Call of the Forest, Wisdom of Trees

Lotus Girl

“EVERYTHING in the Universe, throughout all its kingdoms, is conscious,” H. P. Blavatsky wrote, “is endowed with a consciousness of its own kind and on its own plane of perception.”

“We men must remember that because we do not perceive any signs — which we can recognize — of consciousness, say, in stones, we have no right to say that no consciousness exists there.” 

“There is no such thing as either ‘dead’ or ‘blind’ matter — these find no place among the conceptions of Occult philosophy,” she declared. “The latter never stops at surface appearances, and for it, the noumenal essences have more reality than their objective counterparts.”

• H. P. Blavatsky, The Third Fundamental of The Secret Doctrine.

“There exists a body of research poised to rend apart our modern paradigms — revealing consciousness in places we might not have expected it, and connections between life forms that seem startling and impossible.” So wrote Ben Bendig in July 22, 2013, Epoch Times Primary Perception: Look Into ‘The Secret Life of Plants’ — echoing H. P. Blavatsky’s Fundamental axiom. 

Trees are social beings.

Consciousness is at the core of even the simplest entities on earth, like fungi, and from cells, molecules to atoms, according to Theosophy. Cells at disparate locations in our bodies, for example, talk to one other. Trees are known to warn other trees of insect attacks over long distances.

Trees Have Formidable
Healing Powers

“We have missed the essentials of what a tree is all about,” says Beresford-Kroeger at the beginning of the documentary, which brings viewers to Japan, Ireland and the Redwood forests in the United States, as well as the Boreal forest of Canada. Beresford-Kroeger says that in Japan, “forest bathing,” also known as Shinrin-yoku, is a revered and long-standing tradition. It means taking in the forest through our senses.

Redwood Forest

“This engaging documentary features many miraculous forests of the earth and is hosted by the colorful Irish-Canadian nature-based scientist, dearly revered author, Diana Beresford-Kroeger. This empathically touching film journeys with Beresford-Kroeger while investigating the profound biological and spiritual connections to forests — a worldwide adventure which explores the science, folklore, and restoration solutions of this essential eco-system.

“She explores the most beautiful sacred forests in the Northern Hemisphere from the sacred sugi and cedar forests of Japan to the great Boreal woodlands of Canada. She shares the incredible stories detailing the legacies of these ancient forests while also explaining the science of trees and the vital roles played while nurturing in this realm. Trees offer food, create medicine, and most importantly, provide life-giving oxygen, and more.”

“Without trees transforming carbon dioxide, the living breathable atmosphere of the earth and every living body would be dramatically impacted. Trees are in fact one of the most important living organisms on earth, chemically affecting the environment, and playing substantial and vital roles sustaining all life. Trees are quite literally an all surrounding lifeline of the planet and key dynamic catalyst to organic change among any transforming climates. At present, solely 5% of the world’s old growth native forests currently remain and this film intends to inspire new generations of continual growth among peoples, trees, and beyond.

“Call of the Forest is an insightful testament calling for immediate responses of action on a worldwide scale, yet at heart center, this is a story of triumph and how every being can play a part in the transitions arriving now, and to come, holistically tending to earth, and all elements as a whole: respectfully, honourably, gratefully, thankfully, lovingly!” 🌳 http://calloftheforest.ca

• Also see Related: Plants that Think and Speak

Lotus Plant

Eben Alexander: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey through the Afterlife

Dr. Eben Alexander

THE word ‘Psyche’ is a Hellenistic personification of the soul as female, or sometimes as a butterfly. The allegory of Psyche’s love for Cupid is told in The Golden Ass by Apuleius.

The idea of the psyche is central to the philosophy of Plato.

In his Phaedo, Plato has Socrates give four arguments for the immortality of the soul and life after death following the separation of the soul from the body.^[4] 

“It was H.P. Blavatsky who … was the first to explain [to] the Spiritualist the difference there was between psyche and nous, nefesh and ruach — Soul and Spirit. She had to bring the whole arsenal of proofs with her, quotations from Paul and Plato, from Plutarch and James, etc. before the Spiritualists admitted that the Theosophists were right.” –Mahatma K.H.

-H. P. Blavatsky, Psychic and Noëtic Action

Plato’s Socrates also states that after death, the Psyche is better able to achieve wisdom and experience the Platonic forms since it is unhindered by the body.^[5 The Greek Philosopher Aristotle wrote an influential treatise on the psyche, called in Greek Περὶ Ψυχῆς (Peri Psyches), in Latin De Anima and in English On the Soul.

Butterflies

Proof of Heaven

IN this intimate and powerful re-examination of his best-selling book “Proof of Heaven,” Dr. Alexander looks at the past two and a half years of his life spent in trying to reconcile his rich spiritual experience with contemporary physics and cosmology.

He is convinced that his remarkable near-death journey is totally consistent with the leading edges of scientific understanding today.

This presentation was part of the 128th Summer Convention of the Theosophical Society in America. The theme for the conference was “Science and the Experience of Consciousness,” which brought together such distinguished scientists as physicist Amit Goswami, a consciousness researcher, and psychologist, Dean Radin, physicist, and psychic researcher Russell Targ, neurosurgeon Eben Alexander, and more.

Ω

The Healing Power of Reincarnation and Karma, Part 3

Girl on the monkey bars.

MORE than five-thousand years ago, Chinese doctors described hundreds of invisible energy meridians throughout the human body.

When these pathways were unblocked and revitalized, people quickly healed. This is the ancient system of healing we call acupuncture today, which uses special sterilized needles.

But many healers today are literally tapping into this natural energy  system of the body, without needles, using only their bare hands and fingers.

Using this new system ordinary people are learning to master all the “mental changes” in themselves, as taught by The Voice of the Silence, and report healing almost instantly.

They learn how to “harmless make” the stubborn thought and emotional issues that have plagued them, often embedded in early childhood, causing numerous physical, emotional and psychological illnesses as adults. The success resulting from a healing memory recall is an object lesson of what Einstein famously wrote:

We can’t solve problems, by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

Instead, the old thought forms blocking the flow of natural energies in our system have to be cleared away. As we free ourselves from old habits of thinking, we come to recognize our hand as a causitive agent in the problems they caused.

Einstein

In psychological terms it means assuming personal karmic responsibility, and there’s nothing in the universe, even atomic energy, more powerful than the power of acceptance.

Getting Unstuck

It’s probably an understatement to say it’s difficult for most people to get to the root cause of difficult issues, especially if the causes were set up in a past life, a life they cannot consciously now recall.

It is the forgotten events, limiting beliefs, and fixed emotional patterns that glue us to our fate as flypaper does a fly.

The Healing Power of Reincarnation and Karma, Part 2

Scrooge

WHAT thousands of honest employees in that Enron scandal revealed back in 2001 is they paid by association dearly for the misdeeds at the top of their corporate leadership.

Maybe most of the non-managerial staff were ‘innocent’ hardworking employees — possibly others of them knew what was going on but chose to remain silent.

Either way, the lesson was clear: No one is ever secure working for a company whose administration has lost its moral compass. But, whether or not this is fair, is not the broader issue.

Such effects trigger larger questions: ‘whose Karma is it anyway?’ And: ‘how can such behaviors and unintended consequences be prevented in the future?’

But if Exodus (34:6-7)  is correct (karmically speaking): 

I do not excuse the guilty. I lay the sins of the parents upon their children and grandchildren; the entire family is affected— even children in the third and fourth generations.

Can events suffered by one generation really affect future generations? Is there no Karmic relief? Are we as humans to be forever haunted by the specter of an Ebeneezer Scrooge karmic revenger? Human genetic biology may hold the answer to this question in the form of potentiated memories, the consequential remainder of our former unremembered responsibilities.

Our Karmic Inheritance

“Occultism teaches that the life-atoms [DNA] of our (Prana) life-principle are never entirely lost when a [person] dies.” And Blavatsky explains how this occurs in The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2, p.656:

The atoms [in the genes?] impregnated with the life-principle (an independent, eternal, conscious factor) — are partially transmitted from father to son by heredity …

“They are partially drawn once more together,” she says, “and become the animating principle of the new body in every new incarnation…”