Fields of Dream

WHEN our rational brains are all heated up, arguing life’s complexities, that’s usually the best time to kick off our shoes and give it a rest.

“Ever drifting down the stream, lingering in the golden gleam,” Lewis Carroll wondered: “Life — what is it but a dream?”

At times, when we are faced with a critical decision, or stuck on a complex problem, sleeping or napping on it, researchers find, often leads to the right answer.

The notes of a song, the smell of burning leaves, the babbling of a mountain stream, a day-dream—all can open a door to the the non-rational, poetic mind. They can also arouse unexpected vistas when we are children.

In Wordsworth’s haunting poem “Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood,” those reveries opened for him an unexpected awareness of past lives.

This post was updated and republished at:

Dreaming the Future

Hanging by a Thread

This post has been updated and republished at the following link:

Threads of Genius

Reflecting Pool

BETWEEN us TheosophyWatch editors, we know loved ones who’ve died or almost died at the hand of psychiatrists who over-prescribed them with powerful anti-psychotics.

More recently, we grieved for 12-year-old Denis Maltezm and 7-year-old Gabriel Myers who, the Miami Herald reported, allegedly lost their lives this way.

Denis’ mother is suing the psychiatrist and a special task force is investigating Gabriel’s death. Gabriel, a foster child, “had been taking a cocktail of mental health drugs,” the newspaper said.

Now we realize how important pharmaceuticals and medical technology can be and, frankly, both of us owe our lives to them. Patients should always consult with their physician, before changing or stopping any prescribed medication they may be taking.

At the same time, we increasingly discover reports of conflicts of interest between medical researchers and certain rapacious pharmaceutical companies who fund them, often resulting in skewed research that declares a new drug to be safe, when it really isn’t.

Milarepa, who knows how to listen!

We’ve also butted heads with doctors who find it easier to prescribe a pill with deleterious side-effects than to really listen to the patient, observe, and find the true problem.

A Rare Soul

I reminisce about Percy Brown, Jr., a remarkable youth I met and interviewed in Los Angeles years ago. He was at risk—a gang-bound foster child, but he turned his life around by volunteering in a park. “I had a lot of anger inside of me,” he said.

“[I] was so confused. Because of the way I had to live, I fenced myself up. I was taken into hospitals, and I had to take medicine. I was not only hyper, I was angry. I had therapy. I had medication. But you can only have so much therapy and medication and it may not work. I’ve told myself that the only medication and doctor can be me.” (Los Angeles Times, June 29, 1996).

How rare and fortunate a soul Percy Brown is!

Medication or Meditation?

“The man of meditation is superior to the man of penance and to the man of learning and also to the man of action; wherefore, O Arjuna, resolve thou to become a man of meditation.” -KRISHNA, Bhagavad-Gita Ch.6

News in Science:

Meditation helps kids with ADHD, Helen Carter, ABC writes:

“Meditation can help improve symptoms in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), an international psychiatry conference heard this week.

“The Australian study in 48 children diagnosed with ADHD found Sahaja yoga meditation led to an average 35% reduction in symptom severity over six weeks, and enabled many to reduce their medication.”

Meditation Around the World

Transforming Lives: The David Lynch Foundation provides funds for students to learn to meditate In the past year, the Foundation has provided millions of dollars for thousands of students, teachers, and parents to learn to meditate.

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“ADHD is the most common psycho-social disorder in children, affecting almost 4.5 million children. It causes impaired executive functions of the brain, creating difficulty in controlling attention and behavior. The symptoms commonly associated with ADHD are impulsiveness, hyperactivity, and inattention.”

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You Are What You Swallow

If we imbibe the consciousness of an animal when we eat it, as Helena Blavatsky has suggested, whose consciousness (or consciousnesses) do we imbibe when we consume a pharmaceutical drug?

In The Key to Theosophy, she says, “when the flesh of animals is assimilated by man as food, it imparts to him, physiologically, some of the characteristics of the animal it came from.

“Moreover, occult science teaches and proves this to its students by ocular demonstration, showing also that this ‘coarsening’ or ‘animalizing’ effect on man is greatest from the flesh of the larger animals, less for birds, still less for fish and other cold-blooded animals, and least of all when he eats only vegetables….

“…we advise really earnest students to eat such food as will least clog and weight their brains and bodies, and will have the smallest effect in hampering and retarding the development of their intuition, their inner faculties and powers.”

You Are
What You Bless

Is this why the blessing of food, its purification and spiritualization, is an ancient practice of esoteric traditions worldwide?

If we are to be careful and mindful about the effects of certain foods on our consciousness and “inner faculties,” what to do about ineluctable pharmaceuticals that we rely on?

Try This at Home

The effects on cooked rice after 30 days of speaking positive or negative words to it.

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Water Crystal for “Truth”

Many of you know about the amazing water crystal work of Dr. Masaru Emoto who has shown that human speech or thoughts directed at water, changes its molecular structure. Once frozen, water droplets thus affected take on new shapes and forms– beautiful or ugly, depending upon whether the words or thoughts were positive or negative.

Crystal of water exposed to words "love and gratitude."

Emoto claims this can be achieved through prayer, music, or by attaching written words to a container of water. Is this not scientific proof of the effects of positive and negative intentions?

“Remembering thoughts are things — have tenacity, coherence, and life, — that they are real entities — the rest will become plain.” – Mahatma Letters

Positive & Negative Energy Effects
on Water Crystals

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Transformative Power of Intention

“It is the motive, and the motive alone, which makes any exercise of power become…malignant or…beneficent,” Madame Blavatsky explains in Practical Occultism,

“It is impossible to employ spiritual forces if there is the slightest tinge of selfishness remaining in the operator. For, unless the intention is entirely unalloyed, the spiritual will transform itself into the psychic, act on the astral plane, and dire results may be produced by it.

The powers and forces of animal nature can equally be used by the selfish and revengeful, as by the unselfish and the all-forgiving ; the powers and forces of spirit lend themselves only to the perfectly pure in heart and this is DIVINE MAGIC.”

More Magic Rice

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Since learning about Dr. Emoto’s work, are you more mindful when you walk past a pond, to send it your good intentions? Have you experimented with your own water, putting words on containers?

If your good intentions can change molecular structures of water into beautiful forms, what happens when you do the same with a bottle of pills?

© Kara LeBeau 2009. All rights reserved.

Nicholas Roerich, "Drops of Life"

Buddha’s Grace

Maitreya

MAITREYA, the Future Buddha whose name means “loving kindness,” is a very active Bodhisattva, Buddhist tradition says, involved intimately with the Earth.

We saw in the story of Asanga, how closely Maitreya was in his relationship with his chela.

Not only did this boost Asanga’s spiritual progress, but that propelled him to a point where he could serve as the amanuensis for Maitreya’s teaching written in the fourth century A.D.

Maitreya is a Tathagatha (the Absolute come), which, Helena Blavatsky explains, “is the highest epithet, since the first and the last Buddhas were the direct immediate avatars of the first deity.”

Fascinating that this Future Buddha is so present with us, and reams of testimony in the ancient East bear witness to his personal intercession, sometimes through statues of him, for healing, compassion, forgiveness, teaching, and initiation.

Point of Grace

This intercession is purely a point of grace, for humanity, Helena Blavatsky explains:

“… having fallen into matter, their spiritual vision became dim; and coordinately the third eye commenced to lose its power ….The Inner sight could henceforth be acquired only through training and initiation…” (Secret Doctrine 2:294).

Master K.H. reveals in the Mahatma Letters:

“Our Lord Buddha…would not have appeared in our epoch, great as were his accumulated merits in previous rebirths but for a mystery….” (Letter XV, p. 96).

To understand where, as individuals, we fit into all of this, we’ll explore Maitreya a bit more, and his and our creation in the Dhyani Buddhas.

Maitreya

The Fifth Buddha

In the Secret Doctrine, Madame Blavatsky expounds on the symbolism of the letter “M,” noting that “Maitreya is the secret name of the Fifth Buddha…the last Messiah who will come at the culmination of the Great Cycle.”(I:184):

Vajrayana Buddhism outlines five distinctive ages presided over and involving three types of beings: a Dhyani Buddha, a Dhyani Bodhisattva, and an incarnate Buddha. The transcendent Dhyani Buddhas and their counterparts symbolize aspects of enlightened consciousness as emanations of one single primordial Buddha.  Think of them as types of step-down transformers conveying divine frequencies for assimilation and transformation.

According to this Vajrayana scheme, we currently reside in the fourth age of the Dhyani Buddha Amitabha, the Dhyani Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara (Guan Yin or Kuan Yin), and the incarnate Buddha Shakyamuni. The fifth age would be presided over by the Dhyani Buddha Amoghasiddhi, the Dhyani Bodhisattva Vishvapani, and the incarnation of Maitreya Buddha.

Amoghasiddhi

“[W]e are still in the Fourth Round, and the world also has only had four Buddhas, so far,” Madame Blavatsky explains, “But as every new Root-race at the head of a Round must have its revelation and revealers, the next Round will bring the Fifth, the following the Sixth, and so on.”

Born of Stars:Dhyani Buddhas

Madame Blavatsky, however, asserts there are seven Dhyani Buddhas and offers this insight for how each one of us is under the “star” of a distinct Dhyani Buddha:

“In the esoteric, and even exoteric Buddhism…Adi Buddha …the One unknown, without beginning or end… emits a bright ray from its darkness.

Logos Buddha’s Diamond Heart

“This is the Logos (the first), or…the Supreme Buddha…As the Lord of all Mysteries he cannot manifest, but sends into the world of manifestation his heart — the ‘diamond heart,’…

“This is the second logos of creation, from whom emanate the seven (in the exoteric blind the five) Dhyani Buddhas…

“These Buddhas are the primeval monads from the world of incorporeal being…wherein the Intelligences (on that plane only) have neither shape nor name, in the exoteric system, but have their distinct seven names in esoteric philosophy….

Buddha Here, Buddha There

“In the [Vajrayana] Buddhist system, or the popular exoteric religion, it is taught that every Buddha, while preaching the good law on earth, manifests himself simultaneously in three worlds: in the formless, as Dhyani Buddha, in the World of forms, as a Bodhisattva, and in the world of desire, the lowest (or our world) as a man.

“Esoterically the teaching differs: The divine, purely Adi-Buddhic monad manifests as the universal Buddhi [universal soul or mind,] the spiritual, omniscient and omnipotent root of divine intelligence, … or the Logos.

“This descends ‘like a flame spreading from the eternal Fire, immoveable, without increase or decrease, ever the same to the end’ of the cycle of existence, and becomes universal life on the Mundane Plane.

“From this Plane of conscious Life shoot out, like seven fiery tongues, the Sons of Light (the logoi of Life); then the Dhyani-Buddhas of contemplation: the concrete forms of their formless Fathers — the Seven Sons of Light…”

Bodhisattvas’ Birth

“These Dhyani Buddhas emanate, or create from themselves…celestial Selves — the super-human Bodhisattvas. These incarnating at the beginning of every human cycle on earth as mortal men, become occasionally, owing to their personal merit, Bodhisattvas among the Sons of Humanity, after which they may re-appear as…Buddhas….”

Our Guiding Stars and Parents:

Dhyani Buddhas

Those formless Fathers of the Dhyani Buddhas, those “Seven Sons of Light” mentioned earlier are also called “Stars,” Madame Blavatsky explains in the same passage.

“The star under which a human Entity is born, says the Occult teaching, will remain for ever its star, throughout the whole cycle of its incarnations in one Manvantara.

“But this is not his astrological star. The latter is concerned and connected with the personality, the former with the individuality.

“The ‘Angel’ of that Star, or the Dhyani-Buddha will be either the guiding or simply the presiding “Angel,” so to say, in every new rebirth of the monad [that immortal incarnating part of you], which is part of his own essence….

Twin Souls and Planetary Spirits

“The adepts have each their Dhyani-Buddha, their elder “twin Soul,” and they know it, calling it ‘Father-Soul,’ and ‘Father-Fire.’ It is only at the last and supreme initiation, however, that they learn it when placed face to face with the bright ‘Image.’

“….the [monads, that is–you and me, as] radiations of one and the same Planetary Spirit (Dhyani Buddha) are, in all their after lives and rebirths, sister, or ‘twin-souls,’ on this Earth.

Whose Star Are You Born Under?

“This was known to every high Initiate in every age and in every country: ‘I and my Father are one,’ said Jesus [and] When He is made to say, elsewhere …‘I ascend to my Father and your Father,’ it meant that which has just been stated.

“It was simply to show that the group of his disciples and followers attracted to Him belonged to the same Dhyani Buddha, “Star,” or “Father,” again of the same planetary realm and division as He did.”

In mainstream Buddhism, this is referred to as being a part of a Buddha “family.”

Which of the Dhyani Buddha families are you a member of?

Can We Get There from Here?

Going back to Maitreya, we can understand why he sought to restore the ancient wisdom of the original Buddha’s teaching through his chela Asanga through the new school called Yogacharya. Similar to the role the Mahatmas and Helena Blavatsky fulfilled in the founding of Theosophy in the hope of getting us back on track.

Maitreya sought to restore the ancient wisdom of the original Buddha’s teaching through his chela Asanga, and that intention was the impetus behind the founding of the Yogacharya school of Buddhism. Similar to the role the Mahatmas and Helena Blavatasky fulfilled in the founding of Theosophy.

“From this living and presently acting body of [Mahatmas,] H.P.Blavatsky declared she received the impulse to once more bring forward the old ideas, and from them also received several keys to ancient and modern doctrines that had been lost during modern struggles toward civilization,” William Q. Judge explains, “and also that she was furnished by Them with some doctrines really ancient but entirely new to the present day in any exoteric shape.”

The reassertion of Yogacharya teaching came at a time when misunderstandings about nirvana prevailed, viewing it as total nihilism. It is said that Asanga’s mother, a devotee of the Bodhisattva of Compassion Avalokiteshvara, was grieved by the “great misfortune that had befallen Buddhism” at the time in India and prayed to Him that she might be an instrument to restore the Dharma, says scholar Janice Willis. Thus, Asanga’s mother bore three sons who all dedicated their lives to Buddhism.

Asanga

You Create Reality

One hallmark of the Yogacharya school was the teaching on “Mind-Only” or Cittamatra.  “Our entire experience of ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ reality is nothing but a flow of (illusory) perceptions,” explains Richard Taylor, author of Blavatsky and Buddhism.

“Through sense-perceptions and inference, we construct our entire experience and perceive it to be objective and real–but it is really only our own construct. Since we are all doing this, there is something of a shared illusion, a shared dream. But it is not real. This illusory, constructed aspect is ‘vijnaptimatra.’ This is our experience, samsara, the basis for our confusion and suffering.

“In its pure, absolute aspect, the teaching is of a real, pure, permanent ‘substratum consciousness’ (alayavijnana). When confused, constructed consciousness that is tainted by personal desires ceases — the pure substratum consciousness is unveiled. It is not personal, but universal and eternal.”

The following excerpt from the film “What the Bleep Do We Know?” explores  breaking away from this shared illusion and how one’s brain and body responds:

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A Word from HPB and Asanga

HPB quotes a teaching from Asanga on our true nature:

“THAT which is neither Spirit nor Matter. Light nor Darkness, but is verily the container and root of these, that thou art. The root projects at every Dawn its shadow of ITSELF, and that shadow thou callest Light and Life. O poor dead Form. (This) Life-Light streameth downward through the stairway of the seven worlds, the stairs of which with each step becomes denser and darker. It is of this seven-times-seven scale that thou art the faithful climber and mirror. O little man! Thou art this, but thou knowest it not.”

And then she comments:

“THIS is the first lesson to learn. The second is to study well and know the principles of both the Kosmos and ourselves, dividing the group into the permanent and impermanent, the higher and immortal, and the lower and mortal; for thus only can we master and guide the lower cosmic and personal, then the higher cosmic and impersonal. Once we can do that, we have secured our immortality.”

© Kara LeBeau 2009. All rights reserved.

Nicholas Roerich - "Star of the Hero"

Amphibios

"Amphibios"

We recently updated the companion post, Lofty Strangeness, with a new formation that appeared in an English barley field on May 30, 2009.

Further investigation reveals an exciting Theosophical interpretation of the “jellyfish” formation.

The form may symbolize the Circle Makers themselves—living simultaneously in an astro-spiritual and terrestrial matrix.

Experts in the field, the Alexanders, say they expect this to be an extraordinary season.

Temporary Temples

Temporary Temples‘ photographers and archivists, Steve and Karen Alexander, said “we never expected this!”

“An absolutely stunning new circle … Located at a place called Kingstone Coombes, it is close to Waylan’s Smithy on the Wiltshire-Oxfordshire border, site of many formations over the past few years.”

"Oannes"

“By our approximations it is 500-600ft in length and the jelly-fish-like design is one of the most breathtaking circles we have ever seen. Note the seven circles in the tail and the seven tentacles. Seven in a very prodigious and numinous number.”

“2009 is turning out to be an very special season…”

A Theosophical Interpretation

Amphibios – Annedoti – Oannes

The Greek word amphibios means simply “life on two planes,” from amphi, “on both sides,” and bios, “life.”

The word was often applied in antiquity to those men who, though still wearing a human form, had made themselves almost divine through knowledge, and lived as much in the spiritual supersensuous regions as on earth.

One sees why Occultism places Oannes and the other Annedoti in the group of those ancient “adepts” who were called “marine” or “water dragons” — Nagas.

Waylands Smithy, UK, May 30, 2009

Water typified their human origin (as it is a symbol of earth and matter and also of purification), in distinction to the “fire Nagas” or the immaterial spiritual Beings, whether celestial Bodhisattvas or Planetary Dhyanis, also regarded as the instructors of mankind.

The hidden meaning becomes clear to the Occultist, once he is told that this being (Oannes) was accustomed to pass the day among men, teaching; and when the sun was set, he retired again into the sea, passing the night in the deep, “for he was amphibious,“i.e., he belonged to two planes; the spiritual and the physical.

Human Gods & Divine Men, SD 1:369

The Matsya, or Fish Avatar, happened before the Varaha or Boar Avatar; the allegories, therefore, must relate to both the Padma and the present manvantara, and also to the minor cycles which took place since the reappearance of our Chain of Worlds and Earth.

Not even Esoteric philosophy can claim to know, except by analogical inference, that which took place before the reappearance of our Solar System, and previous to the last Maha Pralaya [great sleep.]

Matsya, Fish Avatar of Vishnu

But it teaches distinctly that after the first geological disturbance in the Earth’s axis, which ended in the sweeping down to the bottom of the Seas of the whole second Continent, with its primeval races — of which successive “Earths” or Continents Atlantis was the fourth…

— there came another disturbance by the axis resuming as rapidly its previous degree of inclination; when the Earth was indeed raised once more out of the Waters, and — as above so it is below; and vice versa.

There were “gods” on Earth in those days — gods, and not men, as we know them now, says the tradition.  (SD 1:369)

Lord Matsya

Wikipedia related: Matsya

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