Why, she [Mrs Kingsford] confounds “Soul and Spirit”, refuses to discriminate between the animal and the spiritual Egos, the Jiv-atma (or Linga-Sharir) and the Kama-rupa (or Atma-rupa), two as different things as body and mind, and – mind and thought are!

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 18, Chronological Edition or Letter 64, Barker Numbering.]

The worlds of effects are not lokas or localities. They are the shadow of the world of causes, their souls – worlds having like men their seven principles which develop and grow simultaneously with the body. Thus the body of man is wedded to and remains for ever within the body of his planet; his individual jivatma life principle, that which is called in physiology animal spirits returns after death to its source – Fohat; his linga shariram will be drawn into Akasa; his Kamarupa will recommingle with the Universal Sakti – the Will-Force, or universal energy; his “animal soul” borrowed from the breath of Universal Mind will return to the Dhyan Chohans; his sixth principle – whether drawn into or ejected from the matrix of the Great Passive Principle must remain in its own sphere – either as part of the crude material or as an individualized entity to be reborn in a higher world of causes. The seventh will carry it from the Devachan and follow the new Ego to its place of re-birth. ...

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 44, Chronological Edition or Letter 119, Barker Numbering.]

Thibetan - Zer (vital ray
Sanscrit - Prana: Jivatma
English - Life-principle

[Letters from H.P. Blavatsky to A.P. Sinnett, p510]

True, Theosophy shrinks from brutal materialization; it prefers believing that, from eternity retired within itself, the Spirit of the Deity neither wills nor creates; but that, from the infinite effulgency everywhere going forth from the Great Centre, that which produces all visible and invisible things is but a Ray containing in itself the generative and conceptive power, which, in its turn produces that which the Greeks called Macrocosm, the Kabalists Tikkun or Adam Kadmon – the archetypal man, and the Aryans Purusha, the manifested Brahm, or the Divine Male. Theosophy believes also in the Anastasis or continued existence, and in transmigration (evolution) or a series of changes in the soul which can be defended and explained on strict philosophical principles; and only by making a distinction between Paramatma (transcendental, supreme soul) and Jivatma (animal, or conscious soul) of the Vedantins.

[C.W.II, p91-2]

“The Yogi is able to enter a dead or a living body by the path of the senses, and in this body to act as though it were his own.” The “path of the senses” – our physical senses supposed to originate in the astral body, the ethereal counterpart of man, or the jiv-atma, which dies with the body – the senses are here meant in their spiritual sense – volition of the higher principle in man.

[C.W.II, p467]

Well – these the Yoga-philosophy characterizes as the Supreme spirit and the human spirit – the Paramatma and Jivatma. The relationship between the Supreme Spirit and the human spirit varies according to the Vedic creed and Yoga-philosophy.

[C.W.III, p106]

[Of the principle which Subba Row calls the Jivatma, and which he says is represented by the sign Sinha, or the Lion:]

In its lowest or most material state, as the life-principle which animates the material bodies of the animal and vegetable worlds, etc.

[Of Subba Row’s statement that the sign Sinha, or the Lion, also represents “the real Christ, the anointed pure spirit, though the missionaries may frown at this interpretation”:]

Nevertheless it is a true one. The Jivatma in the Microcosm (man) is the same spiritual essence which animates the Macrocosm (universe), the differentiation, or specific difference between the two Jivatmas presenting itself but in the two states or conditions of the same and one Force. Hence, “this son of Paramatma” is an eternal correlation of the Father-Cause, Purusha manifesting himself as Brahmâ of the “golden egg” and becoming Viraj – the universe.

[C.W.III, p325-6]

IV. The entity evolved out of the combin-ation of Brahman, Sakti and Prakriti.
Jivatma (Life Soul).

[C.W.III, p407]

IV. Brahman, Sakti and Prakriti. – This again corresponds to your second principle, Jivatma. This power represents the universal life-principle which exists in nature. Its seat is the Anahatachakra (heart). It is a force or power which constitutes what is called Jiva, or life. It is, as you say, indestructible, and its activity is merely transferred at the time of death to another set of atoms, to form another organism. But it is not called Jivatma in our philosophy. The term Jivatma is generally applied by our philosophers to the seventh principle when it is distinguished from Paramatma or Parabrahman.

[C.W.III, p409-10]

If the Aryan esotericism applies the term jivatma to the seventh principle, the pure and per se unconscious spirit – it is because the Vedanta postulating three kinds of existence – (1) the paramarthika (the true, the only real one), (2) the vyavaharika (the practical), and (3) the pratibhasika (the apparent or illusory life) – makes the first life or jiva, the only truly existent one. Brahma or the ONE SELF is its only representative in the universe, as it is the universal life in toto while the other two are but its “phenomenal appearances,” imagined and created by ignorance, and complete illusions suggested to us by our blind senses.

[C.W.III, p422]

The word jiva then, could never be applied by the Arahats to the Seventh Principle, since it is only through its correlation or contact with matter that Fo-hat (the Buddhist active energy) can develop active conscious life; and that to the question “how can Unconsciousness generate consciousness?” the answer would be: “Was the seed which generated a Bacon or a Newton self-conscious?”

[C.W.III, p423]

This, we hasten to say, is wholly due to the carelessness, probably to the ignorance of the English language, and perchance to an unwillingness on the part of the “inspirers” of that particular Fragment to give out more of the doctrine than was strictly necessary – rather than to any fault of the scribe. It was a first attempt to acquaint the public at large with a philosophy which had been for long centuries hidden in the fastnesses of the Himalayan mountains and in the southern Asramas, and it was not settled at that time that Fragment No.1 should be followed by a regular series of other Fragments. Thus it was, that the second or vital Principle in man (Life) is therein named Jivatma instead of Jiva, and left to stand without the explanation that the esoteric Buddhists or Arhats, recognizing but one life, ubiquitous and omnipresent, call by the name of “Jiv,” the manifested life, the second principle; and by Atman or Jivatman, the seventh principle or unmanifested life; whereas the Vedantees give the name but to the seventh and identify it with Paramatman or Parabrahm.

[C.W.IV, p547]

It would have been absurd upon its face to say anything immortal and purely spiritual, anything that is identical with, and of the same essence as the Paramatman or the one LIFE, can “disappear” or perish. The Occultist and the Vedantee – especially the highly philosophical Advaitee – know that the neutral, sexless, and passive Paramatman and its ray the Jivatman which can be manifested only through its connection with object and form, does not, nor can it “disappear” or “perish” as a totality; but that both the words relating to the Manas or antaskarana, those organs of personal conscious sense which belonging only to the body are quite distinct from the spiritual soul -- mean no more than the temporary withdrawal of the ray from the manifested, back into the unmanifested world; and that this soul in short, which is said to have disappeared and perished, is not the eternal total Individuality, but the temporary personality, one of the numberless beads strung on the rosary, the long thread of the manifested lives.

[C.W.IV, p548]

This meaning can be fully realized only by him who has a full knowledge of Prana, the ONE LIFE, “the nave to which are attached the seven spokes of the Universal Wheel.” (Hymn to Prana, Atharva-Veda, XI, 4.)

Even European Orientalists agree that all the systems in India assign to the human body: (a) an exterior or gross body (Sthulasarira); (b) an inner or shadowy body (sukshma), or linga-sarira (the vehicle), the two cemented with -- (c) life (jiv or karana-sarira,“causal body”) .... The Nyaya philosophy when treating of Prameyas (by which the objects and subjects of Prama are to be correctly understood) includes among the 12 the seven “root principles” (See IXth Sutra),...

[C.W.IV, p579-80]

The seven Padarthas (enquiries or predicates of existing things) of Kanada in the Vaiseshikas, refer in the occult doctrine to the seven qualities or attributes of the seven principles. Thus: (1) Substance (dravya) – refers to body or sthulasarira; (2) Quality or property (guna) to the life principle jiv; (3) Action or act (karman) to the Linga sarira; (4) Community or commingling of properties (Samanya) to Kamarupa; (5) Personality or conscious individuality (Visesha) to Manas; (6) Co-inherence or perpetual intimate relation (Samavaya) to Buddhi, the inseparable vehicle of Atman; (7) Nonexistence or non-being (abhava) in the sense of, and as separate from, objectivity or substance – to the highest monad or Atman.

[C.W.IV, p580]

Really, what does he [Subba Row] know of the “Jivatman,” he who speaks of “the pretended translation which follows” the Sanskrit terms, and who does not know that the Jiva or the “life” of the Occultists and the Jiva or Jivatman (the only life or living soul) of the Vedantins are two ideas quite distinct one from the other, and who does not know that the Occultists call the second principle – Life – while the Vedantins, who do not recognize the Universal Life as the only Reality, and consider all the other Jivas (or lives) as illusory, give that name only to the seventh principle -- the divine monad in man – whose identity with the Parabrahm they maintain, in opposition to the Dwaita Vedantins who regard the human soul as distinct from the universal soul.

[C.W.V, p41]

Jivatma is the 7th principle with the Vedantees and the Theosophists have agreed to use it but in the latter sense.

[C.W.V, p117]

This assertion is only true in the sense that Parabrahman or Adi-Buddha is eternally manifesting itself as Jivatma (7th principle) or Avalokiteswara.

[C.W.VI, p179]

Is not the energy that becomes dormant life in the particles of the dead body a lower form of energy than the Kinetic energy, which passes off elsewhere; and although during the life of a man they appear mixed up together, are they not two distinct forms of` energy, united only for the time being?

A student of occultism writes as follows:
. . . . Jivatma . ... is subtle supersensuous matter, permeating the entire physical structure of the living being, and when it is separated from such structure life is said to become extinct. ... A particular set of conditions is necessary for its connection with an animal structure, and when those conditions are disturbed, it is attracted by other bodies, presenting suitable conditions.

[C.W.IX, p77]

The Root that grows in the ocean of life is the potentiality that transforms into objective differentiated matter the universal, subjective, ubiquitous but homogeneous germ, or the eternal essence which contains the potency of abstract nature. The Ocean of Life is, according to a term of the Vedanta philosophy – if I mistake not – the “One Life,” Paramatma, when the transcendental supreme Soul is meant; and Jivatma, when we speak of the physical and animal “breath of life” or, so to speak, the differentiated soul, that life in short, which gives being to the atom and the universe, the molecule and the man, the animal, plant, and mineral.

[C.W.X, p369]

But how can a Vedantin speak of Jivas as though these were separate entities and independent of JIVATMA, the one universal soul! This is a purely Visishtadwaita doctrine which asserts that Jivatma is different in each individual from that in another individual? He asks “why paranirvana could not be attained by any jiva at any time.” We answer that if by “jiva” he means the “Higher Self” or the divine ego of man, only – then we say it may reach Nirvana, not Paranirvana, but even this, only when one becomes Jivanmukta, which does not mean “at any time.” But if he understands by “Jiva” simply the one life which, the Visishta¬dwaitas say, is contained in every particle of matter, separating it from the sarira or body that contains it, then, we do not understand at all what he means. For, we do not agree that Parabrahm only pervades every Jiva, as well as each particle of matter, but say that Parabrahm is inseparable from every Jiva, as from every particle of matter since it is the absolute, and that IT is in truth that Jivatma itself crystallized – for want of a better word.

[C.W.XI, p468]

--oOo--