Subba Row on Kama-Loka, the Second Death

Tallapragada Subba Row · Constitution of Man Series · 11 pages

From Subba Row's Esoteric Writings, prompted by a paper of Sinnett's on the same subject in The Theosophist of February 1885. The warning it opens with is the one most worth carrying into the rest of this section: that above all we must take care to realise that the seven principles in man are not several entities or substances which can be separated and considered each as a distinct individuality with characteristics peculiar to itself. In Sanskrit they are called upadhis — the sheaths or seats of the different states of existence of the One Life.

From that follows his account of where individuality actually resides. The seat of consciousness giving rise to the feeling of individuality, the sense "I am I", is in the fifth principle; and if there is no fifth principle then all the other states of existence are non-existent, since without a percipient ego there can be neither perception nor object of perception. He draws the theological parallel directly: without the son — the germ of consciousness in the Logos roused into activity at Cosmic evolution — there is no Father or Mother, the Father and Holy Ghost coming into existence when the Son is born, which he offers as the true occult explanation of the Trinity in Unity. The objection that animals cognise existence without a fifth principle is met by saying that the fifth, while not united to their lower principles, nevertheless overshadows them.

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