Now the Linga Sharîra remains with the Physical Body, and fades out along with it. An astral entity then has to be created, a new Linga Sharîra provided, to become the bearer of all the past Tanhas and future Karma. How is this accomplished? The mediumistic Spook, the “departed angel,” fades out and vanishes also in its turn[826] as an entity or full image of the personality that was, and leaves in the Kâmalokic world of effects only the record of its misdeeds and sinful thoughts and acts, known in the phraseology of Occultists as Tânhic or human Elementals. Entering into the composition of the Astral Form of the new body, into which the Ego, upon its quitting the Devachanic state, is to enter according to Karmic decree, the Elementals form that new astral entity which is born within the Auric Envelope, and of which it is often said:
Bad Karma waits at the threshold of Devachan, with its army of Skandhas.[827]
For no sooner is the Devachanic state of reward ended, than the Ego is indissolubly united with (or rather follows in the track of) the new Astral Form. Both are Karmically propelled towards the family or woman from whom is to be born the animal child chosen by Karma to become the vehicle of the Ego which has just awakened from the Devachanic state. Then the new Astral Form, composed partly of the pure Akâshic Essence of the Auric Egg, and partly of the terrestrial elements of the punishable sins and misdeeds of the last personality, is drawn into the woman. Once there, Nature models the fœtus of flesh around the Astral, out of the growing materials of the male seed in the female soil. Thus grows out of the essence of a decayed seed the fruit or eidolon of the dead seed, the physical fruit producing in its turn within itself another, and other seeds for future plants.
And now we may return to the Tattvas, and see what they mean in nature and man, showing thereby the great danger of indulging in fancy, amateur Yoga, without knowing what we are about.
The Tâttvic Correlations and Meaning.
In Nature, then, we find seven Forces, or seven Centres of Force, and everything seems to respond to that number, as for instance, the septenary scale in music, or Sounds, and the septenary spectrum in Colours. I have not exhausted its nomenclature and proofs in the earlier volumes, yet enough is given to show every thinker that the facts adduced are no coincidences, but very weighty testimony.
There are several reasons why only five Tattvas are given in the Hindu systems. One of these I have already mentioned; another is that owing to our having reached only the Fifth Race, and being (so far as Science is able to ascertain) endowed with only five senses, the two remaining senses that are still latent in man can have their existence proven only on phenomenal evidence which to the Materialist is no evidence at all. The five physical senses are made to correspond with the five lower Tattvas, the two yet undeveloped senses in man; and the two forces, or Tattvas, forgotten by Brâhmans and still unrecognized by Science, being so subjective and the highest of them so sacred, that they can only be recognized by, and known through, the highest Occult Sciences. It is easy to see that these two Tattvas and the two senses (the sixth and the seventh) correspond to the two highest human principles, Buddhi and the Auric Envelope, impregnated with the light of Âtmâ. Unless we open in ourselves, by Occult training, the sixth and seventh senses, we can never comprehend correctly their corresponding types. Thus the statement in Nature's Finer Forces that, in the Tâttvic scale, the highest Tattva of all is Âkâsha[828] (followed by [only] four, each of which becomes grosser than its predecessor), if made from the Esoteric standpoint, is erroneous. For once Âkâsha, an almost homogeneous and certainly universal Principle, is translated Ether, then Âkâsha is dwarfed and limited to our visible Universe, for assuredly it is not the Ether of Space. Ether, whatever Modern Science makes of it, is differentiated Substance; Âkâsha, having no attributes save one—Sound, of which it is the substratum—is no substance even exoterically and in the minds of some Orientalists,[829] but rather Chaos, or the Great Spatial Void.[830]
Esoterically, Âkâsha alone is Divine Space, and becomes Ether only on the lowest and last plane, or our visible Universe and Earth. In this case the blind is in the word “attribute,” which is said to be Sound. But Sound is no attribute of Âkâsha, but its primary correlation, its primordial manifestation, the Logos, or Divine Ideation made Word, and that “Word” made “Flesh.” Sound may be considered an “attribute” of Âkâsha only on the condition of anthropomorphizing the latter. It is not a characteristic of it, though it is certainly as innate in it as the idea “I am I” is innate in our thoughts.
Occultism teaches that Âkâsha contains and includes the seven Centres of Force, therefore the six Tattvas, of which it is the seventh, or rather their synthesis. But if Âkâsha be taken, as we believe it is in this case, to represent only the exoteric idea, then the author is right; because, seeing that Âkâsha is universally omnipresent, following the Paurânic limitation, for the better comprehension of our finite intellects, he places its commencement only beyond the four planes of our Earth Chain,[831] the two higher Tattvas being as concealed to the average mortal as the sixth and seventh senses are to the materialistic mind.
Therefore, while Sanskrit and Hindu Philosophy generally speak of five Tattvas only, Occultists name seven, thus making them correspond with every septenary in Nature. The Tattvas stand in the same order as the seven macro- and micro-cosmic Forces: and as taught in Esotericism, are as follows: