The Soul Wanderers

Quotes of Wisdom: The Buddhist Cycle of Worlds

Our ideas about evolution are usually tied to the Earth, in particular, the living beings upon it. But we can also learn about the evolution of the universe at large: how it has developed over time to produce the world we live in. But what if this was all a small portion of what is really out there? What if the evolution of conscious beings took place across many different worlds in many universes? This is an idea from esoteric Buddhism, the inner doctrine of Buddhist philosophy that is usually hidden from the majority of monks (for more about esoteric Buddhism, see my previous post). The quote for today is:

From A. P. Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism (1883):
“The evolution of man is not a process carried out on this planet alone. It is a result to which many worlds in different conditions of material and spiritual development have contributed…The system of worlds is a circuit round which all individual spiritual entities have alike to pass; and that passage constitutes the Evolution of Man.”

These worlds form what Sinnett calls a planetary chain, consisting of worlds into which souls can incarnate in living beings. There are seven worlds (planets, globes, spheres…call them what you will), each with differing degrees of spirituality and materiality. Although they are physically far apart (likely in different universes), they are “bound together by subtle currents and forces” that the souls can travel through. The first world is entirely spiritual: there is no matter in it, but only spiritual forms that will later take shape physically. I like to think of this as the world of Plato’s Forms, though Sinnett doesn’t mention that.

As you progress through the chain, the worlds become more physical with the introduction of matter, which life energies are bound up in. On our world (Earth), spirit and matter are approximately equal, so we are at about the middle of the chain (4th world). The picture on the right illustrates this with the spiritual worlds at the top and more material worlds at the bottom.

Throughout this planetary chain, there is a flow of souls which Sinnett calls the “human tide-wave,” though a better term would be the “soul tide-wave” because these souls don’t always incarnate in humans. In any case, the tide-wave is the flow of the majority of souls between the worlds. The tide-wave only occupies one planet at a time, though some rare souls break apart from the tide-wave and have their own wave of evolution. On each planet, the souls pass through a series of incarnations and are able to develop throughout their lives on that planet. When the time is right to move to the next world (after the souls have passed through a series of seven “races” of humans [and by races, I mean stages of development, like Neanderthals, homo sapiens, etc.]), the souls are all ferried to the next world to start the process again. There is a limit to how much we can evolve on any particular world, and so this series of worlds, all with different physical and spiritual properties, serves as the vehicle for higher evolution beyond that which a single planet can provide. As A.P. Sinnett said, “The Darwinian theory of evolution is simply an independent discovery of a portion—unhappily but a small portion—of the vast natural truth.”

We don’t pass through the chain merely once, but many times, so we will return to Earth again after our present evolution here is complete (though only after we pass through the other worlds…which takes a while!). At each new round, the souls will progress to a higher stage of their development even though the world they incarnate in is less spiritual. So “there is a progress downwards, so to speak, in finish and materiality and consistency; and then, again, progress upward in spirituality as coupled with the finish which matter or materiality rendered possible.” So to develop spiritually, there needs to be some form of matter (the progress downward) in order to go back upward spiritually. An artists needs to not only have the idea of a perfect sculpture (spiritual world), but they also have to be able to build it (physical world) to truly be an artist.
To use another silly analogy, it’s like a bouncy ball: it starts out at, say, the height of your chest, and then you throw it down to the ground. When it bounces up, it goes even higher than it was originally, most likely soaring above your head. So there’s a sort of “rebound” for souls descending into matter: although it seems that going into more material worlds is devolving, it allows for the possibility of attaining higher spiritual development.

So there is a co-evolution between matter and spirit, and although it’s hardly fathomable to us, it’s easier to grasp when multiple worlds are taken into consideration. So our view of evolution on the Earth is incomplete without recourse to the other worlds we came from and the ones we are headed toward. Indeed, Sinnett believes that the primary driving force of evolution is the spiralling progress of souls upward, and so the evolution we perceive on Earth, with natural selection and survival of the fittest, is only a subset of this. The impulse of the Earth to develop higher forms for souls to incarnate into is initiated by the tide-wave from the previous planet. Evolution begins with inorganic substances and progresses to all forms of life. It is about developing organized forms, going through the minerals (inorganic substances), vegetables (all plants, really), and then animals. It is only in the animal kingdom, however, that forms are progressed enough to support the development of souls. In the mineral and vegetable stages, there is just one undifferentiated spiritual “monad” directing the evolution of the world.

And so, “in the scale of spiritual perfection it [the soul] is constantly ascending.” A nice way to visualize this is to have each world as a point on a 3-dimensional plot with space on one of the lower two axes, the spectrum of spirituality and materiality on the other, and time on the vertical axis (see pictures below). Of course, this represents 1-D space because to have 3-D space, you’d need 5 dimensions (which I can’t draw for the life of me), so this is just an analogy.

Imagine starting at the pink world on the very bottom, the most spiritual world, as seen by its position on the spirituality/materiality axis. The grey dots represent the tide-wave of souls travelling to the next world after their incarnations on the previous world is complete. These are those mysterious “subtle currents and forces.”

We progress upward in the spiral as time passes, going from one world to the next. So the souls travel through the worlds in loops, and additionally, the progress upward is simultaneously a progress toward higher forms of life in each of the worlds. The different colours represent the different world cycles: the souls starting in the first planet, say, planet A, progress to B, and so on until G, after which they return to planet A again (shown by the start of a new colour). These waves continue on to the next planet to help prepare for the next stage of life.

Now, although there’s always a wave of evolution progressing through these worlds, each planet will at times go into obscuration. This is when the animal and plant life slowly devolve without the great tide-wave to spur its evolution forward. Eventually, the world returns to the state it was in before the tide-wave of souls incarnated in it. A world is left in obscuration for considerable periods of time while the tide-wave makes its way through other worlds in the chain. However, the world will not become totally devoid of life. Let’s say that the tide-wave is on planet C, and that D is in obscuration from the previous cycle. Once the fourth race on planet C is concluded, planet D will begin to prepare to receive the tide-wave. First, during the fifth race on planet C, the mineral kingdom on planet D begins to evolve out of obscuration, and during the sixth race on C, the vegetable kingdom begins to evolve, followed by the animal kingdom, etc. So when the tide-wave of souls is ready to progress to planet D, human evolution has begun and is ready to take the souls into human form.

This means that the evolution on one planet is in direct connection to that on the next (and previous) planet. And since at each round, the souls progress to higher states of spirituality and refinement, despite obscuration, some developments from the previous cycle are preserved, for as Sinnett says, “there are processes of vital action which go on in the resting world even during the most profound depths of its repose. And these preserve, in view of the next return of the human life-wave, the results of the evolution that preceded its first arrival.” So there is some information, in the matter and spiritual properties of the world, that is preserved—or “remembered”—by the world through countless eons. We could thus say that the planet has a sort of memory, and perhaps (though this is more speculation) the beings that live in a particular world can tap into that memory and so learn of the previous cycles of life that have progressed on their planet. Indeed, perhaps this is how the Buddhist mystics discovered the planetary chain and the worlds that comprise it.

Currently, it is thought that we are in the fourth round of the tide-wave, and on Earth, we inhabit the fifth “race” of human beings (which supposedly began around a million years ago. The fourth race, according to Sinnett, was the Atlanteans). There are also seven sub-divisional races, and in each of these, seven branch races, which a soul incarnates in at least twice. So for each soul to make its way through all these incarnations takes a LONG time, especially considering that the soul goes into a state called Devachan between incarnations (which we won’t even get into in here!). Sinnett estimates that any given soul will have at least 800 lives (taking some other factors into account) on each world. Yet although these enormous periods of time are unimaginable to the human mind, this evolution does have an eventual end: it doesn’t go on indefinitely. To put it crudely, the end goal is for us to become gods.

Turning to recent times in this vast evolutionary scheme, physicists on our world have been grappling with the quantum world of subatomic particles and have postulated a multiverse to account for how quantum particles can appear to be in more than one place at the same time. But Buddhists (and the Ancient Greeks, and various other ancient cultures: see my previous post) already theories about a plethora of worlds well before modern physics came into existence. Although much of this is beyond that which we can hope to learn by scientific methods (e.g., how can we use physical science to learn about spiritual worlds when science is about understanding the physical world? This then falls under the realm of occult science, which deals with both), we might hope to catch a glimpse of it through our human science and philosophy.

So this is the general idea of the world cycles in esoteric Buddhism. It might sound far-fetched, but if those studying the occult sciences are correct, then the 200,000 years since humans have developed on Earth is hardly a drop in the vast ocean of all the lives that have existed and those that we are evolving toward in the future.

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Doctor Strange: Magic, Science, and Time

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The new movie Doctor Strange, besides being exciting and visually stunning, explores many fascinating ideas in philosophy, magic, and science, combining them all in an enormous mixing pot, and somehow, creating a great result in the end. There are many different ideas to discuss from the movie, but I’ll just focus on the nature of reality and time.

Note that everything written here is about the movie, not the comics (which I haven’t read), so it’s possible that some of these speculations are explored in more detail in the comics. And I won’t give away any (major) spoilers!

THE MULTIVERSE:

As the Ancient One* tells Strange, our universe is one of many in an infinite multiverse. This idea is not peculiar to contemporary physics, but has its roots in Buddhism and other cultures. For example, the ancient Buddhist text called the Avatamsaka Sutra (A.S.) describes countless “Buddha-fields” of worlds, each maintained by different gods/bodhisattvas. Some of these worlds are similar to our own, and others are vastly different. These worlds can also be seen as jewels in the metaphorical Indra’s net. Regarding Indra’s net, the A.S. says:

“Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions…the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each "eye" of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering like stars…If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring.”

The multiverse is Indra’s net: all the worlds are connected and interdependent. There is no “source” of reality, but every world mirrors every other world in a fractalling pattern of worlds within worlds within worlds. This is the Buddhist concept of dependent origination (the lack of a source of reality, so all things are co-created with all other things) as well as emptiness (that physical worlds are just reflections of other worlds, which are all just reflections of other worlds…yet again, there is no source).

Thus, with all these worlds connected, if we can access their connections via portals, we can transfer energy between them. This was seen in the movie, with sorcerers channeling energy from other worlds in order to perform great feats of magic.

Other ideas about the multiverse crop up throughout history. Here are a few examples:

Again from the A.S.: “What worlds are there herein? I’ll tell you. In these seas of fragrant waters, numerous as atoms in unspeakably many buddha-fields, rest an equal number of world systems. Each world system also contains an equal number of worlds. Those world systems in the ocean of worlds have various resting places, various shapes and forms, various substances and essences, various locations, various entryways, various adornments, various boundaries, various alignments, various similarities, and various powers of maintenance.”

From the Greek philosopher Democritus (460 – 370 B.C.): “There are worlds infinite in number and different in size. In some there is neither sun nor moon, on others there are more than one sun and moon. The distances between the worlds are unequal…Their destruction comes about through collision with one another.”

From the Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus (204 – 270): “The kosmos is like a net which takes all its life, as far as ever it stretches, from being wet in the water, and has no act of its own; the sea rolls away and the net with it, precisely to the full of its scope, for no mesh of it can strain beyond its set place: the soul is of so far-reaching a nature—a thing unbounded—as to embrace the entire body of the All in the one extension; so far as the universe extends, there soul is; and if the universe had no existence, the extent of soul would be the same; it is eternally what it is.”

From the Sufi poet Mahmoud Shabestari (1288 – 1340): “Know that the whole world is a mirror; in each atom are found a hundred blazing suns. If you split the center of a single drop of water, a hundred pure oceans spring forth. If you examine each particle of dust, a thousand Adams can be seen. A universe lies hidden in a grain of millet; everything is brought together at the point of the present.”

And one example (out of many) from current physics:

From Max Tegmark, physicist at MIT: “Accepting quantum mechanics to be universally true means that you should also believe in parallel universes.” (From this article)

Another important idea explored is the power which people have to change the world. Not just changing it via macroscopic cause and effect, but by altering the microscopic nature of reality itself. From what scientists have learned about the subatomic world, where quantum mechanics reigns supreme (as opposed to the larger world where we live in, where gravity is the master), we know that consciousness influences matter. We don’t fully understand how this happens, but it has been experimentally proven. For example, the very act of observation causes a particle to take on a precise value for its position, whereas normally, it is in no defined place, instead acting like a wave spread over a large region. There have also been experiments performed where people have consciously directed the outcome of a random event generator (see this book).

In the movie, we see this power of consciousness in the magic wielded by the sorcerers, as well as when the Ancient One tells Strange that “At the root of existence, mind and matter meet. Thoughts form reality.” This is something common to Buddhism (A.S.: “Mind is like an artist able to paint the worlds”), and is coming to be accepted in physics as well. At the base of reality, there is just energy, which can vibrate and produce particles with mass (thanks to the equivalence of mass and energy: E = mc^2).

Yet what is different in the movie is that the power the sorcerers wield arises not just from the power of their minds and the energies from this world, but accessing energies from other worlds through certain portals. Regarding this, the Ancient One says, “Through the mystic arts, we harness energy and shape reality.”

We also saw the astral body explored in the movie. The astral body is a spiritual duplicate of the human body. It is usually contained within the body, but it’s possible for it to detach from the body and travel elsewhere, temporarily or permanently (if permanently, then death will result). For more about the astral body, see my previous post. Here's an example of the Ancient One jolting Strange's astral body out of him:

Astral projection is found in many different spiritual traditions (as well as Buddhism! e.g., the A.S. says about great sages, “To all lands in the cosmos, countless, they can travel by projection, their bodies most subtle, beyond comparison.”) and many people have been able to today (e.g., see this video). The trick, of course, is to control this skill, and it is only then that people can develop the powers shown rather simplistically in the movie.

TIME:

Time is where the most confusion arises. I think it’s fair to say that Doctor Strange is a real Time Lord. By using a special device, he is able to manipulate time around particular objects and locations. For example, he experimented with bringing an apple backward and forward in time, causing it to be eaten and rot, then return to being whole. Likewise, he turned time back in an entire block of a city in Hong Kong, though he and a few other sorcerers are able to escape the effects of time.

Many issues arise from bending time in this manner. First, if you’re able to go forward or backward in time, what happens to your memories? It seems that the people who are subject to Strange’s time magic have no recollection of the future that Strange had “undone,” yet Strange and the other sorcerers are not subjected to this. They exist in a sort of temporal bubble where they physically go back in time with the rest of the people, but retain their memories and are not forced to “backtrack” whatever movements they have previously done.

This is either just some sort of magic, or, as I like to think, there are two sorts of time: the physical time, which is what our bodies are bound to as we progress through life, and which Strange can manipulate, as well as the mental time, which is the successive series of our thoughts, sensations, and memories that make us who we are. It could also be considered to be our “soul time”, since each soul has its own personal timeline that cannot be distorted by the physical events around it. So although most people, when subjected to a temporal back-track thanks to Doctor Strange, have their mental and physical times linked, meaning that their memories of the future are erased, sorcerers who can split their mental and physical timelines are able to physically turn back time without being affected by it mentally.

There is also the timeless world that the evil sorcerer Kaecilius wishes to find, where there is no death, etc. (typical promised land sort of thing), but if there really is no time whatsoever, then things can’t change. If there is no distinction between physical and mental time, then going to a timeless world would be the equivalent of entering an extreme coma: yes, your body is preserved, but you can’t think or sense anything. Thus, in order for Kaecilius’s wish to make sense (and maybe it just doesn’t: maybe he hasn’t thought it through), it has to be that he wants to go to a physically timeless world where his body will be preserved, but not a mentally timeless world, so that he will retain his sensations and consciousness and be able to interact with the world around him (albeit in a limited sense, since the physical objects can’t change).

Then there’s also the typical question of determinism and free will. If we travel to the future, is it to one of many possible futures, or is it to a certain future? And if you change the future, was that determined? Likewise, if you change the past, did that happen the “first time around”? We don’t really get any of these answers in the movie, but if the series continues (and it’s a Marvel movie, so of course it will), then hopefully we’ll see more about the effects of manipulating time and what it means for the conscious beings within it.

Well, there’s some food for thought. And that’s to say nothing about the dark dimension and Dormammu. To that end, I will end with a quote from the Ancient One:

“This universe is only one of an infinite number. Worlds without end; some benevolent and life-giving, others filled with malice and hunger. Dark places where powers older than time lie, ravenous and waiting.”

* The Ancient One is the master who teaches the protagonist, Doctor Strange. She is a sorcerer at the temple in Nepal.

Aizai the Forgotten is now available in paperback!

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You can now read Aizai in print! To get a copy, check out these links:

Amazon: Canada, United States
Muse it Up
Barnes and Noble

Quotes of Wisdom: Immortality in Ancient China

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The Chinese philosophy Taoism emphasizes the harmony of the universe and following the Tao, or the "Way." The Tao can be understood as the pervasive spirit of the universe that we must align with in order to live a good life. Also prevalent in Taoism are Immortals (hsiens) who have transcended physical limitations, attaining superhuman powers and the ability to travel to other worlds. The idea of immortality, however, has changed over time. In particular, there is what we can call "worldly immortality" as well as "otherworldly immortality." The change of otherworldly immortality to worldliness is explained in this paper:

From "Life and Immortality in The Mind of Han China" by Ying-shih Yu (1965):
"The whole development of immortality both as an idea and as a cult from its beginning in the late Warring-States period down through Han times may be best characterized by one word: worldliness...The process of the worldly transformation of immortality is particularly well illustrated by the changing views on the life of hsien immortals. In pre-Ch'in literature the hsien is portrayed only as a secluded individual wandering in the sky, in no way related to the human world. But in Han literature we begin to find that the hsien may sometimes also enjoy a settled life by bringing with him to paradise not only his family but also all his chattels of his human life."

First of all, for a sense of context, the Han dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China that lasted from 206 BC to 220 AD, though much of what is spoken of here is applicable to other periods of Chinese history.
To understand immortality, we must first look at longevity. Longevity is one of the most ancient desires sought after by the Chinese people. They have studied longevity and have striven to create drugs and other practices to prolong life, such as certain exercises (e.g., what is known as fetal breathing), abstaining from certain foods, meditation, and, strangely, by metamorphosing into a bird. This, however, is not the same as the later concept of a Taoist Immortal. Longevity is about extending your life to enjoy earthly things, even if it involves helping others or learning more; it is not about leaving the world to go to a higher place.
Such is the concept of "worldly immortality," extending our mortal life and what we have in it. It may involve living for long periods of time, hundreds of years, perhaps, though not indefinitely, so it's technically not immortality, though it was still called immortality in some periods. Magicians and philosophers such as the fangshi (see my previous post on the fangshi) were highly sought after by Emperors and princes who wanted to prolong their life, offering them such things as "drugs of no death" and promises of becoming immortal if they followed the guidance of the fangshi.
In contrast, "otherworldly immortality" involved becoming a true Immortal. Taoists believed that the Tao, or Heaven, produces life, and that the Earth nurtures it. The Earth is often associated with Te, or virtue, which is the way people must act in order to live in accordance with the Tao. Te is our inherent nature, which is tied to morality. When we truly live in accordance with our inner nature, we can become immortal, because the Tao is eternal, and aligning to the Tao can lead to personal immortality. Those who sought otherworldly immortality wanted to eventually leave Earth and live as a hsien immortal in higher worlds. These sages studied the esoteric arts, the hexagrams of the I Ching, and most often became recluses living away from human society in mountains or caves as they meditated and reflected upon the world. They could develop super-human powers, such as the enlightened monks who practice kung-fu, as commonly seen in movies where they have super-powers including the ability to fly.
The most well-known Immortals are the Eight Immortals, seen in the picture below:

The Eight Immortals appear in many Chinese legends, and have wild and fascinating stories written about them. They all, however, began their journey on Earth before attaining immortality, which they achieved by learning from a teacher such as the founder of Taoism, Lao-Tzu, studying themselves, and by using powerful devices such as a magical sword. There are also legends about immortals wandering about the sky and riding dragons and clouds. Of course, much of this is just legends, but the idea of attaining immortality is seen throughout Taoist philosophy.

The idea of true immortality came into existence much later in China than longevity, around the fourth century BC. Some people believe this idea was imported from other cultures (India? Egypt? I'm not entirely sure), though others hold the belief that it arose from extending the prevalent ideas of longevity. Attaining immortality and longevity often involved similar practices, such as meditation, martial arts, and the exercises previously spoken of. Yet otherworldly immortality focused on leaving the world rather than extending one's life within it. There is, however, a large overlap between the two notions.

During the Han period, the concept of worldly and otherworldy immortality blended together, largely due to the popularization of immortality by the fangshi, with promises that people could live forever by taking elixirs or engaging in peculiar activities. Thus, the otherworldly immortal became more "worldly," as we saw in the quote. Much of the spiritual nature of true immortality was lost by those engaging in elaborate means to become immortals while still retaining all their power and wealth on Earth. There was little interest in the otherworldly life of the true immortal. For example, the emperor Ch'in Shih Huang thought that there was a land of immortals past the Eastern sea, which he sent envoys to search for. This is different from the traditional idea of hsien immortality, which was not about finding a place of immortality on Earth, but ascending beyond it. In addition, Emperor Ch'end-ti had 683 sacrificial halls built with the hopes of meeting gods and hsien there. It is also thought that Emperor Han Wu-ti expanded his empire westward in order to find Mount K'un-lun where immortals lived, and he went to conquest the city Ferghana because they supposedly had "Heavenly Horses" which he believed could communicate with the hsien immortals for him. The traditional view of a reclusive, ascetic immortal was thus changed to someone who could still pursue worldly pleasures. So, as the author says, "the demarcation line between otherworldly and worldly immortality had become increasingly blurred." Indeed, even people who lived exceedingly long lives were often called immortals, which only furthered the shift of otherworldly to worldly immortals.

Yet despite this tension between the desire for worldly and more transcendent immortality, the concept of the true hsien immortal has been carried down through history. It is also similar to many other traditions that depict spiritual adepts with superhuman abilities, including the ability to live forever, in some cases, remaining in this world, or, in the ideal case, venturing beyond to a higher place.

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Quotes of Wisdom: Buddhist Human Constitution

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Most ancient religions and philosophies have a secret "esoteric" doctrine revealed to a select number of initiates, as well as an "exoteric" doctrine that is revealed to the common people. When it comes to Buddhism, the esoteric and exoteric principles are very similar, though there are some details of esoteric Buddhism that you won't see in most Buddhist texts, for example, what is known as the Septenary Constitution of Man, or the seven principles that constitute a human being. I read about this in the book Esoteric Buddhism by the Theosophist A. P. Sinnett. One particularly interesting quote is:

From A. P. Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism (1883):
"All things, not man alone, but every animal, plant, and mineral have their seven principles, and the highest principles of all--the seventh itself--vitalizes that continuous thread of life which runs all though evolution, uniting into a definite succession, the almost innumerable incarnations of that one life which constitute a complete series."

So first of all, what are the seven principles? Although they can be listed out as distinct principles, they are all intertwined, so bear in mind that listing them out fails to capture the connections between them. I'll call them by their English names and give the Hindu words in brackets:

1) The Body (Rupa)
2) Vitality (Prana or Jiva)
3) Astral Body (Linga Sharira)
4) Animal Soul (Kama Rupa)
5) Human Soul (Manas)
6) Spiritual Soul (Buddhi)
7) Spirit (Atma)

The first principle is simple: it's just the body, containing our organs, the molecules out of which they're formed, all the way down to the basic constituents of matter (mostly protons, neutrons, and electrons). On this level, everything is material: it is the matter that forms a human, the same matter that forms all physical objects such as plants, human or animal bodies, ice-cream, mountains, the air.

The second principle, vitality, is the start of life. It is organic matter. Like the body, it is still physical: it is the energy or force of a human. If we think of matter (m) and energy (E) as interchangeable (thank you, Einstein: E = mc^2), then the principle that vitalizes the body isn't distinct from the body, and is material as well. When the body of the living creature dies, the vitality is no longer united in the body but dissipates among the particles out of which the body was formed. This is because the higher principles that "hold the human being together" leave the body to reincarnate elsewhere, whereas the vitality doesn't undergo reincarnation.

The third principle, the astral body, is a step away from physicality. It is the etheric duplicate of the physical body, present in all living beings. It guides the second principle to form the shape of a human (or whatever other being it is), and it is in turn vitalized by the higher principles. The astral body only leaves the physical body at death, where it remains disembodied for a brief period before perishing. In some cases, mediums can separate their astral bodies while living, yet if it leaves the body permanently, the body will cease to be connected to the higher principles above and will die. This isn't, however, what is commonly known as "astral projection": in astral projection, the higher principles also travel out of the body, not just the etheric double of the body.

The first, second, and third principles all perish when a human being dies, though the higher principles, which we will look at shortly, are reincarnated in this world or another, continuing our spiritual life.

The fourth principle is the animal soul, also known as the vehicle of will. It isn't developed in living beings like plants, but only in animals (and hence, us). It includes emotions, passions, instincts, and sensations. It is focused on the material world and how we can gain pleasure and avoid pain. It is the instinctual part of our mind, the "id" if we're using Freudian terms. There is no intellectual thinking here, just instinct born of the natural world we live in.

The fifth principle, the human soul, involves thinking and individual consciousness. This is where our reason and memory lie. Those who are more enlightened have a more fully developed fifth principle. Most people are unable to connect with this part of themselves, or if they are, then it is rather as a slave to their fourth principle than as the rightful master over it. Yet just as individual people can be more fully evolved than others during the same time period, so too does the human species as a whole develop by evolution, and so as a whole, our species is still in the process of developing our fifth principle.

The sixth principle, or spiritual soul, is our spiritual consciousness that connects us to everything in the world, as well as forming the source of our morality and compassion. It is our individual soul, our "higher ego". Since our fifth principle is undeveloped, it goes without saying that our sixth principle is as well. The spiritual soul is the vehicle for the seventh principle, so can be seen as a more individualized spirit, because as we go down to lower principles, we become more individualized and more material.

The seventh principle is the spirit itself. It is undifferentiated, and in essence, is the same spirit in everything. It could also be considered to be God, Buddha, or the One, the most abstracted part of us. We cannot describe it, for to describe it as anything but simple and pure would be to assign characteristics to it, and as it has no counterpart in the physical world, we will always fall short in our descriptions.

There is much more that can be said about each of these principles, but this is the general idea.
Now, the quote above touches upon how the principles are linked. The seventh principle, the universal spirit, is what binds the principles within us. What makes all these principles constitute a human being (or whatever other creature your higher principles are incarnated in) is the seventh principle, because the lower principles can be seen as particular instances of the universal spirit. The higher principles are bound together through multiple incarnations, though the three lower ones (body, vitality, astral body) are different for particular lives.

To use a common analogy from many occult traditions, it is like white light being dispersed by a glass prism: although it is in essence pure white light, it can be split into many colours. Likewise, the universal spirit can be "dispersed" into many spiritual souls, which can then be further dispersed into human souls and so on. Although things like plants and minerals don't have their human and spiritual souls developed, these principles are still present, only in a dormant form.

Later on, Sinnett says that "matter exists in other states besides those which are cognizable by the five senses." This might make you wonder how we could call it "matter" at all, for matter is something that occupies space and volume, though spiritual substances do nothing of the sort. However, although "occupying space and volume" is our dictionary definition of matter, that doesn't mean that we understand the whole story. Similarly to how Newton's equations to describe gravity were found to be a simplification of Einstein's laws, it is very possible that the physical objects we see around us are only a small part of a more encompassing spectrum of things that exist. I won't call them all "matter," because the soul and spirit are included too, but they can all be considered to be on a spectrum.

Perhaps a good way to think about this is with electromagnetic radiation. We have always been able to see light, which is the visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum. But in reality, that is only a small part of what's out there. There is radiation of all other wavelengths, as seen below:

We know that these gamma rays, X-rays, UV rays, infrared rays, microwaves, and radio waves are just as real as visible light even though we can't see them. We just need other tools to detect them, "senses" other than sight. In this case, we have to rely on instruments to detect them, such as Geiger counters (for X-rays and gamma rays), radio antennas, phototransistors (infrared radiation), and many other more sophisticated technology.

Likewise, when it comes to matter and the spirit, it could very well be that matter is analogous to the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum, something we can perceive with the five physical senses. But this is very limited, because there is so much more out there that we can't perceive. Instead, we have to develop spiritual senses to detect them (which is analogous to the technology we had to develop to perceive other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum). These tools are spiritual senses cultivated through spiritual practices such as meditation, astral projection, visions, etc. This is what Sinnett calls the "missing link between materialism and spirituality," namely, that nothing in the universe is wholly material and nothing is wholly immaterial, but all are linked as in a spectrum (he didn't make the spectrum analogy, but I don't think he would have objected). So these seven principles of man are, in essence, the same thing, though have different qualities based on where they are in the spectrum.
This also provides the answer (at least, part of the answer) to the age-old question of how something immaterial (e.g., the soul) can interact with something material (e.g., the body). It is because they are all made of the same "stuff", but just in different proportions, with matter at one end of the spectrum and spirit on the other. This is what Sinnett referred to as matter existing in other states that we can't perceive by the five senses. And since the same kinds of thing can interact with themselves, as we see in the physical world where matter interacts by the four forces (gravity, electromagnetism, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force), the different principles can also interact with one another.

So we shouldn't be surprised that human beings are so much more than simple matter and energy. Once we, as a species, come to understand what these mystics and philosophers have discovered, we can more fully appreciate our place in the universe and where we are headed in our spiritual evolution.

*Note: The book I quoted from is available online for free here. It's a fascinating book and I'd highly recommend it. One thing to bear in mind is that some other writers make the distinctions of seven principles slightly differently, with the astral body before the vitality, but I think Sinnett's classification makes more sense.