is then indrawn and withdrawn into Buddhi, in which condition the excarnate human being enjoys possibly many thousands of years in a state of blissful dreaming known as the Devachan.¹  If the life just lived has been rich in spiritual aspiration and in practical work in the cause of relieving the human race from its enormous burden of suffering, there is much material of which the devachanic bliss may be fashioned.  However, if the motif of the life just lived has been one of selfishness, and if the unfortunate human being has been governed by greed, lust and cruelty, there is nothing that would hold him in the devachanic state, and after a painful period in the Kâma-loka (a Sanskrit word meaning ‘desire-world’) he returns to Earth in the hope that a new life will give him an opportunity to ally himself with his spiritual self and thus enable him to claim his spiritual birthright, which is the higher consciousness.

A few more words might be written about the ‘lower’ principles to this effect: so closely related are the Astral and the Physical Bodies that they might also be considered to be one principle; or, as H. P. Blavatsky pointed out, the physical body is really no principle at all.  As G. de Purucker explained it, the physical is really the dregs or lees of the astral.  It does provide the organs, through which our senses have their expression, but our senses are not physical — they are astral.

Now, just as the physical body is composed of atoms which are recognized to be the chemical atoms, about which science is making many new and startling discoveries, so Theosophy teaches, all of the principles are composed of atoms, by far the greater number of which are not physical at all and are therefore quite invisible and out of the reach of scientific investigation.  These are technically called Life-atoms and they are of many kinds.

We are in a better position to understand now that in the process of death, when we say that the various principles of the Lower Quaternary are cast off one by one, we are really saying that the various kinds of life-atoms of which they are composed go their own way.  They seek experiences of their own and may wander far and wide before they are called together again to unite and form the new vehicles for the entity when the time comes for him to be reborn on Earth in a new life.

We are also prepared to understand that Man mirrors in a small way the same general classification that was expressed in the terms Gods, Monads and Atoms.  Thus in Man, the Âtman is the Inner God: the true Âtmic consciousness partakes of universality itself, for Âtman is the divine Universal Principle common to all men.  The intermediate portion of Man's nature corresponds to Monads; and the ‘lower’ or less developed portion corresponds to Atoms.  And this gives us a good opportunity to stress the idea that these three departments of Man's consciousness are not limited to three separate locations.  All of them are interblended; for there is no part of Man that is in any way separated from Âtman, and, similarly, all of his principles embody themselves in vehicles or sheaths composed of life-atoms.  To try to separate them would be something like the old question: if C-A-T is cat, what part of the cat is C?

We now come to a very important part of our study, in the course of which we must learn that the human principles are dual in nature — as are all things — and this duality is expressed in the teachings about the Soul and Ego.  In theosophical terminology there is a specific meaning for the word ‘soul’ with which the student must become familiar.  Whereas in general use the word ‘soul’ has a rather indefinite meaning, referring to the non-material part of us that survives physical death, in technical Theosophy the word means a vehicle for something that is still higher than it, even though it may be less material than the body.  Thus, technically, we might call any one of the principles the ‘soul’ of the principle higher or more subtil than it.

To extend the meaning of these terms a step further; each one of the seven principles has its own egoic or energic aspect and its own vehicular aspect, called the soul.  Let us now enumerate the Seven Principles of Man, giving an expanded picture of Man's constitution.

It would be impossible to do justice to this subject in a book the chief aim of which is to show how these sublime teachings may be expressed through the media of geometrical symbols.  However, a close study of the subject is recommended; and since this paradigm was taken from G. de Purucker's Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy, p. 203, the student will be well repaid if he will give careful study to this passage.  When the teachings are presented as the author has given them to us, it is once more like “approaching the window,” as it was expressed in our Foreword, and contemplating the philosophy from the expanded view.

Yet another step towards realizing the objectives of this present book is now to be taken by relating the Egos in Man to the Cosmical Essences or Principles on the one hand, and the Souls in Man to the Cosmical Elements on the other, thus giving emphasis to the concept that man is the Microcosm of the Macrocosm.  Thus the Egos of the human constitution correlate with the Cosmical Essences or Principles known as the Tattvas; while the Souls in the human constitution correlate with the Cosmic Elements known as the Bhûtas.

Now just what are these Cosmic Elements?  We sometimes read of the “ancients” as having worshipped the Earth, water, Air and Fire.  When rightly understood in their original meanings, these Elements were not to be taken as meaning literally the earth we tread, the water we drink, the air we breathe, nor the fire with which we cook our food.  These words merely suggest the essential characteristics of the four elements just named.  Possibly a better understanding may be found in relating these elements to the state of matter thus: Earth might be related to the solid state, Water to the liquid state, Air to the gaseous state and Fire to the fourth state, the recently discovered plasma state, understood by science as the condition of matter at the center of some stars, where it is subjected to extremes of heat and pressure.  This plasma state has been achieved for brief periods of time in the science laboratories.

However, the Esoteric Philosophy recognizes not four but seven Cosmical Elements and these are named as follows:

These are to be considered first of all as the stuffs or materials out of which the Universe is built on all of its planes of consciousness.  This last thought is most important.  These Cosmical Elements are not the planes of consciousness themselves, but the materials, so to speak, out of which the Universe is built on all its planes — or all its fields of force, as we have also expressed it.

Now, each one of these Elements is really a duality (following the pattern that we are coming to see is universal) and, as just explained, the energic or, if you prefer, the consciousness-aspects are the Tattvas, and the matter-aspects are the Bhûtas.  They constitute the various Prakritis or “natures.”

There is much more to this teaching than at first appears.  But at this point let us present another paradigm which emphasizes the inseparability of the Tattvas and Bhûtas, or the Cosmic Elements and Principles:

Note that the Tattva-aspect is represented by the one column of numbers and the Bhûta aspect by the other — two aspects of the same thing.  The paradigm also suggests that, as already pointed out in the case of Man, each one of these Tattva-Bhûtas is the origin of the one below it; or, to put it in another way, each one is derived from all those above it.  It is through a process of “outpouring” that the Universe is conceived as having come into being.

A useful way to emphasize that these Tattvas and Bhûtas are not the planes of consciousness themselves but the various stuffs or materials out of which the worlds are formed that occupy these planes, might be to bring out a lesson taken from Fig. 6 and Plate II.  Figure 6 shows an Icosahedron surrounding a Dodecahedron, within which is another Icosahedron, enclosing yet another Dodecahedron, and so on ad infinitum.  Plate II shows a complete Lesser Maze, with the Cube, interlacing Tetrahedra and Octahedron within the Icosahedron and Dodecahedron.  Now, we might think of the five geometrical solids as being the Tattvas out of which each one of the Lesser Mazes is built, and that the continuing series or succession of Lesser Mazes represents the various planes of consciousness.

And now we come to a most important teaching.  This is that whereas each one of these Tattvas is produced or emanated from the one higher in quality than itself, in serial order, it is likewise true that each one of the Tattva-Bhûtas produces from within itself uncountable hosts of elementary lives, partaking of the nature of the Tattvas that produce them.  In brief, they are the entities of which the various ‘kingdoms of nature’ are to be formed.  And since these Tattva-Bhûtas are the stuffs or materials of which the worlds on all the planes of consciousness are to be built, it follows that each one will produce elementary lives from within itself with characteristics of the plane on which it was first produced.

At this time we must bear in mind the distinction between entities and bodies.  To be sure, all bodies of whatever kind are composed of living units, which we call life-atoms, but the distinction must continually be borne in mind that they are but the vehicles of entities higher than they.

The present section deals with Monads, not the life-atoms that the Monads use in building for themselves their means of self-expression, which we call the various bodies that they inhabit.  We may ask, for example, are the atoms of my body in the human kingdom simply because they form the outer vehicle that we recognize to be my physical body?  Obviously not; for any one of them may have been almost anywhere on the earth before I took it into my system by means of the food I ate, or the air I breathed.  And when any particular atom to which I now play host was a part of a plant that I once ate, was that atom in the vegetable kingdom at that time?

So we see that the various kingdoms of nature are the entities themselves that seek embodiment in such vehicles as will be most suitable to their needs.  Thus do the entities utilize the Tattvas, in which they live and move and have their being?  They draw from them the materials that they need.

We have already seen how complex is a human being; and the story is far from told as yet.  To locate him in the grand scheme, we might do well to enumerate the several kingdoms as recognized by the Ancient Wisdom.  The three that we understand the best (or think we do) are the Vegetable, the Animal and the Human.  Very little is really known about the Mineral Kingdom.  This consists of monads as surely as do the Plant, the animal and the Human Kingdoms.  However, the materials of which the Earth's crust is composed give us few clues as to the real nature of the Mineral Kingdom, and it is easy to fall into erroneous notions about it.

Other Kingdoms about which we need further explanations are the three Elemental Kingdoms, and the three Dhyâni-Chohanic Kingdoms.  We may look forward to a fuller discussion of these later on, but a tabulation in accordance with the teachings of the Ancient Wisdom would be as follows:²

First Dhyâni-Chohanic Kingdom
Second Dhyâni-Chohanic Kingdom
Third Dhyâni-Chohanic Kingdom

Human Kingdom
Animal Kingdom
Plant Kingdom
Mineral Kingdom

First Elemental Kingdom
Second Elemental Kingdom
Third Elemental Kingdom

We must relate these teachings to the study of Man at this time, and we introduce here a most important theme: the various levels of consciousness, which are called the Monads.  The seven Principles can scarcely be thought of as giving a full account of Man's nature.  We are gradually coming to see that they explain only one aspect of the stream of consciousness that is the complete man.

A useful illustration may be found in the production of a book: the ideas which form the subject of the book may represent the Monads; the manner in which these ideas are organized and expressed in the form of chapters and so on may represent the coming into being of the Principles: whereas the pages, type, illustrations and the binding of the book may represent the Atoms which form the tangible vehicle of the ideas.

As we pursue our studies we shall see that there are actually many monads which in their totality comprise the human constitution.  The Monad which is the focus of our consciousness at the present time is the human Monad; and it is the seven Principles of the human Monad that we have been referring to in this chapter.  We shall learn in the next chapter that all the monads have their seven principles.  The picture will resemble on a microcosmic scale the one that we are also building of the Universe itself.

¹ This Tibetan term, when transliterated from its original, may be rendered as bde-ba-can, the ca have the sound of cha in chant. The meaning of the word is “having the nature of happiness,” analogous to the Sanskrit term sukhâvatî.

² For those interested in the properties of numbers, these ten kingdoms goup themselves according to their own nature as: 3 higher, 4 intermediate, and 3 lower. The number 343 is the cube of 7.