What Really Happens When We Die

Flight of the Soul

“THERE is not a mental or physical suffering in the life of a mortal which is not the direct fruit and consequence of some sin in a preceding existence.”

“On the other hand, since he does not preserve the slightest recollection of it in his actual life, and feels himself not deserving of such punishment, and therefore thinks he suffers for no guilt of his own, this alone is sufficient to entitle the human soul to the fullest consolation, rest, and bliss in his post-mortem existence.

Death comes to our spiritual selves ever as a deliverer and friend.

• H. P. Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy, p. 161

Collective Karma

(The Wider Track of the Karmic Law)

Prayer Wheel

In her influential work The Key to Theosophy, H. P. Blavatsky presented the following clarifying principles on this critical subject:

“HPB. According to our teaching all these great social evils, the distinction of classes in Society, and of the sexes in the affairs of life, the unequal distribution of capital and of labour—all are due to what we tersely but truly denominate KARMA.

“ENQUIRER. But, surely, all these evils which seem to fall upon the masses somewhat indiscriminately are not actual merited and INDIVIDUAL Karma?

“HPB. No, they cannot be so strictly defined in their effects as to show that each individual environment, and the particular conditions of life in which each person finds himself, are nothing more than the retributive Karma which the individual generated in a previous life.

We must not lose sight of the fact that every atom is subject to the general law governing the whole body to which it belongs, and here we come upon the wider track of the Karmic law.

The Web of Life

“Do you not perceive that the aggregate of individual Karma becomes that of the nation to which those individuals belong, and further, that the sum total of National Karma is that of the World?

“The evils that you speak of are not peculiar to the individual or even to the Nation, they are more or less universal; and it is upon this broad line of Human interdependence that the law of Karma finds its legitimate and equable issue.”

“ENQUIRER. Do I, then, understand that the law of Karma is not necessarily an individual law?

“HPB. That is just what I mean. It is impossible that Karma could readjust the balance of power in the world’s life and progress, unless it had a broad and general line of action.

It is held as a truth among Theosophists that the interdependence of Humanity is the cause of what is called Distributive Karma, and it is this law which affords the solution to the great question of collective suffering and its relief.

“It is an occult law, moreover, that no man can rise superior to his individual failings, without lifting, be it ever so little, the whole body of which he is an integral part. In the same way, no one can sin, nor suffer the effects of sin, alone. In reality, there is no such thing as ‘Separateness’; and the nearest approach to that selfish state, which the laws of life permit, is in the intent or motive.”

•  H. P. Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy, “What is Karma” p. 201-12

Near-death experiences have been hypothesized in various medical journals in the past, as having the characteristics of hallucinations, but Dr Ackermann and his team, on the contrary, consider them as evidence for the existence of the afterlife and of a form of dualism between mind and body.

What Really Happens When You Die

by Peter Fenwick

Peter Fenwick (born 25 May 1935) is a neuropsychiatrist and neurophysiologist who is known for his pioneering studies of end-of-life phenomena. In this interview he talks about near-death-experiences (NDE), death-bed-visitors and how we can achieve a good death. NDE research is at the cutting edge of consciousness research and offers a convincing model for the understanding of what happens when we die.

Peter Fenwick describes the different transitional phases of the dying process and highlights the importance of letting go at the end of ones life. He offers fascinating insights into common phenomena at the end of life, such as premonitions, seeing a light, death-bed-visions and coincidences. In his opinion everybody should know about death and the dying process, because it is a normal part of living.

Interviewer: Jens Rohrbeck Editor: Werner Huemer Director: Mehmet Yesilgöz © 2018 by thanatos.tv

The doctrine we promulgate being the only true one, must, supported by such evidence as we are preparing to give become ultimately triumphant as every other truth. Yet it is absolutely necessary to inculcate it gradually enforcing its theories, unimpeachable facts for those who know, with direct inferences deducted from and corroborated by the evidence furnished by modern exact science.

• The Great Master’s Letter (Excerpt)

“As Above, So Below”

A complete treatise on authentic Theosophical Teachings of
“When We Die” will be found at:

blavatskytheosophy.com

♥

Hidden Karma of the Soul: What Really Happens When We Die

Flight of the Soul

“THERE is not a mental or physical suffering in the life of a mortal which is not the direct fruit and consequence of some sin in a preceding existence.”

“On the other hand, since he does not preserve the slightest recollection of it in his actual life, and feels himself not deserving of such punishment, and therefore thinks he suffers for no guilt of his own, this alone is sufficient to entitle the human soul to the fullest consolation, rest, and bliss in his post-mortem existence.

Death comes to our spiritual selves ever as a deliverer and friend.

• H. P. Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy, p. 161

Collective Karma

(The Wider Track of the Karmic Law)

Prayer Wheel

In her influential work The Key to Theosophy, H. P. Blavatsky presented the following clarifying principles on this critical subject:

“HPB. According to our teaching all these great social evils, the distinction of classes in Society, and of the sexes in the affairs of life, the unequal distribution of capital and of labour—all are due to what we tersely but truly denominate KARMA.

“ENQUIRER. But, surely, all these evils which seem to fall upon the masses somewhat indiscriminately are not actual merited and INDIVIDUAL Karma?

“HPB. No, they cannot be so strictly defined in their effects as to show that each individual environment, and the particular conditions of life in which each person finds himself, are nothing more than the retributive Karma which the individual generated in a previous life.

We must not lose sight of the fact that every atom is subject to the general law governing the whole body to which it belongs, and here we come upon the wider track of the Karmic law.

The Web of Life

“Do you not perceive that the aggregate of individual Karma becomes that of the nation to which those individuals belong, and further, that the sum total of National Karma is that of the World?

“The evils that you speak of are not peculiar to the individual or even to the Nation, they are more or less universal; and it is upon this broad line of Human interdependence that the law of Karma finds its legitimate and equable issue.”

“ENQUIRER. Do I, then, understand that the law of Karma is not necessarily an individual law?

“HPB. That is just what I mean. It is impossible that Karma could readjust the balance of power in the world’s life and progress, unless it had a broad and general line of action.

It is held as a truth among Theosophists that the interdependence of Humanity is the cause of what is called Distributive Karma, and it is this law which affords the solution to the great question of collective suffering and its relief.

“It is an occult law, moreover, that no man can rise superior to his individual failings, without lifting, be it ever so little, the whole body of which he is an integral part. In the same way, no one can sin, nor suffer the effects of sin, alone. In reality, there is no such thing as ‘Separateness’; and the nearest approach to that selfish state, which the laws of life permit, is in the intent or motive.”

•  H. P. Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy, “What is Karma” p. 201-12

Near-death experiences have been hypothesized in various medical journals in the past, as having the characteristics of hallucinations, but Dr Ackermann and his team, on the contrary, consider them as evidence for the existence of the afterlife and of a form of dualism between mind and body.

What Really Happens When You Die

by Peter Fenwick

Peter Fenwick (born 25 May 1935) is a neuropsychiatrist and neurophysiologist who is known for his pioneering studies of end-of-life phenomena. In this interview he talks about near-death-experiences (NDE), death-bed-visitors and how we can achieve a good death. NDE research is at the cutting edge of consciousness research and offers a convincing model for the understanding of what happens when we die.

Peter Fenwick describes the different transitional phases of the dying process and highlights the importance of letting go at the end of ones life. He offers fascinating insights into common phenomena at the end of life, such as premonitions, seeing a light, death-bed-visions and coincidences. In his opinion everybody should know about death and the dying process, because it is a normal part of living.

Interviewer: Jens Rohrbeck Editor: Werner Huemer Director: Mehmet Yesilgöz © 2018 by thanatos.tv

The doctrine we promulgate being the only true one, must, supported by such evidence as we are preparing to give become ultimately triumphant as every other truth. Yet it is absolutely necessary to inculcate it gradually enforcing its theories, unimpeachable facts for those who know, with direct inferences deducted from and corroborated by the evidence furnished by modern exact science.

• The Great Master’s Letter (Excerpt)

“As Above, So Below”

A complete treatise on authentic Theosophical Teachings of
“When We Die” will be found at:

blavatskytheosophy.com

♥

The Healing Memories of Past Lives

Astral Travel

THE twin doctrines of Karma (responsibility) and Reincarnation (hope) are keys to freeing us from the dark jungle of ignorance.

These doctrines make sense out of two of humanity’s most persistent puzzles — the purpose of life, and the meaning of death.

Theosophical world messenger H. P. Blavatsky made it clear that the ultimate salvation of humanity lay in a true understanding of these doctrines.

In her Third Letter to the 4th Annual Convention of the American Section of the Theosophical Society Blavatsky counseled: “Learn well the doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation:

and teach, practice, promulgate that system of life and thought which alone can save the coming races.

The effect of a new popularization of near death experiences (NDEs), and the reality of the spiritual world they point to, is to understand better Blavatsky’s insistence on the overarching importance of these twin doctrines.

Astral Body rises up

The metaphysical teachings underlying cosmogenesis and anthropogenesis were presented after Isis Unveiled with Blavatsky’s magnum opus, The Secret Doctrine — a universal springboard for the New Age.

Some 130 years later, Theosophy’s light is still brightening the end of the tunnel.

Those who have had a near-death experience have already seen the light — including children, as the noted researcher P.M.H. Atwater reports.

Dreams and the Dreamer

Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are still the most compelling evidence for the existence of a cognitive self that exists independently from the physical body, and a convincing argument for reincarnation of the same soul from life to life.

Compelling scientific documentation was not available in the early days of Theosophy. But in recent years Scientists have begun to study ‘out of body experiences.’ See the blog post: Scientists Study Out of Body Experiences.

“Scientists will see if consciousness continues after brain death. People who report seeing bright lights or tunnels as they leave their bodies in near-death experiences are having their claims treated seriously in a hospital study.”

Dr Sam Parnia, an intensive care doctor who is heading the study, said: “If you can demonstrate that consciousness continues after the brain switches off,

it allows for the possibility that the consciousness is a separate entity.

ξ

Edward Austrian

The Past Life Memory that Healed Him

“Getting back the memory of other lives is really the whole of the process, and if some people don’t understand certain things it is either because they have not got to that point in their other lives, or because no glimmer of memory has yet come.”

– William Q. Judge
(Letters That Have Helped Me, Vol. 2, Letter 5)

Memory in Every Organ

“There is no special organ of will, any more than there is a physical basis for the activities of self-consciousness.  …  memory has no seat, no special organ of its own in the human brain, but that it has seats in every organ of the body. The phenomena of divine consciousness have to be regarded as activities of our mind on another and a higher plane, working through something less substantial than the moving molecules of the brain.”

• H. P. Blavatsky, Psychic and Noëtic Action

The Human Brain

Today’s frontier sciences are providing more and more experimental results demonstrating the existence of a mind-soul existing beyond the boundaries of physical matter. Organizations like the Institute of Noetic Sciences are transforming contemporary worldviews on the relationship between consciousness and matter:

“At the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), we are inspired by the power of science to explain phenomena not previously understood, harnessing the best of the rational mind to make advances that further our knowledge and enhance our human experience.”

‘Dying To Be Me’: The Near-Death Experience of Anita Moorjani

Immortal Individuality

THE New Age Movement heralded by Theosophy in the late 19th century is gradually bearing practical influence here in the 21st.

Theosophical ideas and ethics are literally life-changing to those who contact its influence, directly or indirectly.

Helena Blavatsky, the Movement’s inspired original spokesperson wrote an inspiring Letter to the Third American Convention, noting that “Theosophy is indeed the life, the indwelling spirit which makes every true reform a vital reality.”

Theosophy is Universal Brotherhood, the very foundation as well as the keystone of all movements toward the amelioration of our condition.

“The Ethics of Theosophy are more important than any divulgement of psychic laws and facts. The latter relate wholly to the material and evanescent part of the septenary man, but the Ethics sink into and take hold of the real man — the reincarnating Ego.

“We are outwardly creatures of but a day; within we are eternal. Learn, then, well the doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation, and teach, practice, promulgate that system of life and thought which alone can save the coming races.”

• H. P. Blavatsky, Letter 3 – Fourth Annual Convention  

Rassouli, “Joyriders”

What might be the practical value of these ancient doctrines today? Perhaps the primary importance lies in the assertion of our duality, i.e. the co-existence of awakened material (or psychic) and spiritual (noetic) entities in us. H. P. Blavatsky wrote: “We [assert] the existence of a higher or permanent Ego in us.”

In the thoughts of [this Ego] or the immortal ‘Individuality,’ the pictures and visions of the Past and Future are as the Present.

Further, she wrote, (in stenographically preserved dialogues with her students), “nor are his thoughts like ours, subjective pictures in our cerebration, but living acts and deeds, present actualities. … they are realities.”

• H. P. Blavatsky
  Secret Doctrine Commentary –
  Appendix on Dreams

Salvador Dali, ‘Melting Watch’

Quantum leap hardly begins to adequately measure the inner life of spiritual beings having a human experience, a transcendence that advanced adepts directly understand, because they live it consciously.

Spiritual states of consciousness, quantum states, altered time and space were often hinted at in the writings of H. P. Blavatsky and her Adept Teachers, but few direct examples were offered. The illusion of time and descriptions of elevated states of consciousness were the most powerful and interesting of these.

Such are confirmed now when near-death, out of body and psychic experiences are finally being acknowledged and studied.

Life Goes On – Plato’s Vision of Immortality

Le Ravissement de Psyche -1895
Adolphe-William Bouguereau

THE Myth of Er is a legend that concludes Plato‘s Republic (10.614 – 10.621). The story includes an account of the cosmos and the afterlife, Wikipedia notes,

that greatly influenced religious, philosophical, and scientific thought for many centuries.

At seventeen, even Aristotle joined Plato’s Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of thirty-seven (c. 347 BC).

What he learned is passed on to us in modern Theosophy: No one, however gross and material he might be in this life and thought, can avoid leading a double existence in reality – one life is lived in the visible universe, the other plays out in the invisible.

This is a fundamental tenet of the Theosophical Philosophy as presented by H. P. Blavatsky.

“Socratic myths describe the ascent of the soul to true knowledge,” Theosophical scholar W. T. S. Thackera writes, “its communion with divine realities, and its return to enlighten mankind.”

“The order of the Dialogues is important, as the myths in them,” Thackera explains, “each representing a kind of initiation, progressively reveal new teaching and clarify the old.”

Plato and Aristotle

“Plato opens the Republic with a conversation between Socrates and his elderly friend Cephalus on the subject of death,” Thackara writes. “Cephalus wants to assure himself that, if there is an afterlife, he will be spared the sufferings of the underworld. He even quotes from one of Pindar’s odes to support his argument.

The message is clear: we are all immortal beings, and our destiny is in our own hands.

“Plato ends the Republic with the Vision of Er, as Socrates describes the spiritual warrior who is slain in battle and returns to life, physically resurrected in order to transmit the message of all saviors. (W. T. S. Thackara in Plato’s Myths and the Mystery Tradition).

“Music of The Spheres”

“Between Science and Theology is a bewildered public, fast losing all belief in man’s personal immortality, in a deity of any kind,” H. P. Blavatsky wrote in Isis Unveiled [2:593], “and rapidly descending to the level of materialism.”

Yet, she adds, “from the remotest antiquity, mankind as a whole have always been convinced of the existence of a personal spiritual entity, within the personal physical man.”

“This inner entity was more or less divine, according to its proximity to the crown — Chrestos [The Higher Self].”

Astral Body while Physical Sleeps

“It is on the indestructible tablets of the astral light that is stamped the impression of every thought we think, and every act we perform. And future events — effects of long-forgotten causes” — Isis Unveiled [I:178] — “are already delineated as a vivid picture for the eye of the seer and prophet to follow. the vast repository where the records of every man’s life as well as every pulsation of the visible cosmos are stored up for all Eternity!”

Healed by Unconditional Love, a Near Death Experience

Wings of the Soul

THE new age movement heralded most recently by Theosophy in the late 19th century is at last bearing meaningful fruit here in the 21st.

 “Theosophy is indeed the life, the indwelling spirit which makes every true reform a vital reality,” wrote H. P. Blavatsky the movement’s inspired original spokesperson.

“The Ethics of Theosophy are more important than any divulgement of psychic laws and facts. The latter relate wholly to the material and evanescent part of the septenary man, but the Ethics sink into and take hold of the real man — the reincarnating Ego.

“We are outwardly creatures of but a day; within we are eternal. Learn, then, well the doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation, and teach, practice, promulgate that system of life and thought which alone can save the coming races.

“Theosophy is Universal Brotherhood, the very foundation as well as the keystone of all movements toward the amelioration of our condition.”

“Fear kills the will and stays all action,” she declared in The Voice of the Silence. And, if lacking in the Shila virtue — [Shila: the key of Harmony in word and act, the key that counterbalances the cause and the effect, and leaves no further room for Karmic action]: “The pilgrim trips and Karmic pebbles bruise his feet along the rocky path.”

H. P. Blavatsky to the American Conventions

Rassouli, “Joyriders”

What might be the practical value of these ancient doctrines today? Perhaps the primary importance lies in the assertion of our duality, i.e. the co-existance of awakened material (or psychic) and spiritual (noetic) entities in humans.

“‘We [assert] the existence of a higher or permanent Ego in us. In the thoughts of [this Ego] or the immortal ‘Individuality,’ the pictures and visions of the Past and Future are as the Present.”

Further, she asserts, (in stenographically preserved dialogues with her students): “nor are his thoughts like ours, subjective pictures in our cerebration, but living acts and deeds, present actualities. … they are realities.”

The Sudden Glimpse of His Soul — A Drowning Man’s Vision

Le Ravissement de Psyche -1895
Adolphe-William Bouguereau

THE Myth of Er is a legend that concludes Plato‘s Republic (10.614 – 10.621). The story includes an account of the cosmos and the afterlife, Wikipedia notes,

“that greatly influenced religious, philosophical, and scientific thought for many centuries.”

No one, however gross and material he might be in this life and thought, can avoid leading a double existence in reality. One life is lived in the visible universe, the other plays out in the invisible.

This is a fundamental tenet of the Theosophical Philosophy as presented by H. P. Blavatsky.

“Socratic myths describe the ascent of the soul to true knowledge,” Theosophical scholar W. T. S. Thackera says, “its communion with divine realities, and its return to enlighten mankind.”

“The order of the Dialogues is important, as the myths in them,” Thackera explains, “each representing a kind of initiation, progressively reveal new teaching and clarify the old.”

Plato and Aristotle

“Plato opens the Republic with a conversation between Socrates and his elderly friend Cephalus on the subject of death,” Thackara writes. “Cephalus wants to assure himself that, if there is an afterlife, he will be spared the sufferings of the underworld. He even quotes from one of Pindar’s odes to support his argument.

The message is clear: we are all immortal beings, and our destiny is in our own hands.

“Plato ends the Republic with the Vision of Er, as Socrates describes the spiritual warrior who is slain in battle and returns to life, physically resurrected in order to transmit the message of all saviors. (W. T. S. Thackara in Plato’s Myths and the Mystery Tradition).

“Music of The Spheres”

“Between Science and Theology is a bewildered public, fast losing all belief in man’s personal immortality, in a deity of any kind,” H. P. Blavatsky wrote in Isis Unveiled [2:593], “and rapidly descending to the level of materialism.”

Yet, she adds, “from the remotest antiquity, mankind as a whole have always been convinced of the existence of a personal spiritual entity, within the personal physical man.”

“This inner entity was more or less divine, according to its proximity to the crown — Chrestos [The Higher Self].”

Astral Body while Physical Sleeps

“It is on the indestructible tablets of the astral light that is stamped the impression of every thought we think, and every act we perform. And future events — effects of long-forgotten causes” — Isis Unveiled [I:178] — “are already delineated as a vivid picture for the eye of the seer and prophet to follow. the vast repository where the records of every man’s life as well as every pulsation of the visible cosmos are stored up for all Eternity!”

The Near Death Experience: A Drowning Man’s Vision

Le Ravissement de Psyche -1895
Adolphe-William Bouguereau

THE Myth of Er is a legend that concludes Plato‘s Republic (10.614 – 10.621). The story includes an account of the cosmos and the afterlife, Wikipedia notes,

“that greatly influenced religious, philosophical, and scientific thought for many centuries.”

No one, however gross and material he might be in this life and thought, can avoid leading a double existence in reality. One life is lived in the visible universe, the other plays out in the invisible.

This is a fundamental tenet of the Theosophical Philosophy as presented by H. P. Blavatsky.

“Socratic myths describe the ascent of the soul to true knowledge,” Theosophical scholar W. T. S. Thackera says, “its communion with divine realities, and its return to enlighten mankind.”

“The order of the Dialogues is important, as the myths in them,” Thackera explains, “each representing a kind of initiation, progressively reveal new teaching and clarify the old.”

Plato and Aristotle

“Plato opens the Republic with a conversation between Socrates and his elderly friend Cephalus on the subject of death,” Thackara writes. “Cephalus wants to assure himself that, if there is an afterlife, he will be spared the sufferings of the underworld. He even quotes from one of Pindar’s odes to support his argument.

The message is clear: we are all immortal beings, and our destiny is in our own hands.

“Plato ends the Republic with the Vision of Er, as Socrates describes the spiritual warrior who is slain in battle and returns to life, physically resurrected in order to transmit the message of all saviors. (W. T. S. Thackara in Plato’s Myths and the Mystery Tradition).

“Music of The Spheres”

“Between Science and Theology is a bewildered public, fast losing all belief in man’s personal immortality, in a deity of any kind,” H. P. Blavatsky wrote in Isis Unveiled [2:593], “and rapidly descending to the level of materialism.”

Yet, she adds, “from the remotest antiquity, mankind as a whole have always been convinced of the existence of a personal spiritual entity, within the personal physical man.”

“This inner entity was more or less divine, according to its proximity to the crown — Chrestos [The Higher Self].”

Astral Body while Physical Sleeps

“It is on the indestructible tablets of the astral light that is stamped the impression of every thought we think, and every act we perform. And future events — effects of long-forgotten causes” — Isis Unveiled [I:178] — “are already delineated as a vivid picture for the eye of the seer and prophet to follow. the vast repository where the records of every man’s life as well as every pulsation of the visible cosmos are stored up for all Eternity!”

Changing Your Face: What It’s Like to Die

Changing Your Face

According to tradition, the Buddha’s dying words were (freely translated): “all compounds are perishable.”
It was not man’s immortal spirit he meant. Rather, Buddha was pointing to the temporary physical, passionate, personal and psychic parts of us.

Our deathless spirit uses sensory and physical vehicles merely as instruments of expression in every new ly minted life.

Functionally linked those parts are temporary and are separated from each other at death. They are reduced to their primal elements, like the fuel of a fire, recycled and returned back to Universal Nature, their primal state.

The process is entirely natural, the recycling of renewable substances of evolution, of the temporal forces and materials required for an earthly body:

“Dust thou art,” states Genesis (3:19), “and unto dust thou shalt return”— referring to those perishable parts of man’s complex construction.

By contrast, in a dream, “the Spirit of man is free,” as the occult teaching of the Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad (13) declared, “and naught adheres to the Spirit.”

Death is Sleep

Mme. Blavatsky agreed with the Upanishads, and explains in the Key to Theosophy (109) that “death ever comes to our spiritual selves as a deliverer and friend.” And for the average mortal, “it will be a dream as vivid as life, and full of realistic bliss and visions.”

Even for the materialist, who, “notwithstanding his materialism, was not a bad man, the interval between the two lives will be like the unbroken and placid sleep of a child,” Blavatsky wrote.

“As the man at the moment of death has a retrospective insight into the life he has led, so, at the moment he is reborn on to earth. He has a prospective vision of the life which awaits him and realizes all the causes that have led to it.

Chasing Dreams

“He realizes them and sees futurity, because it is between [the bliss filled after-death dream state called] Devachan and re-birth, that the Ego regains his full [spiritual mind] manasic consciousness, and re-becomes for a short time the god he was —before he first descended into matter and incarnated in flesh, in compliance with Karmic law.”

“The ‘golden thread’ sees all its ‘pearls’ and misses not one of them.” – H. P. Blavatsky

“I repeat it: death is sleep. After death, before the spiritual eyes of the soul begins a performance according to a programme learnt and very often unconsciously composed by ourselves: the practical carrying out of correct beliefs or of illusions which have been created by ourselves. The Methodist will be Methodist, the Mussulman a Mussulman, at least for some time — in a perfect fool’s paradise of each man’s creation and making.

Fools Paradise

“These are the post-mortem fruits of the tree of life. Naturally, our belief or unbelief in the fact of conscious immortality is unable to influence the unconditioned reality of the fact itself, once that it exists; but the belief or unbelief in that immortality as the property of independent or separate entities, cannot fail to give colour to that fact in its application to each of these entities. Now do you begin to understand it?”

(H. P. Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy, Section 9,
“What is Really Meant by Annihilation)

Socrates and the Near Death

Le Ravissement de Psyche -1895
Adolphe-William Bouguereau

THE Myth of Er is a legend that concludes Plato‘s Republic (10.614 – 10.621). The story includes an account of the cosmos and the afterlife, Wikipedia notes, “that greatly influenced religious, philosophical, and scientific thought for many centuries.”

No one, however gross and material he might be in this life and thought, can avoid leading a double existence in reality. One life is in the visible universe, the other in the invisible.

This is a fundamental tenet of the Theosophical Philosophy as expounded by H. P. Blavatsky.

“Socratic myths describe the ascent of the soul to true knowledge,” Theosophical scholar W. T. S. Thackera says, “its communion with divine realities, and its return to enlighten mankind.”

“The order of the Dialogues is important, as the myths in them,” Thackera explains, “each representing a kind of initiation, progressively reveal new teaching and clarify the old.”

The Astral Pattern Body

“Plato opens the Republic with a conversation between Socrates and his elderly friend Cephalus on the subject of death,” Thackara writes. “Cephalus wants to assure himself that, if there is an afterlife, he will be spared the sufferings of the underworld. He even quotes from one of Pindar’s odes to support his argument.

The message is clear: we are all immortal beings, and our destiny is in our own hands.

“Plato ends the Republic with the Vision of Er, as Socrates describes the spiritual warrior who is slain in battle and returns to life, physically resurrected in order to transmit the message of all saviors. (W. T. S. Thackara in Plato’s Myths and the Mystery Tradition).

“Music of The Spheres”

“Between Science and Theology is a bewildered public, fast losing all belief in man’s personal immortality, in a deity of any kind,” H. P. Blavatsky wrote in Isis Unveiled [2:593], “and rapidly descending to the level of materialism.”

Yet, she adds, “from the remotest antiquity, mankind as a whole have always been convinced of the existence of a personal spiritual entity, within the personal physical man.”

“This inner entity was more or less divine, according to its proximity to the crown — Chrestos [The Higher Self].

“It is on the indestructible tablets of the astral light that is stamped the impression of every thought we think, and every act we perform. And future events — effects of long-forgotten causes” — Isis Unveiled [I:178] — “are already delineated as a vivid picture for the eye of the seer and prophet to follow. the vast repository where the records of every man’s life as well as every pulsation of the visible cosmos are stored up for all Eternity!”

The Psychology of Reincarnation: Prodigious Prodigies

Emily Bear

EMILY BEAR is a pianist and composer from Rockford, Illinois. Wikipedia explains:

“When Emily was 2 years old, her grandmother recognized her talent at the piano. Bear began to study with Emilio del Rosario at the Music Institute of Chicago.

“Within 4 years she was enrolled for study of classical music at the Winnetka campus.

“Bear started to compose her own music at the age of three. At 8 years, she has already composed more than 350 pieces – and much of her work – both composition and improvisation – is of the more difficult, 20th Century genre, inclusive of Jazz elements.”

Below, a Six-year old Emily Bear has wowed audiences from the White House to her own house. Playing the piano since age 3, Emily also composes her own music. Has WGN-TV discovered the next Mozart? Or, possibly, the former Mozart?

Instant Karma and the Revolutionary Case of Bridey Murphy

THEOSOPHY students of a certain agemight remember the famous and mysterious  1950’s reincarnation case of “Bridey Murphy.”

We re-present it now briefly in keeping with our blog’s subhead, the heading created by H. P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine, i.e. “Ancient thought in modern dress.”

The hypnotist  Morey Bernstein of Pueblo, Colorado, was working with one of his clients, a twenty-nine-year old housewife and mother named Virginia Tighe when, during one of their sessions, she spoke with the voice and memories of a nineteenth-century Irishwoman named Bridey Murphy.

With this case, the reincarnation genii jumped right out of its metaphysical bottle and into popular consciousness.

This case was, and still is, a powerful reinforcement of the theoretical teaching of Reincarnation — not just leaving the idea hanging intellectually, dogmatically, and blindly, in the minds of modern students. Bernstein’s book about the case was a sensational best seller in 1956, followed by equally wildly popular movies.

Trip To The Afterlife: Near-Death Experience At The Dentist

Hieronymus Bosch “Ascent of the Blessed”

THE new age movement heralded by Theosophy in the late 19th century, is at last bearing meaningful fruit here at the opening of the 21st.

 “Theosophy is indeed the life, the indwelling spirit which makes every true reform a vital reality,” wrote the New Age’s original spokesperson, the inspirational and controvercial H. P. Blavatsky.

She sets the keynote of the Movement thus:

“Theosophy is Universal Brotherhood, the very foundation as well as the keystone of all movements toward the amelioration of our condition.”

“Fear kills the will and stays all action,” she declares in The Voice of the Silence. And, if lacking in the Shila virtue — [Shila, the key of Harmony in word and act, the key that counterbalances the cause and the effect, and leaves no further room for Karmic action] — “the pilgrim trips, and Karmic pebbles bruise his feet along the rocky path.”

“The Ethics of Theosophy are more important than any divulgement of psychic laws and facts,” she explained. “The Ethics sink into and take hold of the real man — the reincarnating Ego. We are outwardly creatures of but a day; within we are eternal.”

Blavatsky concluded: “Learn, then, well the doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation, and teach, practice, promulgate that system of life and thought which alone can save the coming races.”

What might be the practical value of these ancient doctrines today? Perhaps the primary importance lies in the assertion of our human-spiritual duality, i.e. the co-existance of awakened material (or psychic) and spiritual (noetic) entities in us.

“‘We [assert] the existence of a higher or permanent Ego in us,” Blavatsky insisted.

“In the thoughts of [this Ego] or the immortal ‘Individuality,’ the pictures and visions of the Past and Future are as the Present.”

Further she asserts, (in stenographically preserved dialogues with her students): “nor are his thoughts like ours, subjective pictures in our cerebration, but living acts and deeds, present actualities. … they are realities.”

Healing Messages from the Afterlife

THE twin doctrines of Karma (responsibility) and Reincarnation (hope) are keys to freeing us from the dark jungle of ignorance.

These doctrines make sense out of two of humanity’s most persistent puzzles — the purpose of life, and the meaning of death.

Theosophical world messenger H. P. Blavatsky made it clear that the ultimate salvation of humanity lay in a true understanding of these doctrines.

In her Third Letter to the 4th Annual Convention of the American Section of the Theosophical Society she explained: “Learn well the doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation:

“and teach, practice, promulgate that system of life and thought which alone can save the coming races.”

The advent of the new popularization of near death experiences (NDEs) and the reality of the spiritual world they point to, gives us an understanding of Blavatsky’s insistence on the overarching importance of these twin doctrines.

The metaphysical truths underlying cosmogenesis and anthropogenesis followed soon after Isis Unveiled with Blavatsky’s magnum opus, The Secret Doctrine — a universal springboard for the New Age.

Some 125 years later, Theosophy’s light is still brightening the end of the tunnel.

Those who have had a near-death experience have already seen the light — including children, as the noted researcher P.M.H. Atwater reports.

Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are still the most compelling evidence for the existence of a cognitive self that exists independently from the physical body, and a convincing argument for reincarnation of the same soul from life to life.

Compelling scientific documentation was not available in the early days of Theosophy. See the blog post: Scientists Study Out of Body Experiences.

Frontier sciences are providing more and more experimental results demonstrating the existence of a mind-soul existing beyond the boundaries of physical matter.

Organizations like the Institute of Noetic Sciences are transforming contemporary worldviews on the relationship between consciousness and matter.

Beyond Belief: Evidence of Reincarnation

AN ending is just a new beginning in disguise it’s been said. This perfectly describes the ancient belief in the soul’s immortality and continuity through reincarnation.

The spiritual eye of light,(represented in the human brain by the pineal gland), is more and more activated as we progress through spiritual evolution’s wisely appointed reincarnations.

Such stages are necessary to finally achieve “conscious god-hood,” in the words of Theosophical Pioneer W. Q. Judge, all the while living a human existence on Earth, Judge concluding:

“Getting back the memory of other lives is really the whole of the process…”

Mr.Judge in his Letter 5 also notes: “if some people don’t understand certain things, it is either because they have not got to that point in their other lives, or because no glimmer of memory has yet come.” Some people do have such glimmers, and as often such recalls have the power to heal, physically and emotionally.

Near-Death Experience: How to Live Without Fear

THE new age movement heralded by Theosophy in the late 19th century, is at last bearing meaningful fruit here in the 21st.

 “Theosophy is indeed the life, the indwelling spirit which makes every true reform a vital reality,” wrote H. P. Blavatsky the movement’s inspired original spokesperson.

“Theosophy is Universal Brotherhood, the very foundation as well as the keystone of all movements toward the amelioration of our condition.”

“Fear kills the will and stays all action,” she declares in The Voice of the Silence. And, if lacking in the Shila virtue — [Shila: the key of Harmony in word and act, the key that counterbalances the cause and the effect, and leaves no further room for Karmic action]: “The pilgrim trips, and Karmic pebbles bruise his feet along the rocky path.”

“The Ethics of Theosophy are more important than any divulgement of psychic laws and facts,” she wrote. “The Ethics sink into and take hold of the real man — the reincarnating Ego. We are outwardly creatures of but a day; within we are eternal.”

Concluding; “Learn, then, well the doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation, and teach, practice, promulgate that system of life and thought which alone can save the coming races.”

Rassouli, “Joyriders”

What might be the practical value of these ancient doctrines today? Perhaps the primary importance lies in the assertion of our duality, i.e. the co-existance of awakened material (or psychic) and spiritual (noetic) entities in humans.

“‘We [assert] the existence of a higher or permanent Ego in us. In the thoughts of [this Ego] or the immortal ‘Individuality,’ the pictures and visions of the Past and Future are as the Present.”

Further she asserts, (in stenographically preserved dialogues with her students): “nor are his thoughts like ours, subjective pictures in our cerebration, but living acts and deeds, present actualities. … they are realities.”