CHAPTER VII

THE MECHANISM OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

1. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MECHANISM.

IN a very real sense the whole of the bodies of man form the mechanism of consciousness, as organs for willing, thinking, and acting; but the nervous apparatus may be called its special mechanism, as that whereby, in the physical body, it controls and directs all. Every cell in the body is composed of myriads of tiny lives, each with its own germinal consciousness;[51] each cell has its [152] own dawning consciousness, controlling and organising these; but the central ruling consciousness which uses the whole body controls and organises it, in turn, and the mechanism in which it functions for this purpose is the nervous.

This nervous mechanism is the outcome of astral impulses, and consciousness must be active on the astral plane before it can be constructed. Impulses set up by the consciousness - willing to experience and vaguely endeavouring to give effect to this Will -cause vibrations in etheric matter, and these vibrations, by the very nature of the matter[52], become electric, magnetic, heat, and other energies. These are the masons which work under the impulse of the master-builder, Consciousness. The impulse is from him; the execution is by them. The directive intelligence, which as yet he cannot furnish, is supplied by the Logic life in the Group-Soul, and by the [153] Nature-Spirits working under the guidance, as already said, of the Shining Ones of the Third Elemental Kingdom.

We have then to understand that nervous matter is built up on the physical plane under impulses from the astral, the directly constructive forces being indeed physical, but the guidance and the setting in motion of them being astral, i.e., pro­ceeding from consciousness active on the astral plane. The life-energy, the prana, which flows in rosy waves, pulsing along the etheric matter in all nerves, not in their medullary sheaths but in their sub­stance, comes down immediately from the astral plane; it is drawn from the great reservoir of life, the LOGOS, and is specialised on the astral plane and sent down thence into the nervous system, blending there with the magnetic, elec­trical, and other currents which form the purely physical prana, drawn from the same reservoir, but through the Sun, His physical body; close examination shows that the constituents of the prana of the mineral kingdom are fewer and less complex in arrangement than those of the [154] prana in the higher vegetable kingdom, and this again less so than that in the animal and human, and this difference is due to the fact that the astral prana mingles in the latter and not in the former - to any perceptible degree, at least. After the formation of the causal body, this complexity of the prana circulating in the nervous systems of the physical body much increases, and it appears to become yet more enriched in the progress of human evolution. For as the consciousness becomes active on the mental plane, the prana of that plane mingles also with the lower, and so on as the activity of consciousness is carried on in higher regions.

We may pause a moment on this word “prana”, that I have translated as “life­-energy”. Pran is a Samskrit root, meaning to breathe, to live, to blow, made up of an, to breathe, move, live, and hence the Spirit, joined with the prefix pra, forth. Thus pra-an, pran, means to breathe forth, and life-breath, or life-energy, is the nearest English equivalent to the Samskrit term. As [155] according to Hindu thought there is but one Life, one Consciousness, everywhere, the word Prana has been used for the Supreme Self, the all-sustaining Breath. It is the forth-giving energy of the One; for us, the Life of the LOGOS. Hence that Life on every plane may be spoken of as the Prana of the plane; it becomes the life-breath in every creature. On the physical plane it is energy, appearing in many forms, electricity, heat, light, magnetism, etc., transmutable into each other, because fundamentally one; on other planes we have no names whereby to designate it, but the idea is definite enough. Appropriated by a being, it is prana in the narrower sense in which it is generally used in theosophical literature, the individual’s life-breath. It is the vital energy, the vital force, of which all other energies, chemical, electrical, and the rest, are merely derivatives and fractional parts; and it is a little quaint for the occultist when he hears scientific men talking glibly of chemical or electrical energy, and denouncing their parent, vital energy, as an “exploded [156] superstition”. These partial manifestations of vital energy are merely due to the arrangements of matter in which it plays, cutting off one or another of its characteristics, or perhaps all of them save one, as blue glass will shut off all the rays except the blue ones, and red all except the red.

In The Secret Doctrine H. P. Blavatsky speaks of the relation of prana to the nervous system. She quotes, and partly endorses, partly corrects, the view of “nervous ether”, put forward by Dr. B. W. Richardson; the Sun-force is “the primal cause of all life on earth”[53], and the Sun is “the store-house of vital force, which is the noumenon of electricity”[54]. The “‘nervous ether’ is the lowest prin­ciple of the Primordial Essence which is Life. It is animal vitality diffused in all Nature, and acting according to the conditions it finds for its activity. It is not an ‘animal product’; but the living animal, the living flower and plant, are its products”[55].

On the physical plane this prana, this [157] life-force, builds up all minerals, and is the controlling agent in the chemico-physiological changes in protoplasm, which lead to differentiation and the building of the various tissues of the bodies of plants, animals, and men. They show its presence by the power of responding to stimuli, but for a time this power is not accompanied by distinct sentiency; consciousness has not unfolded enough to feel pleasure and pain.

When the current of prana from the astral plane, with its attribute of sentiency, blends with that of the prana of the physical plane, it begins the building of a new arrangement of matter - the nervous. This, nervous arrangement is fundamentally a cell, details as to which can be studied in any modern text-book dealing with the subject[56], and the development consists of internal changes and of outgrowths of the matter of the cell, these outgrowths becoming sheathed [158] in medullary matter and then appearing a threads or fibres. Every nervous system, however elaborate, consists of cells and their outgrowths, these outgrowths becoming more numerous, and forming ever multiplying connexions between the cells, as consciousness demands, for its expression, a more and more elaborated nervous system. This fundamental sim­plicity at the root of such complexity of details is found even in man, the possessor of the most highly evolved nervous organisation. The many millions of neural ganglia[57] in the brain and body are all produced by the end of the third month of ante-natal life, and their develop­ment consists in expansion, and the outgrowth of their substance into fibres. This development in later life results from the activity of thought; as a man thinks strenuously and continuously, the thought-vibrations cause chemical activity, and the dendrons[58] shoot out from the [159] cells, making connexions and cross­-connexions in every direction, literal pathways along which prana pulsates­ - prana which is now composed of factors from the physical, astral and mental planes - and thought-vibrations travel.

Returning from this digression into the human kingdom, let us see how the building of the nervous system, by vibratory impulses from the astral, begins and is carried on. We find a minute group of nerve cells and tiny processes connecting them. This is formed by the action of a centre which has previously appeared in the astral body - of which something will presently be said - an aggregation of astral matter arranged to form a centre for receiving and responding to impulses from outside. From that astral centre vibrations pass into the etheric body, causing little etheric whirlpools which draw into them­selves particles of denser physical matter, forming at last a nerve cell, and groups of nerve cells. These physical centres, receiving vibrations from the outer world, send impulses back to the astral centres, increasing their vibrations; thus the [160] physical and the astral centres act and re-act on each other, and each becomes more complicated and more effective. As we pass up the animal kingdom, we find the physical nervous system constantly improving, and becoming a more and more dominant factor in the body, and this first­-formed system becomes, in the vertebrates, the sympathetic system, controlling and energising the vital organs - the heart, the lungs, the digestive tract; beside it slowly develops the cerebro-spinal system, closely connected in its lower workings with the sympathetic, and becoming gradually more and more dominant, while it also becomes in its most important development the normal organ for the expression of the “waking consciousness”. This cerebro-spinal system is built up by impulses originating in the mental, not in the astral plane, and is only indirectly related to the astral through the sympa­thetic system, built up from the astral. We shall see later the bearing of this on the astral sensitiveness of animals, and lowly-developed human beings, the disappearance, of this sensitiveness with the [161] development of intellect, and its reappear­ance in the higher human evolution.

The permanent atoms form the imper­fect but only direct channel between the consciousness manifesting as the spiritual Triad and the forms he is connected with. In the case of the higher animals these atoms are exceedingly active, and in the brief time between the physical lives considerable changes occur in these. As evolution goes on the increasing flow of life from the Group-Soul and through the permanent atom, as well as the increasing complexity of the physical apparatus, rapidly augment the sensitiveness of the animal. There is comparatively little sensitiveness in the lower animal lives, and little in fishes, despite their cerebro­spinal system. As evolution proceeds, the sense-centres continue to develop in the astral sheath, and in the higher animal these are well organised and the senses are acute. But with this acuteness there is brevity of sensations, and except with the highest animals little of the mental element mingles to lend increased and longer continued sensitiveness to sensation. [162]

2. THE ASTRAL OR DESIRE BODY.

The evolution of the astral body must be studied in relation to the physical, for while it plays the part of a creator on the physical plane, as we have seen, its own further development largely depends on the impulses received through the very organism it has created. It does not, for a long time, enjoy an independent life of its own on its own plane, and the organisa­tion of the astral body in relation to the physical is quite a different matter, and much earlier in time, than its organisation in relation to the astral world. In the East they speak of the astral and mental vehicles of consciousness, when acting in relation to the physical, as koshas, or sheaths, and use the term sharira, or body, for a form capable of independent action in the visible and invisible worlds. This distinction may serve us here.

The astral sheath of the mineral is a mere cloud of appropriated astral matter, and does not show any perceptible signs of organisation. The same is the case with most vegetables, but in some there [163] seem to be certain indications of aggrega­tions and lines, which, in the light of later evolution, appear to be the dawn of incipient organisation; and in some old forest trees distinct aggregations of astral matter are visible at certain points. In animals these aggregations become clearly marked and definite, forming centres in the astral sheath of a permanent and specialised kind.

These aggregations in the astral sheath are the beginnings of the centres which will build up the necessary organs in the physical body, and are not the often-named chakras, or wheels, which belong to the organisation of the astral body itself, and fit it for functioning on its own plane in connexion with the mental sheath, as the lower type of the eastern sukshma sharira, or subtle body. The astral chakras are connected with the astral senses, so that a person in whom they are developed can see, hear, etc., on the astral plane; they lie far ahead of the point in evolution that we are considering, a point at which the per­ceptive powers of consciousness have not yet any organ, even on the physical plane. [164]

As these aggregations in the astral sheath appear, the impulses of conscious­ness on the astral plane, guided as before explained, play on the etheric double, forming the etheric whirlpools already mentioned, and corresponding centres thus arise in the astral sheath and physical body, the sympathetic system being thus built up. This system always remains thus directly connected with the astral centres, even after the cerebro-spinal system is evolved. But from the aggregations in the fore-part or the astral sheath, ten important centres are formed, which become connected with the brain through the sympathetic sys­tem, and gradually become the dominant organs for the activities of the physical, or waking-consciousness - that is, for that part of the consciousness which func­tions normally through the cerebro-spinal system. Five out of the ten serve to receive special impressions from the outside world, and are the centres through which consciousness uses its perceptive powers; they are called in Samskrit, Jnanendriyas, literally “knowledge-senses”, [165] i.e., senses, or sense-centres, by which knowledge is obtained. These set up, in the way before explained, five distinct etheric whirlpools, and thus construct five centres in the physical brain; these, in turn, severally shape and remain connected with their appropriate sense­-organs. Thus arise the five sense-organs: the eyes, ears, tongue, nose, skin, specialised to receive impressions from the outer world, corresponding to the five perceptive powers of seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, feeling. These are specialised ways in the lower worlds by which part of the perceptive ability of consciousness, its power of receiving external contacts, is exercised. They belong to the lower worlds and to the grosser forms of matter which shut consciousness in, and prevent it, thus enwrapped, from knowing other lives; they are openings in this dense veil of matter, permitting vibrations to enter in and reach the shrouded consciousness.

The remaining five of these ten astral centres serve to convey vibrations from consciousness to the outer word; they [166] are the avenues outwards, as the knowledge-senses are the avenues in­wards; they are named Karmendriyas, literally action-senses, senses or sense-centres which cause action. These develop like the others, forming etheric whirlpools, which make the motor-centres in the physical brain; these, again, severally shape and remain connected with their appropriate motor-organs, hands, feet, larynx, and organs of generation and excretion.

We have now an organised astral sheath, and the continual action and re-action between this and the physical body improve both, and these together act on the consciousness and it re-acts on them, both again gaining by this mutual interaction. And as we have already seen, these blind impulses of consciousness are guided in their play upon matter by the Logic life in the Group-Soul and by the Nature-Spirits. Always it is life, con­sciousness, seeking to realise itself in matter, and matter responding in virtue of its own inherent qualities, vitalised by the action of the Third Logos. [167]

3. CORRESPONDENCE IN ROOT-RACES.

A similar succession in the present, the fourth, Round marks the evolution of the kingdoms of Nature, the main character­istics of the previous Rounds being, as it were, repeated in the Root-Races, just as the history of evolution wrought out during long ages is repeated during the embryonic life of each new body. During the existence of the first two human Races there were conditions of temperature which would render sensibility destructive of any life-manifestation, and those Races show no sensibility to pleasure and pain on the physical plane. In the third Race there is sensibility to violent impacts, causing coarse pleasures and pains, but only some of the senses are evolved, those of hearing, touch, and sight, and these but to a low stage, as we shall presently see.

Now in the first two Races there are visible the beginnings of aggregations in the astral matter of the sheaths, arid if these could connect themselves with appropriate physical matter there would be in the physical consciousness sensations [168] of pleasure and pain. But the appropriate connexions are lacking. The first Race shows a feeble sense of hearing, the second a vague response to impacts, the dawning sense of touch.

The spiritual Triad, at this stage or evolution, is so insensitive to vibrations from external matter that it is only when he receives the tremendous vibrations caused by impacts on the physical plane that he begins slowly to respond. Every­thing begins for him on the physical plane. He does not respond directly, but indirectly, through the mediation of the Logic life, and only as the primary physical apparatus is built up do the subtler impulses come through with sufficient force to cause pleasure and pain. The violent vibrations from the physical plane cause corresponding vibra­tion on the astral, and he becomes dimly conscious of sensation. [169]