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and feelings, remain in Kamaloka, and occasionally appear, without a substantial vehicle, however ethereal? Or are we to give up the seven principles, and the belief that there is such a thing as an astral body, and a bhoot, or spook?
Most decidedly not. For Mr. Subba Row himself once more explains how, from the Hindu standpoint, the lower fifth, or Manas, can re-appear after death, remarking very justly, that it is absurd to call it a disembodied spirit. "Five Years of Theosophy," p. 174.) As he says: "It is merely a power, or force, retaining the impressions of the thoughts or ideas of the individual into whose composition it originally entered. It sometimes summons to its aid the Kamarupa power, and creates for itself some particular, etherial form."
Now that which "sometimes summons" Kamarupa, and the "power" of that name make already two principles, two "powers"—call them as you will. Then we have Atma and its vehicle—Buddhi—which make four. With the three which disappeared on earth this will be equivalent to seven. How can we, then, speak of modern Spiritualism, of its materalizations and other phenomena, without resorting to the Septenary.
To quote our friend and much respected brother for the last time, since he says that "our (Aryan) philosophers have associated seven occult powers with the seven principles (in men and in the kosmos), which seven occult powers correspond in the microcosm with, or are counterparts of, occult powers in the macrocosm."*[1]—quite an esoteric sentence,—it does seem almost a pity, that words pronounced in an ex tempore lecture, though such an able one, should have been published without revision.
- ↑ * "Brahmanism on the Sevenfold Principle in Man."
