The Evidence for Intelligent Design: Irreducible Complexity

Intelligent Design

BLIND chance could never on its own have produced a self aware and self-conscious thinking being. Certainly would never have evolved a world class athlete, prima ballerina, a Mozart or Shakespeare.

If there were only random forces ruling the world there would  be no progress or evolution needed because life would be inherently purposeless and pointless.

Instead, Theosophy postulates that the process of evolution is inherently purposeful, guided by three different aspects, or “schemes — inextricably interwoven and interblended at every point. It now becomes plain that there exists in Nature a triple evolutionary scheme . . . or rather three separate schemes of evolution.”

 These are the Monadic (or spiritual), the intellectual, and the physical evolutions. These three are the finite aspects or the reflections on the field of Cosmic Illusion of atma, the seventh, the one reality.

–H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine 1:181

[The word Theosophy} “comes to us from the Alexandrian philosophers, called lovers of truth, Philaletheians, from phil ‘loving,’ and aletheia ‘truth.’ The name Theosophy dates from the third century of our era, and began with Ammonius Saccas and his disciples, who started the Eclectic Theosophical system.”

“We can show the line of descent of every Christian religion, as of every, even the smallest, sect. The latter are the minor twigs or shoots grown on the larger branches; but shoots and branches spring from the same trunk — the WISDOM-RELIGION.

“To prove this was the aim of Ammonius, who endeavoured to induce Gentiles and Christians, Jews and Idolaters, to lay aside their contentions and strifes, remembering only that they were all in possession of the same truth under various vestments, and were all the children of a common mother. This is the aim of Theosophy likewise.”

•  H. P. Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy, Section 1

Tree of Knowledge

Thinking or purpose of any sort it is not needed by the random blind productions of  a purposeless evolutionary. Put in reality: no intelligence required.

But even children understand that figuring anything out in life is a learning process seasoned by reason, healthy emotions, and aha moments.

A conscious, observant puzzle-solver undeniably exists in the background of thought. The numerous paradoxes inherent in human, and even animal intelligence, will remain ever an unsolvable puzzle to reductionist thinkers.

Not unlike the caterpillar’s irrepressible urge to grow wings and fly, truth finding and spiritual growth are guided by a built-in system H. P. Blavatsky calls in her Secret Doctrine ‘progressive awakenings’:

and the upward progress of the Ego is a series of progressive awakenings, each advance bringing with it the idea that now, at last, we have reached ‘reality’—

(The Secret Doctrine 1:40)

Intelligent Design

In her article Spiritual Progress,  H. P. Blavatsky made what seemed kind of obvious point (paraphrased):

The true Adept must become,
[she] cannot be made.

“The true Adept, the developed man,” Blavatsky wrote, “must, we are always told, become – he cannot be made. The process is therefore one of growth through evolution, and this must necessarily involve a certain amount of pain.

“Again, the idea of growth involves also the idea of disruption: the inner being must continually burst through its confining shell or encasement, and such a disruption must also be accompanied by pain, not physical but mental and intellectual.”

•  H. P. Blavatsky, Spiritual Progress

Professional Sprinters

The growing recognition of the intelligence underlying all life, she wrote, is one of ” growth through evolution, and this must necessarily involve a certain amount of pain” — (at least by our human perception.)

Even progressed disciples, aspiring Adepts, may yet experience psychological pain as described in The Voice of the Silence III:

That Secret Path leads the Arhan to mental woe unspeakable; woe for the living Dead, and helpless pity for the men of karmic sorrow; the fruit of Karma Sages dare not still.

Compassion

We may experience stress in the moment, a research study suggests, “but experience greater happiness on a daily basis and longer term.”

“No pain, no gain is the rule when it comes to gaining happiness from increasing our competence at something,” said Ryan Howell, assistant professor of psychology at San Francisco State University. “People often give up their goals because they are stressful, but we found that there is benefit at the end of the day from learning to do something well. And what’s striking is that you don’t have to reach your goal to see the benefits to your happiness and well-being.”

•  ScienceDaily: No Pain, No Gain: Mastering A Skill Makes Us Stressed In The Moment, Happy Long Term

LIFE: The Greatest Problem of Modern Science

Born Again

MAINSTREAM science creates an almost insurmountable obstacle to understanding the real nature of life because of one persistent belief.

They steadfastly refuse to recognize that the Life Principle is a distinct force, and in so doing our modern science blocks all understanding of the nature of reality.

“The greatest problem of philosophy, is the physical and substantial nature of life,” H. P. Blavatsky declared:

It is its independent nature, which is denied by modern science — because that science is unable to comprehend it.

“The reincarnationists and believers in Karma alone dimly perceive,” Blavatsky declared, “that the whole secret of Life is in the unbroken series of its manifestations: whether in, or apart from, the physical body.”

(The Secret Doctrine 1:238)

Nevermind: “modern science’s definition of life still rests on  Herbert Spencer’s old definition, one that describes the phenomenon, but gives no hint of its real cause.” 

(“Moxon’s Master” – Ambrose Bierce)

What is Life?

Spencer’s materialistic definition of Life was that “Life is a definite combination of heterogeneous changes,”

both simultaneous and successive in correspondence with external coexistences and sequences.

Spencer’s assertion is still maintained as the scientific consensus view because “most researchers still believe they can build from one side of nature, the physical,” says the biocentrist Dr. Robert Lanza, in  … concluding, crucially: “without the other side, the living.”

Robert Lanza is one of the most respected scientists in the world—a US News & World Report cover story called him a “genius” and a “renegade thinker,” even likening him to Einstein. Lanza has teamed with Bob Berman, the most widely read astronomer in the world, to produce the book:

Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe.

The Anthropic Principle

He shows that his Biocentrism — an extension of the Anthropic Principle, described by the Einstein disciple physicist John Wheeler — asserts a view of life incompatible with modern materialism.

“The Anthropic Principle was proposed in Poland in 1973, during a special two-week series of synopsia commemorating Copernicus’ 500th birthday,” a physics website explains:

“It was proposed by Brandon Carter, who had the audacity to proclaim that humanity did indeed hold a special place in the Universe, an assertion that is the exact opposite of Copernicus’ now universally accepted theory.”

Biocentrism completes a revolutionary shift in worldview, turning the planet upside down with the revolutionary view that life creates the universe instead of the other way around.

Biocentrism

The premise of Biocentrism is, with important modifications, asserts an intelligent hierarchical structure to Nature, which is also the central premise of Theosophy.

The ancients held that the universe is created by life, and not the other way around.

“The point in the hitherto immaculate Disk, Space and Eternity … denotes the dawn of differentiation,” H. P. Blavatsky explains at the outset of The Secret Doctrine (Vol. 1, Pg. 1).

“It is the Point in the Mundane Egg [see Wikipedia “World Egg”] … the germ within the latter which will become the Universe, the all, the boundless, periodical Kosmos, this germ being latent and active, periodically and by turns.

The Milky Way Galaxy

“The one circle is divine Unity, from which all proceeds, whither all returns. Its circumference — a forcibly limited symbol, in view of the limitation of the human mind — indicates the abstract, ever incognisable presence, and its plane, the Universal Soul, although the two are one.”

The Secret Doctrine (Vol. 1, Pg. 1).

The Force of Love: Making a Difference in the World

THE famous meditation of John Donne, “never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee,” highlights two Theosophical principles:

First, the affirmation that there is no isolation, that nature and all mankind are interconnected — and second, our karmic responsibility.

“It’s one thing to fashion a particular work of art, sculpture, painting, a worthy accomplishment,” Thoreau wrote, “but much greater is the creation of one’s life.” He believed that:

to exemplify the highest potential imagined, it is the highest of loving artistic accomplishments.

A compassionate Nature activist, Julia Butterfly Hill is a living example of Theosophy pure and simple. She took the decisive action taught in The Voice of the Silence — sacrificing  her comfort and well-being to “help Nature and work on with her.”

“Help Nature and Work On With Her”

H. P. Blavatsky, The Voice of the Silence, Fragment 1:

“Desire nothing. Chafe not at Karma, nor at Nature’s changeless laws. But struggle only with the personal, the transitory, the evanescent and the perishable.

Help Nature and work on with her; and Nature will regard thee as one of her creators and make obeisance.

“And she will open wide before thee the portals of her secret chambers, lay bare before thy gaze the treasures hidden in the very depths of her pure virgin bosom. Unsullied by the hand of matter she shows her treasures only to the eye of Spirit — the eye which never closes, the eye for which there is no veil in all her kingdoms.”

Julia Butterfly Hill

It must have been a profound inner sense of the sacred that roused Julia to action as she climbed 18 stories up those long ropes, to begin a permanent encampment in the endangered redwood trees.

She doesn’t follow any organized religion but says she believes very strongly in the spirituality of the universe.

‡

The Mysterious Power of Life

“Light is Life” – H. P. Blavatsky

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 of Theosophy.

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.

A Dome of many-colored glass.

“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,” (The Secret Doctrine 1:2): — “truly, ‘a chaos to the sense, a Kosmos to the reason.'”

The Mysterious Power

by H. P. Blavatsky
The Key to Theosophy, Section 5

“HPB”

“When we speak of the Deity and make it identical, hence coeval, with Nature, the eternal and uncreate nature is meant, and not your aggregate of flitting shadows and finite unrealities. We leave it to the hymn-makers to call the visible sky or heaven, God’s Throne, and our earth of mud His footstool.

Our DEITY is neither in a paradise, nor in a particular tree, building, or mountain: it is everywhere, in every atom of the visible as of the invisible Cosmos, in, over, and around every invisible atom and divisible molecule; for IT is the mysterious power of evolution and involution, the omnipresent, omnipotent, and even omniscient creative potentiality.

“In short, our Deity is the eternal, incessantly evolving, not creating, builder of the universe; that universe itself unfolding out of its own essence, not being made. It is a sphere, without circumference, in its symbolism, which has but one ever-acting attribute embracing all other existing or thinkable attributes — ITSELF. It is the one law, giving the impulse to manifested, eternal, and immutable laws, within that never-manifesting, because absolute LAW, which in its manifesting periods is The ever-Becoming.”

Ostara the Goddess of Spring: The Real Story of Easter

“Ostara” by Helena Nelson-Reed

THERE would be no glorious bursting forth of nature at Easter-time without the cyclic journey of the Sun.

The Sun-cycle ushers springtime into the world above the equator, and the ancients regarded this as the reincarnation season of the year.

The celebration of Ēoestre or Ostara is an old pagan festival, and is the origin of the word Easter. She is the goddess who symbolized the dawn, the warm Spring sun, the resurrection of Spirit in Earth, and much more.

“There is a real Easter, a Sun-cycle—the time of Vernal Equinox, on March 21st, which brings spring-time to the world above the equator. The ancients regarded this as the re-incarnation season of the year. In the Northland, the goddess Ostara was worshipped as beautiful Queen of the Spring-time, and from Ostara, our word Easter comes.

“It is said that when Ostara first came to earth, at the very beginning of the world, she wondered what it was that she had been given to do as part of the world’s work. As she wondered, she noticed how dark and cold and dead everything seemed, though she knew, of course, that the Life in all things was only sleeping for awhile till it was time to waken again. Then it suddenly came to her that this was why she was on earth—to wake things up!”

In the legend, when the beautiful Goddess Ēoestre saw all this wonderful work of hers, she said: “Hereafter, every year I will have one day called Easter, after me. That day, all shall celebrate the awakening of Life from its winter sleep.”

Then shall all people be joyous and glad and give each other eggs as gifts, for the Egg shall be my symbol. So it is fitting, for all Life is first within the egg.

“All life in first within the egg.”

“Life laughs in bud and bloom
from out the bough,
‘Tis Easter now.
The Sun his golden journey makes
In circle wide across the sky.
O, Radiance, teach us how
To mirror in our eyes the gleam,
To let shine forth the Light we dream
This Easter now.”

The Eternal Verities,
The Easter Lesson, p. 251

All One Being: The Conscious Earth

The Greek Goddess Demeter

MOLECULAR biologist Bonnie Bassler discovered that bacteria “talk” to each other, and is studying how they communicate with one another (How bacteria “talk”).

But there is nothing new in this “scientific revelation” for Theosophy to learn.

“The organs and the whole body of man are composed of cells,” H. P. Blavatsky wrote in Kosmic Mind, “and these cells are now being recognised as individual organisms and – quien sabe – will come perhaps to be recognized someday

as an independent race of thinkers inhabiting the globe, called man! It really looks like it.

The Summing Up section (The Secret Doctrine 1:269) had this fundamental covered declaring that “everything in the Universe, throughout all its kingdoms, is conscious, is endowed with a consciousness of its own kind and on its own plane of perception.”

Stones, minerals, rocks, and even chemical ‘atoms’ are simply organic units in profound lethargy.

The Secret Doctrine also summarizes an underlying principle declaring how: “foremost of all, [is] the postulate that there is no such thing in Nature as inorganic substances or bodies.”

“We men must remember,” H. P. Blavatsky said plainly challenging modern materialistic science, “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.” (The Secret Doctrine 1:274 No.5).

The human soul “acquires individuality, first by natural impulse, and then by self-induced and self-devised efforts (checked by its Karma), thus ascending through all the degrees of intelligence, from the lowest to the highest Manas, from mineral and plant, up to the holiest archangel (Dhyani-Buddha). 

[The Secret Doctrine Vol. 1, Page  17]

Healing Stones

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

“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 an interview with Cleve Backster, of “The Secret Life of Plants” fame, (July 22, 2013, The Epoch Times), echoing H. P. Blavatsky’s Fundamental axiom universal mind. 

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

Our Queen Sister, the Morning and Evening Star

Hayley Westenra

“NO STAR among the countless myriads that twinkle over the sidereal fields of the night sky,” wrote Helena Blavatsky, “shines so dazzlingly as the planet Venus.”

“Venus is the queen among our planets, the crown jewel of our solar system.”

“She is the inspirer of the poet, the guardian and companion of the lonely shepherd,” she wrote, “the lovely morning and the evening star.”

“For, ‘Stars teach as well as shine,’ although their secrets are still untold and unrevealed to the majority of men, including astronomers.”

They are ‘a beauty
and a mystery,’ verily.

“This story shall now be told, for the benefit of those who may have neglected their astral mythology. Venus, characterized by Pythagoras as the sol alter, a second Sun, on account of her magnificent radiance – equaled by none other – was the first to draw the attention of ancient Theogonists.” 

• H. P. Blavatsky, The History of a Planet

Bright Stars

“Venus, characterized by Pythagoras as the sol alter, a second Sun, on account of her magnificent radiance – equaled by none other – was the first to draw the attention of ancient Theogonists.

Before it began to be called Venus, it was known in pre-Hesiodic theogony as Eosphoros (or Phosphoros), and Hesperos, the children of the dawn and twilight.

ς

Spiritual Seeing into a Hidden Reality

Illusion or Reality?

WHAT we usually call ‘reality’ may actually be completely subjective, as it is filtered through our ordinary physical senses, according to Theosophy.

Yet, “every one of us possesses the faculty, the interior sense, that is known by the name of intuition,” H. P. Blavatsky wrote in her article The Beacon-Light of the Unknown, “but how rare are those who know how to develop it!

“It is an instinct of the soul, which grows in us in proportion to the employment we give it, and which helps us to perceive and understand the realities of things with far more certainty than can the simple use of our senses and exercise of our reason.”

It is only by the aid of this faculty that men can ever see things in their true colors.

“What are called good sense and logic enable us to see only the appearances of things, that which is evident to everyone. 

Awakening.

“The instinct of which I speak, being a projection of our perceptive consciousness, a projection

which acts from the subjective to the objective, and not vice versa, awakens in us spiritual senses and power to act.

These senses assimilate to themselves the essence of the object or of the action under examination, and represent it to us as it really is, not as it appears to our physical senses and to our cold reason.” 

• H. P. Blavatsky, Le Phare De L’Inconnu

Plato

Plato’s Cave

In a related article “The Subjective and the Objective,” William Q. Judge refers to the Plato’s Cave metaphor:

Socrates: “Imagine the enlightenment and ignorance of our nature in a figure: Behold! human beings living in a sort of underground den, which has a mouth opening towards the light, and reaching all across the den;

they have been here from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them;

“for the chains are arranged in such a manner as to prevent them from turning their heads. At a distance above and behind them the light of a fire is blazing, . . . There can be no question, that the truth would be to them just nothing but the shadows of the images.”

Plato’s Cave

W. Q. Judge: “Theosophy recognizes a continuous gradation of powers, faculties, states, principles — call them what you will — from the highest or most spiritual to the lowest or most material. In this whole gamut of states or conditions, no chasm is found; there is nothing to bridge; consciousness is the necessary substratum and presupposition of the most material, and consciousness is the noumenon or essential reality of the most spiritual.”

We know of nothing more material or external than the physical, material, visible body–the world of matter, so-called …. of the cave which Socrates describes in Plato’s dialogue — the wall upon which fall the shadows supposed by the prisoners to be the only realities.

THE SUBJECTIVE AND THE OBJECTIVE A LESSON FROM THE CAVE OF PLATO’S REPUBLIC, BOOK VII – William Q. Judge

Disappearing into an illusion.

The Bhagavad-Gita

The Hindu poem, a dialogue between Master Krishna and his disciple Arjuna, in the Bhagavad-Gita, is set metaphorically on a ‘battlefield.’ This chosen venue symbolizes “the war within,” which each of us continually faces, an inner struggle we must eventually wage.

(The Theosophy of the Bhagavad Gita)

In Chapter 11, Krishna challenges Arjuna to exercise his spiritual sight in a specially induced vision of “the Divine Form as including all forms.” To enforce the lesson, and in answer to Arjuna’s request, Krishna temporarily awakens his “Divine Eye.” The rest is the drama of the awakening soul.

Read Chapter 11 online:

The Bhagavad-Gita, Chapter 11,
The Vision of the Divine Form as Including All Forms

Krishna and Arjuna on the battlefield.

Temporary Illusions

“Gautama, the Buddha, only remained in solitude long enough to achieve self-awareness, and enable him to arrive at the truth, to which he devoted himself from that time on to promulgate, begging his bread, and living for humanity.”

If, in the words of the dying Buddha, ‘all compounds are perishable,’ then all collections of atoms must be considered but temporary ‘illusions.’

They are such, according to The Secret Doctrine (1:329), because they are the very personal creations “of the perceiving Ego.” But this must not be considered a solipsistic argument. If we only knew how to get past our five material senses would be able to contact the underlying ‘reality’ of physical things. But never in an isolated ‘Me’ universe.

The Me Universe

The term “Ego” here must ultimately refer to a personal state, and as such must always relate to specific ‘states’ of consciousness.  But this is only from our plane of perception. According to The Secret Doctrine (1:330), once we have gotten past that plane, and scaled the “peak of Omniscience,” the “knowledge of things-in-themselves” is immediately available to us.

Real motion or the illusion of motion?

Progressive Awakenings

“Whatever reality things possess must be looked for in them before or after they have passed like a flash through the material world; but we cannot cognise any such existence directly, so long as we have sense-instruments which bring only material existence into the field of our consciousness. Whatever plane our consciousness may be acting in, both we and the things belonging to that plane are, for the time being, our only realities.

“As we rise in the scale of development we perceive that during the stages through which we have passed we mistook shadows for realities, and the upward progress of the Ego is a series of progressive awakenings, each advance bringing with it the idea that now, at last, we have reached “reality;” but only when we shall have reached the absolute Consciousness, and blended our own with it, shall we be free from the delusions produced by Maya.”

THE SECRET DOCTRINE Vol. 1, Page 40

A Musical Thought Image

One of the best ways to describe what Theosophy is, arts reporter Ali Snow remarked on a Utah Public Radio show, “is to think of it as a kind of fusion of religion and science.”

A desire to prove or to explore some of the mystical forces that made religion work and make the spiritual world work.

A striking example of this kind of fusion is H. P. Blavatsky’s description of how “the sense of sound is the first thing that manifests itself in the universe … in  correspondence with colors or sight.”

Colors and Sound

About this sensory synesthetic power Blavatsky wrote:

If you could only see clairvoyantly a person playing a piano, you would see the sound as plainly as you hear it.

“You can even put cotton in your ears—you will see the sound and every little note and modulation that you could not do otherwise. You cannot hear at a distance, but you can see at a distance.”

“You can taste sound, if you like, too. There sounds which are exceedingly acid, and there are sounds which are exceedingly sweet, and bitter, and all the scale of taste, in fact. There is no nonsense, I say it seriously, and you will find it so if you want to know about the super-physical senses.”

Synesthesia

Making reference to this sensory merging (known today as “synesthesia”) she explained: “One would merge into the other. You can taste sound, if you like, too. There sounds which are exceedingly acid, and there are sounds which are exceedingly sweet, and bitter, and all the scale of taste, in fact.” 

There is no nonsense, I say it seriously, and you will find it so if you want to know about the super-physical senses.

(The Secret Doctrine Dialogues p. 86)

Alexander Scriabin, a Russian pianist, and composer who was deeply influenced by Theosophy visualized a grand magnum opus which he titled “Mysterium.”

Click the link here or the link below to listen to Nora Eccles, Harrison Museum of Art as three curators describe the exhibit, Painting Music: Enchanted Modernities, and who gives us a personalized tour of the Theosophy promoted power (click below the photo):

Synesthete Elisabeth Sulser

Click to start below:

This interesting phenomenon is demonstrated practically by the multiple senses of a unique synesthete from Zurich, Switzerland named Elizabeth Sulser. A psi investigator writes:

Her particular combination of senses is so unique that she is the only person in the world documented to have it.

The Conscious Earth: We Are All One Being

The Greek Goddess Demeter

MOLECULAR biologist Bonnie Bassler discovered that bacteria “talk” to each other, and is studying how they communicate with one another (How bacteria “talk”).

But there is nothing new in this “scientific revelation” for Theosophy to learn.

“The organs and the whole body of man are composed of cells,” H. P. Blavatsky wrote in Kosmic Mind, “and these cells are now being recognised as individual organisms and – quien sabe – will come perhaps to be recognized someday

as an independent race of thinkers inhabiting the globe, called man! It really looks like it.

The Summing Up section (The Secret Doctrine 1:269) had this fundamental covered declaring that “everything in the Universe, throughout all its kingdoms, is conscious, is endowed with a consciousness of its own kind and on its own plane of perception.”

Stones, minerals, rocks, and even chemical ‘atoms’ are simply organic units in profound lethargy.

The Secret Doctrine also summarizes an underlying principle declaring how: “foremost of all, [is] the postulate that there is no such thing in Nature as inorganic substances or bodies.”

“We men must remember,” H. P. Blavatsky said plainly challenging modern materialistic science, “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.” (The Secret Doctrine 1:274 No.5).

The human soul “acquires individuality, first by natural impulse, and then by self-induced and self-devised efforts (checked by its Karma), thus ascending through all the degrees of intelligence, from the lowest to the highest Manas, from mineral and plant, up to the holiest archangel (Dhyani-Buddha). 

[The Secret Doctrine Vol. 1, Page  17]

Healing Stones

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

“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 an interview with Cleve Backster, of “The Secret Life of Plants” fame, (July 22, 2013, The Epoch Times), echoing H. P. Blavatsky’s Fundamental axiom universal mind. 

The Magic of Life, Light and Immortality

The One Life

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,” H. P. Blavatsky wrote.

(The Secret Doctrine, Proem, Vol. 1, Page 3, fn.)

“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.”

And “matter in all its phases being merely a vehicle for the manifestation through it of LIFE – The Parabrahmic Breath – in its physically pantheistic aspect it is a super-sensuous state of matter itself the vehicle of the ONE LIFE, the unconscious purposiveness of Parabrahm.”

 (H. P. Blavatsky, “The Life Principle”)

Therefore, says The Secret Doctrine, “the whole secret of Life” 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…’

NB. The above phrase is a verbatim quote from Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats (LII), by Percy Bysshe Shelley – (Blavatsky had no physical library.)

Plaza Kukulcan Dome

“— 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.”  

“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 Life”

“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 — unrealizable, yet the one self-existing reality, truly, ‘a chaos to the sense, a Kosmos to the reason.'” (The Secret Doctrine 1:2)

Spiritual Eyes: Piercing the Illusion of Reality

A musical thought image.

ALL of what we call ‘reality’ may actually be wholly subjective, and beholden to our powers of perception, according to Theosophy.

“Every one of us possesses the faculty, the interior sense, that is known by the name of intuition,” H. P. Blavatsky wrote in her article The Beacon-Light of the Unknown, “but how rare are those who know how to develop it!

“It is, however, only by the aid of this faculty that men can ever see things in their true colors.”

“It is an instinct of the soul, which grows in us in proportion to the employment we give it, and which helps us to perceive and understand the realities of things with far more certainty than can the simple use of our senses and exercise of our reason.”

“What are called good sense and logic enable us to see only the appearances of things, that which is evident to every one.  The instinct of which I speak, being a projection of our perceptive consciousness,

a projection which acts from the subjective to the objective, and not vice versa, awakens in us spiritual senses and power to act.”

These senses assimilate to themselves the essence of the object or of the action under examination, and represent it to us as it really is, not as it appears to our physical senses and to our cold reason.” 

• H. P. Blavatsky, Le Phare De L’Inconnu

Disappearing into an illusion.

The Hindu poem, a dialogue between Master Krishna and his disciple Arjuna, in the Bhagavad-Gita, is set metaphorically on a ‘battlefield.’ This chosen venue symbolizes “the war within,” which each of us continually faces, and must eventually wage. (Blavatsky Theosophy)

In Chapter 11, Krishna challenges Arjuna to exercise his spiritual sight in a specially induced vision of “the Divine Form as including all forms.” To enforce the lesson, and in answer to Arjuna’s request, Krishna temporarily awakens his “Divine Eye.” The rest is history!

Read online:

The Bhagavad-Gita, Chapter 11,
The Vision of the Divine Form as Including All Forms

Krishna and Arjuna on the battlefield.

Temporary Illusions

“Gautama, the Buddha, only remained in solitude long enough to enable him to arrive at the truth, which he devoted himself from that time on to promulgate, begging his bread, and living for humanity.”

If, in the words of the dying Buddha, ‘all compounds are perishable,’ then all collections of atoms must be considered but temporary ‘illusions.’

They are such, according to The Secret Doctrine (1:329), because they are the very personal creations “of the perceiving Ego.” But this must not be considered a solipsistic argument. If we only knew how to get past our five senses we might very well contact the underlying ‘reality’ of physical things.

My Universe

The term “Ego” here must ultimately refer to a personal state, and as such must always relate to specific ‘states’ of consciousness.  But this is only from our plane of perception. According to The Secret Doctrine (1:330), once we have gotten past that plane, and scaled the “peak of Omniscience,” the “knowledge of things-in-themselves” is immediately available to us.

Real motion or the illusion of motion?

One of the best ways to describe what Theosophy is, arts reporter Ali Snow remarked on a Utah Public Radio show, “is to think of it as a kind of fusion of religion and science.”

“A desire to prove or to explore some of the mystical forces that made religion work and make the spiritual world work.”

A striking example of this kind of fusion is H. P. Blavatsky’s description of how “the sense of sound is the first thing that manifests itself in the universe … in  correspondence with colors or sight.”

Colors and Sound

About this sensory synesthetic power Blavatsky wrote:

“If you could only see clairvoyantly a person playing a piano, you would see the sound as plainly as you hear it.”

“You can even put cotton in your ears—you will see the sound and every little note and modulation that you could not do otherwise.”

Synesthesia

Making reference to this sensory merging (known today as “synesthesia”) she explained: “One would merge into the other. You can taste sound, if you like, too. There sounds which are exceedingly acid, and there are sounds which are exceedingly sweet, and bitter, and all the scale of taste, in fact.” 

“There is no nonsense, I say it seriously, and you will find it so if you want to know about the super-physical senses.”

(The Secret Doctrine Dialogues p. 86)

Alexander Scriabin, a Russian pianist and composer who was deeply influenced by Theosophy, visualized a grand magnum opus which he titled “Mysterium.”

Click the link here or the link below to listen to Nora Eccles, Harrison Museum of Art as three curators describe the exhibit, Painting Music: Enchanted Modernities, and who gives us a personalized tour of the Theosophy promoted power (click below the photo):

Synesthete Elisabeth Sulser

Click to start below:

This interesting phenomenon is demonstrated practically by the multiple senses of a unique synesthete from Zurich, Switzerland named Elizabeth Sulser. A psi investigator writes:

“Her particular combination of senses is so unique that she is the only person in the world documented to have it.”

God is Love, God is Life

Born Again

MAINSTREAM science creates an almost insurmountable obstacle to understanding the real nature of life because of one persistent belief.

They steadfastly refuse to recognize life as a distinct force, and in so doing our modern science blocks all understanding of the nature of reality.

“The greatest problem of philosophy, is the physical and substantial nature of life,” H. P. Blavatsky declared:

“It is its independent nature, which is denied by modern science — because that science is unable to comprehend it.”

“The reincarnationists and believers in Karma alone dimly perceive,” Blavatsky insisted, “that the whole secret of Life is in the unbroken series of its manifestations: whether in, or apart from, the physical body.”

(The Secret Doctrine 1:238)

Nevermind: “modern science’s definition of life still rests on  Herbert Spencer’s old definition, one that describes the phenomenon, but gives no hint of its real cause.” 

(“Moxon’s Master” – Ambrose Bierce)

What is Life?

“Life is a definite combination of heterogeneous changes,” Spencer insisted:

“both simultaneous and successive in correspondence with external coexistences and sequences.”

Spencer’s assertion is maintained as the consensus view because “most researchers still believe they can build from one side of nature, the physical,” says the biocentrist Dr. Robert Lanza … concluding, crucially: “without the other side, the living.”

The Anthropic Principle

Dr. Lanza details his frontier science view in his book Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe.

He shows that his Biocentrism — an extension of the Anthropic Principle, described by the Einstein disciple physicist John Wheeler — asserts a view of life incompatible with modern materialism.

“The Anthropic Principle was proposed in Poland in 1973, during a special two-week series of synopsia commemorating Copernicus’ 500th birthday,” a physics website explains:

“It was proposed by Brandon Carter, who had the audacity to proclaim that humanity did indeed hold a special place in the Universe, an assertion that is the exact opposite of Copernicus’ now universally accepted theory.”

Biocentric

The premise of Biocentrism is, with important modifications, asserts an intelligent hierarchical structure to nature, is also a central premise of Theosophy.

The ancients held that the universe is created by life, and not the other way around.

“The point in the hitherto immaculate Disk, Space and Eternity … denotes the dawn of differentiation,” H. P. Blavatsky explains at the outset of The Secret Doctrine (Vol. 1, Pg. 1).

“It is the Point in the Mundane Egg [see Wikipedia “World Egg”] … the germ within the latter which will become the Universe, the all, the boundless, periodical Kosmos, this germ being latent and active, periodically and by turns.”

The Milky Way Galaxy

“The one circle is divine Unity, from which all proceeds, whither all returns. Its circumference — a forcibly limited symbol, in view of the limitation of the human mind — indicates the abstract, ever incognisable presence, and its plane, the Universal Soul, although the two are one.”

Ancient Thought in Modern Dress: “How Trees Talk to Each Other”

Redwoods

THE “Recapitulation” is a portion of the “Summing Up” section in The Secret Doctrine, published in pages 272-278 of the first volume of the work.

In the “Notes” recorded by Commander Robert Bowen, he wrote that H. P. Blavatsky  recommended the study of the recapitulation as part of the essential preliminary exploration of The Secret Doctrine:

“Reading the SD page by page as one reads any other book (she says) will only end in confusion. The first thing to do, even if it takes years, is to get some grasp of the ‘Three Fundamental Principles’ given in Proem.

“Follow that up by study of the Recapitulation – the numbered items in the Summing Up to Vol. I (Part 1). Then take the Preliminary Notes (Vol. II) and the Conclusion (Vol. II).”

TheosophyWiki: https://theosophy.wiki/en/Recapitulation

In The Secret Doctrine H. P. Blavatsky further revealed:

“As a whole, neither the foregoing nor what follows can be found in full anywhere. It is not taught in any of the six Indian schools of philosophy, for it pertains to their synthesis — the seventh, which is the Occult doctrine.”

 

“The whole order of nature evinces a progressive march towards a higher life. There is design in the action of the seemingly blindest forces. The whole process of evolution with its endless adaptations is a proof of this.”

Trees Are Social Beings

“The immutable laws that weed out the weak and feeble species, to make room for the strong, and which ensure the “survival of the fittest,” though so cruel in their immediate action — all are working toward the grand end.”

Concluding:

The very fact that adaptations do occur, that the fittest do survive in the struggle for existence, shows that what is called ‘unconscious Nature’ is in reality an aggregate of forces manipulated by semi-intelligent beings (Elementals) guided by High Planetary Spirits, (Dhyan Chohans), whose collective aggregate forms the manifested verbum of the unmanifested logos, and constitutes at one and the same time the mind of the Universe and its immutable law.

 

– H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine 1:277  

 ♣

(CNN): Nature might not be all about a ruthless “survival of the fittest”. Research suggests that trees don’t just compete for survival, but also cooperate and share resources using underground fungi networks.

CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/07/world/secret-life-of-trees/index.html

How trees talk to each other | Suzanne Simard

Our Hidden Karma and The Royal Talisman

“Adamo Eva”, Masaccio Masolino

BECAUSE all organisms are related through similarities in DNA sequences, the whole of nature could be really one family.

New insights of epigenetics have lead to a revolutionary view of human biology. Theosophy concurs with many of these new findings.

“The failures of science and its arbitrary assumptions,” Blavatsky says in The Secret Doctrine (2:670), “are far greater on the whole than any ‘extravagant’ esoteric doctrine.”

The traditional geneticist’s view of evolution “is from the animal,” she reminds us, and “mind in its various phases” is viewed, erroneously, as completely separate from matter.

Theosophy holds that mind is the mystical glue insuring that the identical genes that were in our ancestor’s bodies, what Blavatsky calls The Life Atoms —”are transmitted through their descendants for generation after generation…

…so that we are literally ‘flesh of the flesh’ of the primeval creature who has developed into man in the later period.

“Occultism teaches that the life-atoms [DNA] of our (Prana) life-principle are never entirely lost when a man dies.” And Blavatsky explains how: “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 reincarnation…”

The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2, p.656

Nature’s Law: Order in the Seemingly Blindest Forces

Intelligent Design

MODERN evolution is one of the most elaborate scientific frauds of all time. The fraud consists in a conscious refusal to accept any kind of plan or intelligence in Nature.

“Modern science believes not in the ‘soul of things.'”
(The Secret Doctrine 1:272)

This blind denial is magnified by science in a disparaging argument waged against irreducible complexity, and implications of design it shows. 

Irreducible complexity is a compelling principle proposed by biologist Michael Behe, as proof that certain biological systems are too complex to have evolved randomly, by chance.

(See: Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution)

Modern evolution calls upon “natural selection,” acting on a series of chance mutations from simpler, or “less complete” predecessors. “No more than Science, does esoteric philosophy admit design or ‘special creation,’ writes H. P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine (2:731).

“It rejects every claim to the ‘miraculous,’ and accepts nothing outside the uniform and immutable laws of Nature. It is argued that the Universal Evolution … the gradual development of species in all the kingdoms of nature, works by uniform laws.”

Annas Hummingbirds

“And the law is enforced far more strictly in Esoteric than in modern Science. But we are told also, that it is equally a law that ‘development works from the less to the more perfect, and from the simpler to the more complicated, by incessant changes, small in themselves, but constantly accumulating in the required direction.’ “It is from the infinitesimally small,” Theosophy agrees in this case, “that the comparatively gigantic species are produced.” 

Modern science confirms this law with a new exhibit titled Dinosaurs Among Us at the American Museum of Natural History noting “the unbroken line between the charismatic dinosaurs that dominated the planet for about 170 million years and modern birds, a link that is marked by shared features including feathers, wishbones, enlarged brains, and extremely efficient respiratory systems.”

H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine Vol. 2, p. 731 “Organic Evolution and Creative Centres”

American Museum of Natural History, New York City

“The fossil record of this story and the biological research it inspires—much of which is being done by scientists trained or working at the Museum—grows richer by the day. So rich, in fact, that the boundary between the animals we call birds and those we traditionally called dinosaurs is practically obsolete.”

A Mother’s Love, The Law of Life

Mother and Child

WHENEVER there is separateness and selfishness, Theosophy teaches, there will always be suffering.

This is why we need to continually try to practice Divine Compassion, “the law of laws,” as urged in The Voice of the Silence, and all that implies about our daily actions.

“Compassion is no attribute, it is the LAW of LAWS — eternal Harmony —

“… a shoreless universal essence, the light of everlasting Right, and fitness of all things — the law of love eternal.”

(The Voice of the Silence)

A feeling of true, universal compassion and caring for others can never dissolve into either separateness or selfish pride. Says the Voice of the Silence of The Buddha: “The esoteric school teaches that Gautama Buddha with several of his Arhats is such a Nirmânakâya, higher than whom, on account of the great renunciation and sacrifice to mankind there is none known.”

Dalai Lama xlv

According to the H.H. the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, “compassion is something really worthwhile.”

It is not just a religious or spiritual subject, not a matter of ideology. It is not a luxury. It is a necessity.

Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.

An Independent Race of Thinkers: How Microbes Defend and Define Us

Microbiology Lab

NEUROSCIENTISTS  have been busy for years attempting to establish and finalize the proposed “neuronal correlates of consciousness” originating in the brain.

Modern science seems determined to prove that consciousness, our thoughts and awareness, must somehow originate in the gray matter between our ears.

This mechanistic view was assumed as fact by the Human Genome Project, established to catalog the complete human DNA and identify specific cures for all diseases, yet has failed to do so.

It is held that genes carry information about how we look, how well our bodies metabolize food or fight infection, and can determine even how we behave.

It was thought, therefore, that researchers would easily be able to identify specific genes underlying specific diseases, and then all diseases could be eliminated by manipulating the related genes.

But it was discovered that the seemingly simple concept was much more complex than expected.

Ö

Just as the origin of consciousness cannot be tagged to specific neurons in the brain, genes are not easily pigeonholed to one disorder. It was found that they function in complex, and frequently changing teams.

Now science is edging nearer to Theosophy, looking closer at a long-neglected area called the microbiome — researching how hundreds of different species of living microbes, inhabiting the human body and outside, are responsible for our health and behaviors. They even discovered a second brain, in our gut, known as the enteric nervous system!

Our Astral Sight, Piercing the Reality of Illusion

Musical Thought Form

ALL of what we call ‘reality’ may actually be subjective, and beholden to our powers of perception, according to Theosophy.

“Every one of us possesses the faculty, the interior sense, that is known by the name of intuition,” H. P. Blavatsky wrote (The Beacon-Light of the Unknown), “but how rare are those who know how to develop it!

“It is, however, only by the aid of this faculty that men can ever see things in their true colours.”

“It is an instinct of the soul, which grows in us in proportion to the employment we give it, and which helps us to perceive and understand the realities of things with far more certainty than can the simple use of our senses and exercise of our reason.”

“What are called good sense and logic enable us to see only the appearances of things, that which is evident to every one.

“The instinct of which I speak, being a projection of our perceptive consciousness, a projection which acts from the subjective to the objective, and not vice versa, awakens in us spiritual senses and power to act; these senses assimilate to themselves the essence of the object or of the action under examination, and represent it to us as it really is, not as it appears to our physical senses and to our cold reason.” 

(The Beacon-Light of the Unknown)

Disappearing into the illusion.

The Hindu poem, a dialogue between the Master Krishna and his disciple Arjuna, the Bhagavad-Gita, is set metaphorically on a ‘battlefield.’ This venue symbolizes “the war within,” which each of us continually face, and must eventually wage. (Blavatsky Theosophy)

In Chapter 11, Krishna challenges Arjuna to exercise his spiritual sight in a specially induced vision of “the Divine Form as including all forms.” To enforce the lesson, and in answer to Arjuna’s request, Krishna temporarily awakens his “Divine Eye.” The rest is history!

Read online:

The Bhagavad-Gita, Chapter 11,
The Vision of the Divine Form as Including All Forms

Krishna and Arjuna on the battlefield.

Temporary Illusions

“Gautama, the Buddha, only remained in solitude long enough to enable him to arrive at the truth, which he devoted himself from that time on to promulgate, begging his bread, and living for humanity.”

If, in the words of the dying Buddha, ‘all compounds are perishable,’ then all collections of atoms must be considered but temporary ‘illusions.’

They are such, according to The Secret Doctrine (1:329), because they are the very personal creations “of the perceiving Ego.” But this must not be considered a solipsistic argument. If we only knew how to get past our five senses we might very well contact the underlying ‘reality’ of physical things.

My Universe

The term “Ego” here must ultimately refer to a personal state, and as such must always relate to specific ‘states’ of consciousness.  But this is only from our plane of perception. According to The Secret Doctrine (1:330), once we have gotten past that plane, and scaled the “peak of Omniscience,” the “knowledge of things-in-themselves” is immediately available to us.

The appearance of Motion, real or illusion?

One of the best ways to describe what Theosophy is, arts reporter Ali Snow remarked on a Utah Public Radio show, “is to think of it as a kind of fusion of religion and science.”

“A desire to prove or to explore some of the mystical forces that made religion work and make the spiritual world work.”

A striking example of this kind of fusion is H. P. Blavatsky’s description how “the sense of sound is the first thing that manifests itself in the universe … in  correspondence with colors or sight.”

Colors and Sound

About this sensory synesthetic power Blavatsky wrote:

“If you could only see clairvoyantly a person playing a piano, you would see the sound as plainly as you hear it.”

“You can even put cotton in your ears—you will see the sound and every little note and modulation that you could not do otherwise.”

Synesthesia

Making reference to this sensory merging (known today as “synesthesia”) she explained: “One would merge into the other. You can taste sound, if you like, too. There sounds which are exceedingly acid, and there are sounds which are exceedingly sweet, and bitter, and all the scale of taste, in fact.” 

“There is no nonsense, I say it seriously, and you will find it so if you want to know about the super-physical senses.”

(The Secret Doctrine Dialogues p. 86)

Alexander Scriabin, a Russian pianist and composer who was deeply influenced by Theosophy, visualized a grand magnum opus which he titled “Mysterium.”

Click the link here or the link below to listen to Nora Eccles, Harrison Museum of Art as three curators describe the exhibit, Painting Music: Enchanted Modernities, and who gives us a personalized tour of the Theosophy promoted power (click below the photo):

Synesthete Elisabeth Sulser

Click to start below:

This interesting phenomenon is demonstrated practically by the multiple senses of a unique synesthete from Zurich, Switzerland named Elizabeth Sulser. A psi investigator writes:

“Her particular combination of senses is so unique that she is the only person in the world documented to have it.”

Life, Light and the Pursuit of Consciousness

ALWAYS poised to advocate for the existence of an invisible conscious world within the visible physical world, the writer of The Secret Doctrine, H. P. Blavatsky, was clearly adamant.

She continually challenged the scientific materialistic beliefs of her day. For her monumental work, The Secret Doctrine, she wrote an introduction which included the following challenging declaration:

“The aim of this work may be thus stated: to show that Nature is not ‘a fortuitous concurrence of atoms,’ and to assign to man his rightful place in the scheme of the Universe —

“To rescue from degradation the archaic truths which are the basis of all religions and to uncover, to some extent, the fundamental unity from which they all spring.

Finally, to show that the occult side of Nature has never been approached by the Science of modern civilization.”
(SD 1:vii Preface)

Underlying nature is a universal and intelligent medium, a matrix supporting the visible physical world. This “invisible physical” was critical to understanding the The Secret Doctrine and the Occult Sciences it presented.

Recently a New Scientist article titled “We’ve Seen a Thought: The Secret Seven-Dimensional Life of Your Mind” proposed that “consciousness may itself be a shadow of a higher-dimensional structure” — i.e. the Theosophical principle of Universal Mind.

Mirroring Kosmic Mind

More intriguing in a recent post by journalist Kari Robinson in Hackspirit.net titled “Scientists Discover Biophotons In The Brain That Could Hint Our Consciousness is Directly Linked to Light!” she writes that “one of the most exciting implications the discovery that

our brains can produce light gives, is that maybe our consciousness and spirit are not contained within our bodies. This implication is completely overlooked by scientists.”

The Double Slit Mystery

“Quantum entanglement says that 2 entangled photons react if one of the photons is affected no matter where the other photon is in The Universe without any delay. This can explain the phenomenon of why the state of a photon is affected simply by consciously observing it, as it is proven in many quantum experiments.

“Maybe our observation communicates something through our biophotons with the photon that is being observed, in a similar fashion as quantum entanglement, like light is just one unified substance that is scattered throughout our Universe and affected through each light particle.”

Ancient Thought in Modern Dress

(H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine 1:579)

“Light is the first begotten, and the first emanation of the Supreme, and Light is Life,” Blavatsky wrote in The Secret Doctrine 1:579, a critical teaching. “Both are electricity  — the life principle, the anima mundi  [The world soul] pervading the universe, the electric vivifier of all things.

“Light is the great Protean magician . . . and its multifarious, omnipotent waves gave birth to every form as well as to every living being. From its swelling electric bosom, spring matter and spirit. 

Entangled Photons

“Within its beams lie the beginnings of all physical and chemical action, and of all cosmic and spiritual phenomena; it vitalizes and disorganizes; it gives life and produces death, and from its primordial point gradually emerged into existence the myriads of worlds, visible and invisible celestial bodies.

“It was at the ray of this First mother, one in three, that ‘God,’ according to Plato, lighted a fire which we now call the sun,” and which is not the cause of either light or heat, but merely the focus, or, as we might say, the lens, by which the rays of the primordial light become materialized, are concentrate upon our Solar System, and produce all the correlations of forces.” 

A structure of stars and light.

Establishing this occult doctrine in her seminal work,  Mme. Blavatsky asserted that: “The whole issue of the quarrel between the profane and the esoteric sciences

depends upon the belief in, and demonstration of, the existence of an astral body within the physical, the former independent of the latter.” 

(The Secret Doctrine Vol 2, p. 149)

“The astral body is itself an aspect of the real inner body,” wrote Robert Crosbie, the Founder of the United Lodge of Theosophists, “which has lasted through the vast period of the past and must continue through the far distant future.”

Magnetic Fields

“This astral body is the prototype, or design, around which the physical body is built, and which, considered from the point of view of the powers, is the real physical body. Without it the physical body would be nothing but a mass of matter — an aggregation of smaller lives.” 

Everything in Nature
is Conscious

“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.

Healing Stones

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

“The Universe is worked and guided from within outwards. As above so it is below, as in heaven so on earth; and man — the microcosm and miniature copy of the macrocosm — is the living witness to this Universal Law, and to the mode of its action.”

The Secret Doctrine 1:274

Is The Sun Conscious?

“It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness.”

– Eugene Wigner, theoretical physicist  and mathematician. He received a share of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963.

“Everything in the Universe, throughout all its kingdoms, is conscious: i.e., endowed with a consciousness of its own kind and on its own plane of perception.” 

– H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine 1:274

The Non-Physical is Real

Scientists have been urging the mainstream scientific community, which today is littered with scientific fraud and industry influence as well as invention secrecy, to open up to a broader view regarding the true nature of our reality.

“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade that in all of the previous centuries of its existence.”

– Nikola Tesla

Physicists Say Consciousness Should be Considered a State of Matter: The “Non Physical” is Real. 

Read: Collective Evolution

The Astral Matrix

Our Real Senses

“It is the astral body which contains the organs, or centers, from which the organs have been evolved in accord with the needs of the thinker within,” he continued. “The real senses of man are not in the physical but in the astral body. The astral body lasts a little over one lifetime. It does not die when the physical body dies, but is used as a body in the immediate after-death states.” -Robert Crosbie, (Universal Theosophy)

After The Secret Doctrine was published it would not take long before modern frontier scientists would begin to take up Mme. Blavatsky’s assertions in earnest using established scientific methods of inquiry. Seven important experiments suggesting the existence of an invisible astral matrix were initiated during the initial decades of the 20th and 21st century.

The Secret Doctrine

Even Mme. Blavatsky admitted in the 19th century: “It is gratifying to see how scientific imagination approaches every year more closely to the borderland of our occult teachings.” (Secret Doctrine 2:137 fn)

Hence the subtitle of this blog Theosophy Watch, i.e. “Ancient Thought in Modern Dress,” is the same title used by Mme. Blavatsky in the presentation found in Volume 1, page 572 of The Secret Doctrine.