Alaya – The Universal Soul – T H E O S O P H Y

What is Alaya? “Alaya” is a Sanskrit term which, in Theosophical literature, appears in “The Secret Doctrine” and “The Voice of the Silence” predominantly.

The ninth sloka of the first stanza from the Secret Book of Dzyan given in Volume 1 (p. 27) of “The Secret Doctrine” states that during the “Night of the Universe,” the Maha-Pralaya or Universal Pralaya, “THE ALAYA OF THE UNIVERSE WAS IN PARAMARTHA.”

When H. P. Blavatsky refers to this verse later on (Vol. 1, p. 47), she includes some explanatory words in parentheses and writes it like this:

“BUT WHERE WAS THE DANGMA WHEN THE ALAYA OF THE UNIVERSE (Soul as the basis of all, Anima Mundi) WAS IN PARAMARTHA (Absolute Being and Consciousness which are Absolute Non-Being and Unconsciousness) . . .”

“Alaya means latent,” says HPB in “The Secret Doctrine Dialogues” p. 109, continuing, “At the end of Manvantara, when Pralaya sets in, certainly the Alaya will become Laya and fall into nothing. There will be the one Great Breath only.”

“Alaya” most literally translates as “storehouse,” “receptacle,” “repository,” or simply “home.” In Mahayana Buddhism, and occasionally also in Theosophy, it is called by its full name, Alayavijnana or Alaya-vijnana, usually translated as “Storehouse Consciousness.”

But what is this Alaya which, like everything else, is eventually reabsorbed into the Absolute or Absoluteness at the end of one Universal Life Cycle, to be outbreathed into manifestation once more at the dawn of the next?

We read in “The Secret Doctrine” that “The two terms “Alaya” and “Paramartha” have been the causes of dividing schools and splitting the truth into more different aspects than any other mystic terms.” (Vol. 1, p. 48) On p. 55 of “Transactions of The Blavatsky Lodge,” HPB elaborates regarding Alaya: “This word, however, is the bone of contention between Yogachârya and the Madhyamika schools of Northern [i.e. Mahayana] Buddhism. The scholasticism of the latter makes of Paramartha (Satya) something dependent on, and, therefore, relative to other things, thereby vitiating the whole metaphysical philosophy of the word Absoluteness. The other school very rightly denies this interpretation.”

We should understand that Alaya is a term and concept which originates with the Yogachara or Yogācāra School (typically written during HPB’s time as “Yogacharya”) of Buddhist philosophy. The “Yogachara School” literally means “Yoga Practice School” but this refers to a high and truly philosophical form of mental and spiritual yoga, not any kind of bodily or physical yoga practices.

The Yogachara school began in India and is part of Mahayana Buddhism.

In the article Nagarjuna, Madhyamaka & Prasangika we explained:

“Two apparently antithetical philosophical worldviews exist within Mahayana: Madhyamaka (often spelt “Madhyamika” during the time of H. P. Blavatsky) and Yogachara or Yogācāra (typically written as “Yogacharya” by HPB and her contemporaries). Both these fundamental perspectives have their original basis in different Mahayana scriptures in which the Buddha himself is presented as having taught both perspectives on different occasions. In some instances, the two schools of thought base themselves on the same set of scriptures but interpret and understand them differently. There is also a third and less frequently encountered philosophical viewpoint, known as Shentong or Tathagatagarbha, which has its basic ideological origins and inspiration in the Yogachara approach but which is not the same as it, although sometimes the two are blended together. . . . Madhyamaka (popularised by Nagarjuna in India in the 2nd to 3rd century C.E./A.D.) and Yogachara (popularised by Asanga and his half-brother Vasubandhu in India in the 4th century C.E.) agree on the vast majority of Buddhist concepts and doctrines. But where they disagree is on some of the most fundamental questions, such as “What is the nature of reality?” and “What is the ultimate nature of ourselves?” Both speak frequently of Shunyata – emptiness or voidness – and both typically deny the existence of anything that can properly be called “self” or “Self,” although some of the “Books of Maitreya” transcribed by Asanga do affirm that the Buddha Nature which is equally present within all beings is a type of pure, universal, impersonal Self or Atman. . . . To summarise it as briefly and simply as possible: Is there an ultimate or absolute underlying essence and definite primordial reality at the innermost core of human beings and of all manifestation? Yogachara says yes, even though it typically considers “self,” “soul,” or “spirit,” to be misnomers for this. Madhyamaka – especially the Prasangika form of Madhyamaka – ordinarily says no. . . . In other words, Madhyamaka believes that anything that can be affirmed about the ultimate nature of reality must of necessity be false and a mistaken approach that can only lead to problems. Even such phrases as “the ultimate nature of reality” or “the ultimate reality” are typically avoided, since they can lead to notions of an ultimate, absolute, eternal “Something,” whereas for them, although they acknowledge that everything is Shunyata or emptiness, they are careful to make it known that this emptiness is not conceived as any type of ultimate, infinite, absolute, eternal, self-existent Reality or Principle or Essence or Energy, but is literally an empty emptiness, devoid of any true reality or independent, permanent, unchanging existence of its own.”

H. P. Blavatsky was often – but not always – critical of the standard Madhyamaka perspectives and referred to them as “the great deniers,” “teaching a system of sophistic nihilism,” and described their doctrines and conclusions as “exoteric travesties.” It so happens that the Gelugpas – the “Yellow Hats” to whom the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama belong and with whom HPB and the Masters have indicated their allegiance – hold exclusively in their most public teachings to the Prasangika-Madhyamika philosophical worldview and not at all to the Yogachara. This is not some new development but is the basis on which the Gelug school was founded in the very early 15th century by Tsong-Kha-Pa himself. All this is something of a mystery and we mention it only in passing, since it does not particularly aid us in comprehending the Theosophical teachings regarding Alaya.

We ought to just point out though that with regard to the Yogacharas or Yogacarins, most exoteric and generally accepted historical sources trace them back to Aryasanga (often just referred to as Asanga, sometimes Arya Asanga) and his half-brother Vasubandhu, saying that they lived and founded this school or system of philosophy sometime around the 4th or at latest 5th century C.E./A.D., i.e. around 1,000 years after the time of Buddha.

H. P. Blavatsky provides, however, interesting and important information about Aryasanga and the Yogachara or Yogacharya School which is not to be found elsewhere.

In “The Theosophical Glossary” she tells us that actually “there are two Yogacharya Schools, one esoteric, the other popular.” Aryasanga was “the Founder of the first Yogacharya School” and “This Arhat, a direct disciple of Gautama, the Buddha, is most unaccountably mixed up and confounded with a personage of the same name, who is said to have lived in Ayodhya (Oude) about the fifth or sixth century of our era.” By this latter personage is meant the historically known Asanga, though historians now know that he and Vasubandhu were actually from Gandhara, in what is present day Pakistan and Afghanistan but was then India.

She goes on to explain that the original Aryasanga (described in “The Secret Doctrine” Vol. 1, p. 49, as “a pre-Christian Adept and founder of a Buddhist esoteric school”) was the founder of “the lofty system of the early Yogacharya school of pure Buddhism, which is neither northern nor southern, but absolutely esoteric” and that “none of the genuine Yogacharya books (the Narjol chodpa) have ever been made public or marketable.” (“Glossary” entries for “Yogacharya” on p. 381 and “Aryasangha” on p. 32)

This purely esoteric Yogacharya School is synonymous with what Theosophists typically refer to as the Trans-Himalayan Esoteric School of the Masters of Wisdom. It has never become known to the world at large, except for the few glimpses provided by HPB and her Adept-Teachers. The later – and the only publicly known – Yogachara School is very well known but is long defunct, although some of its doctrines and terminology (including Alaya-vijnana) survive in various forms, most faithfully in the Chan or Ch’an and Huayen or Huayan schools of Chinese Buddhism. In the “Glossary,” HPB reveals that in the works of the later, public Yogachara School authored by the 4th or 5th century C.E. Aryasanga, “one finds . . . a great deal from the older system, into the tenets of which he may have been initiated.” But “the work defeats its own end, notwithstanding its remarkable dialectical subtilty.”

In the exoteric and publicly known Yogachara philosophy, the term “Ashta-vijnana” (also found in one of the Master K.H.’s letters, “The Mahatma Letters” p. 200) is used to refer to the total of eight states of consciousness in the human being – “ashta” meaning “eight” and “vijnana” meaning “consciousness” in Sanskrit – the eighth and highest of which is Alaya-vijnana, the source, origin, and substratum of all the others, and which is also considered to be “the receptacle or totality of Consciousness both absolute and relative.”

Alaya-vijnana (“vijnana” pronounced “vinyaana”) literally means, as said, “storehouse consciousness” or the “substratum of consciousness,” and is also known as Mula-vijnana: “root consciousness” or “base consciousness.” It is said to be a type of extremely subtle “container” (not of a static type but instead likened to an ocean or ever-flowing stream) in which all our karmic seeds (from thought, feeling, word, and act) and impressions of whatever type, over lifetimes, are recorded and preserved, and from which they eventually manifest in our life experience. The Lankavatara Sutra, Sandhinirmocana Sutra, and Ghanavyuha Sutra are some of the scriptures that the exoteric Yogachara School drew on, in which the Buddha is presented as teaching his disciples about Alaya and the other seven consciousnesses.

But the truly esoteric Yogachara teachings regarding Alaya (and also regarding every other subject), whilst having some significant similarities, are different and more extensive than this in a number of respects, although only a very small portion of them has been made public in the Theosophical teachings.

On pages 48 to 49 of the first volume of “The Secret Doctrine” we read:

“Alaya is literally the “Soul of the World” or Anima Mundi, the “Over-Soul” of Emerson, and according to esoteric teaching it changes periodically its nature. Alaya, though eternal and changeless in its inner essence on the planes which are unreachable by either men or Cosmic Gods (Dhyani Buddhas), alters during the active life-period with respect to the lower planes, ours included. During that time not only the Dhyani-Buddhas are one with Alaya in Soul and Essence, but even the man strong in the Yoga (mystic meditation) “is able to merge his soul with it” (Aryasanga, the Bumapa school). This is not Nirvana, but a condition next to it.”

“The Yogacharyas (of the Mahayana school) say that Alaya is the personification of the Voidness, and yet Alaya (Nyingpo and Tsang in Tibetan) is the basis of every visible and invisible thing, and that, though it is eternal and immutable in its essence, it reflects itself in every object of the Universe “like the moon in clear tranquil water” . . .”

“But what is the belief of the inner esoteric Schools? the reader may ask. What are the doctrines taught on this subject by the Esoteric “Buddhists”? With them “Alaya” has a double and even a triple meaning. In the Yogacharya system of the contemplative Mahayana school, Alaya is both the Universal Soul (Anima Mundi) and the Self of a progressed adept. “He who is strong in the Yoga can introduce at will his Alaya by means of meditation into the true Nature of Existence.” The “Alaya has an absolute eternal existence,” says Aryasanga – the rival of Nagarjuna.”

In her entry for “Alaya” on p. 14 of “The Theosophical Glossary,” HPB defines it as “The Universal Soul” and adds that it is “Identical with Akasha in its mystic sense, and with Mulaprakriti, in its essence, as it is the basis or root of all things.” But please note that she is not saying that Alaya and Akasha or Mulaprakriti are complete, exact synonyms. In Alaya’s mystical sense, it is the same as Akasha, and in its essence it is the same as Mulaprakriti.

Her deeply esoteric article “Psychic and Noetic Action” speaks of the Reincarnating Ego, the Higher Manas, in the human being, and says that “the Higher Mind-Entity – the permanent and the immortal – is of the divine homogeneous essence of “Alaya-Akasha,” or Mahat.” Mahat, literally meaning “The Great,” is a Hindu term for the Universal Mind or Cosmic Mind and it is taught in Theosophy that every human mind is a ray of that Divine Universal Mind and of the same intrinsic essence as It.

Alaya is sometimes correlated by H. P. Blavatsky with Atman, sometimes with Buddhi, and sometimes, as we just saw, with Mahat and the Higher Manas; in other words, with all three of the highest Principles within the human being. Mostly, however, the correlations are with Buddhi and Higher Manas. These are not contradictions. Instead, it shows us that Alaya is a term incapable of being rigidly confined to one specific, fixed “compartment.” Throughout “The Theosophical Glossary,” Alaya is frequently correlated with the Buddhi within us and the Mahabuddhi in the Universe. Buddhi, which literally means “Wisdom,” is associated with the spiritual Heart quality, with deep intuitive perception and insight, and with compassion. In the “Glossary,” HPB also calls Alaya “The Good.”

As the Universal Soul, Alaya is the Universal Consciousness, “the basis or root of all things,” “the basis of every visible and invisible thing,” “eternal and immutable in its essence” and yet reflecting itself “in every object of the Universe.” But the Universal Soul is not the same as the ONE Supreme Absolute Reality. The Absolute is that Paramartha in which “the Alaya of the Universe” lies latent during the unimaginably lengthy period of Universal Pralaya, as we saw mentioned in the Stanzas of Dzyan at the start of this article.

In “The Voice of The Silence” alone, we have counted twelve or more different ways of referring to Alaya, each of which can be meditatively reflected upon if one wishes, including:

The Universal Soul

The Great Soul

The “World-Soul”

The Over-Soul

The Master-Soul

The MASTER

Nature’s Soul-Thought

The ONE Master

The ONE-SOUL

The great Master

The Universal Parent (SOUL)

If one is not keen on such frequent usage of the word “Soul,” words such as “Intelligence” or “Consciousness” or “Mind” can be substituted in its place.

Although the above term “Master” may ordinarily conjure up the image or idea of something “male” or a “masculine force,” it is worth being aware that elsewhere, HPB calls Alaya “the Mother.” Since it is in one sense the universal Buddhi – or “the Universal Spiritual Soul,” as HPB has also termed it – it is a feminine force, seeing as “Buddhi” in Sanskrit is linguistically a feminine word and the typical qualities of the Buddhi principle are considered feminine ones. Yet Alaya also refers to Higher Manas, and Manas or Mind is considered something masculine in its qualities and characteristics.

We have now seen many synonyms of Alaya and numerous of its esoteric correspondences. Yet the most frequently used definition – “The Universal Soul” – may still seem rather vague and unclear. So to be more definite and to the point, it should be known that Alaya is the Universal Logos. The Logos radiates forth from the Absoluteness of Paramartha (regardless of whether we refer to It as Paramartha, Adi-Buddhi, Adi-Buddha, Brahman, Parabrahm, En-Sof, or anything else) at the dawn of each Maha-Manvantara or Maha-Kalpa and proceeds to become the Living Universe itself. The Universal Soul, the Universal Logos, is the Universal Life.

Many people – and even many Theosophists, especially if they follow the distorted teachings of people such as C. W. Leadbeater, Annie Besant, and Alice Bailey – do not understand what this oft-used term “Logos” is actually referring to, even if they think they do. We would recommend reading carefully The Logos, The Logoi, and The Seven Highest Beings, particularly if you think this may apply to you.

HPB said that in the Esoteric Philosophy, Alaya has a triple meaning. First, it is the Anima Mundi, which although literally meaning “World Soul” has always been used in philosophy to indicate the “Soul of the Universe”; second, it is a name which can be applied to the Higher and Spiritual Ego of every individual, not only that of “a progressed adept”; and its third meaning is supplied by the Master K.H. when he says that the vision and perception of the great majority of “seers” is “vision imperfect and deceptive because untrained and non-guided by Alaya Vynyana (hidden knowledge).” (“The Mahatma Letters” p. 198-199) So Alaya-vijnana can also be a synonym for the hidden knowledge of the Secret Doctrine itself, the Gupta Vidya, the ancient and ageless Wisdom.

The “Venerable Chohan-Lama . . . than whom no one in Tibet is more deeply versed in the science of esoteric and exoteric Buddhism” once wrote part of an article for HPB, which was published under the title of “Tibetan Teachings.” Judging from the description given of him, as well as the tone and phraseology of his writing, it would seem that this individual was possibly the same as the Maha Chohan, the venerable Master of the Masters and the Chief of the Trans-Himalayan Brotherhood, whose famous and important letter can be read by clicking here.

He says in that article: “In the book known as the Avatamsaka Sutra [Note: This vast Mahayana Buddhist scripture is one of the primary texts for Yogachara thought, although its teachings and ideas extend far beyond that; it is also referred to in connection with the teachings about the after-death states in “The Mahatma Letters” p. 108.], in the section on ‘the Supreme Atman – Self – as manifested in the character of the Arhats and Pratyeka Buddhas,’ it is stated that ‘Because from the beginning, all sentient creatures have confused the truth, and embraced the false; therefore has there come into existence a hidden knowledge called Alaya Vijnana.’ ‘Who is in the possession of the true hidden knowledge?’ ‘The great teachers of the Snowy Mountain,’ is the response in The Book of Law.”

Later he continues, “Very true, our Masters teach us ‘that immortality is conditional,’ and that the chances of an adept who has become a proficient in the Alaya Vijnana, the acme of wisdom, are tenfold greater than those of one who, being ignorant of the potentialities centred within his Self, allows them to remain dormant and undisturbed until it is too late to awake them in this life.”

In her “Notes on The Gospel according to John,” HPB explains that one who has become “Christos” is “the anointed by Alaya.”

Some very beautiful and inspirational things are said regarding Alaya in the book “The Voice of the Silence” translated by H. P. Blavatsky from the esoteric Buddhist text “The Book of the Golden Precepts” which she says is generally found in centres where Yogacharya schools are established, in Tibet and surrounding regions.

Her book – which has been praised and endorsed by leading figures in the world of Buddhism, including the current Dalai Lama, the ninth Panchen Lama, and the famed Buddhist expert D. T. Suzuki (see “The Voice of The Silence” – An Authentic Buddhist Text) – consists of three “fragments” from the original text and it is in the second and third of these, titled “The Two Paths” and “The Seven Portals” respectively, that the following direct references (by name) to Alaya occur:

* “Alas, alas, that all men should possess Alaya, be one with the great Soul, and that possessing it, Alaya should so little avail them!

“Behold how like the moon, reflected in the tranquil waves, Alaya is reflected by the small and by the great, is mirrored in the tiniest atoms, yet fails to reach the heart of all. Alas, that so few men should profit by the gift, the priceless boon of learning truth, the right perception of existing things, the Knowledge of the non-existent!”

* “Of teachers there are many; the MASTER-SOUL is one, Alaya, the Universal Soul. Live in that MASTER as ITS ray in thee. Live in thy fellows as they live in IT.”

* “Thou hast to saturate thyself with pure Alaya, become as one with Nature’s Soul-Thought. At one with it thou art invincible; in separation, thou becomest the playground of Samvriti, origin of all the world’s delusions.

“All is impermanent in man except the pure bright essence of Alaya. Man is its crystal ray; a beam of light immaculate within, a form of clay material upon the lower surface. That beam is thy life-guide and thy true Self, the Watcher and the silent Thinker, the victim of thy lower Self. Thy Soul cannot be hurt but through thy erring body; control and master both, and thou art safe when crossing to the nearing “Gate of Balance.””

* “Know that the stream of superhuman knowledge and the Deva-Wisdom thou hast won, must, from thyself, the channel of Alaya, be poured forth into another bed.”

* “Compassion is no attribute. It is the LAW of LAWS – eternal Harmony, Alaya’s SELF; a shoreless universal essence, the light of everlasting Right, and fitness of all things, the law of love eternal.

“The more thou dost become at one with it, thy being melted in its BEING, the more thy Soul unites with that which IS, the more thou wilt become COMPASSION ABSOLUTE.

“Such is the Arya Path, Path of the Buddhas of perfection.”

In HPB’s article “The Mind in Nature” we find Alaya being described as “”the divine Soul of thought and compassion” of the trans-Himalayan mystics.” In her footnotes to “The Alchemists,” we read that “This “Fire” is that of Alaya, the “World-Soul,” the essence of which is LOVE, i.e., homogeneous Sympathy, which is Harmony, or the “Music of the Spheres.” And in the article “The Last Song of the Swan,” she quotes the above statement from “The Voice of The Silence” about divine Compassion being “the LAW of LAWS – eternal Harmony, Alaya’s SELF” and describes it as “the very essence and esse of the dormant Individuality” or divine Ego within all of us. “This compassion [is] crystallized in our very being,” she adds.

Thus, Compassion is at the Heart of the Universe and we ought never to forget it.

What this article has hopefully shown is that even though the specific word “Alaya” may only be used a comparatively small number of times in the original Theosophical literature, the reality underlying that name is in fact referred to all throughout this literature, for the Logos, Universal Soul, or Universal Mind, and each of us being inwardly an individualised ray or light-beam of it, is one of the most central and fundamental principles of Theosophy. But “Alaya” seems to be the synonym most favoured by the Trans-Himalayan Brotherhood and Esoteric School, perhaps partly due to it being a uniquely Buddhist term, which may have originated with the Buddha himself – the Patron and overshadowing Chief of that School – in his true esoteric teachings.

“. . . the Alaya of the Northern Buddhists; the divine essence which permeates, animates and informs all, from the smallest atom of matter to man and god. It is in a sense the “seven-skinned mother” of the stanzas in the Secret Doctrine, the essence of seven planes of sentience, consciousness and differentiation, moral and physical. In its highest aspect it is Nirvâna, in its lowest Astral Light. It was feminine with the Gnostics, the early Christians and the Nazarenes; bisexual [i.e. androgynous, hermaphrodite] with other sects, who considered it only in its four lower planes. Of igneous, ethereal nature in the objective world of form (and then ether), and divine and spiritual in its three higher planes. When it is said that every human soul was born by detaching itself from the Anima Mundi, it means, esoterically, that our higher Egos are of an essence identical with It, which is a radiation of the ever unknown Universal ABSOLUTE.” (H. P. Blavatsky, “The Theosophical Glossary” p. 22-23, Entry for “Anima Mundi”)

“This “God” is the Universal Mind, Alaya, the source from which the “God” in each one of us has emanated.” (HPB, “Old Philosophers and Modern Critics”)

“There is an esoteric doctrine, a soul-ennobling philosophy, behind the outward body of ecclesiastical Buddhism,” says HPB in the article “The Theosophical Society: Its Mission and Its Future,” “. . . This secret system was taught to the Arhats alone, generally in the Saptaparna (Mahavansa’s Sattapani) cave . . . near the Mount Baibhar (in Pali Webhara), in Rajagriha, the ancient capital of Maghada [in North-East India], by the Lord Buddha himself, between the hours of Dhyana (or mystic contemplation). It is from this cave . . . that the Arhats initiated into the Secret Wisdom carried away their learning and knowledge beyond the Himalayan range [i.e. into the Trans-Himalayan regions and Tibet], wherein the Secret Doctrine is taught to this day.”

As for herself, she remarks in that same article that she “is undeniably a Buddhist – i.e., a follower of the esoteric school of the great “Light of Asia,”” but that neither Theosophy nor the Theosophical Movement are to be confused with the religion of Buddhism. If the Movement “has a Buddhist colouring [it is] simply because that religion, or rather philosophy, approaches more nearly to the TRUTH (the secret wisdom) than does any other exoteric form of belief. Hence the close connexion between the two.”

“While the Southern Buddhists [i.e. those of the Theravada School] have no idea of the existence of an Esoteric Doctrine – enshrined like a pearl within the shell of every religion – the Chinese and the Tibetans have preserved numerous records of the fact. . . . But it is only in the Trans-Himalayan fastnesses – loosely called Tibet – in the most inaccessible spots of desert and mountain, that the Esoteric “Good Law” – the “Heart’s Seal” – lives to the present day in all its pristine purity.” (H. P. Blavatsky, “The Doctrine of The Eye & The Doctrine of The Heart”)

May we saturate ourselves with pure Alaya, the bright and immaculate ray of the Universal Light within us, and allow it to reach to our very heart of hearts.