VII.
ON THE VARIOUS POST MORTEM STATES.
THE PHYSICAL AND THE SPIRITUAL MAN.
Enq. I am glad to hear you believe in the immortality of the Soul.
Theo. Not of “the Soul,” but of the divine Spirit; or rather in the immortality of the reincarnating Ego.
Enq. What is the difference?
Theo. A very great one in our philosophy, but this is too abstruse and difficult a question to touch lightly upon. We shall have to analyse them separately, and then in conjunction. We may begin with Spirit.
We say that the Spirit (the “Father in secret” of Jesus), or Atman, is no individual property of any man, but is the Divine essence which has no body, no form, which is imponderable, invisible and indivisible, that which does not exist and yet is, as the Buddhists say of Nirvana. It only overshadows the mortal; that which enters into him and pervades the whole body being only its omnipresent rays, or light, radiated through Buddhi, its vehicle and direct emanation. This is the secret meaning of the assertions of almost all the ancient philosophers, when they said that “the rational part of man’s soul”[25] never entered wholly into the man, but only overshadowed him more or less through the irrational spiritual Soul or Buddhi.[26]
Enq. I laboured under the impression that the “Animal Soul” alone was irrational, not the Divine.