The Reincarnating Self of Man: A Study in Causal

Consciousness
A Convention Lecture delivered at Adyar on 26 December 1950

As I understand there may be some members of the public present this evening,
and perhaps some new members of our Theosophical Society not fully aware of
our teachings of the nature of man, I will begin by briefly advancing the view that
man is at least seven-fold in his nature. These seven parts all occupy the same
location in space; they are here and now from highest Spirit to the densest matter.
The seven vestures are the physical body, the vital body, container and conserver
of vitality, and the emotional and mental bodies. These four vehicles are
sometimes called the Personality of man. This is mortal; it comes into existence as
a vehicle of the indwelling Self during prenatal life. After the allotted span these
four bodies at death gradually disintegrate, the real reincarnating Self having
withdrawn from them. This Inner Self is three-fold, being a reflection of the three
aspects of the Creative Logos, spiritual intelligence, intuitive wisdom and within
these the Spirit-Essence, the Atma within, the real Self of man, the core of his
existences. This, in its turn, is forever inseparably united with the one Spirit-
Essence of all, the Paramatma.
I am now going to share with you some fruits of study and research into the
condition of consciousness of that reincarnating Self, the unfolding spiritual unit,
the Ego in the Causal Body. This research is possible because we do not need to
remain imprisoned in the physical body whilst awake. By focusing attention in
superphysical vehicles, we can learn to become aware in them and explore them.
What, then, is the life of the human Ego? I offer, quite undogmatically, some
answers born of my studies of the subject, limiting myself to pure Causal
consciousness, the spirit Self of a reasonably developed Ego in its Causal Body.
Conditions will vary according to development and temperament, but, I think there
will be certain common characteristics. At once I am faced with difficulties
because words can and do falsify abstract ideals, and experiences in arupa worlds
cannot be fully translated into terms of concrete thought and physical speech.
Certain arupa [abstract] conditions contradict rupa [concrete] experience. For
example, in Causal consciousness there are no negatives; only positives exist.
There are no contrasts. All is light all the time and physically we can hardly
imagine light without darkness in contrast.
Complete freedom of existence is another characteristic. There is no
necessity to make any effort about anything. Entry into Causal consciousness
brings at once complete ease as if all resistance, all restrictions, had vanished,
leaving only pure being, the essential existence of the divine principle in man, his
true integral Self, in a serene happiness in which doubt, worry and all other stresses
cannot exist. The Ego dwells in smiling and unbroken ease and serenity.
No effort is ever needed and so no planning. Indeed no thought of a plan is
possible, for to Causal consciousness, all exists and is perpetually available in its
fullness. Any change is but a steady, unrecognized increase in the fullness of
being. No action and therefore no fatigue, no exhaustion, no boredom can be
experienced, no action being called for. There is only an increasing interior
fullness and deepening of existence naturally occurring. The unfolding human
Ego in its own world amongst its peers is simply pure being, without plan,
spontaneous, thought-free, motiveless, complete.
Mystics and occultists have also borne testimony to the causal experience of
entering into supernal, infinite light, of being light itself, a centre of light in an
ocean of light, the ‘true light that never was on sea or land’ and ‘lighteth every man
that cometh into the world’. The Causal Body is self-radiant, an out-raying of light
from its centre. Another contrast with physical life is that there is no skin, no edge
to this radiance of what has been called ‘The Robe of Glory’[15]. Causal
consciousness is virtually universal and the sense of division, of being separated
from anyone or anything does not, cannot, exist in this state. One is light in a world
of universal light. When once this state has been entered and particularly when
dwelt in until it becomes part of consciousness, that same light can be seen in all
beings and all things. The lower worlds are ‘seen’ to be bathed in and
permeated by the vast ocean of spiritual light.
Another strange experience on entering this plane of existence is that the time
sense is greatly changed, almost lost, as if the Inner Self were independent of
time. Time is not a factor in existence and awareness. The Ego abides in duration
or time without limits. Here we live amidst past, present and future. Of these it is
said only the future is actually real, the past having gone and the present vanishing
whilst we think of it. The future approaches all the time. Causally this is not so. All
is in complete existence all the time. The Ego does not actually dwell in eternity,
in the eternal now. That appertains to a far deeper state within universe and man,
at the level of the Spirit-Essence, the Atma, within us. When we touch that deeper
layer, our Monadic self, then perhaps we may know eternity and that all exists in
uttermost fullness all the ‘time’. Processes of beginning, developing, evolving,
achieving, have there little or no meaning; for all exists all at once. Physically, this
is negated, is just not so. Egoic consciousness is somewhere between the two
relatively independent of time, dwelling in time without limits.
 Awareness there can bring strange phenomena into one’s experience; for
example, physically, a swiftly moving body, a bullet fired through the air or, far
more swiftly, a sub-atomic particle, an electron, perhaps, shot with great velocity
passes invisibly. When one tries to examine with heightened vision these swiftly
moving sub-atomic particles and perhaps the root particle, the anu [16], these are
causally and even in some strange way, clairvoyantly, observed to be motionless
— a contradiction of physical experience, and there are many others, all of which
can nevertheless be living and repeatable experiences whilst in the physical body.
A physically moving object, then, can be observed as if there were no such
phenomenon as motion, there being nowhere to go, to come from, to reach, as if
everything exists now, here and all at once.
What, then, is causal knowledge? Here, as we grow up, are educated and
educate ourselves, we have the experience of receiving information, of considering
it, meditatively, contemplatively in some cases, as if something external to
ourselves had come to us. Physically, then, a process occurs of gaining knowledge
from without. That is negated in causal consciousness. The principles of existence,
of emanation, unfoldment in successive degrees, of an underlying harmony of the
whole universe, and all other basic equations and formulae of life, Egoically are
not received ideas. We grow up with them as part of the very nature of our
existence. They are built increasingly as it were into the construction of
consciousness in the higher worlds, after a certain level of development has been
reached. Even those words are contradictions because suggesting time. Egoically,
the processes of Nature operate all around and within and upon one. They are
observed and known intuitively as beyond question or necessity of thought. All
natural principles and processes are, in fact, continually lived and in no sense
observed as if external. They are ‘parts’ of the unified fabric of being. Now those
words have falsified what I want to say, and I find it extremely hard to bring these
causal, arupa, concepts in their vital significance into terms of the concrete mind.
The brain is especially limiting and still more so words.
Let me, then, deliberately provide some concrete ideas. We, Theosophists, are
taught, we believe, and some of us know, that this Inner Self of universe and man
gradually unfolds its inherent powers, reaches one standard of development after
another by virtue of successive lives on earth, the whole process operating under a
flexible Law of Cause and Effect. So in our thought, we say we have had past
lives. We lived on earth in another body, for example, two, three, four, or five
hundred years or so ago. That life came to an end. It finished. It is now a past life.
Behind that again hundreds of other existences as personalities, lived their little
day and, with the civilizations with which they were a part, have all gone into the
past. Now, imagine a state of consciousness in duration or time without limit in
which this simply is not so, those former existences still continuing here and now.
If we were in Egypt once or twice in those lives, then they are still going on. A past
life is, causally, not finished and done with. The whole procedure occurs here and
now, very much as we attending this gathering have been all together a few
minutes before it started when we found our seats and we waited for what had to
be done and is now being done. Whilst physically all events were in succession,
they are still present in our consciousness, still going on. We are here together in a
continuing, non-temporal, process. Something like that, but far more subtle and
extensive, obtains in causal consciousness. Thus the Ego dwells in timelessness.
A peculiarity of physical embodiment is that consciousness is continually
snapped off, broken, lost. Every time we go to sleep, briefly, or for the night,
consciousness is lost, put out like a candle that is extinguished. For us physically
all then vanishes including ourselves. We, Theosophists, may believe that
consciousness continues and there is activity in an inner world but, physically at
any rate, consciousness is intermittent, being continually broken. This is not at all
the case for the Ego in the Causal Body. There — a falsifying word —
consciousness is unbroken, continuous as if the Ego dwells in continuity with
everything going on all the time, without any break in awareness or any change. If
there is any change, it is as of a perpetually unfolding sphere, which from within is
ever unfolding; from a centre or germ within one there is welling up all the time
more and more spirit-essence; more power, life, love, vital energies and awareness
and understanding are perpetually increasing, like a sphere of light with
continually increasing range.
Thus in causal consciousness there cannot ever be any sense of lack, of
want, anything to be striven for. All is fully available all the time, and Egoic
existence consists of a perpetual expansion due to the continuous up-welling from
an infinite source of light, life and energizing, dynamic power. All that ever can be
is already present in this sense of growing fullness in timeless experience. As I said
in the beginning, the experience of causal consciousness in whatever degree is thus
one of rest, peace, great and smiling ease.
Another contrast with physical awareness, a contradiction in fact of our three
dimensional consciousness is that of infinite withinness. Physically, we know that
all objects can be expanded limitlessly in size. Apart from obstructions on the
physical plane, space is limitless, and so we are able to conceive of limitless
outward expansion. Movement outward is for us without restriction, but when we
try to penetrate limitlessly into the interior of things we come to the impassible
centre. Now imagine a state where that impassibility does not exist, where there is
also infinite withinness. This is applicable to both universe and man and if he so
focuses his attention, he can indeed penetrate in consciousness deeper and deeper
towards his inner nature without ever coming to a stop, a barrier, an absolutely
resistant centre.
This is a very strange experience and again in examining sub-atomic particles,
for example, one finds that deep within the minutest of them there is another kind
of existence, penetrating into which one comes to another world from which the
force that makes the object appear in the physical world is coming. This can be
pursued into successive interior states until presumably you come to that centre
which H.P.B. [Helena P. Blavatsky] says is everywhere with circumference
nowhere — inconceivable physically. The brain cannot conceive it though it is
good to meditate upon. Egoically it is a natural characteristic of consciousness in
the causal world.
Then, again, the integrity of the Ego is unstained[17] and unstainable a
wonderful state! Wholeness, actuality, of that which you are is a causal attribute.
You are what you are. How difficult to attain down here, where we are continually
shaped, moulded and conditioned by all sorts of external influences and uttermost
trueness, integrity is almost impossible. But, causally, there are no external
influences. All is within and part of the fabric of one’s being. There is nothing to
attain, nothing to manoeuvre[18] for, plot for, plan for, deceive for. The jewel of
sincerity shines in the crown of the Inner Self of Man
Imagine also a condition of consciousness in which not only time is not a
factor in existence, but space also. To the Ego, space and distance hardly exist. The
Ego of man is independent of location. There is no geography in the causal world.
It does not matter where one is, existence not being in any way affected by position
in space.
There is no going away because there is nowhere to go. There is no losing
someone or something, because all is always here, all ever available. The only
necessity for communion is attunement. If one can attune with any other being in
the causal world or with great ideas and principles of existence then they are
present in fullness. Death of course cannot exist, for the Inner Self is immune from
death. Only the body dies. Having been born, it must die, but the shining Self of
Light is virtually immortal. Egoically, for us all there is no death, no separation, no
bereavements. Perhaps the analogy of radio might help us in this. It does not help
to have the receiver close to the transmitting station. Receivers are generally fairly
independent of location. If you can tune in adequately, all things being equal, you
can pick up a chosen station. Carry that up into terms of pure consciousness and
realize that distance, separation, other locations are not part of the content of such
consciousness.
 If that consciousness is blessed by knowledge of a Master, if there is a sense of
having dedicated oneself and one’s life and being to a great Adept, then He is ever
present and can never be lost as long as the power to attune with Him remains. So
in this sense, the Guru, the Adept, the Master, is not away in an ashram. He is here,
an ever-present living Light and Presence and Power within one’s Inner Self. The
Himalayan Ranges cannot separate the disciple from his Guru, for He is here and
now and within one all the time — a blessed thought for the devotee! Even more
blessed when it is a fully conscious experience as we are promised it can be.
I expect some of you are mentally asking: ‘How can we know some of this
wondrous life, this serene content, this poised harmony, and tranquillity of soul and
mind?’ Indeed this is the great question: How to know? Most of you know full well
and will answer, by the practice of Yoga. May I simplify that and say, ‘by strong
focusing of attention’. Awareness can be established at that point where your
thought is focused. So we should focus our attention out of the unreal into the real,
out of this relative darkness into the light and out of this death into immortality. By
following the habit of living there in thought, of being often focused there, the
doors, the double doorway, opens and we can pass in to the holy of holies of our
inner nature where is enshrined the Atma, the immortal Spirit-Essence of our real
selves. Simply put, it is done by thinking. Think constantly on the eternal and the
eternal will become ours. I have written an affirmation with which I will close.
Lifting consciousness above the physical, astral and mental levels, we may
frequently affirm: ‘I am a divine and immortal being. I live for ever in radiance, in
eternal youth, and in oneness with God’.