8. Mâno—pride.
9. Uddhachcha—agitation or irritability.
10. Avijjâ—ignorance.
On this we may remark that the casting off of Rûparâga involves not only getting rid of desire for earthly life, however grand or noble that life may be, and astral or devachanic life, however glorious, but also of all liability to be unduly influenced or repelled by the external beauty or ugliness of any person or thing.
Arûparâga—desire for life either in the highest and formless planes of the heaven-world or in the still more exalted buddhic plane—would be merely a higher and less sensual form of selfishness, and must be cast off just as much as the lower. Uddhachcha really means “liability to be disturbed in mind,” and a man who had finally cast off this fetter would be absolutely unruffled by anything whatever that might happen to him—perfectly impervious to any kind of attack upon his dignified serenity.
The getting rid of ignorance of course implies the acquisition of perfect knowledge—practical omniscience as regards our planetary chain. When all the fetters are finally cast off the advancing ego reaches the fifth stage—the stage of full adeptship—and becomes
V. Asekha, “the one who has no more to learn,” again as regards our planetary chain. It is quite impossible for us to realize at our present level what this attainment means. All the splendor of the nirvâṇic plane lies open before the waking eyes of the adept, while when he chooses to leave his body he has the power to enter upon something higher still—a plane which to us is the merest name. As Professor Rhys Davids explains, “He is now free from all sin; he sees and values all things in this life at their true value; all evil being rooted from his mind, he experiences only righteous desires for himself, and tender pity and regard and exalted love for others.”
To show how little he has lost the sentiment of love, we read in the Metta Sutta of the state of mind of one who stands at this level: “As a mother loves, who even at the risk of her own life protects her only son, such love let there be toward all beings. Let good will without measure prevail in the whole world, above, below, around, unstinted, unmixed with any feeling of differing or opposing interests. When a man remains steadfastly in this state of mind all the while, whether he be standing or walking, sitting or lying down, then is come to pass the saying which is written, ‘Even in this life has holiness been found.’”
CHAPTER XVII.
What Lies Beyond.
Beyond this period it is obvious that we can know nothing of the new qualifications required for the still higher levels which yet lie before the perfect man. It is abundantly clear, however, that when a man has become Asekha he has exhausted all the possibilities of moral development, so that further advancement for him can only mean still wider knowledge and still more wonderful spiritual powers. We are told that when man has thus attained his spiritual majority, whether in the slow course of evolution or by the shorter path of self-development, he assumes the fullest control of his own destinies, and makes choice of his future line of evolution among seven possible paths which he sees opening before him.