Jiva and Jivatman

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Confusing Words Series · 7 pages

The confusion this file exists to clear is between two uses of one word by two schools. The occultists call the second principle of man Jiva; the Vedantins give that name only to the seventh principle, the divine Monad in man, a universal principle also called Jivatman in Buddhism and Theosophy. The term Jivatman itself is used only by the Buddhists, who make no difference between manifested and unmanifested life. They are, the opening line says, two perfectly distinct ideas that have often been confounded together.

What happens at death is used to make the distinction concrete: the second principle, Jiva-Prana, returns to its source, Fohat, the Light of the Logos. There follows a long account from a Master of Wisdom of how Saptaparna, the seven-leaved man-plant, withers and infolds at death, its constituents returning one after another to their original state and source. The last pages define Adi-Buddha as not merely a state or condition but Primeval Wisdom, note that everyone has his own Bodhisattva and Dhyani-Buddha — the Father of the Son, and our connecting link with the higher hierarchy of celestial beings — ask what makes a perfect adept, and place Fohat as the representative of the Dhyani-Chohans on the objective plane and of the Manasaputras on the subjective, the informing divine energy.

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