Spiritual and Astral Evolution: Darwin’s Black Box

Designed or Chance Mutation?

SINCE Darwin presented his theories modern evolutionists have maintained the most elaborate scientific fraud of all time, critics say.

The fraud consists in a conscious refusal to accept any kind of design or purpose in Nature.

The denial is a consensus of blind authority by modern science waged against irreducible complexity as proof of design. 

Irreducible complexity is the compelling principle proposed by biologist Michael Behe as proof that certain biological systems are too complex to have evolved by random chance. A primary example Behe uses is the bacterial flagellum which is driven by a rotary engine made up of protein. Some authors have argued that flagella cannot have gradually evolved. (Wikipedia)

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

Darwin’s Black Box

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. The fact is, that only the partial truth of many of the secondary ‘laws’ of Darwinism is beyond question.”

• Helena Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine Vol II p. 662 

“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.'” Theosophy agrees in this case:

It is from the infinitesimally small that the comparatively gigantic species are produced.

“Even though we are led to believe that during the Cretaceous the Earth used to be an exclusive home for fearsome giants, including carnivorous velociraptors and arthropods larger than a modern adult human, it turns out that there was still room for harmless minute invertebrates measuring only several millimeters.” (ScienceDaily)

An 8.2-millimeter fossil millipede in Burmese amber.

“Such is the case (above) of a tiny millipede of only 8.2 mm in length, recently found in 99-million-year-old amber in Myanmar. Using the latest research technologies, the scientists concluded that not only were they handling the first fossil millipede of the order (Callipodida) and also the smallest amongst its contemporary relatives, but that its morphology was so unusual that it drastically deviated from its contemporary relatives.” (ScienceDaily)

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.”

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.”

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

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

Measuring the Immeasurable, the Intersection of Science and Spirit

Apparent Levitation of a Yogi

MAINSTREAM science looking for the source of our consciousness, argue its origin must be located in the neurons of our physical brains.

They are certain that all cognition arises from the activity of neurons attached to specific structures, which have fixed locations.

Yet many credible scientific minds today think otherwise and dispute the idea that our human consciousness arises solely from physical brain activity. 

Our brains are transmitters, just as TVs are, and not the creators of the programs and information they channel.

Open-minded science should always be willing to pursue truth wherever it leads, consider that consciousness may be an independent entity apart from the brain through which it manifests. This is only stating the obvious: automation takes us only so far – cars need drivers, and airplanes must have pilots who fly them. Television programs depend on writers, actors, and reporters.

But the standard model science insists the evidence pointing to an independent self is nothing but ‘junk science,’ no matter how rigorous the experiments. The results no matter how conclusive, are ignored. They are generally not accepted for publication in prestigious journals.

Parapsychologists risk being minimized and shunned — and their careers and livlihood can be stalled if funding is withdrawn.

“We live in an age of prejudice, dissimulation, and paradox,” Blavatsky opined in her article A Paradoxical World —”wherein, like dry leaves caught in a whirlpool, we are tossed helpless, hither and thither, ever struggling between our honest convictions and fear of that cruelest of tyrants — PUBLIC OPINION.”

A contemporary scientist spoke to physics and electrical engineering professor Willis Harman, and upon being told of successful remote-viewing [formerly known as “clairvoyance”] experiments, Harman said: “I wouldn’t believe it even if it were true!” 

Dangerous Waters

Yet, poised fearlessly at the frontiers of Psi research are legitimate scientific groups such as the respected Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) in Petaluma, California, and the Institute of HeartMath in Boulder Creek.

These researchers, and others, like NES Energy Medicine, are willing to take a leap in pursuit of the fast-moving hidden soul that other scientists prefer ignoring. Looking to the future, Mme. Blavatsky boldly asserted in her The Secret Doctrine 1:272 that:

Modern science believes not
in the ‘soul of things.’

Fearless investigations were the exclusive precinct of ancient, uncanny intuitives and seers as taught in The Secret Doctrine. But today there are numerous professional scientific investigators on the hunt for answers to the puzzling problems of evolution and consciousness.

The Evolution of Love: Many Chances to Get It Right

Edgar Degas, Dancers.

EVOLUTION, as defined in the teachings of Theosophy, is a multifaceted venture, a vast, complex dance of spirit,  mind, and matter.

In recurring lifetimes our human experience runs the gamut of pain to pleasure, material to spiritual.

The Secret Doctrine asserts this inescapable dance is an individualized expression of life’s eternal “triple evolutionary scheme — three separate schemes of evolution, which are inextricably interwoven and interblended at every point.”

H. P. Blavatsky explains: “These are the Monadic (or spiritual), the intellectual, and the physical evolutions — the finite aspects or the reflections on the field of Cosmic Illusion of the ONE REALITY.”

“Each of these three systems has its own laws; each is represented in the constitution of man, and it is the union of these three streams in him which makes him the complex being he now is —’Nature,’ the physical evolutionary Power, could never evolve intelligence unaided.”

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

True and lasting self-knowledge is acquired gradually in both loving and often painful experiences, through a prolonged, yet ultimately finite series of reincarnations in human form, as we know it. Such transitions occur within the triple evolutionary plan and are, as Blavatsky maintained, “inextricably interwoven and interblended at every point.” Think of Ubuntu, an African Philosophy: ‘I Am Because We Are.’

Ubuntu: I Am Because We Are

The key to our spiritual development lies in recognizing the unity and continuity of life, Theosophy further teaches — and that for the soul, there is really no such thing as final heaven or hell. We are first and foremost spiritual beings, the mind, and its forms being our field of inexorable human experiences.

But what happens to our ‘human self’ after death? Does everything important, our consciousness, love, hopes, and dreams die with the body? Mme. Blavatsky, writing in The Key to Theosophy, assures her readers that love and spirit are immortal. And further, that:

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

Self-knowledge evolves gradually out of the recognition, as the philosopher-mystic Teilhard de Chardin famously said, that we are “spiritual beings having a human experience,” not the other way around. And that “Self-Knowledge is of loving deeds the child,” as taught in The Voice of the Silence.

• H. P. Blavatsky, The Voice of the Silence, Fragment 2.

Parent and child bonding.

Our afterlife, once the dissolution of the body and Earthly desire body is complete, is blissful. That state “consists in our complete conviction that we never left the earth,” Blavatsky writes in the Key to Theosophy, “and that there is no such thing as death at all.”

• H. P. Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy, Section 9

Darwin’s Black Box: Intelligent Design

Beautiful Design

SINCE Darwin presented his theories modern evolutionists have maintained the most elaborate scientific fraud of all time, critics say.

The fraud consists in a conscious refusal to accept any kind of design or purpose in Nature.

The denial is a consensus of blind authority by modern science waged against irreducible complexity as proof of design. 

Irreducible complexity is the compelling principle proposed by biologist Michael Behe as proof that certain biological systems are too complex to have evolved by random chance. A primary example Behe uses is the bacterial flagellum which is driven by a rotary engine made up of protein. Some authors have argued that flagella cannot have gradually evolved. (Wikipedia)

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

Flagellum

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. The fact is, that only the partial truth of many of the secondary ‘laws’ of Darwinism is beyond question.”

• Helena Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine Vol II p. 662 

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.'” Theosophy agrees in this case:

It is from the infinitesimally small that the comparatively gigantic species are produced.

Even though we are led to believe that during the Cretaceous the Earth used to be an exclusive home for fearsome giants, including carnivorous velociraptors and arthropods larger than a modern adult human, it turns out that there was still room for harmless minute invertebrates measuring only several millimeters.

An 8.2-millimeter fossil millipede in Burmese amber.

“Such is the case (above) of a tiny millipede of only 8.2 mm in length, recently found in 99-million-year-old amber in Myanmar. Using the latest research technologies, the scientists concluded that not only were they handling the first fossil millipede of the order (Callipodida) and also the smallest amongst its contemporary relatives, but that its morphology was so unusual that it drastically deviated from its contemporary relatives.” (ScienceDaily)

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.”

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.”

The Wonder of Life: The Great Inscrutable Mystery

Botticelli: Primavera

WE are repulsed by a report of a terrorist beheading. David Brooks wrote about it in a NY Times Opinion, in which he concludes that “the body has a spiritual essence.”

“The human head and body don’t just live and pass along genes,” Brooks writes: “They paint, make ethical judgments, savor the beauty of a sunset and experience the transcendent.”

Sounding more like a student of Theosophy than a cultural and political commentator Brooks adds:

“The body is material but surpasses the material. It’s spiritualized matter.”

“Most of us, religious or secular,” Brooks wrote in his NY Times article The Body and the Spirit, “have some instinctive sense that there is a ghost infused in the machine. And because the human body is a transcendent temple it is worthy of respect. It is offensive to treat it the way you would treat an inanimate object.”

“Even after a person is dead, the body still carries the residue of this presence and deserves dignified handling.”

Similarly, H. P. Blavatsky quoted Thomas Carlyle: “‘we touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body!'” … “How does our physical body come to the state of perfection it is found in now?,” she asks, and answers: “Through millions of years of evolution, of course, yet never through, or from, animals, as taught by materialism.”

Further quoting Carlyle: — ‘The essence of our being, the mystery in us that calls itself  ‘I,’ — what words have we for such things? — it is a breath of Heaven, the highest Being reveals himself in man. This body, these faculties, this life of ours, is it not all as a vesture for the unnamed?'”

Sandro Botticelli, Birth of Venus

“The breath of heaven, or rather the breath of life is, as Novalis said, and no one since has said it better, as repeated by Carlyle: —

“There is but one temple in the universe, and that is the body of man. Nothing is holier than that high form . . . . We touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body!”

‘If well meditated it will turn out to be a scientific fact — the expression of the actual truth of the thing. We are the miracle of miracles — the great inscrutable Mystery.’ 

(Blavatsky adds): “The breath of heaven, or rather the breath of life, called in the bible Nephesh, is in every animal, in every animate speck as in every mineral atom.”

(The Secret Doctrine 1:211-12)

Intelligent Design?

Quoting Thomas Carlyle directly:

“But none of these has, like man, the consciousness of the nature of that highest Being, as none has that divine harmony in its form which man possesses. There is but one temple in the universe, says the devout
Novalis, and that is the body of man. Nothing is holier than that high form.”

“We touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body! This sounds like a mere flourish of rhetoric but it is not so.”

“If well meditated it will turn out to be a scientific fact; the expression in such words as can be had, of the actual truth of the thing. We are the miracle of miracles,— the great inscrutable Mystery of God. We cannot understand it, we know not how to speak of it; but we may feel and know, if we like, that it is verily so.”

(Thomas Carlyle, Ch. 1, Hero as Divinity)

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

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.”

Now is the Only Time We Have

“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.”

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 Psychology of Reincarnation: Prodigious Prodigies

Emily Bear

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

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

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

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

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

The Order of Nature Proves 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 design in Nature.

This blind denial is unfortunately similar to the disparaging argument by modern science waged against irreducible complexity as proving design. 

Irreducible complexity is the compelling principle proposed by biologist Michael Behe as proof that certain biological systems are too complex to have evolved 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.”

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.”

Soul Lessons of Love, Pain and Happiness

EVOLUTION as defined in the teachings of Theosophy is a multifaceted venture, a dance of spirit, soul, mind and matter.

True and lasting self-knowledge is acquired gradually in both loving and painful experiences, through a long, yet ultimately finite series of reincarnations in human form.

Such transitions occur within a triple evolutionary plan, Blavatsky wrote, and are “inextricably interwoven and interblended at every point.”

The key to our spiritual development lies in recognizing the unity and continuity of life, Theosophy says — and that for the soul, there is really no such thing as final extinction. We are first and foremost spiritual beings, and humanity is our field of necessary human experience.

But what happens to our human self after death? Does everything important, our consciousness and love, die with the body? Blavatsky, writing in The Key to Theosophy, assures her students that love and spirit are immortal. And further, that:

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

Self-knowledge evolves gradually out of the recognition, as the philosopher-mystic Teilhard de Chardin famously said, we are “spiritual beings having a human experience,” not the other way around.

Our afterlife, once the dissolution of the body and Earthly desire body is complete, is blissful. That state “consists in our complete conviction that we never left the earth,” Blavatsky writes in the Key to Theosophy, “and that there is no such thing as death at all.”

The Miracle of Miracles, the Great Inscrutable Mystery

Botticelli: Primavera

WE are repulsed by a report of a terrorist beheading, David Brooks writes in a recent NY Times Op-Ed, “because the body has a spiritual essence.”

“The human head and body don’t just live and pass along genes. They paint, make ethical judgments, savor the beauty of a sunset and experience the transcendent.” He further writes:

“The body is material but surpasses the material. It’s spiritualized matter.”

“Most of us, religious or secular,” Brooks writes in The Body and the Spirit, “have some instinctive sense that there is a ghost infused in the machine. And because the human body is a transcendent temple it is worthy of respect. It is offensive to treat it the way you would treat an inanimate object.”

“Even after a person is dead, the body still carries the residue of this presence and deserves dignified handling.”

Similarly H. P. Blavatsky noted, quoting Carlyle and Novalis: “we touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body! … How does our physical body come to the state of perfection it is found in now?,” she asks and answers: “Through millions of years of evolution, of course, yet never through, or from, animals, as taught by materialism.”

“For, as Carlyle says: — ‘The essence of our being, the mystery in us that calls itself  ‘I,’ — what words have we for such things? — it is a breath of Heaven, the highest Being reveals himself in man. This body, these faculties, this life of ours, is it not all as a vesture for the unnamed?'”

Sandro Botticelli, Birth of Venus

“The breath of heaven, or rather the breath of life is, as Novalis said, and no one since has said it better, as repeated by Carlyle: —

“There is but one temple in the universe, and that is the body of man. Nothing is holier than that high form . . . . We touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body!” (Secret Doctrine 1:211-12)

“If well meditated it will turn out to be a scientific fact — the expression of the actual truth of the thing. We are the miracle of miracles — the great inscrutable Mystery,” She continues. “The breath of heaven, or rather the breath of life, called in the bible Nephesh, is in every animal, in every animate speck as in every mineral atom.”

Intelligent Design

Worth repeating:

“But none of these has, like man, the consciousness of the nature of that highest Being, as none has that divine harmony in its form which man possesses. There is but one temple in the universe, and that is the body of man. Nothing is holier than that high form.”

“We touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body! This sounds like a mere flourish of rhetoric but it is not so.”

“If well meditated it will turn out to be a scientific fact — the expression of the actual truth of the thing. We are the miracle of miracles — the great inscrutable Mystery.”  (Thomas Carlyle, Ch. 1 Hero as Divinity)

One Absolutely Fundamental Law in the Universe

THAT modern saying ‘what goes around comes around’ is almost certainly a instinctive memory of karma, the omnipresent law of the universe.

The wisdom of karma insists that every fleeting moment eventually returns, like a relay race, to its original place plus the experience gained. And this law is an obligatory pilgrimage for everyone.

The theosophical universal law of evolution insists that every person’s actions whether good or bad,” as Wikipedia has it, “will often have consequences for that person.” And the consequences, we could add, include everyone in the human race and nature as a whole.

The ancients always insisted on the absolute universality of periodicity, the law “of flux and reflux, ebb and flow,” according to The Secret Doctrine, “which physical science has observed and recorded in all departments of nature.”

“An alternation such as that of Day and Night, Life and Death, Sleeping and Waking, is a fact so common, so perfectly universal and without exception,,” says this teaching, “that it is easy to comprehend that in it we see one of the absolutely fundamental laws of the universe.”

♦

This teaching is set forth in The Secret Doctrine as the Second Fundamental Proposition, a universal law sourced from the Perennial Philosophy (on which the teachings are based):

A metaphor “will convey the idea still more clearly,” Mme. Blavatsky wrote about the basics of the teaching (Volume 1, p. 2): “the out-breathing of the ‘unknown essence’ produces the world; and an inhalation causes it to disappear.”

“This process has been going on from all eternity, and our present universe is but one of an infinite series, which had no beginning and will have no end.”

You Already know Your Karma

ESOTERIC philosophy views Past, Present and Future as compound time, and only from our waking, egoic state of consciousness.

Pointedly, Buddha’s dying words confirmed that indeed “all compounds are perishable,” i.e. illusions.

In the realm of “noumena” or the causal plane H. P. Blavatsky wrote (SD 1:43) the three have no validity, and according to Mahayana Buddhism: “The Past time is the Present time, as also the Future, which, though it has not come into existence, still is.”

To the uninitiated concepts of duration and time Blavatsky points out, “are all derived from our sensations according to the laws of Association.” And because they are “inextricably bound up with the relativity of human knowledge” they are superficial and only temporal tools.

Because rationalist views ignore psychic experience, they must eventually fall away in the face of thousands of reported cases such as the near-death experience. Today precognition is validated by new experimental research data in parapsychology.

Minority Report – Precog

Announcing the publication of a controversial work by Cornell researcher Daryl Bem in a 2003 article published in The New York Times, Dr. Bem purports to have demonstrated precognition in a series of experiments. Dr. Bem studied over 1000 people and looked for proof that future events affected past behavior, or retro causation.

His research was analyzed using standard statistical techniques. Using standard measures, Bem’s research indeed finds a causal link between future events and past behavior (or thoughts?)

Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us?

MILLIONS of years ago, the ancient sages taught, man and all the kingdoms of nature existed as prototypes.

 They gradually developed in the womb of Gaia, Mother Earth, gestating in their formative stage before birth onto this plane of existence.

The living spiritual prototypes were held in an invisible astral matrix, a semi-physical energy field, The Secret Doctrine explains.

This field is the astral projection of the eternal akasic field, the storehouse of all pre-evolutionary blueprints of former worlds.

As they develop the prototypical forms are likened to a living fetus suspended in the ocean of its mother’s womb. There was no ‘solid matter’ as we know it in those developing astral times, more than 300,000,000 years ago it is taught.

Guiding the process is an intelligent hierarchy of spiritual parent-beings, a “hive-mind” at work behind-the-scenes, says The Secret Doctrine, a Mind busily retrofitting the numerous forms of nature and man—preparing them to be reborn on the to-be new Earth, guided by immutable cyclic laws. (Differentiation of Species-Missing Links.)

Blastocyst

Just as Earth mother nourished and birthed innumerable beings in the faraway past, the same grand evolutionary scheme is mirrored today in the differentiation of the human fetus— stages that traverse single-celled zygote, which becomes a mass of cells known as a blastocyst.

Science rejects everything except “mechanical laws,” Blavatsky wrote (SD 2:660), “and admits of no principle outside matter.” Occult Science on the other hand, “allows the human physical frame to have passed through every form, from the lowest to the very highest, its present one.” 

Scientists of Blavatsky’s era recognized this, notably E. H. Haeckel, (mentioned by Blavatsky) who formulated a biogenetic law proposing a recapitulation theory.

The theory states that the embryological development of the individual repeats the stages in the evolutionary development of the species, i.e. “ontonlogy recaptitulates phylogony.”

Ironically the process supports both the intelligently guided evolution of occultism, and the random materialistic Darwinian model. Take your choice.

Evidence for an Uplifting Cosmic Intelligence

Takes Practice and Will

BLIND chance could never on its own have produced a self aware and self-conscious thinking being.

Even if such a blind force existed obviously it would  have no need for reasoning.

Thinking or purpose of any sort it is not needed by the random blind creations of neo-Darwinist evolutionary theory. Simply put: 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 indomitable urge to grow wings and fly, truth finding and spiritual growth are guided by a built-in system called progressive awakenings. In her article Spiritual Progress,  H. P. Blavatsky made what seemed a sort of ‘duh’ comment! (paraphrased)

“The true Adept must become,
she cannot be made.”

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

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

A Shaman Levitates

MAINSTREAM science looking for the source of our consciousness, insist its origin must be located in the physical brain.

Such scientists are certain that all cognition arises from the activity of neurons attached to specific structures, which have fixed locations in the head.

Yet many credible scientific minds today think otherwise, and dispute the idea that our human consciousness arises from physical neuronal structures.

Open minded science should always be willing to pursue truth wherever it leads, even to consider that consciousness itself may be an independent entity from the physiology through which it manifests and operates. It’s only stating the obvious: automation takes us only so far – cars need drivers, and airplanes must have pilots.

But the mainstream clan still labels psi studies, pointing to a stand-alone self, as ‘junk science’ no matter how rigorous the experiments. The results no matter how conclusive, are ignored. They are generally not accepted for publication in prestigious journals which would lend them credibility.

Parapsychologists risk being minimized and shunned — and their careers are often stalled as funding sources dry up.

Ω

“We live in an age of prejudice, dissimulation and paradox,” steamed Blavatsky in her article A Paradoxical World, “wherein, like dry leaves caught in a whirlpool, we are tossed helpless, hither and thither, ever struggling between our honest convictions and fear of that cruelest of tyrants—PUBLIC OPINION.”

Yet, poised fearlessly at the frontiers of psi research are scientific groups such as the respected Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) in Petaluma, California, and the Institute of HeartMath in Boulder Creek.

These researchers, and others, like NES energy medicine, are willing to take a leap in pursuit of the fast-moving “soul of things” that other scientists prefer ignoring.

Such investigations were formerly the exclusive precinct of ancient, uncanny intuitives and seers. Today there are many qualified scientific investigators on the hunt for answers to the puzzling problems of consciousness that stymie mainstream science.

Waiting to Inhale

AN Eastern wisdom teaching is introduced to the West in the familiar proverb “what goes around, comes around.”

The modern saying is almost certainly a soul memory referring to the omnipresent, and unerring law of karma.

Wisdom of karma insists that every fleeting moment eventually returns, to its original state plus the experience gained — after completing an obligatory pilgrimage.

Specifically, a person’s actions whether good or bad,” as Wikipedia has it, “will often have consequences for that person.”

The ancients always insisted on the absolute universality of periodicity, the law “of flux and reflux, ebb and flow,” according to The Secret Doctrine, “which physical science has observed and recorded in all departments of nature.”

“An alternation such as that of Day and Night, Life and Death, Sleeping and Waking, is a fact so common, so perfectly universal and without exception,,” says this teaching, “that it is easy to comprehend that in it we see one of the absolutely fundamental laws of the universe.”

♦

This teaching is set forth in The Secret Doctrine as the Second Fundamental Proposition, a universal law sourced from the Perennial Philosophy (on which the teachings are based)…