Consciousness is Faster than Light or Atoms

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

Knowing very little of its spiritual essence, we define consciousness by names we give to its various ‘states’ — waking, sleeping, intuitive, meditating, angry, depressed, happy or sad.

We experience perhaps hundreds of such random mental and emotional states every day, no wiser in understanding the hidden matrix, or field of consciousness in which they are embedded.

Material Science approaches nature only “through her appearance,” H. P. Blavatsky writes in The Secret Doctrine (1:610), and “that appearance is always deceitful on the physical plane,” adding that Science:

“…refuses to blend physics with metaphysics, the body with its informing soul and spirit, which they prefer ignoring.”

Ω

Nevertheless, physics and metaphysics were once deeply entwined, resulting in the natural philosophy of the Greeks, but is given the cold shoulder now by a science that prefers computer simulations, and huge particle collider machines to the natural world.

Searching for the God Particle

Occult Science, on the other hand, rejecting the Cartesian system, describes the body-mind consciousness as the lower end of a universal, spiritual substrate referred to as “BE-NESS” in The Secret Doctrine—symbolized by two pre-manifested aspects cited as “abstract space” (bare subjectivity), and “abstract motion” (representing unconditioned consciousness.)

“Consciousness has long been one of the great mysteries of life, the universe and everything,” writes Linda Geddes in the 29 November 2011 NewScientist.

Ω

Lucid dreaming, being conscious of dreaming while dreaming, best exemplifies this multi-layered conscious now-presence. Perhaps H. P. Blavatsky expressed it best with a word she coined to describe absolute consciousness —”BE-NESS”— “the first fundamental axiom of the Secret Doctrine is this metaphysical One Absolute.” (Vol. 1:14)

Among all earthly creatures, who might most exemplify this enigmatic quality, if not our feline friends?

Ψ

Be-ness

One of Rupert Sheldrake’s experiments on the unexplained powers of animals is dramatized by the case of David Waithe’s cat Godzilla!

Biologist author of more than 80 scientific papers and ten books, Sheldrake is a former Research Fellow of the Royal Society. In this clip Sheldrake discusses Godzilla, a cat that knows when his owner is calling. 🙂

“We Come from God Who is Our Home”

Arjuna-Krishna

IN the ancient Hindu Bhagavad-Gita Krishna assures his disciple, an uncertain Arjuna, that both have lived many lives on Earth.

“Both I and thou have passed through many births,” the Master tells his disciple, adding: “mine are known unto me, but thou knowest not of thine.”

The Bhagavad-Gita, Ch. 4:31.

“It’s hard to believe,” writes the Blavatsky Theosophy Group UK, in an article titled A Right Understanding of Reincarnation, that until 130 years ago hardly anyone in the Western world had heard of reincarnation or knew anything about it.”

One reason for the disbelief around this teaching is that most people cannot remember having a past life. This is because, in strictly practical terms, the immortal soul enters and uses a new physical body, new astral body, new personality, and a new physical brain. A new brain, cannot be expected to ‘register’ a previous life it was never there to witness.  

Being thus handed an empty photo album by Nature has to be a challenge to the incoming soul by hindering it finding a connection to prior experiences and knowledge. “The new ‘personality,'” Blavatsky explained, “is no better than a fresh suit of clothes.” (The Key to Theosophy, Ch. 8)

Siddhartha-Buddha meditating under the Bo Tree

Even so, by a mysterious process, “the record or reflection of all the past lives must survive,” H. P. Blavatsky wrote: “for when Prince Siddhartha became Buddha the full sequence of His previous births were seen by Him.”

In such a state he was able, she says, “to retrospectively trace the lines of all his lives. This proves to you that the undying qualities of the personality — such as love, goodness, charity, etc., attach themselves to the immortal Ego,

photographing on it, so to speak, a permanent image of the divine aspect of the man who was.

“To our talpatic, or mole-like comprehension, [http://bit.ly/2YP74Sq], the human spirit is then lost in the One Spirit, as the drop of water thrown into the sea can no longer be traced out and recovered. But de facto it is not so.

Photographic Lab

“However long the ‘night of Brahma’ or even the Universal Pralaya [Sleep] – (not the local Pralaya affecting some one group of worlds) – yet, when it ends,

the same individual Divine Monad resumes its majestic path of evolution,

“though on a higher, hundredfold perfected and more pure chain of earths than before, and brings with it all the essence of compound spiritualities from its previous countless rebirths.”

Twin Flames Spiral Evolution

“Spiral evolution, it must be remembered, is dual, and the path of spirituality turns, corkscrew-like, within and around physical, semi-physical, and supra-physical evolution.”

• H. P. Blavatsky,
  Isis Unveiled and the Vishishtadwaita

Spirit and Matter

The mind doesn’t fully incarnate until age seven, (Key to Theosophy Section 9). Thus, a child doesn’t feel the full weight of life and karma right away. As such, they are like karma-less little Buddhas.’

If not pressured to conform by parents and society, it is possible for them to express memories of their former lives, i.e. experience the ‘intimations of immortality’ for an extended period.

Dante And The River Of Lethe, by Gustave Dore

“Spirit got itself entangled with gross matter,” Blavatsky wrote in The Theosophist, “for the same reason that life gets entangled with the fetus matter. It followed a law, and therefore could not help the entanglement occurring.”

We know of no eastern philosophy that teaches that ‘matter originated out of Spirit.’ Matter is as eternal and indestructible as Spirit and one cannot be made cognizant to our senses without the other—even to our, the highest, spiritual sense.

“It was Plotinus who said that ‘our body is the true river of Lethe, for ‘souls plunged into it forget all’ — our terrestrial body is like Lethe” (the “river of forgetfulness” in the Hades of Greek mythology.)” Using a modern analogy, a new computer cannot be expected to recall the data stored on the discarded one, unless the old data is preserved and reinstalled in the new machine.

But this is what sometimes happens with children who die at an early age from accidents or illness if in their short lifetime they had created no basis for a prolonged after-death dream state. Nature is never wasteful, and the still viable astral body is not disintegrated as with normal death but reused by the reincarnation of the child.

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.”

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. 

Lao Tzu’s New Year Resolutions

The Snow Maiden

LAO TZU is classed by H. P. Blavatsky as an awakened Master, a God-like being similar to Krishna, Buddha, and Jesus, who “united themselves with their Spirits permanently,” and “became Gods on earth.”

Such Personages are rare and superior to Moses, Pythagoras, and Confucius, who “have taken rank in history as demi-gods and leaders of mankind” (Isis 2:159).

Lao Tzu was the resuscitator of Taoism, the practical philosophy and religion of The Way.

Taoism is the ancient Wisdom-Religion of Theosophy. The Great Ones of old, described as Original Teachers, and They, as all Theosophists know, exist today and always will.

Lao Tzu was the most famous philosopher, mystic and alchemist in China. He is the author of the Tao Te Ching or the Way.  He is regarded as one of the foundation stones of Taoism.

Originally, the word Tao meant a specific line of action, probably a military one, because the ideograms that compose this word mean “feet” and “leader.”

Olivia Bouler, an animal rights activist.

Lao Tzu interpreted the Tao as a way, the essence of the Universe. In a written poem Lao Tzu described “the Way” as the emptiness that cannot be filled, but from which everything manifests.

“I have three treasures. Guard and keep them,” Lao Tzu said. “The first is deep love, the second is frugality, and the third is not to dare to be ahead of the world. Because of deep love, one is courageous. Because of frugality, one is generous.”

Because of not daring to be ahead of the world, one becomes the leader of the world.”

In his most famous image, Lao Tzu is portrayed as riding a buffalo, because the domestication of this animal is associated with the Path of Enlightenment in Zen Buddhist traditions.

Lao Tzu on an Ox

“Don’t think you can attain total awareness and whole enlightenment without proper discipline and practice,” Lao Tzu warned. “This is egomania.” 

Appropriate rituals channel your emotions and life energy toward the light. Without the discipline to practice them, you will tumble constantly backward into darkness.

♥

When the Eye is Single

ASSUREDLY no ordinary human being could claim to read “the grand clock of the Universe,” and even recognizing the orderly process of seasons on Earth, most wouldn’t accept that a universal time-keeper even exists.

Yet, it can be argued that we do own a piece of the puzzle, as may be discovered by examining the many personal events of our lives. Diligent self-reflection and intuition will lead us to discern the purpose and meaning of those events.

“In the Astral Light are pictures of all things whatsoever that happened to any person, and as well also pictures of those events to come the causes for which are sufficiently well marked and made,” W. Q. Judge wrote in The Ocean of Theosophy, Ch. 16:

“The highest order of clairvoyance — that of spiritual vision — is very rare. … Spiritual sight comes only to those who are pure, devoted, and firm.” 

Such digging may be as close as we can get to knowing and managing our personal Karma, let alone the World’s destiny. Esoteric Theosophical philosophy makes the task more difficult in teaching that Past, Present, and Future represent a “compound” time. Indeed, Buddha’s dying words were, purportedly, “all compounds are perishable,” i.e. temporary illusions.

Inner Peace

Accordingly, we ought to “seize” every stray event in our lives, and attempt to extract their true meaning, according to Judge:

“Man must seize the key in his hands and himself — as a whole — open the gate.”

(“A Year on the Path” William Q. Judge)

The great Sage Patanjali in his Yoga Aphorisms said:

“A great and most subtle knowledge springs from the discrimination that follows upon concentration of the mind performed with regard to the relation between moments and their order.”

“If we do all our acts, small and great, every moment, for the sake of the whole human race, as representing the Supreme Self, then every cell and fibre of the body and inner man will be turned in one direction, resulting in perfect concentration.”

W. Q. Judge – A Single Eye

“Let us hit the mark, O friend! and that mark is the indestructible, the highest spiritual life we are at any time capable of.”

• William Brehon (William Q. Judge) “Hit The Mark”

“This is expressed in the New Testament in the statement that if the eye is single the whole body will be full of light, and in the Bhagavad Gita, it is still more clearly and comprehensively given through the different chapters. In one it is beautifully put as the lighting up in us of the Supreme One, who then becomes visible. Let us meditate on that which is in us as the Highest Self, concentrate upon it, and will to work for it as dwelling in every human heart.”

W. Q. Judge, “Meditation, Concentration, Will”

Child Meditating

“The Sage Patanjali speaks of ultimate divisions of time which cannot be further divided, and of the order in which they precede and succeed each other. It is asserted that a perception of these minute periods can be acquired, and the result will be that he who discriminates thus goes on to greater and wider perception of principles in nature which are so recondite that modern philosophy does not even know of their existence.”

“Karma is not subject to time, and therefore he who knows what is the ultimate division of time in this Universe knows Karma.”

(Aphorisms On Karma)

The Circadian Clock

“Nearly every cell in your body has its own circadian clock, which regulates the activation and deactivation of genes,” Dr. Joseph Mercola explains. “To optimize your health, it’s important to pay attention to and honor ancient patterns of waking, sleeping, and eating.”

PATANJALI

THE YOGA APHORISMS OF PATANJALI
An Interpretation by William Q. Judge
Assisted by James Henderson Connelly

Lotus Flowers

In the realm of “noumena” (or the primary causal plane) H. P. Blavatsky wrote that these three aspects of time have no separate 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.”

(The Secret Doctrine 1:43)

In The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett (Letter 8),
the Master ‘K. H.’ wrote:

“Three clumsy words — Past, Present, and Future — miserable concepts of the objective phases of the subjective whole, they are about as ill-adapted for the purpose as an axe for fine carving.”

A Single Eye

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.

“[Bem] describes as strong evidence for extrasensory perception, the ability to sense future events.”

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 (past thoughts or intention?)

Opening the Spiritual Eye: Piercing the Illusion of Reality

Fortune Teller

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 rider and horse — 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 says. “Optimism and pessimism depend on it also in a great measure.”

The Theosophical Roots of a Spiritual Education

Growing Imagination

THE emergence of a new spiritual epoch in education may have dawned far back in the late 19^th century driven by Theosophical principles.

New educational reforms encompassing spiritual development are evident in the formation of new schools today, many of which embody the eternal principles championed by H. P. Blavatsky in The Key to Theosophy.

“In many countries, educational reforms are taking place to consider the changing needs of 21^st century learners,” writes Canadian theosophist Kathleen Hall in The Theosophical Roots of Spiritual Education, noting how:

“The old factory model of education that was mainly concerned with churning out obedient workers no longer suits the needs of today’s world.”

The principles defined by Madame Blavatsky in The Key to Theosophy, raised the educational bar, both then and now . “Children should above all be taught self-reliance,” she declared, “love for all men, altruism, mutual charity, and more than anything else, to think and reason for themselves.”

Adding: “We would reduce the purely mechanical work of the memory to an absolute minimum and devote the time to the development and training of the inner senses, faculties and latent capacities …

Meditation

“Deal with each child as a unit and educate it so as to produce the most harmonious and equal unfoldment of its powers, in order that its special aptitudes should find their full natural development; Aim at creating free men and women, free intellectually, free morally, unprejudiced in all respects, and above all things, unselfish.” (Theosophy and Education).

“The object of modern education is to pass examinations, a system [adapted] not to develop right emulation, but to generate and breed jealousy, envy, hatred almost, in young people for one another, and thus train them for a life of ferocious selfishness and struggle for honours and emoluments instead of kindly feeling.”

Being Who You Are: Proof of Reincarnation

Julia Butterfly Hill

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 each connected not only to many others, but also to ourselves, a kind of multimedia group of former lives and personalities.  We ordinary humans are paradoxical and often revealing our hidden genius.

Like the soaring music of Mozart to the fearless passion of a Julia Butterfly Hill we each live out a destiny created by ourselves over many lifetimes. That’s our personal family group, and we all know each other, though most may not remember many selves on a conscious level.

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

Julia, up a tree.

Teilhard de Chardin’s idea that we are “spiritual beings immersed in a human experience,” only begins to explain the genius of a Mozart who composed musical score at the age of three. Or why Julia Butterfly Hill, at twenty-four, would choose to spend a dangerous two years alone, 200 feet atop a thousand year-old redwood tree, to save it from destruction by a company of determined, clear-cutting loggers.

Read more of Julia’s compelling story here.

Just like Amadeus and Julia, every one of us is born with a destiny and an individual soul identity, bringing intelligence and experience from former lives. To a greater or lesser degree we remember and act out the memory of them. Memory can develop slowly or quickly, or often, has little opportunity to emerge. All depends upon our karmic circumstances, merit and demerit. Yet beneath it all remains the unshakeable awareness of an “I am I” consciousness. We are ourselves and none other, whether we remember all the details or not.

Lao Tzu: The Flying Dragon

LAO TSU is classed by H. P. Blavatsky  as a God-like being similar to Krishna, Buddha, and Jesus, who “united themselves with their Spirits permanently” and “became Gods on earth.”

Such Personages are rare and superior to Moses, Pythagoras and Confucius, who “have taken rank in history as demi-gods and leaders of mankind” (Isis 2:159).

Lao Tzu was the resuscitator of Taoism, the practical philosophy and religion of The Way.

Taoism is the ancient Wisdom-Religion of Theosophy. The Great Ones of old, described as Original Teachers, and They, as all Theosophists know, exist today and always will.

Lao Tzu was the most famous philosopher, mystic and alchemist in China. He is the author of the Tao Te Ching, or the Way.  He is regarded as one of the foundation stones of Taoism.

Originally, the word Tao meant a specific line of action, probably a military one, because the ideograms that compose this word mean “feet” and “leader.”

Lao Tzu interpreted the Tao as a way, the essence of the Universe. In a written poem Lao Tzu described “the Way” as the emptiness that cannot be filled, but from which everything manifests.

“I have three treasures. Guard and keep them,” Lao Tzu said. “The first is deep love, the second is frugality, and the third is not to dare to be ahead of the world. Because of deep love, one is courageous. Because of frugality, one is generous.”

Because of not daring to be ahead of the world, one becomes the leader of the world.”

In his most famous image, Lao Tzu is portrayed as riding a buffalo, because the domestication of this animal is associated with the Path of Enlightenment in Zen Buddhist traditions.

“Don’t think you can attain total awareness and whole enlightenment without proper discipline and practice,” Lao Tzu warned. “This is egomania.” 

Appropriate rituals channel your emotions and life energy toward the light. Without the discipline to practice them, you will tumble constantly backward into darkness.”

Unfolding Children’s Powers: Music and the Brain

THE emergence of a new spiritual epoch may have dawned far back in the late 19^th century driven by Theosophical principles.

New educational reforms encompassing spiritual development are evident in the formation of visionary new schools today, public and private sector, many of which embody the eternal principles championed by H. P. Blavatsky in The Key to Theosophy.

“In many countries, educational reforms are taking place to consider the changing needs of 21^st century learners,” writes Canadian theosophist Kathleen Hall in The Theosophical Roots of Spiritual Education, noting how:

“The old factory model of education that was mainly concerned with churning out obedient workers no longer suits the needs of today’s world.”

The principles defined by Madame Blavatsky in The Key to Theosophy, raised the educational bar, both then and now . “Children should above all be taught self-reliance,” she declared, “love for all men, altruism, mutual charity, and more than anything else, to think and reason for themselves.”

Adding: “We would reduce the purely mechanical work of the memory to an absolute minimum and devote the time to the development and training of the inner senses, faculties and latent capacities …

Thoughts are Things: Bound Together for Good or Ill

AS human beings our lives and fates are often wrapped up in multiple paradoxes, which seem to be almost the defining characteristic of our species.

The fact that we mutually experience any contrasting states (or that we interact at all) is only made possible because we are connected together.

Similar to a cell phone conversation that depends on the signal between phones. Without that signal, the call gets dropped. But Nature’s signals are much more dependable.

In fact, according to Theosophy, the whole universe is signaled together via a built-in “triple evolutionary scheme,” (The Secret Doctrine 1:181) — “three separate schemes of evolution inextricably interwoven and interblended at every point.”

But does being indissolubly bound as one human family help us or hurt us? Probably both, depending on our self-development.

One moment we are compassionate and forgiving, the next we are weighted with irreconcilable differences and conflicts.

Similarly all beings on Earth are fundamentally entwined like a forest of giant redwoods that are known to have intermingling root systems. Universal non-separateness is the First Fundamental in Theosophy, insisting that “everything in the Universe, throughout all its kingdoms, is conscious,” according to H. P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine (1:274).

Redwoods

Not limited to the human or animal kingdoms Blavatsky maintains, every unit visible or invisible in nature “is endowed with a consciousness of its own kind, and on its own plane of perception.” Scientists now have even connected minerals, linking “two diamonds in a mysterious process called entanglement,” LiveScience senior writer Clara Moskowitz reports —”normally only seen on the quantum scale.” 

It phenomenon is so weird for modern science that Einstein dubbed it “spooky action at a distance.” Described as a strange effect where

“one object gets connected to another so that even if they are separated by large distances, an action performed on one will affect the other.”

“Thus, no speck of dust or grain of sand is without its own quality of consciousness,” according to Gertrude W. van Pelt in Hierarchies: The Ladder of Life, “though, of course, not as human beings understand the word. In this sense every atom is an entity.”

“Every composite being is composed of atoms,” she adds, “which obviously could not be used or respond to impulses if they were not themselves alive, having their own degree of consciousness.”

“If there were not this essential unity, there could be no coordination in nature, and any broken link would mean chaos.”

It has been found that the power of prescience lies ready to spring out from the core of even the simplest entities on earth, from atoms to molecules. Cells at disparate locations in our bodies, for example, will talk to one other. Trees are known to warn other trees of insect attacks over long distances reports seismologist Larry Gedney of Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks. (Do Trees Communicate for Mutual Defense?)

The Meditation of Altruistic Love and Compassion

Luna: Dancing Krishna

“TO whatsoever object the inconstant mind goeth out,” Krishna teaches Arjuna in the Bhgavad-Gita, “subdue it, bring it back, and place it upon the Spirit.”

‘Will and Desire lie at the doors of Meditation and Concentration,” explains William Q. Judge.  (Meditation, Concentration, Will)

“If we desire truth with the same intensity that we had formerly wished for success, money, or gratification,” Judge wrote, “we will speedily acquire meditation and possess concentration.

“If we do all our acts, small and great, every moment, for the sake of the whole human race, as representing the Supreme Self, then every cell and fibre of the body and inner man will be turned in one direction, resulting in perfect concentration.

“Let us meditate on that which is in us as the Highest Self, concentrate upon it, and will to work for it as dwelling in every human heart.”

There are many self-styled gurus and yogis today who instruct in meditation. Matthieu Ricard is unusual. A Buddhist monk who left a career in cellular genetics to study Buddhism in the Himalayas over forty-five years ago.

Krishna and Arjuna

‘He is an internationally bestselling author and an active participant in the current scientific research of the effects of meditation on the brain. He lives in Nepal and devotes most of his time to 140 humanitarian projects in Tibet, Nepal and India.

“In Meng’s words, Matthieu is a true gem in this world. He may be the world’s best bridge between modern science and ancient wisdom.”

‘Matthieu introduces the concept of meditation and leads a practice that includes mindful breathing, altruistic love, compassion, rejoicing and impartiality. He concludes emphasizing the value of caring mindfulness.’

In this video clip, a session of questions and answers followed the meditation.

The Soul’s Tapestry: Look Inward, thou art Buddha

DISCERNING the how and why of human uniqueness, from the likes of Mozart to the fearless passion of Julia Butterfly Hill, is always perplexing.

Lacking the seer’s knowingness, we’d be forced to trudge for clues into the intricate threads of reincarnations, and sift the karmic sands of countless past lives.

Teilhard de Chardin’s idea that we are “spiritual beings immersed in a human experience,” barely begins to explain the innate genius of a Mozart composing music score at age three.

Or why Julia, at twenty-four years old, would choose to spend a dangerous two years alone atop a giant forest redwood, protecting it from hostile, clear-cutting loggers.

We all sport a convincing sense of individual identity, a persistent ‘I am I and no other’ consciousness, and an eternal soul that hovers, hawk-like — silently and all-seeing — soaring sure-eyed above the Salton Sea of each new personality.

Salton Sea

Trauma patients with memory loss are convinced of their egoity, even if they don’t remember who in the world they are. Amnesiacs forget their own name, family, email, and favorite movie and food—yet their sense of ‘I’ persists.

Childhood Memories of Having Lived Before

KRISHNA assures an uncertain Arjuna that he has lived many lives on Earth.

“Both I and thou have passed through many births,” the Master tells his disciple (Bhagavad-Gita, Ch. 4:31):

“Mine are known unto me, but thou knowest not of thine.”

The fact is most people don’t recall their past lives, because in every rebirth the immortal soul must endure a new body and astral body, a new personality and a new physical brain. 

Being handed an empty photo album is a challenge to the incoming soul, hindering it finding a conscious connection to prior experiences and knowledge. Thus “the new ‘personality,'” Blavatsky wrote (Key to Theosophy, Ch. 8), “is no better than a fresh suit of clothes.”

Being so, yet “the record or reflection of all the past lives must survive,” H. P. Blavatsky continues, “for when Prince Siddhartha became Buddha the full sequence of His previous births were seen by Him.” In such a state he was able, she says, “to retrospectively trace the lines of all his lives.”

“This proves to you that the undying qualities of the personality — such as love, goodness, charity, etc., attach themselves to the immortal Ego, photographing on it, so to speak, a permanent image of the divine aspect of the man who was.”

The mind doesn’t fully incarnate until age seven, (Key to Theosophy Section 9). Thus, a child doesn’t feel the full weight of life and karma right away. As such, they are like karma-less “little Buddhas.” If not pressured to conform by parents and society, it is possible for them to express memories of their former life (s), i.e. experience “intimations of immortality” for an extended period.

“Spirit got itself entangled with gross matter,” Blavatsky wrote in The Theosophist, “for the same reason that life gets entangled with the foetus matter. It followed a law, and therefore could not help the entanglement occurring.”

It was Plotinus who said that “our body is the true river of Lethe, for ‘souls plunged into it forget all’ — our terrestrial body is like Lethe” (the “river of forgetfulness” in the Hades of Greek mythology.) Using a modern analogy, a new computer cannot be expected to recall the data stored on the discarded one, unless the old data is preserved and reinstalled in the new machine.

But this is what sometimes happens with children who die at an early age from accidents or illness, if they had created no basis for a prolonged after-death dream state. Nature is never wasteful, and the still viable astral pattern body is not disintegrated as with normal death.

The still vital and alive astral matrix is attracted back into the soul’s new body, with all its memories preserved intact.Thus in many cases such children are said to be born with two astral bodies, one new, the other old.

Love Makes You Available to the Presence of God

STUDENTS of metaphysical theosophy are sometimes called to task for being too ‘intellectual.’ There may be an important lesson to learn from this critique, on both sides.

Some prefer the force of thought to hammer out truth, dismissing feelings and emotions as emanating from the ‘lower nature.’

Yet from the other side, as W. Q. Judge wrote in Ch. 7 The Ocean of Theosophy, “intellect alone is cold, heartless and selfish.” The effect is dramatized in scientific studies of neurological correlates of responses in the physical brain.

Materialistic, intellectual data are stored in the brain, but such data do not stimulate areas such as the pineal gland — known by occultists as “the seat of the soul”— the center that hosts spiritual impulses such as feelings of compassion.

We are spiritual beings at our core, but our behaviors on this physical plane — just like the actions of rider and horse — are solely governed by how we have entrained our psychic and physical instruments to respond to either higher or lower impulses.

“There are persons,” H. P. Blavatsky explains in an occult article, “who never think with the higher faculties of their minds at all.”

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

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

From God Who is Our Home

KRISHNA assures an uncertain Arjuna that he has in fact lived many lives on Earth.

“Both I and thou have passed through many births,” the Master tells his disciple (The Bhagavad-Gita, Ch. 4:31). Adding: “mine are known unto me, but thou knowest not of thine.”

“It’s hard to believe,” writes the Blavatsky Theosophy Group UK, in an article titled “A Right Understanding of Reincarnation,” that until 130 years ago hardly anyone in the Western world had heard of reincarnation or knew anything about it.”

One reason for the ignorance around this teaching is that most people can’t remember every having a past life. This is because, in simple pragmatic terms, the immortal soul enters and uses a new body, new astral body, new personality, and a new physical brain. In the case of a new brain obviously it’s difficult to ‘remember’ a previous life never being there to witness it. 

Handed an empty photo album is a challenge to the incoming soul, hindering it finding a conscious connection to prior experiences and knowledge. “The new ‘personality,'” Blavatsky wrote (Key to Theosophy, Ch. 8), “is no better than a fresh suit of clothes.”

Even so, by a mysterious process, “the record or reflection of all the past lives must survive,” H. P. Blavatsky wrote: “for when Prince Siddhartha became Buddha the full sequence of His previous births were seen by Him.” In such a state he was able, she says, “to retrospectively trace the lines of all his lives.”

“This proves to you that the undying qualities of the personality — such as love, goodness, charity, etc., attach themselves to the immortal Ego, photographing on it, so to speak, a permanent image of the divine aspect of the man who was.”

The mind doesn’t fully incarnate until age seven, (Key to Theosophy Section 9). Thus, a child doesn’t feel the full weight of life and karma right away. As such, they are like karma-less “little Buddhas.” If not pressured to conform by parents and society, it is possible for them to express memories of their former life (s), i.e. experience “intimations of immortality” for an extended period.

“Spirit got itself entangled with gross matter,” Blavatsky wrote in The Theosophist, “for the same reason that life gets entangled with the foetus matter. It followed a law, and therefore could not help the entanglement occurring.”

It was Plotinus who said that “our body is the true river of Lethe, for ‘souls plunged into it forget all’ — our terrestrial body is like Lethe” (the “river of forgetfulness” in the Hades of Greek mythology.) Using a modern analogy, a new computer cannot be expected to recall the data stored on the discarded one, unless the old data is preserved and reinstalled in the new machine.

But this is what sometimes happens with children who die at an early age from accidents or illness, if they had created no basis for a prolonged after-death dream state. Nature is never wasteful, and the still viable astral pattern body is not disintegrated as with normal death.

The still vital and alive astral matrix is attracted back into the soul’s new body, with all its memories preserved intact.Thus in many cases such children are said to be born with two astral bodies, one new, the other old.

A Telepathic Cat

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

Knowing very little of its spiritual essence, we define consciousness by names we give to its various ‘states’ — waking, sleeping, intuitive, meditating, angry, depressed, happy or sad.

We experience perhaps hundreds of such random mental and emotional states every day, no wiser in understanding the hidden matrix, or field of consciousness in which they are embedded.

Material Science approaches nature only “through her appearance,” H. P. Blavatsky writes in The Secret Doctrine (1:610), and “that appearance is always deceitful on the physical plane,” adding that Science:

“…refuses to blend physics with metaphysics, the body with its informing soul and spirit, which they prefer ignoring.”

Ω

Nevertheless, physics and metaphysics were once deeply entwined, resulting in the natural philosophy of the Greeks, but is given the cold shoulder now by a science that prefers computer simulations, and huge particle collider machines to the natural world.

Searching for the God Particle

Occult Science, on the other hand, rejecting the Cartesian system, describes the body-mind consciousness as the lower end of a universal, spiritual substrate referred to as “BE-NESS” in The Secret Doctrine—symbolized by two pre-manifested aspects cited as “abstract space” (bare subjectivity), and “abstract motion” (representing unconditioned consciousness.)

“Consciousness has long been one of the great mysteries of life, the universe and everything,” writes Linda Geddes in the 29 November 2011 NewScientist.

Ω

Lucid dreaming, being conscious of dreaming while dreaming, best exemplifies this multi-layered conscious now-presence. Perhaps H. P. Blavatsky expressed it best with a word she coined to describe absolute consciousness —”BE-NESS”— “the first fundamental axiom of the Secret Doctrine is this metaphysical One Absolute.” (Vol. 1:14)

Among all earthly creatures, who might most exemplify this enigmatic quality, if not our feline friends?

Ψ

Be-ness

One of Rupert Sheldrake’s experiments on the unexplained powers of animals is dramatized by the case of David Waithe’s cat Godzilla!

Biologist author of more than 80 scientific papers and ten books, Sheldrake is a former Research Fellow of the Royal Society. In this clip Sheldrake discusses Godzilla, a cat that knows when his owner is calling. 🙂

Kangaroo Care

SCHOLARS and students of theoretical metaphysics tend to experience the world through squinting intellectual eyes as if blinded by a bright light..

They prefer the force of reason to hammer out truth, dismissing feelings and emotions as irrational and imperfect tools.

But as W. Q. Judge wrote in the Ocean of Theosophy, the intellect by itself is inherently “cold, heartless and selfish.”

This phenomenon is demonstrated by psychologist Mark Robert Waldman‘s research on the neurological correlates of compassion and spiritual practices, at the University of Pennsylvania. (More at the conclusion of this post, “Your Brain on God”.)

Everyday practical, evidence based intellectual data are processed through the brain, but do not appear to stimulate areas such as the pineal gland — an area recognized by occultists as the prime channel for spiritual impulses such as compassion and altruism.

Buried in the brain, the pineal gland, Blavatsky wrote, is nevertheless “the very key to the highest and divinest consciousness in man – his omniscient, spiritual and all embracing mind.”

“This seemingly useless appendage [pineal gland] is the pendulum which, once the clock-work of the inner man is wound up, carries the spiritual vision of the EGO to the highest planes of perception, where the horizon open before it becomes almost infinite.”

We are spiritual beings at core, but our behaviors on this physical plane — not unlike the relationship between a rider and her horse — are solely governed by how we have entrained our natures to perform seamlessly, as one mind, one heart. The inability to fully integrate these two demigods, leads unerringly to failure and disappointment.

River of Lethe

KRISHNA assures an uncertain Arjuna that he has lived many lives on Earth.

“Both I and thou have passed through many births,” the Master tells his disciple (Bhagavad-Gita, Ch. 4:31):

“Mine are known unto me, but thou knowest not of thine.”

The fact is most people don’t recall their past lives, because in every rebirth the immortal soul must endure a new body and astral body, a new personality and a new physical brain. 

Being handed an empty photo album is a challenge to the incoming soul, hindering it finding a conscious connection to prior experiences and knowledge. Thus “the new ‘personality,'” Blavatsky wrote (Key to Theosophy, Ch. 8), “is no better than a fresh suit of clothes.”

Being so, yet “the record or reflection of all the past lives must survive,” H. P. Blavatsky continues, “for when Prince Siddhartha became Buddha the full sequence of His previous births were seen by Him.” In such a state he was able, she says, “to retrospectively trace the lines of all his lives.”

“This proves to you that the undying qualities of the personality — such as love, goodness, charity, etc., attach themselves to the immortal Ego, photographing on it, so to speak, a permanent image of the divine aspect of the man who was.”

The mind doesn’t fully incarnate until age seven, (Key to Theosophy Section 9). Thus, a child doesn’t feel the full weight of life and karma right away. As such, they are like karma-less “little Buddhas.” If not pressured to conform by parents and society, it is possible for them to express memories of their former life (s), i.e. experience “intimations of immortality” for an extended period.

“Spirit got itself entangled with gross matter,” Blavatsky wrote in The Theosophist, “for the same reason that life gets entangled with the foetus matter. It followed a law, and therefore could not help the entanglement occurring.”

It was Plotinus who said that “our body is the true river of Lethe, for ‘souls plunged into it forget all’ — our terrestrial body is like Lethe” (the “river of forgetfulness” in the Hades of Greek mythology.) Using a modern analogy, a new computer cannot be expected to recall the data stored on the discarded one, unless the old data is preserved and reinstalled in the new machine.

But this is what sometimes happens with children who die at an early age from accidents or illness, if they had created no basis for a prolonged after-death dream state. Nature is never wasteful, and the still viable astral pattern body is not disintegrated as with normal death.

The still vital and alive astral matrix is attracted back into the soul’s new body, with all its memories preserved intact.Thus in many cases such children are said to be born with two astral bodies, one new, the other old.