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.”
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“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
“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 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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CONSCIOUSNESS is at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives.
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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.
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