Remembering Past Lives in Nature and our Spiritual Body

Soul Memory

SOUL memory according to Theosophy is referred to as ‘reminiscence,’ and it is this kind memory that assures every human being, whether they know it or not, of their having lived before, and having to live again.

To fully grasp the idea, we first have to study the complex relationship between the human and transcendental aspects of mind (represented physiologically by the brain’s left and right hemispheres.)

Knowledge gained or not by soul-sourced transmission is described by W. Q. Judge in his Ocean of Theosophy, Ch.9:

“By living according to the dictates of the soul the brain may at last 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.”

H. P. Blavatsky in The Voice of the Silence, has an even simpler formula:

Self-Knowledge is of
loving deeds the child.

The differences were experienced directly by neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor PhD, described in her book “My Stroke of Insight.” In a memorable TED Talk, she describes her experience in dramatic detail:

“Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions — motion, speech, self-awareness — shut down one by one. An astonishing story.”

My Stroke of Insight

Jill Bolte Taylor

Duality

The contrast of Spirit (or consciousness) and Matter, Subject and Object.

•  H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine (1:15)

“Spirit (or Consciousness) and Matter are, however, to be regarded, not as independent realities, but as the two facets or aspects of the Absolute (Parabrahm), which constitute the basis of conditioned Being whether subjective or objective.  . . .  Just as pre-Cosmic Ideation is the root of all individual consciousness, so pre-Cosmic Substance is the substratum of matter in the various grades of its differentiation.”

This fundamental double consciousness, Blavatsky explained, is termed first “the spiritual, or those which belong to the imperishable Ego,” (The Key to Theosophy, Section 8, On Individuality and Personality). Second, she describes the intellectual/rational, personal physical brain states:

which inhabit the ever-changing bodies, or the series of personalities of that Ego.

Notwithstanding, our higher mind knows and remembers all its lives, she insisted, “as well as you remember what you have done yesterday. The real Ego has not forgotten them, and the personal never experienced them. Shall the new boots on the feet of a boy who is flogged for stealing apples, be punished for that which they know nothing?” HPB asked.

“Duality Supervenes”

That which is called “the divine man,” is the “real Individuality,” who like the elegant elephant, never forgets.  But its vehicle the personality has no access to that history as it corresponds to “a new suit of clothes.” There are, however, importantly:

modes of communication between the Spiritual and human consciousness or memory.

Evidence for such modes of communication lies in our powers of intuition, conscience, premonitions etc. and, most powerfully, from investigations into the so-called NDE or Near Death Experience. But such states as this “have never been recognised by your scientific modern psychologists,” Blavatsky said of such communications.

That may be changing now.

Remembering Past Lives within The Celestial Body

Soul Memory

SOUL memory according to Theosophy is referred to as ‘reminiscence,’ and it is this kind memory that assures every human being, whether they know it or not, of their having lived before, and having to live again.

To fully grasp the idea, we first have to study the complex relationship between the human and transcendental aspects of mind (represented physiologically by the brain’s left and right hemispheres.)

Knowledge gained or not by soul-sourced transmission is described by W. Q. Judge in his Ocean of Theosophy, Ch.9:

“By living according to the dictates of the soul the brain may at last 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.”

H. P. Blavatsky in The Voice of the Silence, has an even simpler formula:

Self-Knowledge is of
loving deeds the child.

The differences were experienced directly by neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor PhD, described in her book “My Stroke of Insight.” In a memorable TED Talk, she describes her experience in dramatic detail:

“Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions — motion, speech, self-awareness — shut down one by one. An astonishing story.”

My Stroke of Insight

Jill Bolte Taylor

Duality

The contrast of Spirit (or consciousness) and Matter, Subject and Object.

•  H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine (1:15)

“Spirit (or Consciousness) and Matter are, however, to be regarded, not as independent realities, but as the two facets or aspects of the Absolute (Parabrahm), which constitute the basis of conditioned Being whether subjective or objective.  . . .  Just as pre-Cosmic Ideation is the root of all individual consciousness, so pre-Cosmic Substance is the substratum of matter in the various grades of its differentiation.”

This fundamental double consciousness, Blavatsky explained, is termed first “the spiritual, or those which belong to the imperishable Ego,” (The Key to Theosophy, Section 8, On Individuality and Personality). Second, she describes the intellectual/rational, personal physical brain states:

which inhabit the ever-changing bodies, or the series of personalities of that Ego.

Notwithstanding, our higher mind knows and remembers all its lives, she insisted, “as well as you remember what you have done yesterday. The real Ego has not forgotten them, and the personal never experienced them. Shall the new boots on the feet of a boy who is flogged for stealing apples, be punished for that which they know nothing?” HPB asked.

“Duality Supervenes”

That which is called “the divine man,” is the “real Individuality,” who like the elegant elephant, never forgets.  But its vehicle the personality has no access to that history as it corresponds to “a new suit of clothes.” There are, however, importantly:

modes of communication between the Spiritual and human consciousness or memory.

Evidence for such modes of communication lies in our powers of intuition, conscience, premonitions etc. and, most powerfully, from investigations into the so-called NDE or Near Death Experience. But such states as this “have never been recognised by your scientific modern psychologists,” Blavatsky said of such communications.

That may be changing now.

Life Currents in Space: Surprising Secrets about The Sun

Solar Goddess

WINTER in the northern hemisphere marks the annual return of an ancient solar festival.

Indeed, “turnings of the sun” is an old phrase, used by both Hesiod and Homer.

The novelist Alan Furst has one of his characters nicely observe, “the day the sun is said to pause,” recalls the NY Times Op Ed: “Pleasing, that idea…

… as though the universe stopped for a moment to reflect, took a day off from work. One could sense it, time slowing down.”

“The real substance of the concealed (Sun) is a nucleus of Mother substance,” H. P. Blavatsky writes in The Secret Doctrine. It is the heart and the matrix of all the living and existing Forces in our solar universe.

“It is the Kernel from which proceed to spread on their cyclic journeys all the Powers that set in action the atoms in their functional duties, and the focus within which they again meet in their SEVENTH ESSENCE every eleventh year.”

Solstice Secrets, the Turning of an Electric Sun

Sun Goddess

WINTER in the northern hemisphere marks the annual return of a potent and ancient solar festival.

Indeed, “turnings of the sun” is an old phrase, used by both Hesiod and Homer.

The novelist Alan Furst has one of his characters nicely observe, “the day the sun is said to pause,” recalls contributor Richard Cohen in a  NY Times Op-Ed:

“Pleasing, that idea as though the universe stopped for a moment to reflect, took a day off from work. One could sense it, time slowing down.”

But the cyclic work of the Mother matrix never ceases. “The real substance of the concealed (Sun) is a nucleus of Mother substance,” H. P. Blavatsky wrote in The Secret Doctrine Vol. 1, p. 290:

It is the heart and the matrix of all the living and existing Forces in our solar universe.

“It is the Kernel from which proceed to spread on their cyclic journeys all the Powers that set in action the atoms in their functional duties, and the focus within which they again meet in their SEVENTH ESSENCE every eleventh year.”

The solar cycle or solar magnetic activity cycle is the nearly periodic 11-year change in the Sun‘s activity (Wikipedia)

Lessons from the Light, the Near-Death Experience

Soul Memory

SOUL memory according to Theosophy is referred to as ‘reminiscence,’ and it is this kind memory that assures every human being, whether they know it or not, of their having lived before, and having to live again.

To fully grasp the idea, we first have to study the complex relationship between the human and transcendental aspects of mind (represented physiologically by the brain’s left and right hemispheres.)

There is a well known analysis of soul knowledge transmission by W. Q. Judge in his Ocean of Theosophy, Ch.9: “By living according to the dictates of the soul the brain may at last 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.”

The differences were experienced directly by neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor PhD, described in her book “My Stroke of Insight.” In a memorable TED Talk, she describes her experience in dramatic detail:

“Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions — motion, speech, self-awareness — shut down one by one. An astonishing story.”

My Stroke of Insight

Jill Bolte Taylor

This fundamental double consciousness, Blavatsky explained, is termed first “the spiritual, or those which belong to the imperishable Ego,” (Key to Theosophy, Section 8, On Individuality and Personality). Second, she describes the intellectual/rational, personal physical brain states:

which inhabit the ever-changing bodies, or the series of personalities of that Ego.

Notwithstanding, our higher mind knows and remembers all its lives, she insisted, “as well as you remember what you have done yesterday. The real Ego has not forgotten them, and the personal never experienced them. Shall the new boots on the feet of a boy who is flogged for stealing apples, be punished for that which they know nothing?” she asks.

Spiritual and Personal Memories

That which is called “the divine man,” is the “real Individuality,” who like the elegant elephant, never forgets.  But its vehicle the personality has no access to that history as it corresponds to “a new suit of clothes.” There are, however, importantly:

modes of communication between the Spiritual and human consciousness or memory.

Evidence for such modes lies in powers of intuition, conscience, premonitions, & etc. and, most powerfully, from recent research into the so-called NDE or Near Death Experience. But such states as this “have never been recognised by your scientific modern psychologists,” Blavatsky wrote in her day.

That may be changing now.

Divine Light, the Great Protean Magician

Gaia, Mother Earth

THE 2018 Spring Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere occurred at 12:15 PM, Tuesday, March 20 according to astronomical reckoning.

But what exactly is the spring equinox or ‘vernal equinox,’ as it is also known, and why do so many Northern peoples like to celebrate it every year at this time?

The astronomical event marks the start of spring in the northern hemisphere, which means longer days are on the way and people around the world will celebrate fresh starts. 

The phenomenon is a solar event like the solstices that occur on the first days of summer and winter at dawn for two or three days.

Though the length of days are not equal, at solstices the sun seems to linger for several minutes in its passage across the sky, before beginning to double back, another kind of beginning or rebirthing. 

In the northern hemisphere the solstices mark the annual return of an ancient solar festival. Indeed, “turnings of the sun” is an old phrase, used by both Hesiod and Homer. The novelist Alan Furst has one of his characters nicely observe, “the day the sun is said to pause,” (NY Times Op Ed): “Pleasing, that idea as though the universe stopped for a moment to reflect, took a day off from work. One could sense it, time slowing down.”

Sunrise Meditation

But for Theosophy light has much deeper metaphysical even spiritual implications. Both the Sun and the human heart are the two greatest life-givers we know, both emit light and are indissolubly interconnected. According to occult teachings, both radiate a powerful aura of biological and regenerative energies continuously.

H. P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine (1:290, xxi) reveals, (from a “Commentary hitherto secret”) that: “The real substance of the concealed (Sun) is a nucleus of Mother substance,

it is the heart and the matrix of all the living and existing Forces in our solar universe.”

The Heart-Sun

“As its substance is of a different kind from that known on earth, the inhabitants of the latter, seeing through it, believe in their illusion and ignorance that it is empty space,” she notes, “yet there is

not one finger’s breath (angula) of void Space in the whole Boundless Universe.”

Ancient astrology and astronomy identify many ancient temples and pyramids around the world were connected to solar symbology. Such sites and mounds are considered mere burial tombs by mainstream archaeologists, most of whom are disinterested in spiritual traditions.

Temple of Light

But at the time of their construction these sites were in fact intended, wrote H. P. Blavatsky in Isis Unveiled (1:270), to be sacred places of initiation. Describing the Spiritual Sun, called “Agni,” the ancient Rig-Veda declared: “His radiance is undecaying …

…the intensely-shining, all-pervading, unceasing, undecaying rays of Agni desist not, neither night nor day.”

ö

Season of the Sun: Our Cosmic Mother

WHAT is the winter solstice, and why do so many people around the world bother to celebrate it, as they do every year at this time?

“The word ‘solstice’ derives from the Latin sol (meaning sun) and statum (stand still),” explains the NY Times Op-Ed Contributor in the article”There Goes the Sun.”

The phenomenon reflects what we see on the first days of summer and winter at dawn for two or three days.

At that time the sun seems to linger for several minutes in its passage across the sky, before beginning to double back.

Winter in the northern hemisphere marks the annual return of an ancient solar festival. Indeed, “turnings of the sun” is an old phrase, used by both Hesiod and Homer. The novelist Alan Furst has one of his characters nicely observe, “the day the sun is said to pause,” recalls the NY Times Op Ed: “Pleasing, that idea…

As though the universe stopped for a moment to reflect, took a day off from work. One could sense it, time slowing down.”

But the event has deeper, metaphysical implications. Both the Sun and the human heart are the two greatest life-givers we know. Indissolubly interconnected, according to occult teachings, both radiate continuously a powerful aura of biological and regenerative energies.

“The real substance of the concealed (Sun) is a nucleus of Mother substance,” Blavatsky writes in The Secret Doctrine (1:290, xxi). It is the heart and the matrix of all the living and existing Forces in our solar universe.

“As its substance is of a different kind from that known on earth, the inhabitants of the latter, seeing through it, believe in their illusion and ignorance that it is empty space,” she says (1:289, xix). Yet there “is not one finger’s breath (angula) of void Space in the whole Boundless Universe.”

Ancient astrology and astronomy identify many ancient temples, and pyramids around the world connected to solar symbology. Such sites and mounds are considered mere burial tombs by mainstream archeologists, most of whom are disinterested in spiritual traditions.

But at the time of their construction these sites were in fact intended, wrote H. P. Blavatsky in Isis Unveiled (1:270), to be sacred places of initiation. Describing the Spiritual Sun, called “Agni,” the ancient Rig-Veda declares, she says, “His radiance is undecaying …

…the intensely-shining, all-pervading, unceasing, undecaying rays of Agni desist not, neither night nor day.”

ö

Temples of Initiation

LONG before the digital age, before computers, smart phones and social media were vogue, ancients sages had wirelessly transmitted secrets to their disciples.

They introduced to them to the invisible realms of nature and mind, unknown to the general public.

That realm of nature served and still serves as a living psychic interface between man’s consciousness and living forces of spiritual influence.

That same knowledge was revealed to the world by Mother of the New Age H. P. Blavatsky in her first major work — Isis Unveiled: A Master Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology — a work begun in 1875 with the founding of the Theosophical Society in New York City.

The first 1,000 copies of Isis Unveiled were sold in 10 days, and received numerous favorable reviews. The New York Herald called it “one of the remarkable productions of the century,” while The New York Independent said “The appearance of erudition is stupendous.”

The Egyptian goddess Isis is the ideal mother and wife as well as the patron of nature and magic. Originally Issa, the goddess Virgin-Mother, personified nature, according to The Theosophical Glossary, in Egyptian or Koptic Uasari, the female reflection of Uasar or Osiris. She is the “woman clothed with the sun” of the land of Chemi [Egypt].

Isis commanded unseen entities of immense influence. It was an invisible world of nature not copyrighted by Microsoft or Intel, a knowledge first transmitted by Nature’s hidden all-wise spiritual overseers, encoded with evolutionary blueprints for the advancement of spiritual humanity.

The invisible entities, called “elementals” or “elementaries” in modern Theosophy, are  orbs of influence in the sense that they attach to thoughts and emotions. They preserve hidden patterns of intention secreting them upon persons to whom they become unknowingly attached.

They are the preservers and deliverers of Karma. Many have experienced an unmistakable sense of prior knowing a certain person or place—though the encounter is seemingly, in this life,  for “the first time.” The déjà vu occurs probably with a push from those unseen entities.

Dawn of the Sun

WINTER in the northern hemisphere marks the annual return of an ancient solar festival.

Indeed, “turnings of the sun” is an old phrase, used by both Hesiod and Homer.

The novelist Alan Furst has one of his characters nicely observe, “the day the sun is said to pause,” recalls the NY Times Op Ed: “Pleasing, that idea…

… as though the universe stopped for a moment to reflect, took a day off from work. One could sense it, time slowing down.”

“The real substance of the concealed (Sun) is a nucleus of Mother substance,” H. P. Blavatsky writes in The Secret Doctrine. It is the heart and the matrix of all the living and existing Forces in our solar universe.

“It is the Kernel from which proceed to spread on their cyclic journeys all the Powers that set in action the atoms in their functional duties, and the focus within which they again meet in their SEVENTH ESSENCE every eleventh year.”

Lessons from the Light: The Golden Rule

SOUL memory according to Theosophy is referred to as reminiscence, and it is this memory that assures every human being, whether they know it or not, of their having lived before, and having to live again.

To fully grasp the idea, we first have to study the complex relationship between the human and transcendental aspects of mind (represented physiologically by the brain’s left and right hemispheres.)

The differences were experienced directly by neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor PhD, described in her book “My Stroke of Insight.” Our recent post Dance of the Hemispheres is about her experience, and which she describes in dramatic detail at a TED Talk. 

These consciousnesses are termed first “the spiritual, or those which belong to the imperishable Ego,” (Key to Theosophy, Section 8, On Individuality and Personality). Second, are the intellectual/rational states

“which inhabit the ever-changing bodies, or the series of personalities of that Ego.” 

The higher mind fully knows and remembers all its lives, Blavatsky insisted, “as well as you remember what you have done yesterday. The real Ego has not forgotten them, and the personal never experienced them. “Shall the new boots on the feet of a boy who is flogged for stealing apples, be punished for that which they know nothing?” Blavatsky asks.

That which is called “the divine man,” is the “real Individuality,” who like the elegant elephant, never forgets.  But its vehicle the personality has no access to that history as it corresponds to “a new suit of clothes.” There are however, importantly, “modes of communication between the Spiritual and human consciousness or memory.”

Evidence for such modes lies in powers of intuition, conscience, premonitions, & etc. and, most powerfully, from recent research into the so-called NDE or Near Death Experience. But such states “have never been recognised by your scientific modern psychologists,” Blavatsky wrote. That may be changing today.

The Solar Mother

WHAT is the winter solstice, and why do so many people around the world bother to celebrate it, as they do every year at this time?

“The word ‘solstice’ derives from the Latin sol (meaning sun) and statum (stand still),” explains the NY Times Op-Ed Contributor in the article”There Goes the Sun.”

The phenomenon reflects what we see on the first days of summer and winter at dawn for two or three days.

At that time the sun seems to linger for several minutes in its passage across the sky, before beginning to double back.

Winter in the northern hemisphere marks the annual return of an ancient solar festival. Indeed, “turnings of the sun” is an old phrase, used by both Hesiod and Homer. The novelist Alan Furst has one of his characters nicely observe, “the day the sun is said to pause,” recalls the NY Times Op Ed: “Pleasing, that idea…

As though the universe stopped for a moment to reflect, took a day off from work. One could sense it, time slowing down.”

But the event has deeper, metaphysical implications. Both the Sun and the human heart are the two greatest life-givers we know. Indissolubly interconnected, according to occult teachings, both radiate continuously a powerful aura of biological and regenerative energies.

“The real substance of the concealed (Sun) is a nucleus of Mother substance,” Blavatsky writes in The Secret Doctrine (1:290, xxi). It is the heart and the matrix of all the living and existing Forces in our solar universe.

“As its substance is of a different kind from that known on earth, the inhabitants of the latter, seeing through it, believe in their illusion and ignorance that it is empty space,” she says (1:289, xix). Yet there “is not one finger’s breath (angula) of void Space in the whole Boundless Universe.”

Ancient astrology and astronomy identify many ancient temples, and pyramids around the world connected to solar symbology. Such sites and mounds are considered mere burial tombs by mainstream archeologists, most of whom are disinterested in spiritual traditions.

But at the time of their construction these sites were in fact intended, wrote H. P. Blavatsky in Isis Unveiled (1:270), to be sacred places of initiation. Describing the Spiritual Sun, called “Agni,” the ancient Rig-Veda declares, she says, “His radiance is undecaying …

…the intensely-shining, all-pervading, unceasing, undecaying rays of Agni desist not, neither night nor day.”

ö

Wake-Up Time

WHAT is the winter solstice, and why do so many people around the world bother to celebrate it, as they do every year at this time?

“The word ‘solstice’ derives from the Latin sol (meaning sun) and statum (stand still),” explains the NY Times Op-Ed Contributor in the article”There Goes the Sun.”

The phenomenon reflects what we see on the first days of summer and winter at dawn for two or three days.

At that time the sun seems to linger for several minutes in its passage across the sky, before beginning to double back.

Winter in the northern hemisphere marks the annual return of an ancient solar festival. Indeed, “turnings of the sun” is an old phrase, used by both Hesiod and Homer.

The novelist Alan Furst has one of his characters nicely observe, “the day the sun is said to pause,” recalls the NY Times Op Ed: “Pleasing, that idea. …

As though the universe stopped for a moment to reflect, took a day off from work. One could sense it, time slowing down.”

But the event has deeper, metaphysical implications. Both the Sun and the human heart are the two greatest life-givers we know. Indissolubly interconnected, according to occult teachings, both radiate continuously a powerful aura of biological and regenerative energies.

“The Sun has but one distinct function,” Blavatsky explains to her students (Transactions, 116) — “it gives the impulse of life to all that breathes and lives under its light. The sun is the throbbing heart of the system, each throb being an impulse. … This impulse is not mechanical but a purely spiritual, nervous impulse.”

Atlantis Ascending 2

MESSING with the unforgiving physical forces of nature challenging thirty-foot waves can be both exhilarating and deadly.

Similarly, ignorantly engaging paranormal forces and entities in black magic can have devastating personal consequences.

In our last post about the Atlanteans we touched on their increasing predilection to consciously develop and use powers of the dark side.

Another extreme behavior by the giants of those later day Atlanteans, the Teachings say, involved engaging in sex with animals.

Those unnatural sexual unions, The Secret Doctrine says, resulted in “lower races of men, now represented on earth by a few miserable dying-out tribes, and the huge anthropoid apes.”

Koko

Over long ages these behaviors irretrievably compromised the Atlantean spirituality. They were an ungodly mess in the end.

The final outcome of this was that the Atlanteans lost the power of their Third Eye, and nature sent many of that humanity for a long timeout to Davy Jones’ Locker.

∑

The  mental and visual, psychic and spiritual perceptions of the Atlanteans lasted until nearly the end. Its functions, Blavatsky wrote,

“… owing to the materiality and depraved condition of mankind, died out altogether before the submersion of the bulk of the Atlantean continent.”

Orbs of Influence

Euterpe

DEJA VU is an awakened familiar reminiscence of place, or in the case of meeting a stranger, an uncanny feeling of recognition.

We have an unmistakable sense of prior knowing that person or place — though the encounter is seemingly, in this life,  for “the first time.”

Invisible entities called “elementals” or “elementaries” in Theosophy, can be thought of as “orbs of influence,” in the sense that such hidden entities attach to and manifest hidden patterns of intention.

They are attracted to, mirror and preserve fields of information — reflecting the  influences, beneficent or maleficent, of persons, places and things. The Greeks called them Muses.

Similarly, “sacred space” and “spirit of place” are ideas that, for man, refer to a lingering spiritual resonance of certain locations.

Eye of Light

Helen Keller, Age 7

“Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there’s a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.”– Helen Keller

Many people are suffering today as the world’s financial crisis worsens, property values decline, jobs are lost. We’ve been there before — contraction, recession, depression, expansion— a sure sign of the ruling law of cycles at work.

The Founders took pains to include the “All Seeing Eye” on our dollar bills, but ironically, we prefer to suffer the inevitable consequences of our material shenanigans by ignoring the spiritual flip side.

CYCLES RULE

“This second assertion of the Secret Doctrine is the absolute universality of that law of periodicity,” Blavatsky insists, and “in it we see one of the absolutely fundamental laws of the universe.”

As Krishna tells it in The Bhagavad-Gita, “These two, light and darkness, are the world’s eternal ways.”

Reincarnation is the evolutionary means by which lessons are learned. “It is abundantly clear that one life,” William Q. Judge says in The Necessity for Reincarnation, “even if prolonged, is no more adequate to gain knowledge, acquire experience, solidify principle, and form character, than would one day in infancy be adequate to fit for the duties of mature manhood.”

It is only through this Law of coordinated rebirths, that our spiritual eye can be gradually be awakened permanently.

THE STORY OF JAMES – Part 1

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EVOLUTION TRIPLE

There are always three evolutionary forces in play, according to Theosophy — physical, mental and spiritual — “a triple evolutionary scheme,” Blavatsky writes, “which in our system are inextricably interwoven and interblended at every point” (S.D. I, 181).

In this scheme, evolution is much more than a blind physical process. “The cycles must run their rounds,” a Master writes, “Periods of mental and moral light and darkness succeed each other, as day does night.” – A Master’s Letter

LIGHT MATTERS

On our plane of existence, Spirit or light, and Matter or darkness, can never appear separately. They are twins — change one, you change the other. We carry them around every day, on dollar bills in our pockets, without realizing we are carrying around another spiritual light-bringer, the pineal gland in our brain.

This is referred to in the Bible: “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light,” says Matthew 6:22, Luke 11:34.

The pineal gland is a small organ in the brain resembling a pine cone; technically called the epiphysis, forming part of the ventricular or hollow center of the brain, connected with the central canal of the spinal cord.

SPIRITUAL MIND

“[T]he pineal gland, as shown, is far more connected with Soul and Spirit than with the physiological senses of man,” Blavatsky writes, “…for nature never creates the smallest, the most insignificant form without some definite purpose and use.”

It was an active organ, we say, at that stage of evolution when the spiritual element in man reigned supreme over the hardly nascent intellectual and psychic elements. The eye is the mirror and also the window of the soul, says popular wisdom, and Vox populi Vox Dei.

“[T]he pineal gland,” Blavatsky says, “… is the very key to the highest and divinest consciousness in man— his omniscient, spiritual and all embracing mind.” – Dialogue on the Mysteries of the Afterlife

“…there is a power in man which enables him to judge aright—he has the all-seeing eye,” Robert Crosbie writes, in The Kingly Mystery [13] — “the all-encompassing sight which permits him to see the justice of all things.” This power implies a choice, he says – “The questions before each human being are: Whom will ye serve?”

STRETCHING CONSCIOUSNESS

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PROGRESSIVE AWAKENINGS

“Progressive awakenings,” are a hallmark of H. P. Blavatsky’s teachings in The Secret Doctrine. “As we rise in the scale of development we perceive that during the stages through which we have passed we mistook shadows for realities,” she writes,

and the upward progress of the Ego is a series of progressive awakenings, each advance bringing with it the idea that now, at last, we have reached “reality;” but only when we shall have reached the absolute Consciousness, and blended our own with it, shall we be free from the delusions produced by Maya [illusion]. (SD I:39-40.)

ATTRACTING ATTENTION

But what practical measures can we take to achieve freedom from delusion? An example of the popular idiom “Be careful what you ask for” is the law of attraction, described first by William Q. Judge, in an article titled simply KARMA:

“By directing the mind and aspirations to the lower plane,” he writes, “a ‘fire’ or centre of attraction, is set up there, and in order to feed and fatten it, the energies of the whole upper plane are drawn down and exhausted in supplying the need of energy which exists below due to the indulgence of sense gratification.”

On the other hand, the centre of attraction may be fixed in the upper portion, and then all the needed energy goes there to result in increase of spirituality. It must be remembered that Nature is all bountiful and withholds not her hand. The demand is made, and the supply will come. But at what cost?

CHILDHOOD REINCARNATION PART 1

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Stressing the importance of what we absorb in early childhood, leading to the age of responsibility, Blavatsky writes:

Man has his “double” or shadow, properly so called, around which the physical body of the foetus—the future man—is built. The imagination of the mother, or an accident which affects the child, will affect also the astral body. The astral and the physical both exist before the mind is developed into action, and before the Atma [spirit] awakes. This occurs when the child is seven years old, and with it comes the responsibility attaching to a conscious sentient being. (Raja Yoga or Occultism)

CHILDHOOD REINCARNATION PART 2

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This is the “Third Fundamental” of Theosophy, human beings engaging a series of developmental stages. According to this, we acquire our individuality “first by natural impulse,” before the age of seven, “and then by self-induced and self-devised efforts” thereafter.

Each stage the reincarnating soul is “checked by its Karma,” Blavatsky says, and gradually “ascending through all the degrees of intelligence.” This is repeated at each of our new births, and the full acquirement of the highest spiritual mind could take many lifetimes.

The subject of the evolution of human beings cycling on a sevenfold plan, over millions of years, is vast. The journey is mirrored by like changes in the Earth itself, and will be continued in our next post.