Chapter 724

[←715]

It is said by the incarnate Logos, Krishna, in the Bhagavad Gîtâ, “The seven great Rishis, the four preceding Manus, partaking of my nature, were born from my mind: from them sprang [emanated or were born] the human race and the world” (x. 6).

Here, by the seven Great Rishis, the seven great Rûpa Hierarchies or Classes of Dhyân Chohans, are meant. Let us bear in mind that the seven Rishis, Saptarshi, are the Regents of the seven stars of the Great Bear, and therefore, of the same nature as the Angels of the Planets, or the seven Great Planetary Spirits. They were all reborn as men on Earth in various Kalpas and Races. Moreover, “the four preceding Manus” are the four Classes of the originally Arûpa Gods—the Kumâras, the Rudras, the Asuras, etc.; who are also said to have incarnated. They are not Prajâpatis, as are the first, but their informing “principles”—some of which have incarnated in men, while others have made other men simply the vehicles of their “reflections.” As Krishna truly says—the same words being repeated later by another vehicle of the Logos—”I am the the same to all beings ... those who worship me [the sixth principle or the divine Intellectual Soul, Buddhi, made conscious by its union with the higher faculties of Manas] are in me, and I am in them.” (Ibid., x. 29.) The Logos, being no “personality” but the Universal Principle, is represented by all the divine Powers, born of its Mind—the pure Flames, or, as they are called in Occultism, the “Intellectual Breaths”—those Angels who are said to have made themselves independent, i.e., passed from the passive and quiescent, into the active state of Self-Consciousness. When this is recognized, the true meaning of Krishna becomes comprehensible. But see Mr. Subba Row’s excellent Lecture on the Bhagavad Gîtâ (Theosophist, April, 1887, p. 444).