The Healing Memories of Past Lives

Astral Travel

THE twin doctrines of Karma (responsibility) and Reincarnation (hope) are keys to freeing us from the dark jungle of ignorance.

These doctrines make sense out of two of humanity’s most persistent puzzles — the purpose of life, and the meaning of death.

Theosophical world messenger H. P. Blavatsky made it clear that the ultimate salvation of humanity lay in a true understanding of these doctrines.

In her Third Letter to the 4th Annual Convention of the American Section of the Theosophical Society Blavatsky counseled: “Learn well the doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation:

and teach, practice, promulgate that system of life and thought which alone can save the coming races.

The effect of a new popularization of near death experiences (NDEs), and the reality of the spiritual world they point to, is to understand better Blavatsky’s insistence on the overarching importance of these twin doctrines.

Astral Body rises up

The metaphysical teachings underlying cosmogenesis and anthropogenesis were presented after Isis Unveiled with Blavatsky’s magnum opus, The Secret Doctrine — a universal springboard for the New Age.

Some 130 years later, Theosophy’s light is still brightening the end of the tunnel.

Those who have had a near-death experience have already seen the light — including children, as the noted researcher P.M.H. Atwater reports.

Dreams and the Dreamer

Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are still the most compelling evidence for the existence of a cognitive self that exists independently from the physical body, and a convincing argument for reincarnation of the same soul from life to life.

Compelling scientific documentation was not available in the early days of Theosophy. But in recent years Scientists have begun to study ‘out of body experiences.’ See the blog post: Scientists Study Out of Body Experiences.

“Scientists will see if consciousness continues after brain death. People who report seeing bright lights or tunnels as they leave their bodies in near-death experiences are having their claims treated seriously in a hospital study.”

Dr Sam Parnia, an intensive care doctor who is heading the study, said: “If you can demonstrate that consciousness continues after the brain switches off,

it allows for the possibility that the consciousness is a separate entity.

ξ

Edward Austrian

The Past Life Memory that Healed Him

“Getting back the memory of other lives is really the whole of the process, and if some people don’t understand certain things it is either because they have not got to that point in their other lives, or because no glimmer of memory has yet come.”

– William Q. Judge
(Letters That Have Helped Me, Vol. 2, Letter 5)

Memory in Every Organ

“There is no special organ of will, any more than there is a physical basis for the activities of self-consciousness.  …  memory has no seat, no special organ of its own in the human brain, but that it has seats in every organ of the body. The phenomena of divine consciousness have to be regarded as activities of our mind on another and a higher plane, working through something less substantial than the moving molecules of the brain.”

• H. P. Blavatsky, Psychic and Noëtic Action

The Human Brain

Today’s frontier sciences are providing more and more experimental results demonstrating the existence of a mind-soul existing beyond the boundaries of physical matter. Organizations like the Institute of Noetic Sciences are transforming contemporary worldviews on the relationship between consciousness and matter:

“At the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), we are inspired by the power of science to explain phenomena not previously understood, harnessing the best of the rational mind to make advances that further our knowledge and enhance our human experience.”

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.

Evidence of an Immortal Mind in Man and Nature

In the Matrix

MAINSTREAM science looking for the source of consciousness insists its origin has to be generated in the physical brain.

Most neuroscientists agree that all cognition arises from the activity of neurons attached to specific structures, which have fixed brain locations.

Yet many credible scientific researchers today are unconvinced and dispute these biased mainstream materialistic assumptions.

Open-minded investigators are willing to pursue truth wherever it leads, even exploring evidence that mind and its corresponding consciousness is a living entity independent of the physical structures through which it manifests.

But because research findings on this question upset established assumptions, it is frequently ignored by mainstream science. H. P. Blavatsky found the same evidence in her own era declaring:

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

-H. P. Blavatsky, A Paradoxical World

Caught in a whirlpool of dry leaves. (Flickr)

Yet, poised fearlessly at the cutting edge of psi research are scientific organizations such as the respected Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) in Petaluma, California, and the Institute of HeartMath in Boulder Creek. These researchers, and others, like NES energy medicine, are willing to take a leap in pursuit of the fast-moving “soul of things.”

Many frontier investigators risk being minimized and shunned by their peers—their careers stalled as funding dries up.

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

Buddha meditating under the Bo Tree

“The Secret Doctrine is the accumulated Wisdom of the Ages, and its cosmogony alone is the most stupendous and elaborate system,” Mme. Blavatsky wrote.

“The facts which have actually occupied countless generations of initiated seers and prophets to marshal, to set down and explain, in the bewildering series of evolutionary progress, are all recorded on a few pages of geometrical signs and glyphs.”

The flashing gaze of those seers has penetrated into the very kernel of matter, and recorded the soul of things there.

“The genuine texts of the Upanishads treat of and expound the secret and mystic meaning of the Vedic texts. They speak of the origin of the Universe, the nature of Deity, and of Spirit and Soul, as also of the metaphysical connection of mind and matter. In a few words: They contain the beginning and the end of all human knowledge, but they have now ceased to reveal it, since the day of Buddha. . . . One thing in them — and this in all the Upanishads — invariably and constantly points to their ancient origin.”

“But modern science believes not in the ‘soul of things,’ and hence will reject the whole system of ancient cosmogony.” 

The Secret Doctrine 1:272.  

Now all this may be changing . . .

Meeting an Angel and Evidence of Immortality

Immortality

VETERANS of near-death experiences, writes Dr. W. R. Morrow, “found that death is not to be feared.”

“They have all been to the edge, looked over, and afterwards lived out their lives with an optimistic attitude.”

Theosophy concurs according to H. P. Blavatsky who wrote: “death comes to our spiritual selves ever as a deliverer and friend.”

(The Key to Theosophy, Section 9, p.161.)

Dr. Morrow continues:

“This extensive ‘research,’ if it gives any proof at all, gives evidence of a universal heaven, the same comforting near-death vision for everyone reporting!”

“Interestingly, the analysis by researcher Dr. Jeffrey Long of 1,200 reported cases of the near-death phenomenon shows remarkable similarities across cultures, continents, and religions,” Morrow writes. “All were pleasant and reassuring.”  

“Many in the religious community will not accept a God like this who provides no separation of the sheep and the goats, but personally I like this hint of a loving embrace when I go,” he says.

(Dr. William Morrow is a Florida licensed marriage and family therapist with offices in Cape Coral and Fort Myers.) Learn more at: http://www.williamrmorrow.com. Email wmorrowmft@embarqmail.com

Meeting an Angel

♥

Alex Tsakiris: “Welcome to Skeptiko, where we explore controversial science with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I’m your host, Alex Tsakiris, and on today’s show I have an interview with Dr. Jeff Long, author of, Evidence of the Afterlife.  As you’ll hear, Dr. Long is probably one of the most qualified near-death experience researchers. He’s just compiled a huge body of that research into this book. This guy delivers the goods. I had a chance to interview him a few months ago for the documentary film that I’ve told some of you about that we’re putting together. He’s on top of his game. A medical doctor, well qualified in the field of medicine; also a very accomplished researcher.”

Dr. Jeffrey Long

The interview with Dr. Jeff Long, author of, Evidence of the Afterlife:

Evidence of the Afterlife

Healing Miracles of Mind, Intention and Belief

In the Matrix

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

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

Yet many credible scientific researchers today are unconvinced, and dispute these assumptions.

Such open minded investigators are willing to pursue truth wherever it leads, even to evidence that consciousness is a independent entity from the physical structures through which it manifests.

But because research findings on this question upset established assumptions, it is ignored by mainstream science.

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

-H. P. Blavatsky, A Paradoxical World

Leaves in the wind.

Frontier investigators risk being minimized and shunned by their peers—and their careers stalled as funding sources dry up.

Ω

Yet, poised fearlessly at the cutting edge of psi research are scientific organizations such as the respected Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) in Petaluma, California, and the Institute of HeartMath in Boulder Creek. These researchers, and others, like NES energy medicine, are willing to take a leap in pursuit of the fast-moving “soul of things.”

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

Buddha under the Bo Tree

“The flashing gaze of those seers has penetrated into the very kernel of matter, and recorded the soul of things there.”  

“The genuine texts of the Upanishads treat of and expound the secret and mystic meaning of the Vedic texts. They speak of the origin of the Universe, the nature of Deity, and of Spirit and Soul, as also of the metaphysical connection of mind and matter. In a few words: They contain the beginning and the end of all human knowledge, but they have now ceased to reveal it, since the day of Buddha. . . . One thing in them — and this in all the Upanishads — invariably and constantly points to their ancient origin.”

Materialistic science still “believes not in the ‘soul of things,'” Mme. Blavatsky declared forcefully in The Secret Doctrine 1:272.  

Now all this may be changing . . .

Life After Death, the Persistence of Consciousness

The invisible physical.

ANYONE who believes in reincarnation accepts that life can continue to exist without a visible physical form. And that consciousness can exist without a neuron filled physical brain.

Both concepts are still a challenge for the standard model of modern science which “believes not in the soul of things,” as H. P. Blavatsky declared in her monumental work The Secret Doctrine, (1:272)

The problem is directly related to the controversial “hard problem of consciousness,” formulated by the philosopher David Chalmers.

Mme. Blavatsky had already unveiled the problem by declaring that “the whole issue of the quarrel between the profane and the esoteric sciences, depends upon the belief in, and demonstration of, the existence of an astral body within the physical, the former independent of the latter.” (The Secret Doctrine 2:149)

“This astral body is the prototype, or design, around which the physical body is built, and which, considered from the point of view of the powers, is the real physical body. Without it the physical body would be nothing but a mass of matter—” 

Our Real Senses

“It is the astral body which contains the organs, or centers from which the organs have been evolved in accord with the needs of the thinker within. The real senses of man are not in the physical but in the astral body. The astral body lasts a little over one lifetime. It does not die when the physical body dies, but is used as a body in the immediate after-death states.”  – Robert Crosbie, (Universal Theosophy)

Thus, most mainstream scientists will not even approach the possibility that consciousness might exist as a separate entity from the physical brain and body, because they believe that mind and thoughts can only arise from activity within the visible physical. A kind of dogmatic religious belief.

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Brian Josephson refers to this position as a “pathological disbelief” within the scientific establishment. Cell biologist Bruce Lipton in his “The Biology of Belief,” describes their position as:

“I wouldn’t believe it
even if it were true!”  

In contrast Theosophy teaches that life and consciousness cannot be created or destroyed. And further that the duration between lifetimes of the same individual immortal consciousness is not just the 15 or 20  minutes of some near-death studies.

Reincarnation into a new physical body varies from a few hours or weeks, up to 1, 500 years or more (or less), depending on the spiritual, mental and emotional development of the Soul, and also especially the age of the person.

“If our physiologists find the cause of dreams and visions in an unconscious preparation for them during the waking hours,” Mme. Blavatsky asks in The Key to Theosophy p. 165, Section 9, “why cannot the same be admitted for the post-mortem dreams? I repeat it: death is sleep.”

Children who have died early, as a rule tend to be reborn quickly, Blavatsky says, as they do not have many current life experiences that would hold them in the after-death dream state. 

The after-death dream lasts, according to the Master K.H. (Notes on Devachan, 249), only “until Karma is satisfied” and  “is proportionate to the unexhausted psychic impulses originating in earth life.” (W. Q. Judge, How Soon do we Reincarnate?)

But, who knows for certain, and how to they know? According to The Secret Doctrine, Summing Up, knowing hidden truths is acquired using the power exercised by initiated Seers, which includes all the great Masters of Life such as Buddha, Krishna, Jesus,Lao Tsu, etc. Blavatsky explained:

“The flashing gaze of those seers has penetrated
into the very kernel of matter, and recorded
the soul of things there.”

Further: “It is the uninterrupted record covering thousands of generations of Seers,” (The Secret Doctrine 1:272), “whose respective experiences were made to test and to verify the traditions passed orally by one early race to another, of the teachings of higher and exalted beings, who watched over the childhood of Humanity.”

(For more info see: How Soon do we Reincarnate?)

Line of many Buddhas.

Now a team of psychologists and medical doctors associated with the Technische University of Berlin announced they had proven, by clinical experimentation, the existence of some form of life after death.

“This astonishing announcement is based on the conclusions of a study using a new type of medically supervised near-death experiences, that allow patients to be clinically dead for almost 20 minutes before being brought back to life.

Karma and Reincarnation Alone Can Save Humanity

Symbol of Rebirth

LOOKING beyond our relatively short physical lives on Earth, Theosophy teaches that the soul and spirit alone are eternal.

Further, the perennial wisdom tradition declares we don’t just ‘have’ a soul, we are Souls. (The Ocean of Theosophy, Chapter One)

Yet, there are many human beings who live physically to a ripe old age, and according to Wikipedia, the United Nations estimated in 2012 there were 316,600 living centenarians worldwide.

Methuselah is mentioned in the Bible as living 969 years. “But I have never heard of mortal man, layman, or Adept,”  H. P. Blavatsky wrote  in The Key to Theosophy, “who could live even half the years allotted to Methuselah.”

“Some Adepts do exceed, by a good deal, what you would call the ordinary age,” she said, “yet there is nothing miraculous in it, and very few of them care to live very long.” Mme. Blavatsky refers here only to the outward earthly physical body.

But the Spiritual and Astral Bodies that wise adepts have learned to occupy and control — achieving what is termed self-conscious immortality — have no expiration date.

Such Masters as Buddha remain fully alive while occupying their spiritual form (or Bodhisattvic Body). They are called Nirmanakayas, and remain invisible to the uninitiated. Such enlightened masters live a “secret life” of service to humanity.

One who selects the Path of Renunciation is described as a Bodhisattva, a “Buddha of Compassion.” The term literally means “one whose essence is wisdom” or “one of enlightened essence.”

A Buddha of Compassion

The Buddhist sage Aryasangha refers to Gautama Buddha as “the Supreme Nirmanakaya.” H. P. Blavatsky echoes his assertion, writing in a footnote: “The Esoteric School teaches that Gautama Buddha, with several of his Arhats, is such a Nirmânakâya, higher than whom, on account of the great renunciation and sacrifice for mankind, there is none known.”

(The Voice of the Silence, fn 34)

Gautama, the Buddha, after reaching the goal of enlightenment, refused its rewards and remained on earth as a Teacher-Reformer, it is explained, and esoteric tradition teaches that

“he remains in the world, invisibly watching over and protecting mankind.” 

And the Buddha is not alone. What is called a living, spiritual “Wall of Protection“ still exists established to protect humanity, built by the “accumulated efforts of long generations of Yogis, Saints, and Adepts …

The Watcher

“… those  Buddhas of Compassion who have woven for themselves glorious bodies in which they remain invisibly in the world, contributing towards man’s salvation.”

The “Guardian Wall” may also be called the “Wall of Protection.” 

Those Masters are likened to ‘stones’ which go to form this spiritual Wall: “Built by the hands of many Masters of Compassion, raised by their tortures, by their blood cemented, it shields mankind, since man is man, protecting it from further and far greater misery and sorrow.”

The “Guardian Wall”

The “accumulated efforts of long generations of Yogis, Saints, and Adepts, especially of the Nirmanakayas, have created, so to say, a wall of protection around mankind, which wall shields mankind invisibly from still worse evils.” (Voice, fn 28)

These advanced beings assist suffering humans “by influencing them to follow the Good Law and to tread the Path of Righteousness.” Silently they impress the invisible atmosphere of our earth with their Ideation, thus keeping the balance on the side of right.

 (The Voice of the Silence, fn 34)

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.”

Life After Death: Don’t Blame it on Religion

BELIEF in reincarnation also implies that one believes that life and consciousness can exist without a physical body.

This is still a very difficult if not impossible concept for science today.

Most mainstream science cannot even accept the possibility that consciousness can exist separate from the physical brain, because they believe it is created in the neurons.

In contrast Theosophy teaches that life and consciousness cannot be created or destroyed. And further that the duration between lifetimes of the same individual immortal consciousness is not just 15 or 20  minutes as in scientific studies.

Reincarnation into a new physical body varies from a few hours or weeks, to 1, 500 years and more, depending on the spiritual, mental and emotional development, and also especially the age of someone. Children who have died tragically, as a rule tend to be reborn quickly.

Who knows this to be a fact, and how to they know? According to The Secret Doctrine knowing hidden truths is acquired through the power exercised by initiated Seers, including great Masters such as Buddha and Krishna. 

“The flashing gaze of those seers has penetrated
into the very kernel of matter, and recorded
the soul of things there . . . But modern science
believes not in the ‘soul of things.'”

Further: “It is the uninterrupted record covering thousands of generations of Seers,” The Secret Doctrine 1:272 declares, “whose respective experiences were made to test and to verify the traditions passed orally by one early race to another, of the teachings of higher and exalted beings, who watched over the childhood of Humanity.”

(More info see: How Soon do we Reincarnate?)

Line of many Buddhas.

Now a team of psychologists and medical doctors associated with the Technische University of Berlin announced they had proven, by clinical experimentation, the existence of some form of life after death.

“This astonishing announcement is based on the conclusions of a study using a new type of medically supervised near-death experiences, that allow patients to be clinically dead for almost 20 minutes before being brought back to life.

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.

Healing Messages from the Afterlife

THE twin doctrines of Karma (responsibility) and Reincarnation (hope) are keys to freeing us from the dark jungle of ignorance.

These doctrines make sense out of two of humanity’s most persistent puzzles — the purpose of life, and the meaning of death.

Theosophical world messenger H. P. Blavatsky made it clear that the ultimate salvation of humanity lay in a true understanding of these doctrines.

In her Third Letter to the 4th Annual Convention of the American Section of the Theosophical Society she explained: “Learn well the doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation:

“and teach, practice, promulgate that system of life and thought which alone can save the coming races.”

The advent of the new popularization of near death experiences (NDEs) and the reality of the spiritual world they point to, gives us an understanding of Blavatsky’s insistence on the overarching importance of these twin doctrines.

The metaphysical truths underlying cosmogenesis and anthropogenesis followed soon after Isis Unveiled with Blavatsky’s magnum opus, The Secret Doctrine — a universal springboard for the New Age.

Some 125 years later, Theosophy’s light is still brightening the end of the tunnel.

Those who have had a near-death experience have already seen the light — including children, as the noted researcher P.M.H. Atwater reports.

Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are still the most compelling evidence for the existence of a cognitive self that exists independently from the physical body, and a convincing argument for reincarnation of the same soul from life to life.

Compelling scientific documentation was not available in the early days of Theosophy. See the blog post: Scientists Study Out of Body Experiences.

Frontier sciences are providing more and more experimental results demonstrating the existence of a mind-soul existing beyond the boundaries of physical matter.

Organizations like the Institute of Noetic Sciences are transforming contemporary worldviews on the relationship between consciousness and matter.

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.”

Mystery of the Afterlife

PSYCHE in occult Greek philosophy was the organ or vehicle of the nous, the higher ego or reembodying spirit.

The caterpillar lives its period, making for itself a chrysalis, which after a stage of dormancy is broken by the emerging butterfly.

As an analogy of spiritual evolution this implies the potentiality of soul growth for all beings, and of an earthbound humanity becoming aerial, uniting with spirit.

These thoughts led the ancient Greeks to use the butterfly as a symbol of the human soul (psyche); and in their mythology Psyche was in consequence represented in art with butterfly wings.

Seven year old Kristine loved to take her daydreams outside. One day during her dreamy wanderings she noticed a Monarch Butterfly who appeared to have a hurt wing and couldn’t fly.

“I decided I must help her!” Kristine wrote. “Putting her on my shoulder I took her home and announced I was going to heal her back to full health. My parents didn’t tell me I ‘couldn’t’ although I heard them discuss how heartbroken I would be if the Butterfly didn’t live.

“My Mom helped me gather up what we thought a Butterfly would eat and we made a grassy nest next to my pillow on my bed, and she stayed right there at night while I slept. During the day I would take her outside for fresh air and to see if she could fly yet…a week went by, my parents were seen shaking their heads.

“Then a few more days went by and while outside she suddenly flew off my shoulder…she flew up and away.

ζ

“And then I cried, happy that she could fly again, sad that she was gone. However as I turned for one last look in the last direction she flew in, I felt a brush across my cheek.

“Ms. Butterfly had come around the other side of me, to give me what my Mother always called ‘Butterfly Kisses.’ My tears turned into a grateful smile. My love for all of God’s miracles of being has never left me.” – Kristine Kamp-Adante, (Courtesy of Northwest Animal Healing & Intuitive Communication)

Eye of the Seer

Le Ravissement de Psyche -1895
Adolphe-William Bouguereau

SOCRATIC myths describe the ascent of the soul to true knowledge, its communion with divine realities, and its return to enlighten mankind.

The order of the Dialogues is important, as the myths in them, each representing a kind of initiation, progressively reveal new teaching and clarify the old.

Plato opens the Republic with a conversation between Socrates and his elderly friend Cephalus on the subject of death.

Cephalus wants to assure himself that, if there is an afterlife, he will be spared the sufferings of the underworld. He even quotes from one of Pindar’s odes to support his argument.

Plato ends the Republic with the Vision of Er, as Socrates describes the spiritual warrior who is slain in battle and returns to life, physically resurrected in order to transmit the message of all saviors, (W. T. S. Thackara in Plato’s Myths and the Mystery Tradition).

The message seems clear: we are all immortal beings, and our destiny is in our own hands.

“Music of The Spheres”

“Between Science and Theology is a bewildered public, fast losing all belief in man’s personal immortality, in a deity of any kind, and rapidly descending to the level of materialism,” H. P. Blavatsky wrote in Isis Unveiled [2:593].

Yet, “from the remotest antiquity, mankind as a whole have always been convinced of the existence of a personal spiritual entity, within the personal physical man.”

“This inner entity was more or less divine, according to its proximity to the crown—Chrestos [The Higher Self].”

“It is on the indestructible tablets of the astral light that is stamped the impression of every thought we think, and every act we perform. And future events — effects of long-forgotten causes,” Blavatsky also writes in Isis Unveiled [I:178],—”are already delineated as a vivid picture for the eye of the seer and prophet to follow. the vast repository where the records of every man’s life as well as every pulsation of the visible cosmos are stored up for all Eternity!”

Death No Fear

VETERANS of near-death experiences, writes Dr. W. R. Morrow, “found that death is not to be feared.”

“They have all been to the edge, looked over, and afterwards lived out their lives with an optimistic attitude.”

Theosophy concurs in H. P. Blavatsky who wrote: “death comes to our spiritual selves ever as a deliverer and friend,” (The Key to Theosophy, p.161.)

“This extensive ‘research,’ if it gives any proof at all, gives evidence of a universal heaven,” says Morrow, “the same comforting near-death vision for everyone reporting!”

“Interestingly, recent analysis by researcher Dr. Jeffrey Long of 1,200 reported cases of the near-death phenomenon shows remarkable similarities across cultures, continents, and religions,” Morrow notes. “All were pleasant and reassuring.”  

“Many in the religious community will not accept a God like this who provides no separation of the sheep and the goats, but personally I like this hint of a loving embrace when I go.”

Heavenly Vision

♥

Dr. William Morrow is a Florida licensed marriage and family therapist with offices in Cape Coral and Fort Myers. Learn more at: http://www.williamrmorrow.com. Email wmorrowmft@embarqmail.com

Afterlife is Real

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 its feature article headline.

“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 writes in the Newsweek October 15 cover story.

“Though we seem to live in a world of separation and difference,” he says, “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 tool kit 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.”

Crossing Over

LOOKING past our relatively short physical lives on Earth, Theosophy views the soul as eternal. Further, we don’t just ‘have’ a soul, we are souls, the wisdom tradition says.

There are many human beings who live to a ripe old age, and according to Wikipedia, the United Nations estimated in 2009 there were 455,000 living centenarians worldwide.

Methuselah is mentioned in the Bible as living 969 years. “But I have never heard of mortal man, layman, or Adept,”  H. P. Blavatsky says in The Key to Theosophy, “who could live even half the years allotted to Methuselah.”

“Some Adepts do exceed, by a good deal, what you would call the ordinary age — yet there is nothing miraculous in it, and very few of them care to live very long.”

She refers here to the Earthly body, not the Spiritual Body that high adepts have learned to occupy and control, thereby achieving self-conscious immortality — albeit invisible to uninitiated mankind.

Gautama, the Buddha, after reaching the goal of enlightenment, refused its fruition and remained on earth as a Teacher-Reformer, it is explained, and esoteric tradition teaches that he still remains in the world, invisibly watching over and protecting mankind.

Not only Gautama, but a “Wall of Protection” is built by the “accumulated efforts of long generations of Yogis, Saints and Adepts,those Buddhas of Compassion

who have woven for themselves glorious bodies in which they remain invisibly in the world, contributing towards man’s salvation.”

They do this “by influencing him to follow the Good Law and to tread the Path of Righteousness. Silently they impress the invisible atmosphere of our earth with their Ideation, thus keeping the balance on the side of right.”

Healing Naturally

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

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

Yet many credible scientific researchers today are unconvinced, and dispute these assumptions.

Such open minded investigators are willing to pursue truth wherever it leads, even to evidence that consciousness is a independent entity from the physical structures through which it manifests.

Most so-called New Age science is still considered hocus pocus, and the researcher’s findings are not considered credible, no matter how rigorously the studies are done.

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

Poised fearlessly at frontier research are scientific organizations such as the respected Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) in Petaluma, California, and the Institute of HeartMath in Boulder Creek.

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

Life Goes On

BETWEEN Science and Theology is a bewildered public, fast losing all belief in man’s personal immortality, in a deity of any kind, and rapidly descending to the level of materialism.

From the remotest antiquity, mankind as a whole have always been convinced of the existence of a personal spiritual entity, within the personal physical man.

This inner entity was more or less divine, according to its proximity to the crown—Chrestos [Christos, The Higher Self].

The closer the union, the more serene man’s destiny, and the less dangerous the external conditions. This belief is neither bigotry nor superstition, only an ever-present, instinctive feeling of the proximity of another spiritual and invisible world.

This world, though it be subjective to the senses of the outward man, is perfectly objective to the inner ego.

Ω

The foregoing words were written in Isis Unveiled, (Ch. 12) by H. P. Blavatsky her first first major work on Theosophy—examining religion and science in the light of Western and Oriental ancient wisdom, and occult and spiritualistic phenomena.

The Psychic and Noetic

The Pythia Oracle

MAINSTREAM scientists looking for the source of consciousness, expect it’s origin to be located in the physical brain.

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

Yet many credible scientific researchers dispute these assumptions. They are not convinced, and are willing to investigate the anciently held belief that consciousness is a independent entity from the physical structures through which it may manifest.

Because their investigations are not considered credible, investigators risk being minimalized and shunned by their peers — and what is worse, by their funding sources.

Ω