The Force of Love: Making a Difference in the World

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

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

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

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

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

“Help Nature and Work On With Her”

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

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

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

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

Julia Butterfly Hill

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

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

‡

Everything in The Universe is Conscious

The Greek Goddess Demeter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conscious?

“We men must remember,” H. P. Blavatsky said plainly challenging modern materialistic science, “that because we do not perceive any signs — which we can recognize of consciousness, say, in stones — we have no right to say that no consciousness exists there.”

(The Secret Doctrine 1:274 No.5).

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

[The Secret Doctrine Vol. 1, Page  17]

Healing Stones

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

“There exists a body of research poised to rend apart our modern paradigms — revealing consciousness in places we might not have expected it, and connections between life forms that seem startling and impossible.” So wrote Ben Bendig in an interview with Cleve Backster, of “The Secret Life of Plants” fame, (July 22, 2013, The Epoch Times), echoing H. P. Blavatsky’s Fundamental axiom of a universal mind. 

Cosmic Mind: The Universe A Conscious Being

The Greek Goddess Demeter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We men must remember,” H. P. Blavatsky said plainly challenging modern materialistic science, “that because we do not perceive any signs — which we can recognize of consciousness, say, in stones — we have no right to say that no consciousness exists there.” (The Secret Doctrine 1:274 No.5).

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

[The Secret Doctrine Vol. 1, Page  17]

Healing Stones

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

“There exists a body of research poised to rend apart our modern paradigms — revealing consciousness in places we might not have expected it, and connections between life forms that seem startling and impossible.” So wrote Ben Bendig in an interview with Cleve Backster, of “The Secret Life of Plants” fame, (July 22, 2013, The Epoch Times), echoing H. P. Blavatsky’s Fundamental axiom universal mind. 

Love is Divine Magic: the Heart Rules

Mother and Child

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

♥

Reincarnation

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

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

All One Being: The Conscious Earth

The Greek Goddess Demeter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We men must remember,” H. P. Blavatsky said plainly challenging modern materialistic science, “that because we do not perceive any signs — which we can recognize of consciousness, say, in stones — we have no right to say that no consciousness exists there.” (The Secret Doctrine 1:274 No.5).

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

[The Secret Doctrine Vol. 1, Page  17]

Healing Stones

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

“There exists a body of research poised to rend apart our modern paradigms — revealing consciousness in places we might not have expected it, and connections between life forms that seem startling and impossible.” So wrote Ben Bendig in an interview with Cleve Backster, of “The Secret Life of Plants” fame, (July 22, 2013, The Epoch Times), echoing H. P. Blavatsky’s Fundamental axiom universal mind. 

The Soul of Things: Spirit and Matter are One

Spirit and Matter

DESPITE our general human insanity H. P. Blavatsky saw a deeper picture of a world preparing for greater normalcy, insisting she heard a more enlightened humanity “raising its voice.”

With an insight decades ahead of the time, her declaration clearly saw and expected a kinder, gentler New Age to come.

The voice of the new humanity was described in her article The Tidal Wave writing how “the Spirit in man has returned like King Lear, from seeming insanity to its senses.”

Humanity today is transitioning as she envisioned, with thousands of New Age movements speaking “in those authoritative tones to which the men of old listened in reverential silence through incalculable ages.” She was not the first to anticipate the arrival of a newly awakened humanity.

In the long past humankind had listened to their inner spiritual voice, she says, but “failed because they were too

deafened by the din and roar of civilization and culture, they could hear it no longer.

But now “look around you and behold,” writing as if she were living today, and “think of what you see and hear, and draw therefrom your conclusions.”

Problem was, Mme. Blavatsky could see into the future reflected in the Astral Matrix, but who of us today can claim do so? Probably she was referencing the future affect Theosophical ideas would have on the world.

“If every eight-year-old is taught meditation, we will eliminate violence from the world within one generation.” – Dalai Lama

What must have been a difficult sell in her time, Blavatsky nevertheless boldly maintained that “the age of crass materialism, of Soul insanity and blindness, is swiftly passing away” — an idea still not easy to recognize. More like her next description:

A death struggle between Mysticism and Materialism is no longer at hand, but is already raging.

True knowledge, Plato’s Nous, comes slowly and is not easily acquired, says Theosophy.

The Conscious Earth: We Are All One Being

The Greek Goddess Demeter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We men must remember,” H. P. Blavatsky said plainly challenging modern materialistic science, “that because we do not perceive any signs — which we can recognize of consciousness, say, in stones — we have no right to say that no consciousness exists there.” (The Secret Doctrine 1:274 No.5).

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

[The Secret Doctrine Vol. 1, Page  17]

Healing Stones

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

“There exists a body of research poised to rend apart our modern paradigms — revealing consciousness in places we might not have expected it, and connections between life forms that seem startling and impossible.” So wrote Ben Bendig in an interview with Cleve Backster, of “The Secret Life of Plants” fame, (July 22, 2013, The Epoch Times), echoing H. P. Blavatsky’s Fundamental axiom universal mind. 

Evidence of an Afterlife, the Science of Near-Death Experiences

WHEN a neurosurgeon found himself in a coma, the medical doctor experienced things he never thought possible—a journey to the afterlife.

“Dr. Eben Alexander says he’s not the first person to have discovered evidence that consciousness exists beyond the body,” notes Newsweek Magazine in a feature article.

“Brief, wonderful glimpses of this realm are as old as human history.”

“Modern physics tells us that the universe is a unity—that it is undivided,” Dr. Alexander wrote in the Newsweek October 15 2012 cover story.

“Though we seem to live in a world of separation and difference,” he writes, “science tells us that beneath the surface, every object and event in the universe is completely woven up with every other object and event. There is no true separation.”

“In some sense man is a microcosm of the universe,” wrote David Bohm — legendary American quantum physicist known for his theory of an “Implicate Order,” a universe of undivided wholeness—”therefore what man is, is a clue to the universe.”

“We are enfolded in the universe,” Bohm says. Theosophy agrees. “We know of no eastern philosophy that teaches that ‘matter originated out of Spirit,’ Blavatsky wrote:

“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.”

Theosophy also asserts what neurologists and physicists are now beginning to verify — that there is no special location of consciousness in the brain. Consciousness exists throughout the brain, and the body.

The mind actually lives independently with its own energetic matrix interpenetrating the physical body, using the brain, heart and other organs and cells as its toolkit on this plane.

“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.”

Everything is Conscious: We Are All One Being

The Greek Goddess Demeter

MOLECULAR biologist Bonnie Bassler discovered that bacteria “talk” to each other, and is studying how they communicate with one another.  But there is nothing new in this “revelation” for Theosophy. (How bacteria “talk”)

H. P. Blavatsky, author of The Secret Doctrine, her masterwork, summarized the underlying principle: “foremost of all, [is] the postulate that there is no such thing in Nature as inorganic substances or bodies.”

“Stones, minerals, rocks, and even chemical ‘atoms’ are simply organic units in profound lethargy.” (SD 1:626fn)

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

“We men must remember,” she said plainly, challenging modern materialistic science, “that because we do not perceive any signs — which we can recognize of consciousness, say, in stones — we have no right to say that no consciousness exists there.” (See: The Third Fundamental of The Secret Doctrine).

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

“There exists a body of research poised to rend apart our modern paradigms — revealing consciousness in places we might not have expected it, and connections between life forms that seem startling and impossible.” So wrote Ben Bendig in an interview with Cleve Backster, of “The Secret Life of Plants” fame, (July 22, 2013 The Epoch Times), echoing H. P. Blavatsky’s Fundamental axiom of universal mind. 

How the Soul of Leopard Diabolo became Spirit

Diabolo

SOUL energy exists in both humans and animals, and when they communicate on the same level, magic happens.

This is the incredible story of how a dangerous leopard called Diabolo was tamed by an animal whisperer, and then renamed Spirit.

It’s true that animals always try to communicate with humans but we do not have the skills to listen, or more often, are  not listening.

This journey of a panther who was abused in the past is inspiring and touching, and reinforces an important teaching of Theosophy. (See HPB article Have Animals Souls).

The animal whisperer in this story proves humans can talk to animals and understand their needs and wants, including finding out about their past very accurately. It’s amazing what this panther told the animal whisperer was confirmed as true by everyone who knew the panther’s past.

Wrote H. P. Blavatsky, ” the man of science, the most determined materialist, one who proceeds to vivisect a living animal with the utmost coolness, would yet shudder at the thought of laming or torturing to death his fellow man.”

This view of animals contrasts, Theosophy says, with the “adherents of both Hinduism and Buddhism, the oldest religions in the world, who regard the animal world as their ‘younger brothers.'”

Universal Unity and Causation = Human Solidarity

NASA Astronaut Tracy Caldwell

WHEN the Theosophical Society was founded in 1875, the First and foremost of its Three Objects was identified as Universal Brotherhood.

It was the only one of the Three Objects requiring acceptance by prospective members of the Society. The fundamental first principle was held to be a “fact in Nature.” 

The Theosophical Movement magazine noted persuasively in its article Universal Brotherhood Fiction or Fact?  that “the world is sick of war and desires peace, yet wars and preparations for war continue.”

“People wish to banish enmity and to usher in an era of friendship,” the article continues, “yet rivalry and hatred perpetuate hard feelings which separate man from man. Many believe in and talk about Brotherhood, but we see everywhere the failure of unity and harmony.”

“… the very concept of cosmopolitan internationalism, of humanity as a unit, one grand family, seems fanciful.”

Would not this concept of unity, if acknowledged, inexorably shift humanity’s worldviews away from selfishness and separateness towards a realized universal compassion and world peace, as Theosophy established in its original First Object?

If universal unity and causation are in truth the substratum of nature and the cosmos, must it not be so with humanity? Would acknowledgement and proof of this idea not lead to true human solidarity?

Universal Unity and Causation

In the century following the launching of the theosophical movement, one scientist arose who got the message, British astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle (1915-2001). Hoyle dedicating his life to asking and answering universal questions,  maintained that the origin of life was cosmic, not terrestrial — and seemed like a dedicated Theosophist plus world-renowned astronomer.

Hoyle maintained “there is a coherent plan in the universe.” (Adding, “though I don’t know what it’s a plan for.”)

His “steady state” theory maintained that the universe had no beginning or end, and would continue to exist. Likewise Theosophy “affirms the Eternity of the Universe in toto as a boundless plane,” H. P. Blavatsky notes (The Secret Doctrine 1:16).

Fred Hoyle

And she explained how this grand canvas “is periodically the playground of numberless Universes incessantly manifesting and disappearing, called ‘the manifesting stars,’ and the ‘sparks of Eternity.’” 

“The appearance and disappearance of Worlds is like a regular tidal ebb of flux and reflux.”

(See Part II., “Days and Nights of Brahma.”)

“This second assertion of the Secret Doctrine is the absolute universality of that law of periodicity, of flux and reflux, ebb and flow, 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, that it is easy to comprehend that in it we see one of the absolutely fundamental laws of the universe.”

“It expanded like the bud of the Lotus.”

Preempting the future gravity-based materialism of science, in what would come to be known as “The Big Bang” concept, The Secret Doctrine declared with irrefutable logic, that an ‘infinite universe’ cannot by any stretch of the imagination become ‘larger!’

The “expansion” so-called, does not mean “an increase in size,” rather “it was a change of condition,” Blavatsky maintained — “it ‘expanded like the bud of the Lotus,'” a metaphor she used frequently in her teachings. (The Secret Doctrine 1:62-3)

A Life Does Not Have to be Human to be Great

SAVING LUNA is an award-winning documentary produced by Mountainside Films, and directed by Michael Parfit and Suzanne Chisholm.

It tells the true story of a lone baby orca named Luna, who was separated from his family and tried to befriend people on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

SAVING LUNA is narrated as a personal story by co-director Michael Parfit. You could call it the director’s cut. Another version of the film, narrated by film star Ryan Reynolds (The Proposal, Green Lantern, and others), was released in selected theaters in the United States in late 2011.

SAVING LUNA has been shown on television around the world, but has not yet been shown on TV in the United States. The film will be made available to public television stations soon. If you think it should be on US television, click here and look on the list for a station near you to write and request that it be shown.

What does Theosophy say about
intelligence in Nature?

In her re-presentation of Theosophy, H. P. Blavatsky was not at all abstract when it came to standing up for the planet. In writing “help Nature and work on with her,” she was especially concerned with what she witnessed as widespread animal abuse and cruelty in her time.

Though not a strict vegan, Mme. Blavatsky was in sync with today’s new age ideas and unreservedly supported the healthful practices and spiritual values of a non-meat diet.  In her lengthy article “Have Animals Souls?”, Madame Blavatsky went further into some aspects of the matter than she did in her book “The Key to Theosophy.”

Blavatsky’s radicalism reveals itself in her six-point “mission statement” in The Secret Doctrine (1:274), especially point number five in which she declared that “everything in the Universe, throughout all its kingdoms is conscious:

… endowed with a consciousness of its own kind and on its own plane of perception.”

Individual conscious awareness develops gradually throughout the kingdoms of nature, peaking in the human stage. Self-aware consciousness in some higher animals, Blavatsky writes in The Secret Doctrine (1:178), “comes almost to the point.”

ζ

When Spirit and Matter Hold Hands

DESPITE our seeming insanity H. P. Blavatsky foresaw a world ready for greater normalcy, and insisted she heard a more enlightened humanity “raising its voice.”

With an insight decades in advance of her time, her declaration clearly expected a kinder, gentler New Age.

The voice of the new humanity was described in her article The Tidal Wave saying “the Spirit in man has returned like King Lear, from seeming insanity to its senses.”

Humanity today is transitioning as she envisioned, with thousands of New Age movements speaking “in those authoritative tones to which the men of old listened in reverential silence through incalculable ages.”

She was not the first to acknowledge the arrival of a newly awakened humanity.

In the long past human kind had listened to their inner spiritual voice, she says, but failed because too “deafened by the din and roar of civilization and culture, they could hear it no longer.”

But now “look around you and behold,” writing as if she were living today, and “think of what you see and hear, and draw therefrom your conclusions.”

“If every 8 year old is taught meditation, we will eliminate violence from the world within one generation.” – Dalai Lama

What must have been a difficult sell in her time, Blavatsky nevertheless boldly maintained that “the age of crass materialism, of Soul insanity and blindness, is swiftly passing away” — an idea still not easy to see. More like:

“A death struggle between Mysticism and Materialism is no longer at hand, but is already raging.”

Ω

True knowledge, Plato’s Nous, comes slowly and is not easily acquired, says Theosophy.

Animal Souls: How Leopard Diabolo Became Spirit

Diabolo

SOUL energy exists in both humans and animals, and when they communicate on the same level, magic happens.

This is the incredible story of how a dangerous leopard called Diabolo was tamed by an animal whisperer, and then renamed Spirit.

It’s true that animals always try to communicate with humans but we do not have the skills to listen, or more often, are  not listening.

This journey of a panther who was abused in the past is inspiring and touching, and reinforces an important teaching of Theosophy. (See HPB article Have Animals Souls).

The animal whisperer in this story proves humans can talk to animals and understand their needs and wants, including finding out about their past very accurately. It’s amazing what this panther told the animal whisperer was confirmed as true by everyone who knew the panther’s past.

Wrote H. P. Blavatsky, ” the man of science, the most determined materialist, one who proceeds to vivisect a living animal with the utmost coolness, would yet shudder at the thought of laming or torturing to death his fellow man.”

This view of animals contrasts, Theosophy says, with the “adherents of both Hinduism and Buddhism, the oldest religions in the world, who regard the animal world as their ‘younger brothers.'”

Near Death Journeys into the Afterlife

WHEN a neurosurgeon found himself in a coma, he experienced things he never thought possible—a journey to the afterlife.

“Dr. Eben Alexander says he’s not the first person to have discovered evidence that consciousness exists beyond the body,” notes Newsweek Magazine in a feature article.

“Brief, wonderful glimpses of this realm are as old as human history.”

“Modern physics tells us that the universe is a unity—that it is undivided,” Dr. Alexander wrote in the Newsweek October 15 2012 cover story.

“Though we seem to live in a world of separation and difference,” he writes, “science tells us that beneath the surface, every object and event in the universe is completely woven up with every other object and event. There is no true separation.”

“In some sense man is a microcosm of the universe,” wrote David Bohm — legendary American quantum physicist known for his theory of an “Implicate Order,” a universe of undivided wholeness—”therefore what man is, is a clue to the universe.”

“We are enfolded in the universe,” Bohm says. Theosophy agrees. “We know of no eastern philosophy that teaches that ‘matter originated out of Spirit,’ Blavatsky wrote:

“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.”

Theosophy also asserts what neurologists and physicists are now beginning to verify — that there is no special location of consciousness in the brain. Consciousness exists throughout the brain, and the body.

The mind actually lives independently with its own energetic matrix interpenetrating the physical body, using the brain, heart and other organs and cells as its toolkit on this plane.

“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.”

The Unconditional Renunciation of our Personal Self

THE word magic is largely misunderstood, because there are various kinds of so-called magic, much of which is deception and trickery.

But there is a magic which might be called the unseen and hidden power to bring to pass certain desired results, without revealing its methods. It is called intention.

Its successful use requires a knowledge far beyond any kind of trickery, and is based on an innate spiritual force in man and nature.

Those who practiced it in ancient times were the initiates, the wise, called Magi — the source of the word magic.

≈

It is relatively easy to learn tricks and spells, Mme. Blavatsky writes, “and the methods of using the subtler, but still material, forces of physical nature.”

The force of selfish human desire awakens darker powers, Theosophy says. Unless the motive is pure, destructive passions are often aroused, and even unconsciously will do harm to others and to nature.

In the article Practical Occultism, H. P. Blavatsky warns of this: “it is the motive alone which makes any exercise of power become black, malignant, or white, beneficent Magic,” she writes, “and unless the intention is entirely unalloyed…

“the spiritual will transform itself into the psychic, act on the astral plane, and dire results may be produced by it.”

‡

“It is impossible to employ spiritual forces, she maintains, “if there is the slightest tinge of selfishness [or separateness] remaining in the operator.”

Amazing Animal and Human Encounters

ANYONE who thinks Theosophy is only abstract metaphysics, invisible worlds, and mystical hierarchies might want to think again.

Theosophical philosophy, often referred to as the “Wisdom Religion,” teaches Universal Brotherhood to its students as the First Fundamental.

“Real Theosophy is Altruism,” H. P. Blavatsky wrote in her heroic article Our Cycle and the Next — “and we cannot repeat it too often,” she emphasized — because its a direct application of that First Fundamental.

Theosophy always keeps in step with the ancients who were serious about nourishing and protecting Mother Earth, and every one of her creatures great and small. “Help Nature,” Blavatsky wrote in her rendition of The Book of the Golden Precepts,” and work on with her.”

“[Theosophy] is brotherly love, mutual help, unswerving devotion to Truth.”

♥

Individual conscious awareness develops gradually throughout the kingdoms of nature, peaking in the human stage.  Self-aware consciousness in some higher animals, Blavatsky writes in The Secret Doctrine (1:178), “comes almost to the point.” This short video clip dramatizes that “almost” point.

Be Cruelty Free, with a Universal Compassion for Life

THE spiritual sun of consciousness manifests by degrees, not in humans alone, but the  legacy of all kingdoms of nature as befits the plan of their particular hierarchy — from atoms to stars.

Samhain, origin of Halloween, for example, is similar to the Gothic samana, and the Sanskrit sámana — the Hindu God Krishna — all symbols of man’s Higher Diviner Nature.

It is such universal spiritual forces that manifest cyclically during mankind’s darkest times. And the whole of nature, visible and invisible, benefits from such cycles, it is taught in esoteric cycles — wisely appointed beneficent spiritual impulses.

It is no less than in the Bhagavad-Gita (IV:31), where Krishna, the Higher Self of all human beings, assures his disciple Arjuna that he is continually reborn as a a world benefactor.

ζ

It is only selfish Buddhas, the “Pratyekas”, he taught, who remain in the their selfish state of personal Nirvana and refuse to reach out to help others. Corresponding examples of such evil separateness can be found in all walks of life in every culture and clime.

“I produce myself among creatures whenever there is a decline of virtue and an insurrection of vice and injustice in the world,” says Krishna, “and thus  

I incarnate from age to age for the preservation of the just, the destruction of the wicked, and the establishment of righteousness.”

ξ

Our daily sleeping and waking cycles correspond to this universal impulse which daily transports us to our true home. Dreamless sleep is a state “in which even criminals commune through the higher nature with spiritual beings, and enter into the spiritual plane,” wrote W. Q. Judge in Three Planes of Human Life.

Animals have many dream states too, and dreamless states where they commune consciously or unconsciously in varying degrees, depending on the kingdom to which they belong, with the spiritual hierarchies of their particular degree.

“It is the great spiritual reservoir by means of which the tremendous momentum toward evil living is held in check. And because it is involuntary, it is constantly salutary in its effect.”

♥

In an ideal world, perfect harmony and balance between man and nature would be the norm. Thus, the keynote of Mme. Blavatsky’s worldview was the just and moral treatment of all the beings in nature, the First Object of the Theosophical Society, Universal Brotherhood.

This foundational teaching of Theosophy is expressed in The Secret Doctrine, Summing Up #5, which states that “everything in the Universe, throughout all its kingdoms, is conscious,” and

“…endowed with a consciousness of its own kind and on its own plane of perception.”

‡

Consequently, Mme. Blavatsky was adamant in opposing animal cruelty. She spoke out forcefully against sport hunting, foxes, birds and big game, and most strongly against vivisection — animals in biological experiments.

“If these humble lines could make a few readers seriously turn their thoughts to all the horrors of vivisection,” Blavatsky wished, “the writer would be content.”

Halloween: the Eternal Spiritual Fire

“THE Sun and Venus align themselves this week with the Pluto/Chiron sextile that is arranged in the background of our lives.”

“This alignment is in preparation for the Taurus Full Moon,” explains Lauren at Astrology by Lauren — a Theosophy inspired website — “which culminates on the 6th of November.” 

“Full Moons often bring things to a head, or unveils truths,” she writes: “this one also brings healing, or at least the tools to relieve ourselves of some serious baggage. It’s up to us to use them.” To read the full essay and next week’s horoscopes, visit the Articles and Horoscopes page.

Halloween, an annual holiday observed on October 31, primarily in the United States, Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom, is importantly in Theosophy understood as a harvest festival.

It is called “Samhain” (Summer’s End), and is rooted in Celtic polytheism. The word is also the Irish and Scottish Gaelic name for November. 

The Halloween time was the beginning of a “darker” season on Earth, with less sunlight and shorter days. But instead of the usual psychic horrors and scary costumes, we choose instead to reflect upon an inner spiritual sun, symbolized by a flaming candle placed inside a hollow pumpkin.

Candlelight Vigil

“Today the season has morphed into a holiday celebrated with costumed children and treats, where children make their rounds like so many fairies and demons from beyond the veil,” Lauren writes:

“In ancient Ireland bonfires were lit in honor of the dying sun, and as a beacon to remind the Sun to return once more from the underworld, in order to light our days once again here in the North.

And so we continue to celebrate this most magical time of year with hope and anticipation of the returning light.”

Bonfire Dance

The spiritual sun consciousness manifests, by degrees, and is the inheritance of all kingdoms of nature as befits the plan of their particular hierarchy — from an atom to a star — not humankind alone.

Samhain, origin of Halloween, is similar to the Gothic samana, and the Sanskrit sámana — which is the Hindu God Krishna, a symbol of the Higher Self, who incarnates cyclically at mankind’s darkest times.

“Even though myself unborn, of changeless essence, and the lord of all existence, yet in presiding over nature — which is mine,” Krishna says in Ch. 4 of the Bhagavad-Gita: “I produce myself among creatures…whenever there is a decline of virtue and an insurrection of vice and injustice in the world; and thus I incarnate from age to age for the preservation of the just, the destruction of the wicked, and the establishment of righteousness.”

In the Bhagavad-Gita (IV:31), Krishna assures his disciple Arjuna that as a world benefactor he is reborn to nature and humanity. It is only the selfish Buddhas, the “Pratyekas” who remain in the their selfish state of personal Nirvana and refuse to reach out to help others.

Our daily sleeping and waking cycles correspond to this universal impulse which daily transports us to our true home.

W. Q. Judge explains in The Three Planes of Human Life, that dreamless sleep is a state “in which even criminals commune through the higher nature with spiritual beings, and enter into the spiritual plane.” 

Animals have many dream states too, and dreamless states where they commune consciously or unconsciously in varying degrees, depending on the kingdom to which they belong, with the spiritual hierarchies of their particular degree. For humans

“… it is the great spiritual reservoir by means of which the tremendous momentum toward evil living is held in check. And because it is involuntary with them, it is constantly salutary in its effect.”

In an ideal world, perfect harmony and balance between man and nature would be recognized and practiced by all. Thus, the keynote of Mme. Blavatsky’s worldview was the just and moral treatment of all the beings in nature, the First Object of the Theosophical Society, Universal Brotherhood.

All Nature is Conscious

This foundational teaching of Theosophy is expressed in The Secret Doctrine, Summing Up #5, which states that “everything in the Universe, throughout all its kingdoms, is conscious,” and

“…endowed with a consciousness of its own kind and on its own plane of perception.”

‡

Consequently, Mme. Blavatsky was adamant in opposing animal cruelty. She spoke out forcefully against sport hunting, foxes, birds and big game, and most strongly against vivisection — animals in biological experiments.

“If these humble lines could make a few readers seriously turn their thoughts to all the horrors of vivisection,” Blavatsky wished, “the writer would be content.”

Intention, a Force in Nature

THE act of true intending is widely misunderstood, because there are hidden aspects of so-called intent consisting solely of desire for personal fulfillment.

Seducing the public to desire beauty, riches and power is the undisguised theme of thousands of self-help books written by money seeking modern gurus.

But there is a higher, purer and more unselfish level of intention in true occultism. It is the unseen power to bring to pass desired results without personal motives.

Success at this level requires a knowledge far beyond any kind of falsehood, and is based on knowledge of an innate spiritual force in man and nature. Those who practiced it in ancient times were the initiates, the wise ones called “Magi” — the source of the word “magic.”

Lynne McTaggart, author of The Intention Experiment, featured in Dan Brown’s Book – The Lost Symbol: “…human consciousness, as Noetic author Lynne McTaggart described it, was a substance outside the confines of the body. A highly ordered energy capable of changing the physical world.”

“Katherine (Solomon) had been fascinated by McTaggart’s book ‘The Intention Experiment’, and her global, Web-based study – theintentionexperiment.com— aimed at discovering how human intention could affect the world.”

— Dan Brown, “The Lost Symbol” (Random House, 2009)