Home
Preface
5 Planes of Existence
Introduction
Five Planes of Manifestation
A to Z
Related Information
|
KAMA
A symbol of desire which is love inverted. That
is, desire is attraction to the outer nature, whereas love is
attraction to the inner. Thus the twain are antagonists.
"The world was fashioned from the body of a primitive being, a giant
Purusha, dismembered by the gods. . . . In (the self-existent
substance Purusha) arose Kama, desire, and that was the first
starting-point in the subsequent evolution of being." - BARTH,
Religions of India, p. 30.
The lower nature of the soul is said to be formed of the "body," or
outer envelope,-astro-mental,—of the Archetypal Man, who, when made
perfect through involution, dies out of that state to be born in the
next state-evolution. His "body" is divided into the many qualities
(members of Christ) which are now to be found in humanity, his
offspring. From the self-existent Spirit, which is at the foundation
of all things, arose desire with its wish to manifest its nature
outwardly. It is through the stimulus of desire that the first and
subsequent early stages of the evolution of qualities are brought
about in the soul.
"When he has set himself free from every desire of his heart, the
mortal enters immortal into the Brahma. (From the Brahmana of the
hundred paths.) Desire (kama) and action (karman) are here named as
the powers which hold the spirit bound within the limits of
impermanence. Both are essentially the same. 'Man's nature,' it is
said in the same treatise from which we have taken the passage
quoted, depends on desire. As his desire, so is his aspiration, so
is the course of action (karman) which he pursues; whatever be the
course of action he pursues, he passes to a corresponding state of
being.' - OLDENBURG, Buddha, etc., p. 48.
"Desire is the actual essence of man, in so far as it is conceived
as determined to a particular activity by some given modification of
itself." - SPINOZA, Ethics, Bohn, Vol. II. p. 173.
|
See Also
|