The Unstoppable Force of Love

Mother and Child

LOVE in its most unselfish form was described by H. P. Blavatsky as the “absence of every ill-feeling , selfishness, charity, goodwill to all beings.”

The alchemy of such enlightened ethics unleashes the power of an stoppable universal force.

“The powers and forces of spirit,” Blavatsky declared in her article Practical Occultism, “lend themselves only to the perfectly pure in heart — and this is DIVINE MAGIC.”

‘Kamadeva’, a Sanskrit word, is defined in The Theosophical Glossary as “the first conscious, all-embracing desire for universal good, love, and the first feeling of infinite compassion and mercy for all that lives and feels, needs help and kindness. Only later did kama become the power that gratifies desire on the animal plane.”

“Desire first arose in It, which was the primal germ of mind,” (Secret Doctrine 2:176) — “and which sages, searching with their intellect, discovered to be the bond which connects Entity with Non-Entity.” 

Mother and Child, Tibet

That power arose,” Blavatsky said, “in the consciousness of the creative One Force, as soon as it came into life and being as a ray from the Absolute.” It was she also who, in the article Love with an Object, fervently declared:

“Love can exist without form, but no form can exist without Love.”

Devotion arose out of a feeling she explained, “and became the first and foremost motor in our nature — for it is the only one which is natural in our heart, which is innate in us.”

Home From The War

The Heart Doctrine

In her first Letter to a Theosophical Convention in 1888, Blavatsky wrote: “He who teaches Theosophy preaches the gospel of goodwill, and the converse of this is true also — he who preaches the gospel of goodwill, teaches Theosophy.”

Compassion is no mere attribute of thinking or emotion, says the Book of the Golden Precepts. Like love, its companion force, compassion is “the Law of Laws” declares The Voice of the Silence (III). Genuine harmony of feeling and deed naturally resonate as the “fitness of all things.”

Compassion is also described in Theosophy as a “shoreless universal essence,” and “the light of everlasting Right.” Simply put, this ancient teaching asserts this power is nothing short of “the law of love eternal.”

The Law of Love Eternal

The more thou dost become at one with it, thy being melted in its BEING, the more thy Soul unites with that which IS, the more thou wilt become COMPASSION ABSOLUTE.  Such is the Arya Path, Path of the Buddhas of perfection.

(The Two Paths)

Of the heart’s  Blavatsky wrote in Isis Unveiled (Preface 1:v): “we believe in no Magic which transcends the scope and capacity of the human mind, nor in ‘miracle,’ whether divine or diabolical, if such imply a transgression of the laws of nature instituted from all eternity.”

Nevertheless, we accept…that the human heart has not yet fully uttered itself, and that we have never attained or even understood the extent of its powers.

The Heart Rules

“All the organs in our body generate their own specific fields. One organ in particular seems to generate significant fields which affect the entire body. The heart is the Emperor in the system. The liver and all the organs have other tasks. But the heart is overruling all.”




The Solar Heart

The Sun rhythmically expands and contracts like the human heart it is taught, and “there is a regular circulation of the vital fluid throughout our system,

of which the Sun is the heart — the same as the circulation of the blood in the human body.

The Sun Heart

Mme. Blavatsky devoted an entire section in The Secret Doctrine  to the teaching (“The Solar Theory“), comparing the Sun to a heart, calling it “the heart of the solar system.”

“Only, instead of performing the round in a second or so, it takes the solar blood ten of its years, and a whole year to pass through its auricles and ventricles before it washes the lungs and passes thence to the great veins and arteries of the system.”

The Electric Sun

“Foremost of all, they [the astronomers] would have to repudiate the ideas on the Sun’s solidity and incandescence; the Sun is ‘glowing’ most undeniably, but not burning . . .” 

(The Secret Doctrine 1:492)

“If the sun is connected to the rest of the galaxy in an electrical sense, it doesn’t require to burn itself at all. The energy that we receive is actually received from the galaxy [central sun?], and the sun is acting as a focus for that energy. . . . its puzzling characteristics with respect to conventional interpretations are most likely demonstrating the fluctuations in current arriving from the Milky Way’s electric generator.”

–Wallace Thornhill, Plasma Physicist (The Thunderbolts Project)

“The Sun is neither a solid nor a liquid, nor yet a gaseous glow; but a gigantic ball of electro-magnetic Forces, the store-house of universal life and motion, from which the latter pulsate in all directions . . . when your astronomers speaking of sun-matter, term those lights and flames as ‘clouds of vapour’ and ‘gases unknown to science’ . . . we know it to be simply magnetic matter in its usual state of activity —”

[The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, Letter 23b]

Modern Science and the
Message of H. P. Blavatsky

Sun Cycles

“This, Science will not deny, since Astronomy knows of the fixed cycle of eleven years when the number of solar spots increases, which is due to the contraction of the Solar heart,” Blavatsky insisted.

Solar Heart

“The universe (our world in this case) breathes, just as man and every living creature, plant, and even mineral does upon the earth — and as our globe itself breathes every twenty-four hours.”

New Solar Images

Many Mysteries

“Could the human heart be made luminous, and the living and throbbing organ be made visible, so as to have it reflected upon a screen — then every one would see the Sun-spot phenomenon repeated every second — due to its contraction and the rushing of the blood.”

On the mystery of consciousness, Blavatsky wrote  in Psychic and Noetic Action, that “no physiologist, not even the cleverest, will ever be able to solve the mystery of the human mind, in its highest spiritual manifestation.”

Nor will they be able to understand the meaning of “the psychic and the noetic — or even to comprehend the intricacies of the former on the purely material plane.”

Organized Religion

Healing Humanity

by H. P. Blavatsky

“On the day when Theosophy will have accomplished its most holy and most important mission — namely, to unite firmly a body of men of all nations in brotherly love and bent on a pure altruistic work, not on a labor with selfish motives —

“…on that day only will Theosophy become higher than any nominal brotherhood of man.

“This will be a wonder and a miracle truly, for the realization of which Humanity is vainly waiting for the last 18 centuries, and which every association has hitherto failed to accomplish.” 

 

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

♥

Karmagenetics: The Spirit in Matter

“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. Theosophical teachings may agree with many of these new findings.

“The failures of science and its arbitrary assumptions,” Blavatsky wrote 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.

The First Fundamental of The Secret Doctrine (1:15) explains the doctrine: “Apart from Cosmic Substance, Cosmic Ideation could not manifest as individual consciousness, since

it is only through a vehicle of matter that consciousness wells up as ‘I am I,’ a physical basis being necessary to focus a ray of the Universal Mind at a certain stage of complexity.

“Again, apart from Cosmic Ideation, Cosmic Substance would remain an empty abstraction, and no emergence of consciousness could ensue.”

•  H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine (1:15)

Jill Bolte Taylor and Friend

Why you should listen

“One morning, a blood vessel in Jill Bolte Taylor’s brain exploded. As a brain scientist, she realized she had a ringside seat to her own stroke. She watched as her brain functions shut down one by one: motion, speech, memory, self-awareness.”

Watch Jill Bolte Taylor’s TED talk

♦

Theosophy teaches 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

Occult America: Through The Looking Glass

Through the Looking Glass

THE  surreal landscape of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass has Alice wondering what the world is like on the other side of a mirror.

To her surprise, Alice is able to pass into a fantastic astral world and experience an alternate existence.

A puzzled Alice discovers a book with looking-glass poetry called “Jabberwocky,” which she can read only by holding it up to a mirror.

To Theosophical students, Carroll’s imaginative invention is an unambiguous reminder of “the astral light” of occultism, a universal storage drive where original images of all things are seen in reverse of their visible projections on our terrestrial plane.

In 1871, mediumship and table-tipping were all the rage, detailed in Mitch Horowitz’s popular book Occult America. “Understandably, Carroll’s sequel to Alice in Wonderland was wildly popular at the time,” he writes:

Clairvoyance and psychic powers have always fascinated the public. But then, as now, they were considered nonsensical by mainstream scientists.

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast,” the White Queen confides to Alice.

Alice through the looking glass.

Once of interest only to ghost-hunters, and the derided science of parapsychology, “The Big 5”: Precognition, Telepathy, Clairvoyance, Psychokinesis and Healing (known collectively as “psi”), are now being noticed by the rank-and-file psychological and neuroscience community.

We Are All Connected, Bound Together for Good or Ill

© Lois Greenfield

THE uplifting adage ‘attitude is altitude’ pinpoints how the power of positive thinking can improve every aspect of our lives, using a simple but underutilized power we all possess.

“For decades, scientists have tried to test the power of prayer and positive thinking, with mixed results,” writes NPR National Desk religion correspondent Barbara Bradley Hagerty about a study on the science of spirituality.

“Now some scientists,” she writes, “are fording new, and controversial territory.” In an area of esoteric inquiry which is sometimes called Mental Alchemy and/or Metaphysics, a lot of thinkers over the ages have stated the idea in various ways.

The conviction that one’s thoughts are the great determiners of the content of one’s life, inspires  many to forge on despite difficult life circumstances.

Ancient wisdom traditions maintain that thoughts are actual things, and that one’s thoughts are the result of an unalterable universal law called “Cause and Effect,” and will manifest themselves at some point in one’s life.

Cause and Effect

“The lower world of effects is the sphere of … distorted Thoughts; of the most sensual conceptions, and pictures; of anthropomorphic deities, the out-creations of their creators, the sensual human minds of people who have never outgrown their brutehood on earth

Remembering thoughts are things — have tenacity, coherence, and life — that they are real entities — the rest will become plain.

“Disembodied — the creator is attracted naturally to its creation and creatures; sucked in — by the Maelstrom dug out by his own hands. . . . But I must pause, for volumes would hardly suffice to explain all that was said by me in this letter.”

Letter 9, The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett

◊

All Connected

The law of Cause and Effect can also be described as a law that says, “For every action, there is a reaction.”  Since thoughts are actual things, and since thoughts are also actions, it means that the thoughts will invariably cause a reaction that will result in the manifestation of those thoughts.

“No act is performed without a thought at its root either at the time of performance or as leading to it. These thoughts are lodged in that part of man which we have called Manas — the mind — and there remain as subtle but powerful links with magnetic threads that enmesh the solar system.” 

• William Q. Judge,
  The Ocean of Theosophy, Chapter 11 – “Karma”

The Secret Gate of Reality

The Mystery of Water

“THE idea that things can cease to exist and still be, is a fundamental one in Eastern psychology.

“Under this apparent contradiction in terms,” wrote H. P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine, “there rests a fact of Nature to realize is the important thing.”

“A familiar instance of a similar paradox is afforded by chemical combination,” she pointed out.

“The question whether Hydrogen and Oxygen cease to exist, when they combine to form water, is still a moot one.”

“Some [argue] that since they are found again when the water is decomposed, they must be there all the while—others contending that as they actually turn into something totally different, they must cease to exist as themselves for the time being.”

Neither side is able to form the faintest conception of the real condition of a thing, which has become something else, and yet has not ceased to be itself.

“Existence as water may be said to be, for Oxygen and Hydrogen, a state of Non-being which is ‘more real being’ than their existence as gases. And it may faintly symbolize the condition of the Universe when it goes to sleep, or ceases to be — “to awaken or reappear again, when the dawn of the new [Universe] recalls it to what we call existence.”

Padma – Lotus

This masterful treatise on reality and illusion by Mme. Blavatsky might have been written by one of today’s  quantum physicists or frontier cosmologists.

Instead, they are her words, the ideas of a master Theosophical thought leader, excerpted from the Fundamentals of her magnum opus  The Secret Doctrine [1:54-5] — the  quintessence  of physics, metaphysics and ethics.

The Lotus Symbol

“There are no ancient symbols, without a deep and philosophical meaning attached to them; their importance and significance increasing with their antiquity. Such is the Lotus. It is the flower sacred to nature and her Gods, and represents the abstract and the Concrete Universes, standing as the emblem of the productive powers of both spiritual and physical nature.”

Vishnu and Padma, the lotus.

“The lotus flower, represented as growing out of Vishnu’s navel — that God resting on the waters of space and his Serpent of Infinity — is the most graphic allegory ever made: the Universe evolving from the central Sun, the point, the ever-concealed germ. Lakshmi, who is the female aspect of Vishnu, and who is also called Padma, the lotus, is likewise shown floating at “Creation,” on a lotus flower, and during the “churning of the ocean” of space, springing from the “sea of milk,” like Venus from the froth.”
– H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine 1:379

Behind Your Brain, A Master Planner

Jill Bolte Taylor

BREAKING up is hard to do especially when it comes to ingrained scientific worldviews.

Even after they have betrayed us, dogmatic beliefs still cling like burrs to our psyche and brains, despite all logic.

Recall the insistent flat earth and geocentric crowd, and creationist belief that the Earth is only ten thousand years old.

The list is very long. Science is littered with the remains of once sacred cows.

Until only a few years ago, for example, it was asserted that the brain cannot grow new cells —

when they are gone they
are gone for good!

Challenging this cliché that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, science now confirms that in fact adult brain cells keep growing after all! H. P. Blavatsky made short work of the errors of science in explaining the occult teachings:

“The brain is the instrument of waking consciousness and every conscious mental picture formed means change and destruction of the atoms [neurons?] of the brain.” Yet, “in ordinary intellectual activity, moves on well beaten paths in the brain, and does not compel sudden adjustments and destructions in its substance.”

Neurofeedback

She then noted that a “new kind of mental effort calls for something very different — the carving out of ‘new brain paths’, the ranking in different order of the little brain lives.”

•  The “Secret Doctrine” and its Study (P.G. Bowen) – Being extracts from the notes of personal teachings given by H.P. Blavatsky to private pupils.

“Memory has no seat, no special organ of its own in the human brain,” Blavatsky wrote in — it has seats in every organ of the body. The seat of memory, then, is assuredly neither here nor there, but “everywhere throughout the human body.”

•  H. P. Blavatsky, Psychic & Noetic Action

Neuroplasticity

Modern studies in people recovering from stroke also provided support for neuroplasticity, as regions of the brain remained healthy could sometimes take over, at least in part, functions that had been destroyed.”

The ideas she presented were no less than a startling preview of our modern science’s newly understood doctrine of neuroplasticity.

Especially the “brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life.” This fact in occult science began to be recognized by modern science thanks to the findings of Dr. Paul Bach-y-Rita, called “the father of sensory substitution and brain plasticity.” These “now commonly accepted concepts, [were]  novel ideas when [he] first conceived of them [70 years after Blavatsky] in the 1960’s.”

“In the 1960s, Paul Bach-y-Rita invented a device that was tested on a small number of people, and involved a person sitting in a chair, in which were embedded nubs that were made to vibrate in ways that translated images received in a camera, allowing a form of vision via sensory substitution.

(Wikipedia – Neuroplasticity)

Tree Bark

A musician needs his instrument, a painter her canvas. This requirement of a physical material vehicle is explained in The Secret Doctrine‘s first Fundamental Proposition: “…it is only through a vehicle of matter that consciousness wells up as ‘I am I,’

a physical basis being necessary to focus a ray of the Universal Mind at a certain stage of complexity.

A central nervous system connected to a physical brain and body are indispensable to complete our human evolutionary experience. Just as the invisible “zeros and ones” of a digital software program, for example, must be connected to a physical computer or they cannot be read or used.

The brain is such a complex thing, both physically and metaphysically, that it is like a tree whose bark you can remove layer by layer, each layer being different from all the others, and each having its own special work, function, and properties.

– H. P. Blavatsky
(Transactions, Appendix on Dreams)

Neurons

The world of brain science was forever changed. Yet, “the scale of change [in the brain] is much smaller than what goes on during the critical period of development,” said a study co-author Elly Nedivi, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) —

but the fact that it goes on at all,
is earth-shattering.

The truth is that neuroscientists today are completely baffled by how the brain is able to organize itself so perfectly.

Yet, the word “science” comes from the Latin word “scire” which means to know. “Science” is supposed to be a systematic, organized way of investigating the world. The catch is when specialized learning turns into a dogmatic worldview, it then becomes an end-in-itself — distorting what might have resulted in a more holistic truth.

With persistent reference to occult science Blavatsky insisted (The Secret Doctrine 1:14), that “consciousness is inconceivable to us apart from change,”  and, “motion best symbolises change, its essential characteristic.”

Neuroplasticity: Carving Out New Brain Paths

Jill Bolte Taylor

BREAKING up is hard to do especially when it comes to ingrained scientific worldviews.

Even after they have betrayed us, dogmatic style beliefs still cling like burrs to our psyche, and our brains, despite all logic.

Recall the insistent flat earth and geocentric crowd, and creationist belief that the Earth is only ten thousand years old.

The list is very long. Science is littered with the remains of once sacred cows.

Until only a few years ago, for example, it was asserted that the brain cannot grow new cells —

when they are gone they
are gone for good!

Challenging this cliché that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, science now confirms that in fact adult brain cells keep growing after all!

H. P. Blavatsky explained: “The brain is the instrument of waking consciousness and every conscious mental picture formed means change and destruction of the atoms [neurons?] of the brain.” Yet, “in ordinary intellectual activity, moves on well beaten paths in the brain, and does not compel sudden adjustments and destructions in its substance.”

She then noted that a “new kind of mental effort calls for something very different — the carving out of ‘new brain paths’, the ranking in different order of the little brain lives.”

Her idea was, unmistakably, a preemptive nod to our modern science’s newly understood doctrine of “neuroplasticity” —

“… the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life.”(Wikipedia) This fact of occult science began to be recognized thanks to the findings of Dr. Paul Bach-y-Rita, called “the father of sensory substitution and brain plasticity.”

These “now commonly accepted concepts, [were]  novel ideas when [he] first conceived of them [70 years after Blavatsky] in the 1960’s.” (Salus University)

Neurons

The world of brain science was forever changed. Yet, “the scale of change [in the brain] is much smaller than what goes on during the critical period of development,” said a study co-author Elly Nedivi, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) —

“but the fact that it goes on at all,
is earth-shattering.”

The truth is that neuroscientists today are completely baffled by how the brain is able to organize itself so perfectly.

Yet, the word “science” comes from the Latin word “scire” which means to know. “Science” is supposed to be a systematic, organized way of investigating the world. The catch is when specialized learning turns into a dogmatic worldview, it then becomes an end-in-itself — distorting what might have resulted in a more holistic truth.

With persistent reference to occult science Blavatsky insisted (SD 1:14), that “consciousness is inconceivable to us apart from change,”  and, “motion best symbolises change, its essential characteristic.”

The Healing Power of Reincarnation and Karma, Part 2

Scrooge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our Karmic Inheritance

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

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

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

The Buddha Consciousness: A Triumph of the Human Spirit

Laughing Child

FACED with misery and death, journalist-editor Norman Cousins famously laughed his way out of the hospital, and healed himself of a life-threatening illness.

His groundbreaking book Anatomy of an Illness, about the healing effects of laughter using humor and positive emotions to boost the bodies’ capacity for healing, jump-started an era of mind-body medicine that continues today.

That was more than 30 years ago. But Gautama Buddha had preached the same power of healing and happiness through positive thinking over 2,500 years earlier.

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, Buddha is quoted as teaching, but the flame will not be diminished. The world’s greatest spiritual coach enthusiastically assured his followers:

Happiness never decreases
by being shared.

Western cognitive sciences are only just beginning to understand the subtle yet overarching power of the psycho-physiological power of thought, of intention and feeling, the importance of it being understood and taught by all ancient sages down the ages.

One Candle Lighting Another

“Respect life as those do who desire it,” declares the ancient spiritual psychology of Light on the Path, challenging the student to remain unselfish, and to

…be happy as those are
who live for happiness.

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Tales of Enlightenment: Buddha’s Dog, and Mahatma of the Himavat

Buddha and His Dog

ASANGA gave up. Twelve long years of meditation and spiritual practices, and still no vision of the future Buddha Maitreya.

He yearned to connect with Maitreya to receive teaching directly, which would accelerate his progress on the Bodhisattva path.

Asaṅga was “one of the most important spiritual figures”of Mahayana Buddhism and the “founder of the Yogacara school” who promoted Mahayana teachings on the bodhisattva path. (Wikipedia)

“Every new Bodhisattva or initiated great Adept is called the ‘liberator of mankind,’ Helena Blavatsky explains in footnote (20) in The Voice of the Silence:

“Now bend thy head and listen well, O Bodhisattva,” she wrote, “Compassion speaks and saith: ‘Can there be bliss when all that lives must suffer? Shalt thou be saved and hear the whole world cry?’”

In footnote (34) on Gautama Buddha, Mme. Blavatsky declared:

“To be enabled to help humanity, an Adept who has won the right to Nirvâna, ‘renounces the Dharmakâya body’ in mystic parlance; keeps, of the Sambhogakâya, only the great and complete knowledge, and remains in his Nirmânakâya body. 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.”

• H. P. Blavatsky, The Voice of the Silence, Fragment III, The Seven Portals

Asanga

After the first three years of spiritual practices to no avail, Asanga left his solitary cave, disheartened. But then he saw a little bird pecking a hole in a rock to build a nest in it, and he felt ashamed at his lack of persistence. He went back up to his cave.

A Rock Nest

After the next three years, Asanga gave up again. As he descended the mountain, he met a man who was grinding down a thick rod of iron with a cloth to make needles. When the man showed him some needles he’d already made this way, Asanga hung his head and went back up the mountain.

Pulsation of the Manifested God in Nature

ONE LIFE

“IT is the ONE LIFE, eternal, invisible, yet Omnipresent, without beginning or end, yet 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; truly, ‘a chaos to the sense, a Kosmos to the reason.

“Its one absolute attribute, which is ITSELF, eternal, ceaseless Motion, is called in esoteric parlance the ‘Great Breath,’ which is the perpetual motion of the universe, in the sense of limitless, ever-present SPACE.

“That which is motionless cannot be Divine. But then there is nothing in fact and reality absolutely motionless within the universal soul.”

“From the beginning of man’s inheritance, from the first appearance of the architects of the globe he lives in, the unrevealed Deity was recognized and considered under its only philosophical aspect —

universal motion, the thrill of
the creative Breath in Nature.

“Occultism sums up the ‘One Existence’ thus:  ‘Deity is an arcane, living (or moving) fire, and the eternal witnesses to this unseen Presence are Light, Heat, Moisture,’ — this trinity including, and being the cause of, every phenomenon in Nature.”

• H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine Vol 1, p. 2

The Self-Awakened State, a Visceral Knowing

Star Gazer

ASTRONAUT Edgar Mitchell’s epiphany struck when he looked out the window of his spacecraft at the Earth, Moon, and Sun, surrounded by an infinitely vast universe.

Suddenly it came to him that the molecules and cells of our bodies “must have had their origin in those faraway stars.”

It was at that moment an overwhelming realization of the interconnectedness of all life dawned on him.

It was a life-altering flash of insight — not an “intellectual knowledge,” he said, but a “visceral knowing:”

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

This feeling is sometimes called the ‘overview effect.’ “The overview effect is a cognitive shift in awareness reported by some astronauts during spaceflight, often while viewing the Earth from outer space.  It is the experience of seeing firsthand the reality of the Earth in space, which is immediately understood to be a tiny, fragile ball of life, ‘hanging in the void’, shielded and nourished by a paper-thin atmosphere.”

This is doubtless the ideal evoked by the original First Object of the Theosophical Movement: (Objects of the Theosophical Society)

To form a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or colour.

Indeed: “From space, national boundaries vanish, the conflicts that divide people become less important, and the need to create a planetary society with the united will to protect this ‘pale blue dot’ becomes both obvious and imperative.” (Wikipedia)

Sun, Earth, Moon, and Stars.

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

Having had the life-changing experience of the Overview Effect, the former astronaut, along with parapsychologist Charles Tart, attempt to interpret the non-linear feelings and insights for the rest of us.

Mother’s Love, a Shoreless Universal Essence

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.

Kangaroo Care and The Healing Heart

Kangaroo Care

STUDENTS of Theosophy are sometimes called to task by some for being overly metaphysical or ‘intellectual.’

It may be true that some students of Theosophy prefer to use the force of their intellect to hammer out meanings, and have a purely intellectual discussion.

That means not consulting their feelings or emotions which are deemed lesser powers from the human ‘lower nature’ and therefore unreliable.

But W. Q. Judge was not of that opinion. He wrote in the Ocean of Theosophy that “intellect alone is cold, heartless and selfish.” The truth of this is shown today by studies of neurological correlates in the physical brain. Similarly, Mr. Judge, back in the day, insisted that if we can live “according to the dictates of the soul

the brain may at least be made porous to the soul’s recollections — if the contrary sort of a life is led, then more and more will clouds obscure that reminiscence.

Materialistic and intellectual data are stored in the lower mind and desire body, and such grosser data does not stimulate higher areas as the pineal gland in the brain. The mysterious ‘third eye’ whose vehicle is the pineal gland, is known by occultists to transmit spiritual powers including intuition and compassion.

Pituitary and Pineal Glands

Our Dual Nature

We are spiritual beings at our core, but our behaviors on this physical plane — just like the actions of the horse guided by the rider — are determined solely by how we have entrained our psychic and physical instruments.

“No physiologist, not even the cleverest,” Blavatsky wrote, “will ever be able to solve the mystery of the human mind, in its highest spiritual manifestation, or in its dual aspect of the psychic and the noëtic or the manasic, or even to comprehend the intricacies of the former on the purely material plane – unless he knows something of, and is prepared to admit the presence of this dual element.” 

– H. P. Blavatsky, Psychic and Noëtic Action

Horse and Rider

“There are persons,” H. P. Blavatsky writes, “who never think with the higher faculties of their minds at all.” (Studies in Occultism)

This is why it is so very difficult for a materialist — the metaphysical portion of whose brain is almost atrophied — to raise himself,

“Or for one who is naturally spiritually-minded to descend to the level of the matter-of-fact vulgar thought,” she wrote. “Optimism and pessimism depend on it also in a great measure.”

Laws of Karma and the Sin of Separateness

Child King Canute?

MAY DAY, in medieval and modern Europe, holiday (May 1) is the celebration of the return of spring, an ancient Nature Festival.

Because the Puritans of New England considered the celebrations of May Day to be licentious and pagan, they forbade its observance, and the holiday never became an important part of American culture.

Thankfully, time and tide wait for no man according to Geoffrey Chaucer, nor do such Nature’s supreme powers submit to the dictates of modern despots, gods or saviors, or religious bigots.

The Laws of Karma rule always. No one is so all-powerful they can stop the march of time or turn back the ocean waves, as King Canute unsuccessfully tried. Or the relentless march of time and seasons.

Yet what he learned from the experience is that the best each of us can do is attempt to discover and live in harmony with nature’s immutable laws. Shakespeare dramatized karma as a force that ebbs and flows cyclically, and that one must go with the flow. As Brutus notoriously exclaims in Julius Caesar:

There’s a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.

Procrastinating and obstruction waste precious moments allowing beneficial waves or tides to begin to recede. If a moral or environmental opportunity is neglected, individuals and humanity as a whole may suffer dire consequences.

A tide in the affairs of men.

“All the passing shows of life, whether fraught with disaster or full of fame and glory, are teachers; he who neglects them, neglects opportunities which seldom the gods repeat,” W. Q. Judge wrote in his Essay on Chapter 2 of  the Bhagavad-Gita. “And the only way to learn from them is through the heart’s resignation;

for when we become in heart completely poor, we at once are the treasurers and disbursers of enormous riches. Krishna then insists on the scrupulous performance of natural duty.

Ancient Atlantis, our former habitat, was destroyed by natural and human-caused climate change thousands of years before its time, and we are heading down a very similar, dangerous path — the result of pervasive collective selfishness. Just as Walt Kelly’s Pogo warned, as he stared at a trash filled swamp on Earth Day 1970:

“We have met the enemy,
and he is us.”

Atlantis

Sickness occurs when “a group of individual cells refuses to cooperate, and wherein is set up discordant action, using less or claiming more than their due share of food or energy,” wrote W. Q. Judge in The Synthesis of Occult Science, concluding:

Disease is nothing more or less than ‘the sin of separateness.’

So long as there is separateness and selfishness, Theosophy says, there will be suffering. And this is why we need to practice Divine Compassion, “the law of laws” as described in The Voice of the Silence.

“Compassion is something really worthwhile. It is not just a religious or spiritual subject, not a matter of ideology,” says the Dalai Lama: “It is not a luxury. It is a necessity.”

Mother Teresa

“It is an absolute fact that without good works the spirit of brotherhood would die in the world—and this can never be,” Blavatsky wrote in her article Let Every Man Prove His Own Work:

Therefore is the double activity of learning and doing most necessary; we have to do good, and we have to do it rightly, with knowledge.

The proverb about time and tide illustrates the complex interplay between fate and free will in human life. It has karmic beauty as well, suggesting that while we do not have total control over our lives, we do have a responsibility to take what few measures we can to live ethically and honorably.

Life on Spaceship Earth and the Overview Effect

NASA Astronaut Tracy Caldwell

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

Pioneer theosophist and co-founder of the Theosophical Society William Q. Judge served as permanent chairman of the Theosophical Congress, whose presentation of its ideals and principles drew increasingly larger audiences.

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

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

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

 – W. Q. Judge, Universal Brotherhood a Fact in Nature

Just Being Yourself: Proof of Reincarnation

Julia Butterfly Hill up a Redwood

REDWOOD trees live in families. “They have very shallow roots, but redwood trees are connected to each other through their root system,” says pioneer nature defender Julia Butterfly Hill.

When you see a group of redwood trees, often they are all part of the same roots, and they feed one another that way.

Similarly, we are all connected not only to many others but also to our higher self in a spiritual sense.

It’s a kind of multimedia group of former lives and personalities to which we intimately belong.  We, ordinary humans, are paradoxical often reveal our hidden genius founded on the collective experience of many lifetimes.

From Mozart’s soaring music to the fearless passion of a Julia Butterfly Hill, we are each drawn to a karmic destiny created by ourselves over many lifetimes. That’s our personal family, and we still know each other, though most may not remember the connection consciously.

Most of us lack a Seer’s knowing, are forced to dive for clues of our history into the far horizons of reincarnation, and sift the karmic sands of countless past lives to uncover the source of our collective powerful talents, dreams, failures, and successes.

Julia, very high up!

Teilhard de Chardin’s idea that we are “spiritual beings immersed in a human experience,” barely begins to explain the genius of a Mozart who composed musical score at the age of five.

Or why Julia Butterfly Hill, a determined twenty-four-year-old, would choose to spend a very dangerous two years alone 200 feet atop a thousand-year-old redwood tree. Alone to save the tree, and others like it, from destruction by a logging company supporting an army of determined clear-cutters.

She climbed up and lived 200 feet atop the giant tree, on a 6-by-6-foot plywood platform, for over two years!  Just to save a stand of ancient redwood trees in California from being cut down by Pacific Lumber Company. (For more info Click Here)

Protecting Luna

Just as Amadeus and Julia, every one of us is born with a destiny and an individual soul identity, and engaging intelligence and experience from former lives to this one.

“To a greater or lesser degree, we remember and act out the memory of them. By standing together in unity and solidarity and love, writes Julia:

we will heal the wounds in the earth and in each other. We can make a positive difference through our actions

Read more of Julia’s compelling story here.

Memory can develop slowly or quickly, but as is often the case, has little opportunity to emerge. All depends upon our karmic circumstances, merit and demerit. Yet within the outer circumstances remains an unshakable awareness of an ‘I am I’ consciousness. We are ourselves and none other, whether we remember all the details or not. 

Where Are We Going? -The Law of Love Eternal

Kwan-Yin (Chinese: 觀音, Guānyīn) is the female Bodhisattva of compassion.

COMPASSION has been compared to the innocent act of helping someone you don’t know. It cannot be forced.

When absent, like the power of love, life can not go on. “Love can exist without form,” H. P. Blavatsky wrote, “but no form can exist without Love. The same for Compassion, the ‘Law of Laws’.

(Love With an Object)

Love is an immortal power which is beyond mere human creation. Nor can it be compared to one of the dogmas invented by religion, nor is it merely a causal neuronal attribute of thinking or emotion as in materialism.

As with Universal Compassion, Love is an inherent core force, a Universal Spiritual Law of Life as declared in the ancient scripture Book of the Golden Precepts, on which The Voice of the Silence is based — transcendent and beyond any man-made scientific or religious dogmas.

The phrase used in Theosophy to define Universal Compassion is found in The Voice of the Silence: “the Law of Laws.” It is the primary and most compelling of its spiritual Precepts. (Fragment III, The Seven Portals):

Canst thou destroy divine compassion? Compassion is no attribute. It is the LAW of laws — eternal Harmony, Alaya’s SELF; a shoreless universal essence, the light of everlasting Right, and fitness of all things, the law of love eternal.

“The more thou dost become at one with it, thy being melted in its BEING, the more thy Soul unites with that which IS, the more thou wilt become Compassion Absolute.”

Buddha of Compassion

When exercised purely and impersonally this power lies beyond the partisan beliefs of either atheist or religionist, and always exhibits itself by emanating “The light of everlasting Right, and fitness of all things—the law of love eternal.” Is this Law not something we most need today? 

Without love and compassion, the soul is missing. In the first volume of Isis Unveiled, p. 318, H. P. Blavatsky declared: “When one falls into a love of self [narcissism] and love of the world, with its pleasures, losing the divine love of God and of the neighbor, he falls from life to death.”

The higher principles which constitute the essential elements of his humanity perish, and he lives only on the natural plane of his faculties. Physically he exists, spiritually he is dead.

“To all that pertain to the higher and the only enduring phase of existence he is as much dead as his body becomes dead to all the activities, delights, and sensations of the world when the spirit has left it. This spiritual death results from disobedience of the laws of spiritual life, which is followed by the same penalty as the disobedience of the laws of the natural life.”

The opposite pole is represented by the great compassionate Adepts such as Buddha and Kwan-Yin. The Buddha in The Voice of the Silence, Fragment III as Mme. Blavatsky explained “The esoteric school teaches that Gautama Buddha with several of his Arhats is … higher than whom … on account of the great renunciation and sacrifice to mankind, there is none known.”

Kwan-Yin seated on a lotus flower.

The Kwan-Yin Pledge

Never will I seek nor receive private, individual salvation; never will I enter into final peace alone; but forever and everywhere will I live and strive for the redemption of every creature throughout the world.

The universal power of Compassion is also described as a “shoreless universal essence.” The idea refers to a spiritual substance called in Sanskrit the Ākāśa, defined as “The subtle, supersensuous spiritual essence which pervades all space; the primordial substance.”

Such is the understanding of modern theosophical students who study The Voice of the Silence, based on the ancient Golden Precepts as translated and arranged by H. P. Blavatsky.

The Charter for Compassion

Our higher mind or Higher Ego, H. P. Blavatsky wrote in her article Psychic and Noetic Action:

is part of the essence of the UNIVERSAL MIND, is unconditionally omniscient on its own plane, and only potentially so in our terrestrial sphere, as it has to act solely through its alter ego – the Personal Self.

The Charter for Compassion (Wikipedia) is a document that urges the peoples and religions of the world to embrace the core value of compassion. The charter currently is available in more than 30 languages and has been endorsed by more than two million individuals around the globe. (Author: Karen Armstrong)

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Divine Compassion

As such, divine consciousness has “to be regarded as activity of our mind on another and a higher plane, working through something less substantial than the moving molecules of the brain. It cannot be explained as the simple resultant of the cerebral physiological process [which] only condition them or give them a final form for purposes of concrete manifestation.”

No physiologist, not even the cleverest, will ever be able to solve the mystery of the human mind, in its highest spiritual manifestation.

(Psychic and Noëtic Action)

Atlantic Theater Company, “Through a Glass Darkly”

Nor will they be able to understand the duality “of the psychic and the noetic,” says Blavatsky, “or even comprehend the intricacies of the psychic on the purely material plane…

unless they know something of and are prepared to admit, the presence of this dual element.

This means, she asserts, that psychologists will have to accept “a lower (animal), and a higher (or divine) mind in man, or what is known in Occultism as the ‘personal’ and the ‘impersonal’ Egos.”

“There is no such thing as ‘righteous anger'”, wrote William Q. Judge in (Culture of Concentration Part 1). “Whether your ‘rights’ have been unjustly and flagrantly invaded or not does not matter.  Anger must be strictly avoided, and it cannot be avoided unless charity and love – absolute toleration – are cultivated.” 

No More Blame

“The personal element is one that ever has a tendency to delude us as it hides behind various walls and clothes itself in the faults, real or imaginary, of others.” (Letters That Have Helped Me, W. Q. Judge)

To Think, or Not

“Self-consciousness, which from the animal plane looking upward is the beginning of perfection, from the divine plane looking downward is the perfection of selfishness and the curse of separateness. It is the ‘world of illusion’ that man has created for himself.”

La Belle Sauvage

“The faculty of every Ego which considers itself a Unit, separate from and independent of the One Infinite and Eternal Sat or ‘be-ness,’ is an illusion. The ‘eternal pilgrim’ must, therefore, mount higher, and flee from the plane of self-consciousness it has struggled so hard to reach.”

– William Q. Judge, The Synthesis of Occult Science I

Taking Sides

The right hemisphere of the brain is the organ to express compassion and feelings. It is “big picture” oriented and where imagination rules, symbols and images, present and future, philosophy and religion—can “get it” (i.e. meaning).

Beliefs, appreciation, spatial perception, knowing an object’s function, also find activity in the right side of the brain.

Duality Rules

Based on fantasy, the right hemisphere also reflects possibilities and is active during impetuous, risk-taking.

The left hemisphere activates with the use of logic, is detail oriented and facts, words, and language, present and past, math and science rule. It is activated when reasoned knowing is present.

Arjuna

It allows for the acknowledgment of order and patterns, knows object names, is reality-based, and forms practical strategies.

A Parable of Sowing and Reaping 

Sow a Thought
Reap an Act,
Sow an Act
Reap a Habit,
Sow a Habit
Reap a Character,
Sow a Character
Reap a Destiny.

On the significance of Karma and Reincarnation In The Key to Theosophy, we are warned that “Karma, with its army of Skandhas [personal tendencies], waits at the threshold of Devachan [Heaven], whence the Ego [Soul] re-emerges to assume a new incarnation. It is at this moment that the future destiny of the now-rested Ego trembles in the scales of just Retribution, as it now falls once again under the sway of active Karmic law.”

Psychic and Noetic

“Between the psychic and the noetic,” H. P. Blavatsky wrote:

between the personality and the individuality, there exists the same abyss as between a ‘Jack the Ripper,’ and a holy Buddha.

Macbeth

“Unless the physiologist accepts all this, we say, he will ever be led into a quagmire,” she writes. “We intend to prove it.”

(Psychic and Noëtic Action)

The Network of Destiny

“Yes; ‘our destiny is written in the stars!’, Blavatsky wrote in The Secret Doctrine 1:639. “Only, the closer the union between the mortal reflection man and his celestial prototype [Higher Self], the less dangerous the external conditions and subsequent reincarnations — which neither Buddhas nor Christs can escape.”

And in Her Five Messages to American Theosophists, she delivered a stern warning the everyone would do well to heed: 

Ethics sink into and take hold of the real person—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.

Dueling Minds

W. Q. Judge, The Ocean Of Theosophy, Ch VII.

“Manas [Sanskrit], or the Thinker, is the reincarnating being, the immortal who carries the results and values of all the different lives lived on earth or elsewhere.

“Its nature becomes dual
as soon as it is attached to a body.”

≈

“For the human brain is a superior organism and Manas [Sk. the mind] uses it to reason from premises to conclusions.”

Many Faces

“The lower, and purely intellectual, is nearest to the principle of Desire,” writes Judge, “and is thus distinguished from its other side which has affinity for the spiritual principles above.”

“If the Thinker, then, becomes wholly intellectual, the entire nature begins to tend downward — for intellect alone is cold, heartless, selfish …”

The Three Faces of Eve

The intellect, W. Q. Judge says, “is the lower aspect of the Thinker or Manas, and not, as some have supposed, the highest and best gift belonging to man.”

Its other, and in theosophy higher, aspect is the intuitional, which knows, and does not depend on reason.

Chapter 7, The Ocean of Theosophy
by William Q. Judge

Life in Stages

by H. P. Blavatsky

“One night the actor, or ‘Ego,’ appears as ‘Macbeth,’ the next as ‘Shylock,’ the third as ‘Romeo,’ the fourth as ‘Hamlet’ or ‘King Lear,’ and so on, until he has run through the whole cycle of incarnations.

King Lear

“The Ego begins his life-pilgrimage as a sprite, an ‘Ariel,’ or a ‘Puck’— he plays the part of a super, is a soldier, a servant, one of the chorus — rises then to ‘speaking parts,’ plays leading roles, interspersed with insignificant parts — till he finally retires from the stage as ‘Prospero,’ the magician.” 

The Personas

The physical body and brain are new in each life, and can have no memory of the past life of the True Ego.

Personas

In Theosophy, one’s True Ego or permanent individuality can be also thought of as one’s ‘character’…

The character is a continuous, collective reminiscence, often unconscious, the fruit of numberless and varied experiences over many lifetimes.

Character, the “Master Soul,” may have thousands of struggling apprentices over as many lifetimes.

Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.

“All is impermanent in man except the pure bright essence of Alaya [Master Soul],” says the Book of the Golden Precepts.

Man is its crystal ray; a beam of light immaculate within, a form of clay material upon the lower surface.

“That beam is thy life-guide and thy true Self, the Watcher and the silent Thinker, the victim of thy lower Self. Thy Soul cannot be hurt but through thy erring body; control and master both, and thou art safe when crossing to the nearing ‘Gate of Balance.'”

– The Voice of the Silence, Fragment III

Who Are We?

Buddha’s favorite disciple, Ananda, and Krishna’s Arjuna were exceptional, in that they were able to assimilate their essence to the Master. Thus they added to the powers of the Master, and by that means strengthened their own immortality. That would be a win-win for humanity and the planet if were achieved.

The Buddha-Nature

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