Man and His Bodies - ODYSSEE Theater

Man and His Bodies by Annie Besant ( Theosophical Manual No. VII )
THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE
Adyar, Madras 600 020, India Wheaton, III., USA . London,
England
1912
First Edition 1896
PREFACE
FEW words are needed in sending this little book out into the world. It is
the seventh of a series of Manuals designed to meet the public demand for a
simple exposition of theosophical teaching. Some have complained that our
literature is ,at once too abstruse, too technical, and too expensive for
the ordinary reader, and it is our hope that the present series may succeed
in supplying what is a very real want. Theosophy is not only for the
learned; it is for all. It may be that among those who in these little
books catch their first glimpse of its teachings, there may be a few who
will be led by them to penetrate more deeply into its philosophy, its
science, and its religion, facing its abstruser problems with the student's
zeal and the neophyte's ardour. But these manuals are not written for the
eager student, whom no initial difficulties can daunt; they are written for
the busy men and women of the work-a-day world, and seek to make plain some
of the great truths that render life easier to bear and death easier to
face. Written by servants of the Masters who are the Elder Brothers of our
race, they can have no other object than to serve our fellow-men.
CONTENTS
|Preface |V |
|Introduction |1 |
|The Physical Body . |5 |
|The Etheric Double |24|
|The Astral or Desire Body |33|
|The Mind Bodies |60|
|Other Vehicles |82|
|The Human Aura |85|
|The Man |90| INTRODUCTION
So much confusion exists as to consciousness and its vehicles, the
man and the garments that he wears, that it seems expedient to place
before Theosophical students a plain statement of the facts so far as
they are known to us. We have reached a point in our studies at which
much that was at first obscure has become clear, much that was vague has
become definite, much that was accepted as theory has become matter of
first-hand knowledge. It is therefore possible to arrange ascertained
facts in a definite sequence, facts which can be observed again and
again as successive students develop the power of observation, and to
speak on them with the same certainty as is felt by the physicist who
deals with other observed and tabulated phenomena. But just as the
physicist may err so may the metaphysicist, and as knowledge widens new
lights are thrown on old facts, their relations are more clearly seen,
and their appearance changes - often because the further light shows
[end of Page #1] that the fact which seemed a whole was only a fragment.
No authority is claimed for the views here presented; they are offered
only as from a student to students, as an effort to reproduce what has
been taught but has doubtless been very imperfectly apprehended,
together with such results of the observations of pupils as their
limited powers enable them to make.
At the outset of our study it is necessary that the Western reader
should change the attitude in which he has been accustomed to regard
himself, and that he should clearly distinguish between the man and the
bodies in which the man dwells. We are too much in the habit of
identifying ourselves with the outer garments that we wear, too apt to
think of ourselves as though we were our bodies; and it is necessary, if
we are to grasp a true conception of our subject, that we shall leave
this point of view and shall cease to identify ourselves with casings
that we put on for a time and again cast off, to put on fresh ones when
we are again in need of such vestures. To identify ourselves with these
bodies that have only a passing existence is really as foolish and as
unreasonable as it would be to identify ourselves with our clothes; we
are not dependent on them - their value is in proportion to their
utility. The blunder so constantly made of identifying the
consciousness, which is our Self, with the vehicles in which that
consciousness is for the moment functioning, can only be excused by [2]
the fact that the waking consciousness, and to some extent the dream
consciousness also, do live and work in the body and are not known apart
from it to the ordinary man; yet an intellectual understanding of the
real conditions may be gained, and we may train ourselves to regard our
Self as the owner of his vehicle and after a time this will by
experience become for a definite fact, when we learn to separate our
Self from his bodies, to step out of the vehicle, and to know that we
exist in a far fuller consciousness outside it then within it, and that
we are in no sense dependent upon it; when that is once achieved, any
further identification of our Self with our bodies is of course
impossible, and we can never again make the blunder of supposing we are
what we wear. The clear intellectual understanding at least is within
the grasp of all of us, and we may train ourselves in the habitual
distinguishment between the Self - the man - and his bodies; even to do
this is to step out of the illusion in which the majority are wrapped,
and changes our whole attitude towards life and towards the world,
lifting us into a serener region above "the changes and chances of this
mortal life," placing us above the daily petty troubles which loom so
largely to embodied consciousness, showing us the true proportion
between the ever-changing and the relatively permanent, and making us
feel the difference between the drowning man tossed and buffeted by the
[3] waves that smother him, and the man whose feet are on a rock while
the surges break harmlessly at its base.
By man I mean the living, conscious, thinking Self, the
individual; by bodies, the various casings in which this Self is
enclosed, each casing enabling the Self to function in some definite
region of the universe. As a man might use a carriage on the land, a
ship on the water, an aeroplane in the air, to travel from one place to
another, and yet in all places remain himself, so does the Self, the
real man, remain himself no matter in what body he is functioning; and
as carriage, ship and aeroplane vary in materials and arrangement
according to the element in which each is destined to move, so does each
body vary according to the environment in which it is to act. One is
grosser than another, one shorter-lived than another, one has fewer
capacities than another; but all have this in common - that relatively
to the man they are transient, his instruments, his servants, wearing
out and renewed according to their nature, and adapted to his varying
needs, his growing powers. We will study them one by one, beginning with
the lowest, and then take the man himself, the actor in all the bodies.
[4]

THE PHYSICAL BODY
Under the term physical body must be included the two lower
principles of man - called in our old terminology the Sth?la Shar?ra and
Linga Shar?ra - since they both function on the physical plane, are
composed of physical matter, are formed for the period of one physical
life, are cast off by the man at death, and disintegrate together in the
physical world when he passes on into the astral.
Another reason for classing these two principles as our physical
body or physical vehicle is that so long as we cannot pass out of the
physical world - or plane, we are accustomed to call it - we are using
one or other or both of these physical vestures; they both belong to the
physical plane by their materials, and cannot pass outside it;
consciousness working in them is bound within their physical
limitations, and is subject to the ordinary laws of space and time.
Although partially separable, they are rarely separated during earthly
life and such separation is inadvisable and is always a sign of disease
or of ill-balanced constitution.
They are distinguishable by the materials of which they are
composed into the gross body and the etheric [5] double, the latter
being the exact duplicate of the visible body, particle for particle,
and the medium through which play all the electrical and vital currents
on which the activity of the body depends. This etheric double has
hitherto been called the Linga Shar?ra, but it seems advisable, for
several reasons, to put an end to the use of the name in this relation.
"Linga Shar?ra" has from time immemorial been used in Hindu books in
another sense, and much confusion arises among students of Eastern
literature, whether Easterns or Westerns, in consequence of its
arbitrary wresting from its recognized meaning; for this reason, if for