The Overview Effect: Universal Brotherhood a Fact in Nature

Jodie Foster, the movie “Contact”

DURING the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, the Theosophical Society participated in the first World’s Parliament of Religions.

William Q. Judge served as permanent chairman of the Theosophical Congress, whose presentation of its ideals and principles drew increasingly larger audiences.

“I have been requested to speak on the subject of universal brotherhood . . . not as a theory, not as a Utopian dream which can never be realized; not as a fact in society, not as a fact in government — but as a fact in nature:

that universal brotherhood is an actual thing, whether it is recognized or whether it is not.

“Every nation, every civilization has brought forward this doctrine, and the facts of history show us that, more than at any other time … have seen this doctrine violated in society, in government, and in nations. So that at last men have come to say, ‘Universal brotherhood is very beautiful; it is something that we all desire, but it is impossible to realize.’ With one word they declare the noble doctrine, and with the other they deny the possibility of its ever being realized.”

(W. Q. Judge “Universal Brotherhood a Fact in Nature”)

Excerpt from “Contact”

Did you love your father? Yes, very much. — Prove it.

Samadhi in Space

(https://tinyurl.com/yc4kyy5s)

Fast forward to 1971: Astronaut Edgar Mitchell’s universal brotherhood epiphany struck when he looked back out the window of his Apollo 14 spacecraft at the Earth, Moon and Sun, engulfed by an infinitely vast star-filled universe.

After he returned to Earth, Dr. Mitchell’s illuminating realization drove him to create the Institute of Noetic Sciences to scientifically study that powerful aha moment, and further the realization of our human potential.

It had suddenly come to him that the molecules and cells of our bodies “must have had their origin in those faraway stars.”  At that moment an overwhelming realization of the interconnectedness of all life dawned on him. It was a life-altering flash of insight — not an “intellectual knowledge,” he says, but in a “visceral knowing.”

“It was accompanied by a very blissful feeling that I had never experienced before.”

Sun, Moon, Earth and Stars

Dr. Mitchell describes being completely engulfed by a profound sense of universal connectedness he explains in an excerpt from Renée Scheltema’s visionary film, Something Unknown is Doing We Don’t Know What.

Having had such a life-changing experience, sometimes called the Overview Effect, the former astronaut, along with parapsychologist Charles Tart, in this video excerpt attempt to interpret the non-linear feelings and insights for the rest of us.

Beyond Personal

Something Unknown

Often misunderstood, and under-appreciated, the “Third Object” of the Theosophical Movement, proposes

“The Investigation of the Unexplained Laws of Nature and the Psychical Powers Latent in Man.”

This last focus of the theosophical mission statement is not just about so called “astral” powers, but is concerned with the importance of the psychic, or “psyche”— a word that in Greek means soul or breath.

“Look inward, thou art Buddha” – Voice of the Silence

The student is thus directed to study ‘soul’ powers. Such would certainly include the power of mind over matter (telekinesis}, and the power of thought, the keynote of Buddha’s teachings.

Click to order DVD

The Buddha

Sigmund Freud the “father of psychoanalysis,” reportedly named The Buddha “the greatest psychologist of all time.” Gautama Buddha, the awakened Indian Sage, with his teaching about the dynamic, formative power of human thought, may well rank as the world’s greatest healer.

The essential key to Buddha’s outlook is revealed in the opening verse of the Dhammapada:

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought: all that we are is founded on our thoughts and formed of our thoughts.”

THE DHAMMAPADA
With Explanatory Notes
and a Short Essay on
Buddha’s Thought

THE DHAMMAPADA

Fields of Knowing

The stature of Buddha’s words are a confirmed by anyone familiar with recent scientific evidence revealing the potent interaction between our heart, thought, and body fields. The video clip below from “The Living Matrix” reveals new insights into our bodies, minds and health—information that will transform your understanding of how to get well and stay well.

This breakthrough film provides an up-close look at the science of information as medicine. Leading researchers and health practitioners share their discoveries on the “miracle cures” traditional medicine can’t explain.

Bio-Fields

The spirit and body bond, modulated by biofields, was originally taught by the ancient masters of Theosophy, and is critical to understanding the integral nature of personal  development. This concept should be recognized as the practical keystone of physical, mental and emotional health.

Without stimulation of our biofield (energy body), altruism has no soil in which to grow and flower. And H. P. Blavatsky referred to the growth of altruism as “an integral part of self-development.” 

Buddha’s Spiritual Force Field

It is one’s duty “to give all that which is wholly his own and can benefit no one but himself, if he selfishly keeps it from others. Theosophy teaches self-abnegation, but does not teach rash and useless self-sacrifice, nor does it justify fanaticism.”

In one of the most significant verses of The Voice of the Silence, that Blavatsky translated from The Book of the Golden Precepts, one finds a simple but profound description of the process.

The practice of Buddha’s heart doctrine, encapsulated there, is almost too profound a truth for Western minds to fully grasp, declaring simply:

“Self-Knowledge is of
loving deeds the child.”

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Sister and Brother

The acquirement of self-knowledge means the effective bonding of our Spirit (or intuition) with our Mind. In Sanskrit this is known as the union of “Buddhi-Manas.” It is expected, in the course of spiritual evolution, a new human will at last emerge out of this self-initiated alchemy.

It is a process of occult transformation that will give birth to civilizations of the future, where every person will naturally manifest a permanently embedded higher consciousness.

You Raise Me Up

Self-Awakened

The transformation, or raising-up, is not in interposing of an outside, personal god, but the overview effect and incarnation of our Higher Self—the only god man can ever know.

 In her Appendix on Dreams in the Secret Doctrine Commentary (Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge) — Mme. Blavatsky admonishes her students:

Remember that the only God man comes in contact with is his own God, called Spirit, Soul and Mind, or Consciousness, and these three are one.

“But there are weeds that must be destroyed in order that a plant may grow. We must die, said St. Paul, that we may live again. It is through destruction that we may improve, and the three powers, the preserving, the creating and the destroying, are only so many aspects of the divine spark within man.”

Weeding the Garden

“It is through destruction that we may improve, and the three powers, the preserving, the creating and the destroying, are only so many aspects of the divine spark within man.”

This process what Theosophy calls the synthesis of the ‘head’ and the ‘heart’ and its development is predicted to be the eventual (and only) savior of our humanity and our cosmic home, planet Earth.

It is a state of holistic awareness that we experience at times when we have a ‘gut feeling’ or an intuitive flash — much as did astronaut Edgar Mitchell looking out from the vantage of his spaceship.

For the advanced Masters of Life, the Self-Awakened state is not merely a transitional “aha” moment, however transformative, but an ever-present, continuous manifesting of altruism and selflessness.

Such spiritual expansion is surely the only antidote to human selfishness, the result of the constant and consistent practice of loving deeds affecting others and the whole of humanity. 

♥