The Seven Rays Book Review

In his book The Seven Rays, Ernest Wood, a theosophist and disciple of Annie Besant and Mme. Blavatsky, makes a colorful association of the powers of consciousness with an ancient Hindu legend about the creation of the world.

The Column of Fire

One of the most fascinating stories of Hindu lore describes the beginning of the Universe.

In the story, the gods of love and the gods of wisdom — Vishnu and Brahma — entered into a fierce contest for supremacy of power. At the height of their struggle, the fight became really dangerous as these two supremely powerful gods threw their most destructive weapons against each other. Astonished and terrified, all the other gods and goddesses decided to run to Mount Kailas, the abode of Lord Shiva, the Lord of life and power. They cried for his help, "Oh Lord, please come to our rescue! Vishnu and

Blavatsky’s teachings were influenced by Buddhist and Vedic teachings, as we can see from this Hindu legend of the creation of the world.

In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna, who is the incarnation of Vishnu, gives his description of nature, called prakriti (in Sanskrit) to differentiate matter from spirit (purusha).

Prakriti (matter or nature) is divided into eight elements according to Bhagavad-Gita: earth, water, fire, air, ether, manas, buddhi, and ahamkara. Krishna tells us, “These are the eightfold divisions of my manifestation.”

This allows us to complete the picture of God’s creation as manifested in a human soul which is incarnated. Here is the complete definition of spirit and matter as incarnated in a human form. As you can see, the Vedic thought has a complex definition of the statement, “God created man in His own image.” It explains it in detail. It is from this theory that the understanding of destiny follows, so please bear with me (even if you are not inclined so much towards