The Seven Rays

PART I

THE SOURCE OF THE RAYS

There are seven Forces in Man and in all Nature. The real substance of the Concealed [Sun] is a nucleus of Mother-Substance. It is the Heart and Matrix of all the living and existing Forces in our Solar Universe. It is the Kernel from which proceed to spread on their cyclic journeys all the Powers that set in action the Atoms, in their functional duties, and the Focus within which they again meet in their Seventh Essence every eleventh year. He who tells thee he has seen the Sun, laugh at him, as if he had said that the Sun moves really onward in his diurnal path. . . .

It is on account of this septenary nature that the Sun is spoken of by the ancients as one who is driven by seven horses equal to the metres of the Vedas; or, again, that, though he is identified with the seven Gana [Classes of Being] in his orb, he is distinct from them, as he is, indeed; as also that he has Seven Bays, as indeed he has. . . .

The Seven Beings in the Sun are the Seven Holy Ones, self-born from the inherent power in the Matrix of Mother-Substance. It is they who send the seven principal Forces, called Bays, which, at the beginning of Pralaya, will centre into seven new Suns for the next Manvantara. The energy from which they spring into conscious existence in every Sun is what some people call Vishnu, which is the Breath of the Absoluteness.

Occult Aphorisms, quoted in THE SECRET DOCTRINE

CHAPTER I

THE PILLAR OF LIGHT

I SEE no means to avoid, in the writing of this book, and the putting forth of what I hope are clear ideas about the Rays, certain matters of a rather abstract character, and foremost among them a statement about the universality of God or Brahman, whom some regard as living far away on a high plane somewhere beyond our vision. The fact is that the Sachehidānanda Brahman¹ is here and now, before ns and with us every day. Analyse the entire world of your experience, and you will find that it is composed of three parts: there is first a great mass of objects of all kinds, which are material on every plane, however high; secondly, there are vast numbers of living beings, with consciousness evolved in various degrees; and thirdly, there is yourself. The first of these three is the world of sat, existence; the second is that of chit, consciousness; and the third is ānanda, happiness, the true self. The will to live is the will to have this joy.

This will be better understood if we recall the story of the great pillar of light. The great being Nārāyana, Vishnu, the soul and life of the Universe, thousandeyed and omniscient, was reclining upon his couch, the body of the great serpent Sesha or Ananta, endless time, which lay coiled up on the waters of space, for it was the night of being. Then Brahmā, the great creator of the world of being, called sat, came to him and touched him with his hand, and said, Who art thou? Then an argument arose between those two as to who was the greater, and while this was going on, and as it threatened to become furious, there appeared before them a vast pillar of fire and light, incomparable and indescribable, which astonished the disputants so much that they forgot their quarrel and agreed to search for the end of so wonderful a thing. Vishnu plunged downwards for a thousand years, but he could not find its base, and Brahmā flew upwards for a thousand years, but he could not find its top, and both returned baffled. Then Shiva, whose nature is ānanda, stood before them and explained that they two were one in him their overlord, the pillar of light, who was three in one, and that in the coming age Brahmā would be born from Vishnu, and Vishnu should cherish him, until at the end of it they both should see their overlord again.

People sometimes think that by going upwards they may find God, but the truth is that even were they to go downwards below their present state and search for a thousand years they could not find the end of Him. This does not mean that He is here but invisible and unknown to us. He is here visible and known; for the world that we see with our eyes is His sat, and the consciousness by which we know it is His chit, and the self that we cannot but affirm ourselves to be is His ananda. Each one of as is in that pillar of light, no matter where he may go to in the space of being, nor where he may be occupied in the time of consciousness.

No man will ever escape these three realities: he cannot say I am not; he cannot say, I am unconscious; nor can he at last fail to rest his knowledge upon the outer world of being. Though there be millions of worlds within worlds and beings within beings, sat, chit and ānanda are everywhere present, and everywhere in one. The things that we see and touch and taste and smell and hear are sat, true being, and in that realm of being no man will ever escape from that upon which all rely, the evidence of their senses, even though his clairvoyance may extend through all possible planes up the pillar of light.

God the Universe, the Sachchidānanda Brahman, is not composed of three realities put together—sat, chit and ānanda—but That² spreads itself out in space and time, in what is called manifestation, where and when the qualities of sat and chit come into activity amid the mysterious cyclic changes that go on in the life of the eternal super-being.

We find ourselves in such a dual world of matter and consciousness, the great passive and active principles. In the seventh chapter of The Bhagavad-Gītā Shrī Krishna says: Earth, water, fire, air, ether, manas, buddhi and ahamkāra—these are the eightfold division of my manifestation. The last word is prakriti, translated variously as ‘matter’ and as ‘nature,’ but manifestation expresses the idea of it, as the word comes from kri, ‘to make or do,’ with the preposition pra, which means ‘forth’. It may strike some students as strange that these eight manifestations should be mentioned together as though they formed one class, and should be described in the next verse as "My lower manifestation There is a good reason for that, however, for they are in one class, although they fall into two subdivisions within it, composed of the first five and the last three respectively. The first five words name the five planes of human evolution—earth is the physical plane, water the astral, fire the mental, air the buddhic, and ether the ātmie or nirvānic. The Sanskrit word which is here translated ether is akasha, and this is regarded as the root-matter of the five planes under consideration. These five planes must be regarded for our present purpose in one eyeful, if I may use such an expression, as one world having five degrees or grades of density in its matter; we must disregard the steps which these degrees of density make, and think of the whole as one world shading imperceptibly downwards, from the highest point to the lowest.

The remaining three divisions of My manifestation are manas, buddhi and ahamkāra, Here we have the ātma-buddhi-manas familiar to Theosophists. They are three faculties or powers of consciousness. Ahamkāra means literally ‘I—making,’ and agrees with the Theosophical conception of ātmā. Manas is the faculty with which consciousness cognises the material aspect of the world; buddhi is that with which it becomes aware of the consciousnesses within that world, and ahamkāra or ātmā is that with which it individualises these experiences and so makes for each of us "my world and my consciousness". This last faculty knows the one I, but it manifests it in a thousand or a million apparent I’s.

When Shrī Krishna throws consciousness and matter into the same class, he does not suggest that consciousness is in any way superior to matter or above it. We are not to think that consciousness is manifested in a fivefold world from above that world; matter and consciousness are equal partners, two aspects of one manifestation. It is not that life or consciousness manifests in the material world from above with different degrees of power. The world is just as much a world of life as of matter; the two are mixed together, and on the whole equally.

To understand this, consider the following. In the physical level of the world we seem to be in a world of matter. The matter is so obvious, so prominent, so dominant, so ever-present, that we have some difficulty in recognising the existence of any life at all in this plane, and even then we find only sparks or points of it embodied in men, animals and other beings. It looks very much like a great world of matter in which only a tiny bit of life incarnates. When one enters on the astral plane one finds a change from this state; there the matter is a little less dominant and the life a little more evident—the powers of consciousness are more influential and the limitations of matter less rigid, obstructive and resistive. At the next level, the lower mental, life is a degree more prominent still, and matter still less dominant. Thus the three planes, physical, astral and lower mental, constitute a region in which we may say there is more matter than life.

Now consider the highest of the five planes. Here the conditions are quite the reverse of those in the physical world. It is a great sea of the powers of consciousness. It is as difficult to find matter there as it is to find consciousness in the physical plane. Similarly, the buddhic plane may be said to offer reverse conditions to those which prevail on the astral, and the higher mental to those of the lower mental.

Suppose, then, that a visitor from some other state of being should enter our fivefold field of manifestation. If he happened to come into it at the physical level he would describe it as a world of matter in which there are points of life, centres of consciousness; but if he touched it at its highest level he would call it a world of consciousness in which there are some points of matter.

These principles are shown in the following diagram:

__________

¹ The word Brahman, a neuter noun, applies to the entire trinity of Shiva, Vishnu and Brahmā, but Brahma, a masculine noun, is the third member of that trinity.

² We need here a new pronoun. English writers have long been feeling the necessity of one that will comprise both he and she, and yet be singular in number; but here we want one to include the sense of ‘it’ as well.

CHAPTER II

CONSCIOUSNESS

IN Hindu and Theosophical books the terms ichchhā, jnāna and kriyā are employed to indicate the three essential constituents of consciousness. Those words are usually and quite accurately translated as will, wisdom and activity, but the significance of the English words in this connection will not be understood unless it is clearly realised that they refer to states of consciousness and nothing else.

The three states of consciousness link the being who has them to the three great worlds—ichchhā or will to the self, jnāna or wisdom to the world of consciousness itself, and kriyā or activity to the world of things or being. Therefore jnanā is the very essence of consciousness.

When we see the great scope of these three states we may realise the inadequacy of their English names, which in fact draw attention principally to the positive or outward-working aspect of each of them. Consciousness is always twofold—as being receptive or aware, and as being active and influential, or, in other words, as possessing faculties and powers. Each of its three states is both a faculty and a power.

Ichchhā is oar consciousness of self, and also the power that is will. Jnāna is oar consciousness of others and also the power that is love. And kriyā is our consciousness of things, and also the power that is thought.

Consciousness can never be seen on any plane with any sort of clairvoyance; only being can be seen—but consciousness can be experienced, and is of course being experienced by every conscious being. Let as realise that however splendid amid the relativity of things may be the being aspect of a jivātmā or living self on the higher planes, it still belongs to the world of things or sat. Again, consciousness is not snbject at any time or on any plane to the limitations of sat, or, to express the same fact in another way, to go from one place to another it need not cross intervening space. It crosses only time. If, for example, I ask you to walk from one place to another, and after yon have done it 1 question, What were you doing? Were you moving? I should expect the answer, No, I was not moving. And if I press the matter farther and question, What then were you doing? I should expect the reply, I was thinking; I was perceiving the motion of the body.

It is only by inference from observation through the senses that human beings know the position and motion of their own bodies. If you are sleeping in a Pullman berth on the railway, and the train is running smoothly, you cannot tell whether yon are going head or feet first; but when you let up the blind and look at the lights and shadowy objects flitting by, you infer that you go head first, and then invest the body with the supposed sensations of motion in that direction.

When this freedom from space limitations that is enjoyed by consciousness is understood and remembered, it is possible to obtain accurate ideas of the nature of will, wisdom and activity as conscious operations.

When men speak of God they do not, as a rule, think of the Universal God of whom I have spoken, but imagine One who is the supreme consciousness of our solar system. He is one consciousness and it is that in which we all take part—not that it is divided among us, but that we share in it with Him. That great consciousness, called by Theosophists the solar Logos, shows the three powers of will, wisdom and activity. He is of Vishnu in essence, but His will puts Him in touch with Shiva and His activity with Brahmā. But by analogy these aspects of that Vishnu have been called also Shiva, Vishnu and Brahmā. Though these personifications are misleading, I mention them because I want to tell the story of our Vishnu’s creation of His world.

First of all Brahmā was sent forth to wield the creative power or divine activity. It is recounted in the books for the understanding of men that He performed His work by sitting in meditation, and that as He meditated the worlds took form under the power of His thought. Such was His activity. It was Vishnu who then entered into the material world and filled it with life, and Shiva with His power that is Self who was there as its super-being.

The true Brahmā is outside consciousness, but this Brahmā