Human constitutionSimplifiedDefined by Blavatsky

Manas

Also: Mind · Human soul · Higher and Lower Manas

Sanskrit manas, ‘mind’ · MUH-nus

Blavatsky

Original sense

The fifth principle, the thinker. Higher Manas is the reincarnating individuality, capable of union with Buddhi. Lower Manas is that same mind snared in Kama, producing the personality — clever, passionate, mortal. The whole human drama is the tug of war between the two.

Manas is dual — the higher, attracted to Buddhi; the lower, attracted to Kâma, the seat of animal desires.
The Key to Theosophy, on the principles in man

Mentalism in the New Thought / Law of Attraction sense is not her doctrine. Thought is causative, but it is karmically causative over lives, not a vending machine in this one.

New Age

Later sense

Usually just ‘the mind,’ something to silence in meditation or to program with affirmations. The dual Manas, and its role as the actual reincarnating being, is almost unknown outside Theosophical study groups.

Typical use. Monkey-mind discourse; manifestation teaching that treats thought as instantly creative.

The drift

The core survived; the metaphysics was flattened.

The protagonist of her psychology was demoted to a nuisance. New Age often wants to skip Manas (too mental) and go to ‘the heart,’ which she would have filed, depending on quality, as Buddhi or as Kama in nicer clothes.

Related terms

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