"Know the separate Self as the owner of the chariot, and the body as the charioteer. Know the mind as the charioteer, and the mind truly as the reins.
The senses are called horses; having imagined the senses to be horses, know objects as paths. When that Self is associated with body, senses, and mind, recognising people call Him enjoying.
But in that mind which, always connected with the unguided mind, is deprived of recognition, the senses are unruly like the burrowing horses of a charioteer.
But in that mind which - because it is always connected with the controlled mind - is endowed with recognition, the senses are always obedient, like good horses in a charioteer.
But that charioteer does not attain the goal because of such a mind, which - because it is connected with a nonrecognising mind and an unguided mind - is always impure; he attains worldly existence.
However, that chariot-owner who is associated with a discerning mind, endowed with a controlled mind, and is always pure, attains that goal by becoming renounced, from which he is not born again.
And the man who possesses, as a charioteer, the discerning mind, and is governed by the reins of the mind, reaches the end of the journey; this is the highest place of Vishnu.
The objects of the senses are above the senses, and the mind is above the objects of the senses; but the mind is above the mind, and the Great Soul is above the mind.
The Unmanifested is higher than Mahat; Purusha is higher than the Unmanifested. There is nothing higher than Purusha. He is the highest, He is the highest goal.
He is hidden in all beings; therefore He is not as the Self of all. But to those who see the subtle He is seen through the keen and subtle mind.
The recogniser should dissolve the organ of speech in the mind; he should dissolve this mind in the I of the mind; he should dissolve the I of the mind in the Great Soul, he should dissolve the Great Soul in the serene Self.
Rise, awaken, and learn by turning to the highest. The wise describe this path as difficult to traverse, like a razor blade; when it is sharpened, it is difficult to traverse.
One is freed from the jaws of death by learning that which is soundless, intangible, colourless, inexhaustible, and also tasteless, eternal, odourless, without beginning and without end, distinct from the Mahatas and always unchanging." [Katha upanishad]
"All soul is immortal, for she is the source of all motion both in herself and in others. Her form may be described in a figure as a composite nature made up of a charioteer and a pair of winged steeds. The steeds of the gods are immortal, but ours are one mortal and the other immortal. The immortal soul soars upwards into the heavens, but the mortal drops her plumes and settles upon the earth.
Now the use of the wing is to rise and carry the downward element into the upper world?—there to behold beauty, wisdom, goodness, and the other things of God by which the soul is nourished. On a certain day Zeus the lord of heaven goes forth in a winged chariot; and an array of gods and demigods and of human souls in their train, follows him. There are glorious and blessed sights in the interior of heaven, and he who will may freely behold them.
The great vision of all is seen at the feast of the gods, when they ascend the heights of the empyrean?—all but Hestia, who is left at home to keep house. The chariots of the gods glide readily upwards and stand upon the outside; the revolution of the spheres carries them round, and they have a vision of the world beyond. But the others labour in vain; for the mortal steed, if he has not been properly trained, keeps them down and sinks them towards the earth.
Of the world which is beyond the heavens, who can tell? There is an essence formless, colourless, intangible, perceived by the mind only, dwelling in the region of true knowledge. The divine mind in her revolution enjoys this fair prospect, and beholds justice, temperance, and knowledge in their everlasting essence. When fulfilled with the sight of them she returns home, and the charioteer puts up the horses in their stable, and gives them ambrosia to eat and nectar to drink.
This is the life of the gods; the human soul tries to reach the same heights, but hardly succeeds; and sometimes the head of the charioteer rises above, and sometimes sinks below, the fair vision, and he is at last obliged, after much contention, to turn away and leave the plain of truth. But if the soul has followed in the train of her god and once beheld truth she is preserved from harm, and is carried round in the next revolution of the spheres; and if always following, and always seeing the truth, is then forever unharmed." ["Phaedrus", Plato's Dialogues : Plato, Translation by Benjamin Jowett]
The chariot analogy is found in the Katha Upanishad:
3. 'Know the Self to be sitting in the chariot, the body to be the chariot, the intellect (buddhi) the charioteer, and the mind the reins 3.'
4. 'The senses they call the horses, the objects of the senses their roads. When he (the Highest Self) is in union with the body, the senses, and the mind, then wise people call him the Enjoyer.'
5. 'He who has no understanding and whose mind (the reins) is never firmly held, his senses (horses) are unmanageable, like vicious horses of a charioteer.'
6. 'But he who has understanding and whose mind is always firmly held, his senses are under control, like good horses of a charioteer.'
7. 'He who has no understanding, who is unmindful and always impure, never reaches that place, but enters into the round of births.' https://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/sbe15/sbe15012.htm
VII - The Chariot
"The various decks of Tarot cards now in existence agree admirably as to the form and design of the seventh card. In each case a chariot drawn by sphinxes is depicted in which rides a kingly figure crowned and bearing sceptres and other insignia of his rank. The chariot is canopied and hung with a starry curtain, and often a triform symbol resembling a flame appears above the head of the king. The front of the chariot is adorned with solar emblems and its wheels are armed with points of spears.
The whole design shows a prince or king in his chariot of war. Some Tarot writers feel that this card is a conventionalization of Ezekiel’s vision; others that the symbolism is derived from Enoch. It is generally admitted, however, that the whole figure reveals the Logos or Creator of the universe in his aspect as being chief of or the sum of the seven formative agencies. The seven gods are here one in the form of their first or supreme aspect.
It is written in the ancient Qabbalistic books that “the Lord, blessed be His name, was seated in the midst of the directions and the dimensions” and that the palace of the everlasting One was ever in the midst of the world. It is not difficult to realize that the chariot itself is the symbol of the world (more exactly of the mundane sphere), that is, the universe in its seven manifesting aspects. The four pillars supporting the canopy are the corners of the earth and also arcanely the equinoxes and solstices, yes, even the fixed signs of the zodiac also. The blue canopy is the Empyrean or heavenly world and being star-flecked also represents the Auric Egg—the circumference of creation, the wall which constitutes the Ring Pass Not. Upon the front of the canopy are prominently displayed ten golden stars.
These signify the ten Sephira or emanations upon the Qabbalistic Tree of Life, for upon the surface of the Empyrean are the thrones of the ten hierarchies and beyond these are the ten aspects of divinity and still higher and more remote the ten sacred Names of the eternal God. The cube-shaped body of the chariot is the alchemical salt or earth which is the establishment or foundation from which rises the body of the great king.
The yellow robes of the princely ruler reveal him to be Mahat the Yellow Emperor; he also signifies Buddhi which is again Mercury or the mind. The human form rising from the cube, therefore, signifies mind rising out of matter and establishing rulership over it, whereas the flame or sulphur above represents spirit in its three hypostases of spirit, mind and body. The three flames of the spiritual fire perfect the seven by causing it to become ten, which is the total sum of the concealed and manifested creation, revealed in its seven parts and concealed in its three parts. The wheels upon the chariot indicate that the creator is ever in motion but that his motion is beyond the estimation of mortals. While the profane declare God to be in his world, the wise know that his world is in God.
The chariot, therefore, intimates the continual distribution of the Logos throughout the area of Himself. The sphinxes are not actually attached to the chariot, for the vehicle is in reality self-moving, though to the profane it is propelled by the positive and negative aspects of natural law—the sphinxes. From a phenomenal viewpoint, it seems that all things must be moved by external force; but from the noumenal viewpoint, it becomes apparent that the universe is a self-moving mechanism, the power of which is an indwelling activity whose several aspects are summed up in the nature of mind which communicates purpose and direction to all the activities of Nature.
Here, then, is the Mercavah, the ever-moving throne of the unmoved God, the universe which, phenomenally speaking, is being hurled endlessly through the immensities of space but which, noumenally speaking, is immovable upon the foundation of mind. W e also learn from the symbols upon the card that the whole figure reveals the nature of the sun whose chariot, according to the Greeks, is ever rumbling down the starry waste. The sun unites within itself the six emanations which have issued from it and which together with their parent constitute the seven Elohim or Builders of the solar world. To the Chinese, the sun was the symbol of mind and was seated in the midst of the four Emperors of the Corners of the World. These guardians are often referred to as the kings of the corners of the earth.
The Gnostic solar god, Abraxas, is depicted as drawn through the heavens in his chariot by four white horses, but in the Tarot the king is attended by sphinxes which may or may not be regarded as drawing his throne car. The sphinxes are evidently symbols of polarity and it is apparent that polarity is essential to the manifestations of the kingly powers of the Logos. Polarity marching before the chariot makes way for the equilibrium which can only be manifested through contrasts of polarity. Here also is revealed the sevenfold constitution of man, with the ego or mental individuality manifesting through the bodies or inferior principles symbolized by the chariot.
Here is what Hermes calls the man composed of seven men. The seven does not signify seven ones but a pattern in which the separate units are mingled into a composite unity. Here indeed is light carrying in suspension the spectrum which can only be released when the single ray is broken up on the prism of creation. Seven is a most sacred number, for it reveals the dynamics of activity. In the Mysteries three numbers are sacrosanct: the three, which is the symbol of consciousness: the five, which is the symbol of intelligence: and the seven, which is the symbol of force. In order to reveal that the seven is synonymous with force, the king and the chariot bear symbols of warfare. W e have added to the older cards a small shield containing a circle consisting of seven stars.
The jewel of seven stars is the occult symbol of creative authority. It may even be interpreted to signify the seven Rishis of the Great Bear, who are the watchful guardians of the world. From the great king issue forth worlds, races, continents, and an inconceivable concatenation of septenaries, all suspended from a common unity and enclosed within it. In Masonic symbolism, the letter G signifies God as being the first letter of the name of deity and also geometry because, as Plato says, God geometrizes.
The letter G is the seventh of the English alphabet and should reveal to the well informed Mason that of all numbers seven shows most completely the constitution of the creating Logos who impresses his signature in the form of a septenary upon the whole face of Nature, revealing his own peculiar constitution through an endless repetition of sevens. In all these groups of sevens there is one which is the chief and six which are suspended therefrom.
Hence, the seven perpetually reveals kingship or authority, and the creator by imprinting as Boehme might have said, the seal of himself upon the world always causes the seven to consist of six directions or dimensions like the points of the sixpointed star in the midst of which, in his chariot, rides the One who through the six manifests his septenary in every department of existence."
— All-seeing Eye V5 N9 Jun 1931 by Manly P. Hall
"The tenfold breath is given to man; the Atman is the eleventh, and all respiratory forces are based on it. In the middle is the Atman, around it are the respiratory forces. Just as all the spokes are connected in the hub and doorpost of a wheel, so all the respiratory forces, all the worlds, all are united in this Atman.
Gods, all beings, all these 'I.'"
-Brahman of a hundred paths
"Know the Self as the owner of the chariot, and the body as the chariot."
-Katha Upanishad, I, III
Man knows himself and the world around him according to the data of his experience, for if he were deprived of the opportunity to manifest his activity, he could not reach either self-knowledge or consciousness of the reality surrounding him. 'Whoever wants,' says Rickert, 'to practically know value, must experience it.' A person draws from all aspects of his being, but all these perceptions invariably result in a certain form, determined by the general type of consciousness.
An embodied person always builds every concept, every thought on the foundations of the physical world. Thought as this differs from the thought of real volume only in that in one case a person can directly verify its presence with physical senses, while in the other he is deprived of this, but in both cases, equally, a person builds the entire course of your thinking on the laws and properties of the physical world. The most abstract mathematical thought always stems either from a concrete geometric idea or from an abstract concept of magnitude, but it is quite obvious that the very concept of magnitude is an integral category of the physical world. No matter how much an embodied person departs from the physical world in his opinion, he still thinks in the world of forms, sounds, time and light.
No matter how much a person strives to imagine a spiritual being, he cannot come up with anything other than an idealization of human properties.
From the above, the following follows: the embodied person lives, feels and thinks exclusively phenomena of the physical world. All types of human knowledge exist only insofar as they lead to a person’s sense of self, and therefore consciousness is the totality of feelings and knowledge. The difference in feelings and knowledge entails a difference in consciousness, and vice versa; from here it becomes clear that each world, determined by the totality of known types of knowledge, affirms and is itself affirmed inversely by the existence of the corresponding consciousness.
Plan, i.e. a random, generally speaking, section of the cosmos in metaphysical space is affirmed in existence by the attributes inherent in those phenomena that manifest themselves in this plane. From here it is clear that the difference in plans stems from the difference in phenomenal attributes, and, moreover, generally speaking, but not according to the order of synthesis, but only due to personal isolation.
On the contrary, the difference between worlds, which affirms the difference between consciousnesses, stems from their deep differences in their very essence. All this is expressed by the law: plans are coordinated by phenomena, worlds are coordinated by consciousnesses.
The Atman of man is the true and absolute likeness of the Universal Spirit; just as the Divine is One for the macrocosm, so the Atman is one and all-encompassing for the world of the microcosm in an absolute manner. Divinity and Atman are consubstantial in nature, analogous to each other, singular in essence, comprehensive in principle and differ from each other only in that the Infinity of the Divine is a higher degree than the infinity of Atman.
Everything that lies below the Perfect Man is deprived of the possibility in principle of perceiving the Absolute in His True Nature, for in his consciousness they cannot be separated.
Arcanum VII is the doctrine of man in the highest and absolute meaning of the word. Atman carries out the creativity of its own relative in general, but absolute for a given person, individual world in exact analogy with the Universal Creativity. In Arcanum VI, the monad is cognized in the state of a fully identified substance of the second kind, objectified and delimited among other similar ones; it occupies a very definite place in the whole of the universe, as a specific set of tonalities of the spirit; at the same time, she does not have the gift of self-awareness, does not feel her existence and does not even live, being only an abstract possibility of reality, but not reality itself.
Arcanum VII teaches about a great turning point in the existence of the cosmic family of monads: each of them decides to leave the bright area of the spirit inherent in its true nature, and at the cost of this sacrifice, transform itself into reality, recognize itself and know its place in the Whole. The spirit cannot lose its nature, even if it itself wished to do so; being a single reality, he can neither find a successor for himself, nor bind his essence with fetters.
Having decided to delve deeper into the waves of illusion, to ascend into his concrete potencies, he only breaks his consciousness with the essence of his being and emanates it into the sphere of his potential capabilities. From this moment, consciousness begins to feel the beginning of its existence outside and above itself, it clearly begins to feel the illusory nature of its states and at the same time is filled with a thirst for reality, gravitates toward the spiritual essence of the entire human being.
"Thanks to Him, having the form of Eternal Consciousness, all things are known, starting from ahankara and down to the body, lust, etc., as vessels (of the spirit, which in itself exists without a vessel). This Spirit is Purusha, the Existent, Atman (the essence of all things) is the Eternal, Constant, Unconditional, Absolute Bliss, Which is constantly equal to Itself and is Self-Consciousness, by the Verb (word, Logos) of Which the spirit of life comes into motion."
-Sri Shankaracharya
The Monad, as the Prototype, with the totality of its potential properties and qualities, objectifies in the metaphysical space the integral being of man, as the exhaustive body of the spirit, its phenomenal analogue. This being is nothing more than the system of possibilities of the Atman; it is born along with it and exists abstractly, being transformed into reality only by the work of dynamic consciousness.
When the Monad, striving for self-knowledge and affirmation, emanates its consciousness outside its single essence, this latter begins to slide along the lines of analogy, involutively descending to the simplest concrete potencies. At the same time, there is a process of gradual rebirth of consciousness and the identification of the involutionary septer of principles from the Atman.
The identified and approved Monad is a system of the Atman and its integral being, as a body of spirit, mutually affirmed and dissolved in each other. All abstract potentialities that previously lay outside the essence of Atman enter into it, becoming, as it were, facets of his self-consciousness, through which he, on the one hand, feels his individuality, and on the other hand, communicates with the entire world that lies outside him.
In harmony with this, the Atman, as it were, enters into all the qualities of its being, penetrates into all types and forms of its tonalities, is reflected in them like a ray of light, and connects all their diversity into one whole. This idea is expressed by tradition in the formula - the human spirit is a ray of the Divine penetrating matter.
"Atman is that which permeates the whole world but is not penetrated by it; which illuminates all things, but all things cannot illuminate it."
-Sri Shankaracharya
Descending in the order of synthesis from the Atman to specific differential potencies, consciousness gradually changes its nature in its very being. This successive change is sharply divided into seven separate sections, each of which, according to the above law, brings into existence the corresponding world and, in turn, is affirmed into reality by it.
During the involutionary descent, the integral consciousness of a person is gradually delayed by all the worlds of the cosmos, each of which, like a metaphysical network, retains those parts of it that correspond to it. As a result of this process, the consciousness of the integral human being is, as it were, divided into seven separate zones, each of which begins to live as an independent and independent whole in its own world.
The division of integral consciousness entails the illusion of division of the individual spirit: each type of consciousness objectifies in the Atman its inherent aspect, which becomes the absolute Origin in relation to this world.
“He who knows everything through himself, but whom no one sees, he who animates Buddhi and others, but is not himself animate by them, is the Atman itself.”
-Sri Shankaracharya
“Every thing in nature, although in itself it constitutes a triad, has a quadruple application on the external plane.”
-Thomas Henry Burgon
"Know your soul, know the one, great law of unity inherent in every person." - Upanishads.
"Become who you are." - St. Anselm.
Arcanum VII ends with the first septer of the Great Arcana; he affirms the existence of the latter in the form of an integral self-sufficient system; he is the last link in the involutionary chain of the Primary Principles of the Realm of the Spirit. The Divine Spirit, cognizing Itself, affirming the Supreme Principles in Itself, gives birth to aspects of only the Same Spirit. The entire galaxy of Principles of the first seven Arcana, which interpret the involution of the Spirit as such, in its true essence cannot but lie in the same World of the Spirit.
"The Supreme Soul resides in beings of the highest order, as well as in the lowest beings. From this Supreme Soul emanate, like sparks from fire, countless Life Principles, Which constantly impart movement to all kinds of creatures." - Laws of Manu.
The involution of the spirit is only a change in self-consciousness; the spirit as such cannot lose its qualities, cannot itself involute, he is only capable of contemplating himself differently through the various prisms generated by him, which color the permanent essence differently.
Arcanum VII is the last chord of those deepest internal rearrangements of the Universal Spirit, which entailed the existence of the world of measure and time. He is the conductor of the entire higher system of Principles in the full and absolute meaning of the word, he is the highest limit of all types of a priori possible knowledge, including the consciousness of the spirit for man of the world of being, and, at the same time, serves as the lowest limit to which the Divine descends, One All-Encompassing Spirit.
The Atman of man is an eternal link connecting the Divine World with the World of Existence; it lies on the border of both of them, and each of them is affirmed in the other. Human consciousness cannot reach the heights of an individual spark, and therefore; according to the basic principle of the existence of particular relative worlds, everything a priori accessible to comprehension is forever limited by the limits of the relative world that corresponds The Atman, which has known itself in its entirety.
Atman is the Divinity for the man generated by it, for it is the highest section of the ray of the Divine Essence that created man; behind this section only the incomprehensible “Not-That” remains. Atman is the human aspect of the Divine, coordinated by the human being of the World of Existence.
The main principle of Arcanum VII is the doctrine of the divinity of the essence of the human being - the individual monad, and the absolute perfection of the potential integral person corresponding to the monad and the likeness of his Divinity,
“Man is made in the likeness of the world. By the will of the Father, he is awarded wisdom more than other earthly creatures; through his feelings he is in communication with the Second God (Arcanum 22), through his thought with the First (Arcanum 21). In One he is affirmed as a creature, in the other as the Uncreated Being, Reason and Good. Understand that the world comes from God and exists in God, that man comes from the world and exists in the world. The Principle, the Perfection of the Type and the Immutability of all things is God."
- Hermes Trismegistus.
"This means that man is called a microcosm, not because he is composed of four elements, as they are included in animals and even in lower beings, but because he unites in himself all the powers of the universe. For in the universe there are gods, there are four elements, there are also irrational animals and plants. Man has all these powers, for he has the Divine Power, the power of thinking, possesses the nature of the elements and the divine power of perception and faith and the power of making others like himself." - Vita Anonymi de Pithagore
"The Kingdom of God is in you." - Gospel
"Self-knowledge is True Wisdom." - Vedanta
Man was created in the image of God and likeness, and therefore he is the whole world, he has all his laws, all his possibilities. Thinking about a human being, we naturally come to the conclusion that his movements, his emotions, his hidden and manifested inclinations and capabilities truly constitute an infinite world; that all this infinity is bound by the same laws and principles that reign in the infinity of the macrocosm.
No matter how much a person runs from himself, no matter how afraid he is of his inner strength, his inner mind, which pierces all his deeds, no matter how afraid he is of a distant goal, no matter how much he puts off achieving it, he still always realizes that everything his goal, his entire calling, his entire path and all the forces to achieve everything lie in himself, he himself can only be called to life, and only in himself can he find the end of all his quests.
"Honor the Spiritual Atman, whose body is breath, whose appearance is light, whose essence is ether, the Atman who receives the kind he wants, quick as a thought, full of right desire, full of right holding, full of every fragrance, rich in all kinds of juices, extending to all countries of the world, filling the whole universe, silent, all-satisfied. Small, like a grain of rice, or barley, or millet, or like millet, so this spirit abides in the Self; golden, like a smokeless light - that is what it is; wider than the sky, wider than the ether, wider than this earth, wider than all creatures; he is the “I” of breath, he is my “I” (Atman); I will unite with this Atman when I leave here. Whoever has mastered this, truly does not harbor any doubts."
-Vedanta
The unknown and incomprehensible Atman of a person pours out its royal power onto his entire being, fills him with strength and thereby gives him the opportunity to live, move and rush forward.
"You carry within you the highest friend whom you do not know, for God dwells within every person, but few can find Him. The person who sacrifices his desires and his actions to the One, the One from Whom the beginnings of all things flow and by Whom the creation the universe achieves perfection through such a sacrifice, for the one who finds his happiness, his joy in himself and carries his light in himself is that person in unity with God. Know this: the soul that has found God is freed from birth and death , from old age and suffering and drinks the water of immortality." -Bhagavad Gita.
The true man is the Atman. His consciousness in the Upper World is the Divine Soul; the man of the World of Existence, the higher Ea and the incarnate man together constitute a true microcosm, a semblance of the macrocosm, for it is infinite, holistic, closed and complete a system animated and fertilized by the Atman. He is the immortal spark of the Eternal Light, living in the human soul, unknown and incomprehensible, but eternally known by the acts of the power emanated by it.
"He who dwells in the earth is different from the earth, and the earth does not know about him, his body is the earth, inside he moves the earth, this is Atman, the immortal inner mover. He who dwells in water, who dwells in fire, who dwells in the sun, moon and stars, who dwells in lightning and thunder, abiding in all worlds, abiding in all Vedas, in all sacrifices, in all beings, different from all beings, which they do not know. All beings, which moves all beings within, is the Atman, the inner mover, the immortal.”
-Upanishads.
Every man at any given moment is a system in equilibrium; man, like the world, is immovable in his whole, but constantly changing and varying in his differential parts and details. Wherever man goes, wherever he endeavors, however he acts on the various occasions of his centuries-long journey, - still all his actions and the decisions he takes are preordained and governed by his Atman. A powerful wind of his power descends from the Heights of the Mountains, and the man of the earth wanders along the path he himself predetermined, widening, deepening, and coloring it according to the will of his embodied consciousness.
Always striving, always going higher and higher, man always and invariably balances all sides and facets of his soul in himself, in a way incomprehensible to himself, only for a while as if departing from some of them and for a while drawing closer to others. Sooner or later, following his long path, he passes through all the windings of his way, and finally, the fetters of the earth are unable to restrain him further, and he rises upwards so that, relying on what he has learned before, he can learn again directly from the World Source of Wisdom. All of the above is the doctrine of Arcana VI. The human being in the World of Being is a closed system in absolute equilibrium; all its forces, all its movements arise from the action of the Man of the Mountain World - his Divine Atman.
"I, that Supreme, Eternal, True 'I', the All-Blissful, All-Holy, Rising above illusion, above convention, apprehended only in the guise of the concept: 'I am seven'." - Vijnananauka
Man does not know his true essence, does not know his true Self, cannot grasp and delineate in his consciousness his Atman, for he cannot become outside it, cannot oppose it, cannot mold it, cannot even express what he seeks or what he wishes to find. This is why man sometimes doubts himself, for he cannot separate his doubt from himself, for whatever he does, whatever he thinks, whatever he feels, whatever he strives for, is all a manifestation of the same "I."
"Where is the man who doubts the reality of his existence? If he exists, he must know that he, the doubter, is the 'I' which he denies." - Sratmanimpana.
The greatness of man's vocation, his divine cosmic mission, lies at the foundation of all the teachings on man, in all the Initiations. In perfect harmony with the Indian doctrine of the Atman, the Semitic Revelation in the aspect of Kabbalah states:
"And Simeon ben Yohai said: 'The being of man contains all that is in heaven and earth, the higher beings and the lower beings; that is why the Ancient of Days chose him for Himself. No form, no world, could exist before the being of man, for he embraces all things, and all that exists exists exists no other way than through him; without him there would be no world; it is in this sense that these words must be understood: 'The Eternal has established the earth on Wisdom.' We must distinguish between the Man of the Highlands (?????? ???) and the Man of the Lowlands (????? ???), for the one could not exist without the other. On this being of man rests the perfection of the affirmation of all things; it is the one referred to when it is said that they saw above the chariot the likeness of man's appearance; it is the one which Daniel has delineated in these words, And I saw the son of man walking with the clouds of Heaven, coming near to the Ancient of Days, and standing before Him." - Idra Rabba.
"Man is the synthesis and completion of the most sublime in Creation; that is why he was not created until the sixth day. When man came into existence, everything was completed, both the World Below and the World Above, for everything is summarized in man; he unites all forms." - Zohar.
Every man is a whole world, a whole microcosm. In this world, his Atman lives, fills it, is reflected in it, and recognizes itself. Outside this world, nothing exists for him; the alien will only become one's own when it is one's own. Man does not cognize phenomena or states, but only differences of states and positions. The laws and principles of the noumenal world are immovable; that is why man must move to cognize them. But they are contained in him before this age through the divinity of his spirit - that is why he must have inner movement. So - man, living in himself, in himself, and moves. This is the first basic law of all his being, life, and activity.
“I liken your heart to a city in which the righteous and the unrighteous live side by side. You are the ruler of this city, and your mind is your great vizier.”
-Saadi
"All external manifestations are nothing more than roads converging to one center, and you follow them in order to reach this center and find the real person, that is, the group of abilities and feelings that produce everything else. Here is a new world, an endless world, because every visible action entails an endless series of previous or new reasonings, emotions, sensations that contributed to its understanding, which, like long rocks sunk deep into the soil, reach its extreme, its tip and its base.”
-Hippolyte Taine
When a person dreams, he can either move his consciousness in relation to his dream, or, conversely, he can make it itself move. In both cases, this dream is a set of more elementary dreams, its individual gradations, along which a person’s consciousness glides. Everything in the world is generated by relative motion; absolute movement is not only an unattainable fiction, but also a useless fiction. Considering that movement lies entirely in the Whole, we come to the idea of ??the Manifestation of the World as dreams, imprinted in the waves of Maya; on the contrary, considering the Whole motionless and attributing to the parts the category of motion, we come to the idea of ??World Manifestation in the aspect of the doctrine of emanation. It is clear that both ideas are identical in essence and differ only due to the conditional acceptance of various points in relative motion as stationary, which, generally speaking, is indifferent. In both cases, we equally came to the conclusion that consciousness glides through the composition, and this is what life consists of.
This idea of successive identifications of a person’s personality with separate sets of elements of composition was especially clearly developed by the Gnostic Isidore in his "??? ???????? ????," where he expresses the completely correct idea that the versatility of the human being and the possibility of complete immersion in various specific emotions, sometimes opposite to each other, naturally lead to the need to recognize the presence of a group character in the human soul - a repository of previous experience.
Every feeling, every thought, every idea is itself composed of elementary aspects. Decomposing these aspects into even more elementary ones, we ultimately come to the simplest aspects, which are, as it were, individual atoms of the composition; I will call these atoms the elements of man. These elements, combining with each other in various ways, generalizing in various relative syntheses, create the entire mass of properties and inclinations of the human soul, which is nothing more than a composition.
That inner movement that is eternal occurs in man, and there is an eternal rearrangement of the elements; that is why man lives in himself and in himself and moves; that is why all human activity is limited to its own inner world. Each element is similar, according to the Law of Analogy, to the integral person himself, and a person for such an element is the Demiurge; in terms of the highest, man is an element of the World Collective Man - Adam Kadmon; this is expressed by the law: each person is Adam Kadmon for everything lower and an element of the higher.
Thoughts and images, ideas and feelings, aspirations and researches of a person, in their complex making up his soul, are quite similar to individual people who together form one nation. Each individual element of a person has as its main driver the desire to develop as close as possible to the maximum possible development in general and to subordinate everything around on this path to its influence. This engine is identical with the engine of every person, for the desire for development and dominance above everything and generally determines the essence of a living being on earth.
Just as among people no two are equal, so among the elements of the human soul no two are identical; both in the human world and in the world of the soul of one person, these elements live, move and feel according to their own, individual qualities and properties.
"The sages found the roots of existence in their hearts." - Rigveda.
"When the warmth and movement of unconscious impulses and passions torment the soul on all sides, a person is unable to give or receive anything consciously. But when we find the center in our soul, thanks to the power of self-control, the power that can bring into harmony the struggling elements, uniting everything, then our individual impressions turn into wisdom and our momentary heartfelt interests find their completion in love. For a person who has come to know his soul, a certain center of the universe arises, around which everything else is distributed and finds its true place." - Rabindranath Tagore [Shmakov V.A. - The Sacred Book of Thoth (c. 1916), Vladimir Alekseevich Shmakov (April 1887, Moscow - 1929, Argentina) - Russian philosopher. Head of the Moscow Rosicrucian school in the 1920s]
See Also