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<font size="4">The
Immortal Person</font></b></p>
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<FONT SIZE=3 COLOR="#000000">THE whole purpose of man's life
upon earth, it may be said, is to make an individuality of himself
and to grow in that individuality and organise it perfectly.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3 COLOR="#000000">An ordinary man is a most
disorganised entity and possesses no individual character. His mind
is a conglomeration of thoughts and ideas which do not particularly
belong to him, but to everybody, being elements of the world-mind in
general. His vital being too is a medley of desires, impulses,
energies that are not personal in any sense, but pass through him or
take a long or short-term asylum in him from the universal vital
force. The body, being a definitely delimited object, is perhaps the
only thing that appears to be personal – the chief, if not the only
source and sign of personal identity; and with the loss of the body,
the whole personality seems to crumble down and disappear in the
world-existence – the body particles get mixed into the world of
matter, the life elements disperse in the vital world, the mental
components disintegrate into the world of mind. In fact, this is what
happens to the human person after death or would happen normally.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3 COLOR="#000000">Thus man, the ordinary or
&quot;natural&quot; man, has no person&shy;ality, no real
individuality. It is just like a wave-formation out of universal
nature, moving in and being moved by the total swell and heave, being
formed and being destroyed every moment – as the poet says:</FONT></P>
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<BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3 COLOR="#000000">They take birth in you and they
dissolve in you like</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3 COLOR="#000000">the waves in the sea.</FONT></p>
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<FONT SIZE=3 COLOR="#000000">And yet the building up of an
abiding individual is the secret</FONT><BR>
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<span style="font-size:10pt;">Page – 295</span><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3 COLOR="#000000">urge of Nature's evolution: it is
the hidden spring of human aspiration and the purpose of God's
creation. Not mere disparate particles – of substance or energy or
consciousness – breaking up constantly and scattering and finally
dissolving into the void (the great law of <I>Running Down </I>or as
the Veda figures it, <I>tucchyena abwapihitam </I>absorbed by the
infinitesimal) – but a gathering of elements, integrating them into
organic wholes, moulding definite forces into definite forms – such
is the secret plan behind. Indeed, ego is the first formation, the
original instrument which Nature fashioned to carry out this object
of hers. '</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3 COLOR="#000000">Ego means a hardened core that is
not easily broken by the impact of forces. It delimits, ,cuts out,
endeavours to maintain its formation by a strong violent
self-assertion. Ego is a helper, but also it is a bar. It assists the
first formation but delays and obstructs the true and final
formation. For the ego is a formation, an individual formation, but
on the level of universal Nature: it is of a piece with the normal
cosmic movement, only bounded by a peripheral line. In the general
expanse it puts up enclosures and preserves and fencings; the
constituting elements remaining the same in substance and quality.
Even the delimitation is illusory in reality, it is something like
the membrane in the body separating the different functional organs,
rigid yet allowing interaction and interpenetration. That is why,
when death removes the outward fencing, the individuality also cannot
long maintain itself and merges into the general. We may look upon
egoism as a kind of artificial or experimental individuality, a
laboratory formation, as it were, tried and developed under given
conditions. In fact, however, egoism is a shadow or an echo upon this
side of our nature of the true individuality which lies and comes
from elsewhere.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3 COLOR="#000000">And that is the soul of the man.
We have spoken of the body, the life and the mind of the individual,
but beside and beyond these elements which are only instruments there
is this secret master and overlord. It is the particle of divinity in
each, the developing consciousness – the spark of Fire, the ray of
Light – “the immortal in the mortal no bigger than one's thumb.&quot;
The soul is an individual, an individual formation of the divine
reality: it is a godhead formulating an aspect or function of </FONT>
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<span style="font-size:10pt;">Page – 296</span><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3 COLOR="#000000">God. We may thus say that the
whole purpose of earthly evolution is the evolution of this
soul-formation, that is to say, its growing individualisation in
light and power, in the expression of the godhead. This growth is
first in itself and of itself, its inherent being and consciousness;
then, the growth is that of its instrumentation, in other words, the
development and organisation of the mind, the life and the body.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3 COLOR="#000000">So the individualisation and
growth of the soul means a growth and individualisation of the mental
being, the vital being and also of the physical being. Normally the
purpose of intellectual culture is the growth and individualisation
of the mind, the purpose of moral culture is the growth and
individualisation of the vital being and the true purpose of physical
culture too should be a well-balanced and well-developed physical
body, not only in a general sense, but' in a very individualised
mode. But all these varieties and modes of culture can be truly
individualised and not merely ordered or organised, more or less on
the surface, only when they obey and subserve the culture of the
soul. The mind, the vital and the physical each has to grow its
individuality in the growing individuality of the soul. The soul,
otherwise called the psychic being, is man's spiritual being: the
growth of the spiritual being means the advent and establishment bf
the true personality.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3 COLOR="#000000">There is, of course, a spiritual
path that turns the soul away from its instruments and demands that
it should concentrate exclusively upon itself, upon its essential
essence, upon its transcendent existence; but that is not our path
and, according to us, that is only a temporary phase, an intermediate
necessity for some persons and at certain stages.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3 COLOR="#000000">The individualisation of the mind,
its organisation as a special formation, as a vehicle of the true
light, the light of the Psychic consciousness is comparatively easy
for a man. Mind is the first member of the lower sphere that is taken
up and dealt with by the soul; for it is the highest and the most
characteristic element in man and less dense and less subject to the
darkness inherent in human nature. The mental indi&shy;vidual
persists the longest after the dissolution of the body, it survives
and may survive very long the disruption of the vital being. This
vital being is next in the rung to be taken up, organised and
individualised by and around the psychic being.</FONT><BR>
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<span style="font-size:10pt;">Page – 297</span><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3 COLOR="#000000">The organisation of the vital.
being in view of a particular object or aim in ordinary life is
common enough: the purpose is limited, the scope restricted. Great
men of action have done it and one has to do it more or less to be
successful in life. This, however, may be called organisation; it is
not individualisation in the true sense, much less personalisation. A
limb is individualised, personalised only when it is an instrument
and formation of the soul consciousness, the psychic being. And the
vital is not easily amenable to such a role. For, it is the dynamic
element, the effective power of life and it has acquired a strong
nature and a definite function in its earthly relations. Naturally,
there is a secret drive and an occult inspiration behind over-riding
or guiding all immediate and apparent forces and happenings: in and
through these the shape of things to come is being built up. In the
meanwhile, however, actually the vital is an executive agent of the
lower consciousness: it is an anonymous force of universal nature
canalised into a temporary figure that is the normal individual man.
The individualisation of the vital being would mean an immortal
formulation of an immortal soul as energy consciousness with a
specific role for the Divine to play. It maintains its identity, its
personality independent of the vicissitudes of the physical body: it
continues to function as a divine being, a godhead, to work for
mankind and the world. The popular legend has imaged this phenomenon
in the mystic figure of an immortal Aswatthama and Vibhishana still
wandering in earth's atmosphere.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3 COLOR="#000000">Finally, it is the turn of the
body to become individualised, personalised, that is to say, when it
takes up the <I>disposition </I>and <I>configuration </I>of the
psychic person and individual. The first stage is that of a subtle
body individualised, a radiant form of etherealised elements
consisting of the concentrated light particles of the divine
consciousness of the Psyche. This too is an immortalisation of the
personal identity which can be achieved and is achieved by the
gnostic man who is to come, who will wholly psychicise and divinise
his personality. The second stage is the reorganisation and
individualisation of the material sheath itself. The very cells of
the body are impre&shy;gnated with the radiant substance of the
supreme spiritual consciousness; they live the life of the spiritual
individual, the personal divine embodied in the individual. When the
whole</FONT><BR>
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<span style="font-size:9pt;">Page – 289</span><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3 COLOR="#000000">process is gone through and the
work clone, the individual body, physically too, shares in and
attains the immortality of the soul. The body is firm enough to
maintain its physical identity and yet plastic enough to change in
the manner and to the degree demanded of it at any time.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3 COLOR="#000000">In the process of making the body
personal and divine and immortal, death or what appears as such may
be a needed operation. It is no longer an ineluctable destiny forced
upon you, but an instrument which you use consciously for a definite
purpose. It is a mystic or occult work <I>(kriy<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">Ä</FONT>)
</I>which we can try to understand by an analogy. The evolution of
the ideal or divine man, the assumption of the mortal by the immortal
involves a twofold operation: rejection and integration. Rejection
means throwing out the elements that belong exclusively to the lower
grade and cannot be taken up and incorporated into the higher; while
integration means taking up and absorbing utilisable elements of the
lower into the higher. This double process goes on on all the levels,
on the mental, on the vital, on the subtle physical and even on the
physical level. At a certain stage or in a concentrated process of
alchemy the process of rejection may demand a mode of reshuffling and
redisposition which physically appears like death, but it is
inevitably followed or accompanied by the process of integration or
recreation.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3 COLOR="#000000">Perhaps this supreme and dangerous
gesture only the Master can make-as the pioneer and pathfinder-and he
has made it.</FONT></P>
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<span style="font-size:10pt;">Page – 299</span></P>
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