the key to theosophy…

“Mr. Kingsland:  Does Atma accumulate experiences?

 
Mr. Old:  No! But you have got hold of the idea that it is only accumulated experience that we know.

 
Mr. Kingsland:  It is only accumulated experience which is our intuition.

 
Mme. Blavatsky:  How can you give experience to that which is absolute? How is it possible to fall into such a philosophical error as that? The Atma no more belongs to you than to this lamp; it is common property.

 
Mr. Old:  Every higher self is, so to speak, the manifested end of a ray.

 
Mme. Blavatsky:  It is not; it is the Manas itself.

 
Mr. Old:  There is the individual logos, as well as the universal logos.

 
Mme. Blavatsky:  Not at all. It is simply that Atma and Buddhi cannot be predicated as having anything to do with a man, except that man is immersed in them; so long as he lives he is overshadowed by these two; but it is no more the property of that than of anything else.

 
Mr. Old:  This is identifying Atman with Jiva.

 
Mme. Blavatsky:  I beg a thousand pardons. Jiva and Atma are one, only Jiva is this end, and Atma at the highest end; but you cannot make the difference in England. It would have a meaning for the Sanskrit, but not in the European languages, or any of them, because there is but one essence in the universe, and this has neither beginning or end, and the various shadows or rays of that absoluteness during the period of differentiation, this is that which makes it the final essence of everything, and of man.”

 
H. P. Blavatsky