Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. II (the Corpus Hermeticum) — G. R. S. Mead (1906)
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This is precisely the same idea as that of the Jlvanmukta in Indian theosophy — namely, the man who has reached Mukti or Liberation while still living in the body.
Hermes thus proceeds to distinguish Gnosis, the end of human science, from sense or opinion. Gnosis is the apotheosis of the mind, its immediate perception of the things-that-are — namely, the Intelligible Cosmos.
11. The Sensible or Hylic Cosmos is then explained, and also the nature of man, and his relationship to the Cosmos and God.
THE VEHICLES OF THE SOUL
13. The vehicles of man's " Soul " are then categorized (fax*! $£ avOpwTrov oxelrai rov rpoirov TOVTOV), the Soul being here used in the sense of the Self, and as distinguished from the " soul " in the category. They are as follows, one within the other, in the sense of being respectively more intimate to the true nature of man :
Mind (you?) ; reason (Xo'yo?) ; soul (^jrvxn) ', spirit
( TTvevjma) ; body (a-co/ma).
The remarkable similarity of this category with the psychology of the Upanishads cannot fail to strike the student of those mother-treatises of Vaidik theosophy. Thus we read in the Kathopanishad, I. iii. 10, 11 :
" Beyond the senses are the rudiments l ; beyond the rudiments impulsive mind; beyond the mind, the reason ; beyond the reason, the Great Self.
"Beyond the Great, the Increate2; beyond the
Increate, the Man 3 ; beyond the Man, not any thing ;
That is the goal; That is the final end."
The analogy is striking. Body = gross elements ; spirit = subtle elements ; soul = impulsive mind (manas)', reason = reason (buddhi*)', Mind = the Great (Mahat); Source (axp?i) = the Increate; the One and Only (TO ev KCU juoVoy) = the Man.
These so-called " vehicles," " envelopes," or " sheaths " (koshas), are elsewhere given in the Upanishads as: anna-may a-kosha — that is, the kosha composed of, or resulting from, food (body); prana-maya-k., of life (spirit) ; mano-maya-k., of impulse (soul) ; vijnanamaya-k., of discrimination (reason); ananda-maya-k., of bliss (Mind).
" Spirit " is thus seen to correspond to life (prdna) ; it is that which "bestows upon the living creature motion, and, as it were, doth bear it " (i.e. support it) " in a way" (§ 13). It is not Life, but individualized
1 The subtler elements.
2 Avyakta, undifferentiated cosmic substance.
3 Purusha, the True Man.
4 The manas and buddhi of the Upanishads are not to be confounded with these terms as at present employed in modern Theosophical literature.
life, and in the Aupanishad literature is differentiated into five modes, which may be almost translated as etheric currents or modes of motion in the body.1
The quotation from Proclus in " Plato Concerning Metempsychosis," will have sufficiently shown that this " life " is of the same nature as the animal life. It is that principle of soul which man shares with the animals.
THE DUAL SOUL
And here we may refer to Jamblichus (De Myst., viii. 6), when referring to the " Hermaic writings " he says :
" Man has two souls, as these writings say. The one is from the first Mind, and partakes also of the power of the Creator, while the other, the soul under constraint, comes from the revolution of the celestial [spheres] ; into the latter the former, the soul that is the seer of God,2 insinuates itself at a later period.
" This being so, the soul that descends into us from the worlds [or spheres] keeps time with the circuit of these worlds, while the soul from the Mind existing in us in an intelligible fashion is free from the whirl of genesis; by this the bonds of Destiny are burst asunder ; by this the Path up to the Gods whom mind alone can see is brought to birth; by such a life as this is that Great Art Divine, which leads us up to That beyond the spheres of genesis, brought to its consummation."
Hermes in our treatise is, however, more precise as to the so-called " vehicles " or " souls," for he writes (§ 17) :
"Mind taketh, then, the soul for, as it were, an envelope. And soul itself being, too, a thing divine,1 doth use the spirit as its envelope, while spirit doth pervade the living creature." 2
1 Of. K. K.t 44, 45, Comment.
2 Of. C. H., ix. (x.) 3 : "The daimon who's illumined by God's Light."
"HE WHO STANDS"