Clapping with One Hand
Mental Constructs: How Do They Affect You?
This old Zen koan, like others of its kind, invites us to break our mental schemes. How can palms clap if one of the hands is missing?
Our entire mental construction rests upon fundamental structures such as time and space. But what happens if those structures are not present in our mind? In an experiment conducted with certain animals, they were deprived from birth, through artificial means, of a portion of the three-dimensional vision of the world. That is, they were allowed to see only vertical lines and no horizontal ones, or only horizontal and no vertical ones. The unfortunate subjects of the experiment (for which someone should be held accountable) could not move correctly: they fell and were unable to adopt a stable posture. In the first moments of life, we need to “structure” the world around us; if we do not, it is like waking up in a parallel universe where dimensions do not exist as we know them.
There are, therefore, mental structures that we acquire shortly after birth through our first experiences. A newborn does not “know” anyone; later, they recognize the mother. First, there is the mother and “the other,” the undifferentiated universe. Then another figure appears—that which we call “the father”—and the recognition of the external world gradually awakens, although we frequently die without ever fully understanding it.
According to tradition—the Platonic one, for example—rather than learning to recognize the world, we gradually lose consciousness of the infinite and the multiple from whence we come, reducing it to the small drawer of the material world. Throughout our maturation, we limit it even further: man or woman, child or elder, pensioner, employee, Christian, Muslim, sinner, ascetic, mystic… and who knows how many more labels. Our mental drawer does not expand; we simply add sub-drawers, classifications, and new limitations.
When someone speaks to us of mystic-philosophical questions that fall outside those drawers, we tend to reject them and even become angry. “What are you talking about? I don’t understand you. Too complex. What a bore!”
In That Then Nothing Existed
Well, today we are going to dedicate ourselves precisely to that: breaking the drawers. We continue with our beloved The Secret Doctrine, specifically its most difficult part: Cosmogenesis, or how it all began. The first stanzas, or slokas, attempt to explain something that does not fit into our schemes. Let us look at what Sloka 4 says:
«The seven ways to bliss were not. The great causes of misery were not, for there was no one to produce and get ensnared by them.»
In this world, we all seek happiness in one way or another. For many, it consists of satisfying physical needs—including money—such as hunger, thirst, sleep, and rest. But the text speaks of a different bliss, one more lasting and more true.
That bliss is the cessation of the pain that besets us daily. Not in a dramatic sense. For these philosophers, pain is not the prick of a needle or a physical blow, but a constant dissatisfaction, a restlessness that does not cease, a permanent disquiet: the opposite of serenity. It is that force that drives us from the moment we wake up to do something: drink coffee, shower, anticipate problems, remember arguments, activate our manias… and so many other daily “amenities” that do not leave us in peace, dragging us from one side to another throughout our entire lives.
The final bliss—the ultimate—would be absolute serenity, stillness, and peace: Nirvana, Moksha.
The text refers to a state prior to the existence of the world, even before time went “tick-tock”: silence, darkness, and universal rest (pralaya). It states that the seven ways leading to Nirvana or the Great Serenity did not exist.
Two questions then arise:
A) What are those ways? Where can I find them? I am interested.
B) If they did not exist, did the need not exist either?
«The great causes of misery were not, for there was no one to produce and get ensnared by them.»(Sloka 4, cont.)
The Mystery of the 7 Paths to Happiness
In a private meeting between H.P.B. and her disciples to comment on The Secret Doctrine, she was asked what those seven ways to bliss or Nirvana were. Her answer was enigmatic:
«They are certain faculties as to which the student will know more when he goes deeper into the occult sense.»
(Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge, p. 25)
Later, she clarified that they were practical faculties that had to be developed.
Some scholars—such as David Reigle, a Sanskritist and specialist in Tibetan texts—conclude that it cannot be known with certainty what she refers to, although they suspect it relates to the seven traditional hierarchies linked to the septenary constitution of the human being.
For those not familiar with these topics, the idea is simpler than it seems, though complex in practice. According to this tradition, the human being possesses seven aspects or principles: four “material” (physical body, energetic or vital body, emotional body, and mental body) and three “spiritual” (higher mind or manas, intuitional body or wisdom, and the ultimate spark that connects us with divinity: Atma, or Pure Will).
This division into seven aspects is replicated within each of them, and again at a third level: 7x7x7 times, that is, the famous 343 “fires” of the Hindu mystical tradition.
Put simply: we are a conglomerate that repeats itself at different levels of complexity.
And here comes the interesting part: human perfection does not consist of a Hollywood-style “enlightenment,” nor a dramatic conversion falling to one's knees before an angel. No. It is, according to tradition, a constant and gradual work upon each of the expressions of our human septenary.
If, for example, I want to develop Wisdom on a high plane, I must first implement it on the physical, mental, and emotional planes. If I want to awaken Atma (Pure Will), it must also be embodied in each of those same levels.
Sloka 4 of the Cosmogenesis section of The Secret Doctrine states that those paths did not exist. Then the question arises: if the paths of perfection did not exist, does it mean that on that plane karma did not exist either? Was there no possibility of action, neither positive nor negative?
The answer is no. Dharma, or the Ultimate Law, coexistent with the Absolute, was not manifested because the world did not yet exist. No one could break the Law nor follow it; and without action, there is no karma. It is a period prior to the existence of the world: before the concrete time and space we know, although Infinite Duration and Abstract Space did exist.
What are the «great causes of misery»?
The text refers to the well-known «Nidanas». The 12 nidanas are the twelve causations or “bonds.” They constitute the chain of causes and effects that lead from one form of existence to another. They are represented in the Wheel of Samsara—the eternal wheel of existence—the result of blind forces driven by our erroneous action. It is the great mechanism of which we are all a part, alluded to by this Buddhist text:
Inconceivable is the beginning of this Samsara; not to be discovered is any first beginning of beings, who, obstructed by ignorance, and ensnared by craving, are hurrying and hastening through this round of rebirths. (Anamatagga Samyutta (The Unimagined Beginning)
These twelve causes that give rise to Samsara can be summarized in three large blocks1:
Avidya: Ignorance as the essential cause. With it we begin, conclude, and undertake the cycle of a new life.
Phassa: Contact or sensory experience. From the information received—filtered by our mental prejudices—we generate cascades of thoughts and associated images that trap us in repetitive mental circuits.
Upadana: Attachment, the clinging to desires and pleasurable sensations, which leads us to rebirth and completes the chain of Samsara.
We are trying to understand a state prior to manifestation, when the paths of access to Nirvana did not exist, nor the possibility of error, ignorance, or kármic consequences. All beings were submerged in the Great Sea of Serenity, which is not the happiness of one who possesses or has everything within reach, but that of one who needs nothing.
The entire universe was in a state of suspension, where the rules of existence were not applicable: a condition in which bliss consisted in the absence of need and pain, in total integration, with nothing lacking and nothing superfluous—an absolute immersion in the Absolute.
