Dictionary of all Scriptures & Myths

SEA (LIMITED) 

A symbol of the astral plane of the desires and passions.

"And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good." - GENESIS 1:9-10.

And the Supreme now directs that the waters under the heaven, that is, the astral matter, shall be centralised and coordinated, so that preparation shall be made for physical matter (dry land) to appear. And the physical matter is named Earth, which term also stands for the lower nature of the soul, the natural man; and the gathering together of the waters signifies the formation of the astral sea of desires. And all is pronounced good, that is, perfect in involution for purposes of forthcoming manifestation through evolution.

"Thou saidst Let the waters be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear which thirsteth after Thee. For neither is the bitterness of men's wills, but the gathering together of waters called sea; for Thou even curbest the wicked desires of men's souls and fixest their bounds, and thus dost Thou make it a sea, by the order of thy dominion over all things." - AUGUSTINE, Confessions, p. 367.

"In the midst of the waters a heaven is formed in the once benighted creature. That unstable element, so quickly moved by storms, is the well-known type of the restless desires of the heart of fallen man; for the wicked are like the troubled sea, which cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt (Is. lvii. 20)." - A. JUKES, Types of Genesis, p. 15.

"The eye of man, O disciples, is the sea; things visible are the foam of this sea. He who hath overcome the foaming billows of visible things, of him, O disciples, it is said: that is a Brahman who hath in his inner man outridden the sea of the eye, with its waves and whirlpools, with its depths profound and its prodigies; he hath reached the shore; he stands on firm earth. (The same follows regarding the sea of hearing and the other senses.) Thus spake the Exalted One; when the Perfect One had thus spoken, the Master went on to say:—

If thou this sea with its abyss of waters,
Full of waves, full of deeps, full of monsters,
Hast crossed, wisdom and holiness are thy portion;
The land hast thou, the goal of the universe hast thou reached.

(Samyutta Nikāya)." - H. OLDENBERG, Buddha, p. 260.

Perception on the lower mental plane discloses the astral plane with its passions and desires which have to be controlled and outgrown ere the ego can reach the higher planes of consciousness (the further shore). When this sea of desire and strife is crossed, Wisdom and Love are gained.

"There are many who look with disgust upon that man who flies into a rage and shamefully beats his child, or horse; while within the soul of the spectator is a sea surging back and forth in surly, irritable moods, like the open and broad expanse of the ocean, never tranquil and still like an inland lake." - A. B. ÖLSTON, Mind Power, p. 322.

"Typhon is called the sea.... Typhon is that part of the soul that is subject to the passions." - PLUTARCH, Isis and Osiris, §§ 33 and 49.

Typhon or Set, the adversary, is a symbol of the desire principle on the astral plane—the sea.

"The transformations of fire are, first of all, sea; and of the sea one half is earth and the other half is lightning flash." - Herakleitos, V. 21.

"The priests hold the sea to proceed from fire, and as distinct from all else; neither a part nor an element of nature, but something of a different sort, both destructive and the occasion of disease." - PLUTARCH, Isis and Osiris, § 7.

There is a close relation between the buddhic and astral planes. The astral plane (sea) is a transformed or inverted representation of the buddhic plane (fire). The astral plane is related on the one side to the physical (earth), and on the other side to the life (lightning). The astral plane contains the lower life principle—desire—which opposes the Divine will, and is the occasion of evil.

"It is clear that when these chapters (of magic) had been recited, Ra and his company set out and went over the whole sea, but as no more enemies were seen, they returned to Egypt travelling by night." - Legend of the Winged Sun-disk.

The Logos, having now so far accomplished His course in disciplining the soul by means of a set religious system (magic), is said to be Lord of the astral sea, and now is able to dwell at peace in the sublimated sense-nature, free of unruly desires. The reference to travelling by night is an allusion to the forgetting of all past experiences, which implies the expunging of all pain and sorrow, pleasure and sense-happiness, the killing out of desire, which is compatible with the beginning of a new life conformable with the reign of the higher individuality.

"For what is denoted by the title of the sea, but this world's bitterness raging in the destruction of the righteous? Concerning which it is said by the Psalmist too, He gathereth the waters of the sea together as in a skin (Ps. xxxiii. 7). For the Lord gathereth the waters of the sea together as in a skin, when disposing all things with a wonderful governance, He restrains the threats of the carnal pent up in their hearts. Thus the Lord treadeth upon the waves of the sea. For when the storms of persecution lift up themselves, they are dashed in pieces in astonishment at His miracles." - GREGORY THE GREAT, Morals on the Book of Job, Vol. I. p. 501.

See Also

ASTRAL PLANE
BOLTS
BUDDHIC PLANE
EARTH
FIRE
MAGIC
MAN (Natural)
NAVIGATION
OCEAN
RA
SET
SHIP ON SEA
SHORE (other)
WALKING ON WATER
WATER (lower)
WAVES