Glossary-C

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Caste: Originally the system of the four hereditary classes into which Indian population was divided: Brahman -des cendants of Brahma; Kshatriya - warrior; Vaisya - mercantile; Shoodra - agricultural.  From these four, hundreds of divisions and minor castes have sprung.

Causal Body: The Spiritual Soul, so called because it is the direct cause of the Sushupti state leading to the Turya state, the highest state of Samadhi.  It is called Karanopadhi, "the basis of the cause," by the "Taraka Raj" Yogis, and in the Vedanta System corresponds to both the Vignavamaya and Anandamaya Kosha (the latter coming next to Atma and therefore, being the vehicle of the Universal Spirit.

Chanting:  intoning of religious works in a blend of harmonic monotones.  To be effective, chanting must be clear, whole-hearted and concentrated, with the voices of the various chanters merging harmoniously.

Chela (Sans): A disciple.  The pupil of a Guru or Sage; the follower of some Adept, or a school of philosophy.

Chrestos (Grk): The early Gnostic term for Christ.  Christes or Christos meant that the "way," the path, was already trodden and the goal reached;  when the fruits of the arduous labor, uniting the personality of evanescent clay with the indestructible  Individuality, transformed it into the immortal Ego.  "At the end of the way stands the Christos," the Purifier; and the union, once accomplished, the Chrestos, the "man of sorrow," became the Christos Himself.

Christian Scientist: A practioner of a healing art by will; "Mental Scientists" deny every disease and evil imaginable and claim, since all are absorbed in Spirit, there can be no such thing as disease.

Clairaudience: The faculty to hear things at whateve distance.

Clairvoyance: A faculty of seeing with the inner eye or spiritual sight; it is a loose and flippant term, embracing under its meaning both a happy guess due to natural shrewdness or intuition.

Cremains:  a word entering common usage, coined from "cremation" and "remains," to denote the remains of a person whose body has been cremated.

Cycle (Kuxlos, GRK): The ancients divided time tinto endless cycles, wheels within wheels, all such periods being of various durations, and each marking the beginning or end of some event either cosmic, mundane, physical or metaphysical.