Theos-Talk Archives (November 1994 Message tl00065)

Responses to remarks made regarding my article on
psychology/theosophy

To Jerry H-E:

Your plans for using my article in your study group sounds fine
to me.

I would like to add some suggestions for that:

-it may be a useful exercise for students to apply/learn to
recognize the workings of the seven juwels of wisdom on their own
thinking,etc.  Also they can be recognized in nature as a whole.
You may want to include my first article on the seven jewels
and/or G de P's exposition of these in his fundamentals of
esoteric wisdom.

 One interesting example regarding this is when we try to replace
 negative thoughts by positive ones (by directing our mental
 perception to ideas of wholeness, connectedness, brotherhood,
 etc.).  Everybody will experience a _cyclic_ comeback of these
 negative thoughts, which will diminish in strength if we persist
 in our efforts to attune to more spiritual layers in our own
 stream of consciousness.  This _recognition_ will contribute to
 the understanding of how nature works in our psyche.

 Also, students of theosophy can learn to recognize these 7 dual
 aspects of thinking in their own mind, the dominating
 principle(s), as well as their motives (personal, impersonal)
 for doing things.  BTW, these 7 dual aspects ARE the seven
 loka-tala twins of thinking as far as I understand them.  Issues
 of reality and illusion (the identification with the world of
 phenomena vs.  identification with spiritual factors immanent in
 this world) are also of great importance.  Identification is the
 keyword here.  Antropomorphic thinking is another related issue.
 The three guna's form another angle from which thinking and
 acting can be discussed.  Controlling your thought-process vs.
 being slave of the passions makes a good topic too, especially
 in relation to questions of sympathy/antipathy, in short: the
 pairs of opposites, their 'mechanism', transcending them, i.e.
 using the polarized forces of nature (Shiva - the
 destroyer-renewer of structures).

 Forgive me for elaborating a little bit here.  I think it may be
 useful for students.  I am greatly indebted to a Dutch
 theosophist, D.J.P.  Kok, from whose work - non-copyrighted, and
 only partially published (for the general public)- I greatly
 borrowed, although adding my own insights and order in this
 article.


Now, to your remarks, I will try to discuss them:

>Thus personality consciousness does not survive long after the
> body..

I discovered a problem of nomenclature in G de P's work:

In the fundamentals he gives the name 'Human ego' to the
Bhutatman, while in his esoteric instructions he reserves the
term Human ego for the personal ego, a ray from the human
(personal) monad or _reincarnating_ ego as G de P calls it on
p.86 [see also p.  54] of his 11th esoteric instruction.  The
Bhutatman is a _reimbodying_ ego.  So, I followed G de P's
esoteric instructions's instead of his fundamentals in
attributing the term 'human' and hence 'reincarnating' to the
personal ego/monad.  The personal ego serves as a separate focus
for the prana of atman, hence it's name: pranatman.  I think that
at second death this personal ego is withdrawn as a ray in the
'bosom of the human (personal) monad'.  The human monad is on its
turn withdrawn as a ray in the spiritual-intellectual monad, etc.

All this is quite technical, but indicates somehow that the
character of the personal ego is in some way preserved to
manifest again in a new incarnation.  The personal ego-soul is in
principle sevenfold (14-fold)= loka's/tala's and it's character
is formed by those principles/elements in its ego-soul which are
most dominant.

>issue of unconscious expression of thoughts..

That's why real sincerity of mind is needed, in order not to fool
ourselves.  Practice makes perfect so to speak.  We have to try
it.

To ASTREA:

I understand what you mean.  That's why I personally added the
duality of the seven aspects of thinking, indicating that even
inspiration can be used in a very selfish way, also indicating
that the divine principle is _also_ involved in the physical
aspect thinking.  Our body itself has a connection with the
divine principle through the auric egg (cf.  G de P - our body
literally a divine temple ).  So, you are right in saying that
the divine principle is active on all levels, all be it in a
different degree.

There is in reality but One principle, as WQ Judge says,
multiple-facetted in manifestation.  Yet a separation of
principles is possible, as we all know, be it in our sleep, be it
at initiation, etc.  This reminds me of the three upadhi's of
Blavatsky in SD I.

To get practical: let's not forget about the suffering in this
world.  Buddha's teachings point to the source of all suffering:
ignorance about the real nature of man, coupled with thinking in
terms of separateness.  Theosophical societies have a duty to
teach others about the causes of suffering and the solution of
that.  Individual theosophists have their daily duties added to
this and should find forms/ways/methods to infuse their wisdom
into organizations, individuals, etc.

We are on the rising arc of evolution.  This means that we have
the net-force of nature behind us in this work.  The key is
understanding and harmonious development.  This all will greatly
contribute to a better world, if only practiced!

TO JERRY S.  continuous/discrete jumps;Tree of life; GV-model

I will have to think it over.  Nature itself points to discrete
jumps (think of discrete spectra of chemical elements).  In these
discrete jumps however a laya-center may be involved, involving a
reconfiguration of matter into another state! So, my guess is
that matter-consciousness can be brought into quite another
hierarchy or sub-hierarchy by being dissolved into its
components, being recombined into new forms in this other
hierarchy.  What do you think?

That's all for now.
Nice discussion anyway!
Martin.