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PSYCHOLOGY - THE SCIENCE OF THE SOUL
STUDIES IN OCCULTISM
by H. P. Blavatsky
(Excerpts)
No occultist would for a moment deny that the materialistic theory as to the relations of mind and brain is in its way expressive of the truth that the superficial brain-consciousness or "phenomenal self" is bound up for all practical purposes with the integrity of the cerebral matter. This brain consciousness or personality is mortal, being but a distorted reflection through a physical basis of the mânasic self. It is an instrument for harvesting experience for the Buddhi-Manas or monad, and saturating it with the aroma of consciously-acquired experience. But for all that the "brain-self" is real while it lasts, and weaves its Karma as a responsible entity. Esoterically explained it is the consciousness inhering in that lower portion of the Manas which is correlated with the physical brain.
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STUDIES IN OCCULTISM
by H. P. Blavatsky (Excerpts)
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/hpb-sio/sio-cons.htm
Death comes to our spiritual selves ever as a deliverer and friend. For the materialist, who, notwithstanding his materialism, was not a bad man, the interval between the two lives will be like the unbroken and placid sleep of a child; either entirely dreamless, or with pictures of which he will have no definite perception. For the believer it will be a dream as vivid as life and full of realistic bliss and visions.
...both immortality and consciousness after death become for the terrestrial personality of man simply conditioned attributes, as they depend entirely on conditions and beliefs created by the human soul itself during the life of its body. Karma acts incessantly: we reap in our after-lifeonly the fruit of that which we have ourselves sown, or rather created in our terrestrial existence.
Our philosophy teaches that Karmic punishment reaches the Ego only in its next incarnation. After death it receives only the reward for the unmerited sufferings endured during its just past existence.
We could easily make of the body the vehicle of the "vital Double"; of the latter the vehicle of Life or Prana; of Kama-rupa or (animal) soul, the vehicle of the higher and the lower mind, and make of this six principles, crowning the whole with the one immortal spirit. In Occultism, every qualificative change in the state of our consciousness gives to man a new aspect, and if it prevails and becomes part of the living and acting EGO, it must be (and is) given a special name, to distinguish the man in that particular state from the man he is when he places himself in another state.
Manas, in its lower aspect, is the seat of the terrestrial mind, and, therefore, can give only that perception of the Universe which is based on the evidence of that mind, and not on our spiritual vision. It is said in our Esoteric school that between Buddhi and Manas, or Isvara and Prajnsa, there is in reality no more difference than between a forest and its trees, a lake and its waters, just as Mandukya teaches. One or hundreds of trees dead from loss of vitality, or uprooted, are yet incapable of preventing the forest from being still a forest. The destruction or post-mortem death of one personality dropped out of the long series, will not cause the smallest change in the Spiritual Ego, and it will ever remain the same EGO.