Lessons from the Light: The Golden Rule

SOUL memory according to Theosophy is referred to as reminiscence, and it is this memory that assures every human being, whether they know it or not, of their having lived before, and having to live again.

To fully grasp the idea, we first have to study the complex relationship between the human and transcendental aspects of mind (represented physiologically by the brain’s left and right hemispheres.)

The differences were experienced directly by neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor PhD, described in her book “My Stroke of Insight.” Our recent post Dance of the Hemispheres is about her experience, and which she describes in dramatic detail at a TED Talk. 

These consciousnesses are termed first “the spiritual, or those which belong to the imperishable Ego,” (Key to Theosophy, Section 8, On Individuality and Personality). Second, are the intellectual/rational states

“which inhabit the ever-changing bodies, or the series of personalities of that Ego.” 

The higher mind fully knows and remembers all its lives, Blavatsky insisted, “as well as you remember what you have done yesterday. The real Ego has not forgotten them, and the personal never experienced them. “Shall the new boots on the feet of a boy who is flogged for stealing apples, be punished for that which they know nothing?” Blavatsky asks.

That which is called “the divine man,” is the “real Individuality,” who like the elegant elephant, never forgets.  But its vehicle the personality has no access to that history as it corresponds to “a new suit of clothes.” There are however, importantly, “modes of communication between the Spiritual and human consciousness or memory.”

Evidence for such modes lies in powers of intuition, conscience, premonitions, & etc. and, most powerfully, from recent research into the so-called NDE or Near Death Experience. But such states “have never been recognised by your scientific modern psychologists,” Blavatsky wrote. That may be changing today.

River of Compassion

BUDDHA never had any intention of establishing a religion 2500 years ago, at least not the sectarian kind we know today.

But it was not long before extremist followers across Asia and India split his teachings into separate branches and sects, ruled over by self-appointed lamas and monks.

The same exists today in a Hinduism that is dominated by a priestly caste of Brahmins who have co-opted the ancient wisdom religion for their own purposes.

It compares to Islam where a minority of priestly fanatics have gained dominance and political power, and who preach a severe and even violent dogmatism aimed at preserving their right to rule.

Yet Buddha’s life and teachings showed humanity the way to conscious enlightenment without priestly intermediaries,  through direct spiritual development, merit and compassion. People were inspired to rediscover and live according to the dictates of their own peaceful spiritual insights without any forced obedience to caste or creed.

The Buddha’s teaching of individual responsibility and the primacy of individual spiritual action should have saved the world from religious dogmatism. But with the persistence of the selfish side of human nature such teachings would not prevail.

Similarly, Christian religious dogmatism, with its god and invented savior, cleverly placed beyond our mere earthly domain, the ‘only son of God’ dogma secured a virtually unbreakable dominance over the soul of humanity.

Brahmin performing the Ganga Aarti

“Shun ignorance, and likewise shun illusion. Avert thy face from world deceptions” and “mistrust thy senses, they are false,” The Voice of the Silence (Fragment 2) declared. “But within thy body, the shrine of thy sensations,” it insisted,

“seek for the ‘eternal man,’ and having sought him out, look inward: thou art Buddha.”

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The ancient origin of the [Upanishads], H. P. Blavatsky notes in The Secret Doctrine [Summing Up section], “proves many of the the Upanishads were written before the caste system became the tyrannical institution which it still is.”

“Half of their contents have been eliminated,” she wrote, “while some of them were rewritten and abridged.” A few brave souls today are speaking and acting out, as Blavatsky did, against dogmatic desecration and dominance.

Seven Secrets of The Sun

OCCULT philosophy denies that the Sun is a globe in combustion, and defines it simply as a world, a glowing sphere.

The real Sun is hidden behind, it says, and the visible one is only its reflection, its shell. 

The Nasmyth willow leaves (sunspots), mistaken by Sir J. Herschel for ‘Solar inhabitants,’ are really the reservoirs of solar vital energy — the vital electricity that feeds the whole system.

The ancients understood the real Sun is the storehouse of our little island in space, ever self-generating its vital electric fluid, and ever receiving as much as it gives out.

There is a regular circulation of the vital fluid throughout our planetary system, of which the Sun is the heart —the same as the circulation of the blood in the human body sustains our life. And the Sun contracts as rhythmically at every ebb and flow of fluid as the human heart does.

“The visible Sun is only a window cut into the real Solar palace and presence, which reflects, however, faithfully the interior work.”

Instead of the rhythmic pulse taking second or so, “it takes the solar blood ten of its years, and a whole year to pass through its auricles and ventricles, before it washes the lungs and passes thence to the great veins and arteries of whole the solar system,” according to this ancient wisdom. “As Above so Below” is a key concept in the old Hermetic teachings with which Theosophy agrees.

Photo of a Sunspot

“This, Science will not deny, since Astronomy knows of the fixed cycle of eleven years when the number of solar spots increases,” H. P. Blavatsky asserts, “which is due to the contraction of the Solar HEART. The universe (our world in this case)

“…breathes, just as man and every living creature, plant, and even mineral does upon the earth; and as our globe itself breathes every twenty-four hours.”

“In the same manner as a man approaches a mirror placed upon a stand, beholds in it his own image, so the energy or reflection of Vishnu (the Sun) is never disjoined, but remains in the Sun as in a mirror that is there stationed” [Vishnu Purana, Ch. XI]

“The dark region of sun spots is not due “to the absorption exerted by the vapours issuing from the bosom of the sun and interposed between the observer and the photosphere,” as Father Secchi would have it (“Le Soleil“ II., 184), nor are the spots formed “by the matter (heated gaseous matter) which the irruption projects upon the solar disc” (ibid), Blavatsky says.

Animal Wonders – Stargazing Scarabs

OCCULTISM connotes by the word God, “the symbolic conception of the Life and Motion of the Universe.”

This is in stark contrast to the crude anthropomorphism, which is still the backbone of our current theology.

“The One Life is deity itself, immutable, omnipresent, eternal,” says the teaching. And the distinction “between organic and inorganic matter is fallacious and nonexistent in nature.”

“Matter in all its phases, is merely a vehicle for the manifestation through it, of LIFE.

Therefore, “the whole secret of Life,” says The Secret Doctrine, can only be discovered “in the unbroken series of its manifestations: whether in, or apart from, the physical body. Because if —

‘Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity…’*

— yet it is itself part and parcel of that Eternity — for life alone can understand life.  It is the One Life, eternal, invisible, yet Omnipresent, without beginning or end.”  (*Adonais, by Percy Bysshe Shelley)

“Light is the first begotten, and the first emanation of the Supreme, and Light is Life, says the evangelist. Both are electricity — the life-principle, the anima mundi, pervading the universe, the electric vivifier of all things.

“Light is the great Protean magician, and under the Divine Will of the architect, its multifarious, omnipotent waves gave birth to every form as well as to every living being.” (Isis Unveiled 1:258)

It is “periodical in its regular manifestations, between which periods reigns the dark mystery of non-Being — unconscious, yet absolute Consciousness — unrealisable, yet the one self-existing reality,” (Secret Doctrine 1:2): — “truly, ‘a chaos to the sense, a Kosmos to the reason.'”

When Did You Stop Dancing?

Luna Poddar: Dancing Krishna

WHEN we have stopped dancing, singing, being enchanted by stories, or finding comfort in silence we experience the loss of soul, many shamanic societies  say.

“Dancing, singing, storytelling, and silence, Gabrielle Roth attests, “are the four universal healing salves.”

For Roth physical movement, according to an Huffpost article, “is key to unlocking the spirit.”

She was an incredibly influential teacher of meditative dance and the creator of the 5Rhythms movement practice.”

“Roth dedicated her life, heart and soul to exploring how to engage her spirit and creativity through dance and movement — and helping others to do the same. The effect of her influence is palpable.”

“Dance is the fastest, most direct route to the truth,”  she claimed. It is notable in this regard that two of the most powerful ancient gods, Krishna and Shiva, are so often depicted as dancing, and Krishna additionally is shown at the same time playing the flute.

Yet in our present society, “especially in so-called civilized countries,” H. P. Blavatsky declared  in The Key to Theosophy (Sect. 122), “we are continually brought face to face with the fact that large numbers of people are suffering from misery, poverty, and disease.”

Blavatsky went on to describe a society whose “physical condition is wretched, and their mental and spiritual faculties are often almost dormant.” On the other hand, she said, “many persons at the opposite end of the social scale are leading lives of careless indifference, material luxury, and selfish indulgence.”

“Neither of these forms of existence is mere chance. Both are the effects of the conditions which surround those who are subject to them, and the neglect of social duty on the one side is most closely connected with the stunted and arrested development on the other.”

We still suffer terribly from the neglect of each other as a humanity, but there are always a few self-sacrificing individuals who are unselfishly devoted to finding ways to help us heal.

River of Lethe

KRISHNA assures an uncertain Arjuna that he has lived many lives on Earth.

“Both I and thou have passed through many births,” the Master tells his disciple (Bhagavad-Gita, Ch. 4:31):

“Mine are known unto me, but thou knowest not of thine.”

The fact is most people don’t recall their past lives, because in every rebirth the immortal soul must endure a new body and astral body, a new personality and a new physical brain. 

Being handed an empty photo album is a challenge to the incoming soul, hindering it finding a conscious connection to prior experiences and knowledge. Thus “the new ‘personality,'” Blavatsky wrote (Key to Theosophy, Ch. 8), “is no better than a fresh suit of clothes.”

Being so, yet “the record or reflection of all the past lives must survive,” H. P. Blavatsky continues, “for when Prince Siddhartha became Buddha the full sequence of His previous births were seen by Him.” In such a state he was able, she says, “to retrospectively trace the lines of all his lives.”

“This proves to you that the undying qualities of the personality — such as love, goodness, charity, etc., attach themselves to the immortal Ego, photographing on it, so to speak, a permanent image of the divine aspect of the man who was.”

The mind doesn’t fully incarnate until age seven, (Key to Theosophy Section 9). Thus, a child doesn’t feel the full weight of life and karma right away. As such, they are like karma-less “little Buddhas.” If not pressured to conform by parents and society, it is possible for them to express memories of their former life (s), i.e. experience “intimations of immortality” for an extended period.

“Spirit got itself entangled with gross matter,” Blavatsky wrote in The Theosophist, “for the same reason that life gets entangled with the foetus matter. It followed a law, and therefore could not help the entanglement occurring.”

It was Plotinus who said that “our body is the true river of Lethe, for ‘souls plunged into it forget all’ — our terrestrial body is like Lethe” (the “river of forgetfulness” in the Hades of Greek mythology.) Using a modern analogy, a new computer cannot be expected to recall the data stored on the discarded one, unless the old data is preserved and reinstalled in the new machine.

But this is what sometimes happens with children who die at an early age from accidents or illness, if they had created no basis for a prolonged after-death dream state. Nature is never wasteful, and the still viable astral pattern body is not disintegrated as with normal death.

The still vital and alive astral matrix is attracted back into the soul’s new body, with all its memories preserved intact.Thus in many cases such children are said to be born with two astral bodies, one new, the other old.