From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1993 01:49:00 -0500 From: Andrew Rooke Subject: Light - a unitary concept Thanks to those members of the network who expressed interest in reading Jim Thillaimuthu's concept of the unitary nature of light and radiation. Jim does not have direct access to Internet, so I will pass messages on to him and/or you can correspond with him at the following address : Jim Thillaimuthu, Unit15 No.576 Centre Rd., Bentleigh, Melbourne, Victoria 3204, AUSTRALIA Tel: (03) 557.3229. A UNITARY CONCEPT OF LIGHT AND RADIATION The grand puzzle of the duality of light has been unexpectedly resolved. The science of physics which is intended to seek truthful knowledge of nature's phenomena, has strangely been confused with technology's methodology needed for making artefacts. All phenomena turn out to be deterministic. The phenomena of light and radiation are effects of Universal Sharing of Energy in Nature, propagating in all directions and acting-at-a- distance. Such energy orinates in electrons orbiting in plasmas, atoms and molecules which are accelerated to visible frequencies in light sources as varied as the sun, chemical combustion, bioluminescence, etc. The discovery has been provisionally called the Shared Energy Concept (SEC). It does not denigrate technological theories. Resonances in the electron clouds (after W. Heisenburg) in ocular retinal surface molecules become the cornerstone of the visual process. We see a medeley of frequencies as evidenced by a vast luxuriance of colours, hues, and tints in the world around : we do not see "wavelengths" or "photons". This concept is outlined in greater detail in a range of publications , principally the following: Article on the Demystification of Physics in Toth Maatian Review July 1992 pages 5249-55. This magazine is available in US libraries or by contacting the publishers at 3101, 20th St., Lubbock, Texas 79410, USA A book entitled "Light and Radiation : a revolutionary Unitary Concept" (140pages, 15 illustrations, colour plates) Copies are available from Jim Thillaimuthu at 15/576 Centre Rd., Bentleigh, Melbourne, Victoria 3204 AUSTRALIA. From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1993 11:21:26 -0500 From: Arvind Kumar Subject: AAB and HPB Jerry, H., hi, let me insert comments/questions in your previous message. and later on I'll do the same to your last message which I got yesterday. It is a pleasure to engage in this work! Best Regards/Arvind > If you are familiar with Bailey's 24 > volumes, I am deeply interested in having a comparative > discussion with you. My purpose would be to compare the > writings to see where they agree and/or don't agree. I'm more > knowledgeable about Blavatsky than Bailey, but if your > familiarity with Bailey is comprehensive enough, I think we can > have a fruitful dialogue. As I recall, you said that you like > both Blavatsky and Bailey. I responded that Blavatsky is more > appealing to me. I had done some preliminary comparative > research on Bailey/Blavatsky about five or six years ago, but > other obligations left the work unfinished. I'm very interested > in continuing this research, and if you are also interested, we > can accomplish much more in dialogue. Is your work of six years ago documented in any way? If yes, I'd like to get a copy of the same. > In order to maximize the productiveness of this inquiry, > there would be a couple of ground rules that I would suggest: 1. > That information exchanged be backed up by evidence, and opinions > be supported by a rationale. 2. That the source of any quote be > cited, and care is taken that the quote is not used out of > context. > I hope that others on the net will also feel free to make > input, and that they also respect the above. > Assuming you are interested in this type of exploration, I > will "kick the ball off" by responding to some of your statements > to Eldon: > You expressed the opinion that Bailey "was the person that > HPB had predicted will appear in the 20th century to carry > further the work that she (HPB) had started in the 19th century." > You cannot be referring to H.P.B.'s statement that another effort > will be made in 1975, since Bailey died around 1948 or 49. > Therefore you must be referring to some prediction H.P.B. made > that I'm unfamiliar with. Would you kindly direct me to where I > can find this prediction in H.P.B.'s writings? I am reading SD currently and although I do not have the page number (I did not note it down a couple or three weeks ago when I was on that page) I do know that she (HPB) has indicated that someone will come in the 20th century and "explain more of SD"; this is also hinted at in the Introduction or preface to the "Treatise on Cosmic Fire". In addition, HPB has indicated that the 'Hierarchy' sends a 'massenger' towards the last quarter of every century. I do not know who that messanger is for this century, the only person that comes to my mind who may have started the teaching in 1975 is Benjamine Creme, who claims that the Lord Christ ('Maitreya') has taken a physical body and is waiting for the 'right' time to make himself known. Are you familiar with this and the associated publications like "Share International". Benjamin Creme (a British artist) has written several books (some of which I have read). In one of them, by the way, he comments on the initiatory status of HPB (4.0) and AAB (3.3). Some of the material he has published is hard to reconcile for some people but I for one cannot refute anything that he has written (so far). > You said: "Can you Eldon (or anyone reading this), point to > any specific area in which AAB teachings differ from HPB's > teaching? It appears to me that both of them used mental > processes (telepathy) to transcribe the information that they > received from the Hierarchy." > Your first question, is of course, the one I hope we will > explore. Regarding your second point: I have never seen anywhere > in Blavatsky's writings or in the Mahatma letters, any mention of > H.P.B. communicating with a "Hierarchy." She does claim, however > to be in communication with various people whom she referred to > as "Brothers;" principally the Mahatmas M. and K.H. But the > Mahatma letters show these people not as (though enlightened) > remote demigods, but rather very accessible human beings, whom > many people were in physical contact. Among those who knew the > Mahatmas in the flesh were H.P.B., Olcott, Damodar, and Subba > Row. The Mahatma's expressed themselves in very human ways and > expressed human needs. For instance, at the end of letter 6, > K.H. says: "Meanwhile, being *human* I have to rest. I took no > sleep for over 60 hours." K.H. also expresses negative emotions. > In letter 53, K.H., speaking of Hume, says: "I grow sometimes > very irritated at his petty feelings and spirit of > vindictiveness..." > It is of course true that K.H., if he is still alive, would > be a different person now. But the fact still remains that > H.P.B. was working with human beings with human weaknesses, and > that their is no reference (as far as I have been able to find), > to a "hierarchy" such as that outlined by A.A.B. Would you show > me where H.P.B. describes this "Hierarchy?" AAB refers to the 'brothers' of HPB as forming a part of the Spiritual Hierarchyof this planet, it is the great Ashram of Sanat Kumara. I do not see any difference here between HPB and AAB; AAB has never indicated that the 'brothers' are demi-gods; she has like HPB only indicated their much more evolved status than that of a normal aspirant or beginner on the path. > In your discussion of James Stephenson's book, you say: > "Further, she [A.A.B.] believes the sender to be a Tibetan lama > named Djwal Khul who had worked in a similar manner with Mrs. > Helena Petrovna Blavatsky when she wrote The Secret Doctrine, > first published in 1888." Does Stephenson give a source where > Djwal Khul "worked" with H.P.B. on THE SECRET DOCTRINE? This is > the first I have ever heard of Djwal Khul's involvement in that > book. Stephenson probably has not indicated anywhere in his book as to why he thinks that HPB got SD from DK but perhaps I can try to explain from what little I know. DK is himself a Master in one of the Ashrams under the 'Chauhanship' of the great 2nd Ray Ashram of KH (Ray2, Subray 3 Ashram is headed by DK). Allusions to DK can be found in the writings of Leadbeater (I do not remember the book or the page number from many years ago when I was reading Leadbeater). It appears that the Hierarchy as a whole has given DK the mandate to give out in three instalments much of the teaching to be given at this time (the first instalment was given thru HPB, the second one thru AAB and the third one will be given in the early 21st century (2025). DK apparently works in close coordination with the Masters M. and KH. There is a picture of DK in Leadbeater's "The Masters and the Path", where he is shown (his picture is hard to see) near the 'homes' of M. and KH. That is all I'll say for now about this. > You close by saying: "What I particularly like about both > HPB and AAB is their emphasis on selfless service." Yes I agree, > H.P.B. certainly tried to emphasize service. So we on this point > we have agreement. Would you please furnish a citation for your > quote? Yes, that wonderful quote appeared in an article entitled (I think) 'The Principle of Limitation' by Mary Bailey (Foster's 2nd wife) in the July-August issue of the 'Beacon' (a bimonthly publication of Lucis Trust). Someone has borrowed that issue of Beacon from me (believe it or not, after I had quoted that very quote over dinner to a friend who is on the path!) So I am not in a position just now to quote the book or page number but if you are very serious about getting the page number etc. all I have to do is to call Sarah Mchechnie or one of her co-workers at Lucis Trust (phone number 212 982-8770) to get the exact reference (I'll do that if you want me to). > Jerry Hejka-Ekins > From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1993 13:38:39 -0500 From: "Jessica L. Coker" Subject: I'm home. This is from Nancy. I've returned from my trip and am overwhelmed at the quantity of mail that accumulated. I shall try to catch up ASAP. Bye. From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Tue, 2 Nov 93 12:09:27 PST From: "Eldon B. Tucker" Subject: science This is by Brenda Tucker. For people who haven't had a chance to get a copy of the new biography by Sylvia Cranston titled, H.P.B., I'd like to report on one chapter, Chapter 3 Science and The Secret Doctrine in Part 7 The Century After. Believe it or not, this chapter begins with a quote from a presentation by none other than our own Jerry Hejka-Ekins (whom Cranston calls a "leading American Theosophist"). We're all very impressed Jerry!!! True to form, the chapter then proceeds to the subject of prophecy in THE SECRET DOCTRINE, and in particular the years 1888 and 1897 for producing a "large rent" in "the Veil of Nature." An overview from THE NEW OUTLINE OF SCIENCE by David Deitz follows beginning with a written report of a discovery of x-rays on December 28, 1895 by Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen in Wurzburg, Germany. In 1896, another major discovery: radioactivity was made by Antoine Henri Becquerel in Paris who studied fluorescence in relation to x-rays. Uranium and thorium were thought of as eternal atoms and these were found to be actively transforming themselves by throwing off great pieces of themselves (Robert Millikan). So it destroyed the idea of immutability of the elements. (Did it?) In 1897, the "most important discovery of all", that of the electron, by Sir J.J. Thomson who used the work of Sir William Crookes which asserted a fourth state of matter, solid, liquid, gaseous and now radiant matter. Two points: 1) A quote from THE SECRET DOCTRINE concerning a prediction by H.P.B. that Crookes' "discovery of radiant matter will have resulted in a further elucidation with regard to the true source of light, and revolutionize all the present speculations." 2) I believe Cranston is stating that the entire field of electronics "radio, motion pictures and electronic instruments" was possible because of this last great discovery. How are "electronics" related to the electron? Please excuse my ignorance on this subject. 1898: Marie and Pierre Curie discovered Radium, four times more radiant than Becquerel's uranium. 1900: Max Plank: "matter radiates electromagnetic waves, which are wave-like and corpuscular," also electrons jump from orbit to orbit without passing through intervening space---the quantum leap and QUANTUM MECHANICS were born. 1905: Einstein's E=mc2, mass is equivalent to energy. Matter is convertible into radiant energy. Cranston explains that matter is energy condensed, whereas energy is matter spread out. Check out a pending publication by Reed Carson entitled: BLAVATSKY'S FOREKNOWLEDGE OF TWENTIETH CENTURY SCIENCE. Other prophecies found in THE SECRET DOCTRINE: "The atom is divisible." "...where matter APPEARS inert, it is the most active." and "that there is no rest or cessation of motion in nature." A quote from "an American theosophist" (who is none other than W.Q. Judge) "force and matter are only two sides of the same SUBSTANCE." or her own direct assertion from ISIS UNVEILED, "Every objective manifestation...requires two conditions: will and force--plus MATTER...and these three are all convertible forces. . . ." Here's H.P.B. in THE SECRET DOCTRINE again, "The wave motion of living particles" becomes comprehensible on the theory of a spiritual . . . universal Vital Principle, independent of OUR matter, and manifesting as ATOMIC ENERGY only on OUR plane of consciousness. Not surprisingly, Cranston states that scientists at MIT have regularly studied THE SECRET DOCTRINE in groups. In the field of biological sciences, after a lengthy discussion of genetics, H.P.B. relates, "The Universe is worked and GUIDED FROM WITHIN outward. . . . The whole Kosmos is guided, controlled, and animated by an endless series of Hierarchies of sentient beings, each having a mission to perform. . . . They vary infinitely in their respective degrees of consciousness and intelligence." In the field of Astronomy, scientists are recognizing reincarnation versus a destiny of destruction. The quote from THE SECRET DOCTRINE is "This process has been going on from all eternity, and our present universe is but one of an infinite series, which had no beginning and will have no end." Gaia Science, or the new field of studying the earth as a living entity, was dedicated in THE SECRET DOCTRINE where H.P.B. says, "It hardly seems possible that science can disguise from itself much longer, by the mere use of terms such as "force" and "energy," the fact that things that have life are living things, whether they be atoms or planets." Once more, if you'd like to generate an awareness of other worlds being inhabited, "think how if minerals are alive, then of course all worlds are inhabited." (CRANSTON) Scientists, once material, are now expressing deep belief that physics and mysticism are somehow fraternal twins. (Ken Wilber, QUANTUM QUESTIONS, MYSTICAL WRITINGS OF THE WORLD'S GREAT PHYSICISTS) A scientist is one who pricks "the impenetrable in order to know it, that this manifestation of highest wisdom is accessible and to the scientist, this knowledge and this feeling of awe is at the center of true religiousness." "The devotion and strength of feeling from those who pioneer work in theoretical science, without which achievements are not possible, is a cosmic religious feeling." AND "...the serious workers are the only profoundly religious people." (Einstein, THE UNIVERSE AND DR. EINSTEIN and THE WORLD AS I SEE IT) As Sarah (Balam) and Eldon and I study together twice a month, I thought you might be interested to know that her complaint, after becoming acquainted with theosophy several years ago with a group meeting somewhere near San Francisco, was that theosophy was outdated. I could see where she might think so since the most widely studied literature is from the last century and people are projective of what they read as much as they are able to be. I, for one, admit that I am the outdated one, not being able to keep up with the scientific understandings, and not theosophy. It really helps to be able to share this chapter with the subscribers to this network as in some ways I'm still going through what many learned men and women did a century ago, and I'll probably need to repeat the experience as with so many day to day activities, this awareness and appreciation of great laws, doesn't retain its vividness. From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1993 16:03:48 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: religion, science, and philosophy Jay: There are certain qualities, certain virtues associated with the ideal scientist, noble attributes of the human spirit that should be strived after. The same is true of the philosopher and religious person. A scientist seeks practical knowledge of the outer world. The philosopher works with pure thought, things that cannot be outward manipulated. And the religious student deals with matters of the spirit, matters of perfection, unity, divinity, relatedness to the fountainhead of life. This is talking about the ideal of each area of thought. In actual practice, as found in our western society, we can find fault with the typical person in them. The typical geologist, the typical writer of philosophy, the typical Baptist, may fall far short of the ideals. I might find fault with the practice of science, not in its mastery of the material world, which is unexcelled in known history, but rathern in its attempt to explain everything in material terms, in its total materialism. In the middle ages, in our western world, when religious thought ruled, there was no experimentation, no checking of ideas against the outer world, no reality checks. Modern science stepped in and showed remarkable success due to its empiricism, its accumulcation of a body of knowledge due to objectivity and experimentation. This is not to say that such success is solely a property of science. Similar success would be found with philosophy or religion where experimentation, a continual re-examination of beliefs, constant reality checks done. Such was not done because the religious and philosophical thought of the day, dominated by politics and the church, was spiritually dead, with but rare exceptions in saintly individuals and in underground spiritual movements like the Masons and Rosicrucians. We can derive an understanding of life from external observations, from which theories are derived and then tested and proven to work. These observations and experiments need not be simply of material things and physical actions, but can also be of imagination, thought, and using deeper spiritual faculties. Our age is basically a material one, both in terms of the long run, the 432,000 year Kali Yuga, and in terms of the shorter period of perhaps a few hundred years. In this period, the emphasis is on having and working with material objects, rather than interpersonal relations, wisdom and study, or the contemplation of the divine. (Purucker speaks of short periods of time, of perhaps a century, during which there is an emphasis on religion, then on philosophy, then on science. This would be a very minor cycle.) One sign of the material age is how everything is seen in terms of physical matter. An action is seen as good if it has material effects, like feeding people or housing them. Philosophy is seen as a tool to understand the finer and more rarified behaviors of matter. Religion and the search for the divine looks more often to subatomic particles than to something entirely nonphysical. And even metaphysics describes higher levels of consciousness as merely subtler types of matter. The philsophical and spiritual are not extrapolations of the physical world! We must not forget that consciousness is not matter, it comes from an experience of something that is apart from, but at the same time as material existence. New forms of consciousness do not arise from finding new forms of matter, they arise from an initial spark of awareness by sympathic vibration from others having it, then grow to fullness by giving our awareness and attention to them. Looking about us, we see many people searching for more. But those people are a small minority. We see many of them because we are among them, and associate with people of like mind. The majority are good, fine people, but they are not looking for something more, they are quite happy living their lives as the existing karma dictates. And of those we see searching, many are dissatisified with their current *form* of belief, and will be quite happy to stop thinking and exploring life as soon as they find one that fits perhaps a different lifestyle than they had before. They are like people that upon waking up in the middle of the night, roll over in bed, get more comfortable, then go back to sleep. The real form of searching, the real inquirers, the real seekers in life are looking for something more than a lifestyle replacement. They will not just be happy to become vegetarian, chant "om", and burn incense, nor to replace The Bible or Koran with "The Secret Doctrine" or "The Voice of the Silence". They are looking for something of a higher purpose than just living a life for its own sake. They are feeling the initial urge towards *compassion*, the distinguishing consciousness that sets apart the servers of humanity from the rest. There is a dual-track to life, the builders and the architects. We as humans are at the height of powers and capabilities as builders. We can proceed to become Dhyan Chohans, after the seven rounds are up, if our evolution is successful, but still be just loftier, more advanced builders. The higher track is that of the architects, the members of the Hierarchy of Compassion, those who work on the luminous side of life, the life-givers, as opposed to the life-receivers or manifesters. Members of the Hierarchy of Compassion have dedicated their lives to the betterment of the world, at the expense of their own futher spiritual evolution, although their eventual reward is far greater than those who choose to go on and leave the rest of us behind. The material progress in the world is directed and ruled over by humanity in its role as builders. We can participate in that role. But there is the other role that we can play as well, the role of architects, and that is something entire different that what we might think. We live our lives in an entirely differently way inwardly, although the outer differences may not be noticable, at first, and our conscious participation in life is different. We may still be a scientist, philosopher, or religious leader, but we are "in the world but not of the world". Like in the Ox-Hearding Pictures in Buddhism, we have changed inwardly and now are participating in the world in an entirely different manner. We are not working for the advancement of science, religion, or philosophy, but rather are living and giving outward expression to something higher. Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Tue, 2 Nov 93 21:03:18 PST From: "Eldon B. Tucker" Subject: group karma When we talk about karma, it is usually *individual karma* that we are referring to. There is occasional mention of group karma, but it is never made clear what that means. There is no sentient being that functions as a group, to which a collection of beings belong. There is no being that is the United States, nor one for California, Los Angeles, a swarm of bees, nor any grouping or collection of beings. A group does not sometimes have clearcut boundaries, and the groups that we belong to overlap in a multitude of ways. One person, for instance, could be a woman, American, vegetarian, Mason, mother, resident of San Diego, and member of a particular subrace of the Fifth Root Race. We could mention group after group to which she belongs. None of these groups are individual beings. There is not a being which is archetypal womanhood, nor another which is the essential nature of a resident of the city of San Diego. Although there is not an individual being, of which a group consists, that does not mean that there is nothing to the group. There *is* something, an unique *effect* from some being or beings. The group consists of the range or extent of an *influence*, spreading out in life to touch everyone of a kindred spirit. Like the reach of waves in a pond resulting from the toss of a rock, the effect of a particular influence reaches to touch the lives of individuals to the extent that they are attune to it. This is the meaning of group karma. Because of the interconnected nature of life, when we give forth in life an impersonal effort, not focusing on a particular individiual, we touch others in a general sense. Others are changed to the extent that they have the corresponding quality in themselves. They do not experience the quality as specifically coming from us, and we do not specifically sense the effects of our action going to certain particular people. The interaction between us and the rest of life is at an impersonal level, and we are not making individual karma. The purest form of impersonal action is essentially the sort of experience that is to be had on the formless planes, where we act on the world without having to have forms to represent ourselves, where we act directly on the surrounding environment. Our effects, though, however impersonal, do not have the scope, the reach, the power that can touch and change the lives of millions of people. What we usually call groups and their large-scale behavior are the effects of the Dhyani-Chohans, acting on the elementals, creating achetypal parterns and molds of thought and action in akasha and then the astral light, from which our personalities and the lives that we live are formed. When we participate in group karma, we are living out karmic bonds between ourselves and other, often higher beings, beings that we may never see or know directly, but only indirectly through the effects of their impersonal actions. As we perfect ourselves spiritually, we too are learning to become impersonal forces for good in the world, where our actions can touch and uplift the lives of others without creating personal bonds. Group karma is produced due to impersonal action. There is not a self-awareness of a connection between the individual responsible for the influence on the world that causes the group, and an individual that is affected and thereby belongs to the group. Despite the lack of this awareness lack of awareness, there is a personal link, there is a connection between the two, between the group-creater and the group participant. Group karma is a form of individual karma, in the final analysis, since everyone and everything is interconnected. Our very being is composed of the connections between ourselves and the rest of life. And when we do an impersonal work in the world, we reach out and touch many more people that we might realize, we uplift the whole world, be it but slightly. And looking about us, we see the far-reaching affects of the actions of a multitude of wonderous divinities, a world of overlapping beauty after beauty, all reaching out and touching us and brightening our lives! Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1993 09:39:55 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: NDE's, OBE's, and spiritual vision A few weeks ago, Brenda and I attended a one-day program at the Krotona School of Theosophy on Near Death Experiences. It was put on by Dr. Robert Ellwood, a Prof. in the School of Religion at USC (and also a member of the Los Angeles T.S.), and his wife, Gracia Fay Ellwood, a graduate student. Following are some notes and ideas regarding what they presented. ---- There are different parts to the experience. Early on, there is a beautifly sense of peace, and one does not want to go back to the living. One encounters either a welcoming committee or a being of light. If what one meets is a welcoming committee, the individuals say to go back, they remind one that his life is not yet finished. If one meets a being of light, the being asks one what he has done with his life, leading him to decide on his own to go back. Fifty percent have a memory of an NDE, fourty percent a sense of peace, thirty-seven percent an out-of-body [OBE] experience, twenty-four a tunnel or darkness, sixteen percent light at the other end, and ten percent experience going into the light. A few experiences, on the other hand, were painful. The general affect of a NDE is an increased love for life, and an increased desire to learn, to know things, to understand life. When out of the body, the observation of physical things and events is present, the person can see what is going on in the operating room or about him. Regarding non-physical things, the experience is subjective, colored by the religious background and expectations of the individual. This is because the experience is generally understood and interpreted in terms of what the individual knows. An important part of the NDE is the recollection of one's past life. All the events are relived, in passing. The NDE is clear, lucid, as real an experience as being awake and alive in the physical body. It is different from the typical OBE (astral projection). The question was asked if, since NDE usually are followed by an awakening of an interest in the spiritual, could not astral experiences also be used to that effect? The answer was no, because OBE's tend to be quite different. In an OBE experience, people report the mind to not work as clearly as in an NDE, it is foggy, much less clear and conscious. Something different is happening. We were told that the closest affect to an NDE would probably come from psychadelic drugs, and not astral projection (OBE's), although it is not to be recommended. NDE's happen, we hear, much more frequently that we'd expect. At nearly every audience where they would speak, there would be someone raising a hand and sharing an experience. ---- When I was in junior high school, I read all of Leadbeater's books on Theosophy, and wanted to be psychic like him. My dreams were more vivid at that time, and I'd sometimes be self-aware in a dream. My thoughts and interests were directed more in that direction, so that area of my life was more active. Since then, my interests have shifted more to philosophy and the higher mind, and the focus has been on knowing and understanding things, rather then just seeing them. The assumption that the study of NDE's is *real*, and that of the theosophical teachings is less real, possibly shaky, somewhat insubstantial, says more about one's relation to the teachings, than it does about Theosophy. The teachings *can* become as real and as proven by experience as anything in life. But this experience is not with the seeing with psychical eyes, the visiting of other planes, the production of phenomena to the amazement of sceptics and friends. The experience comes from establishing a firm, unshakeable relationship with the source of wisdom and understanding, Mahat, an opening of the "eye of wisdom" (a poetic figure of speech, not a literal "eye") rather than an opening of the "eye of psychic sight". There is a way to "see" knowing, understanding, wisdom, to appraise it at a distance, in the same manner as we see a physical panorama with our eyes and look at both things near and far. This is the true form of spiritual vision. Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1993 16:06:21 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: accidents and other aspects of karma Karma is said to govern the happenings in life. Nothing is due to change. There is a meaning behind every apparently random external event. Our unexpected misfortunes are due to something that we've done in the past. Everything that happens in life is deserved, and justice rules the world. On the other hand, we hear about accidents, how things can happen, unintentionally, that affect us. How can these be explained in light of karma? One example is where a man dies prematurely, before his normal span of life, and spends the remaining time asleep in kamaloka. An apple may fall off a tree and hit me on the head. A careless driver may crash into my car. A mosquitoe could bite me and give me malaria. None of these effects on me were intentional, were knowingly done by the other party, and I may not have a personal karmic connection with them, but the events may happen anyway. Besides accidents, there is the problem of someone interfering in the karma of another. I may, of my own free will, choose to be and act in a certain way. Because of someone's intervention in my life, I may not be able to freely be myself. I did nothing myself to bring this on, it was an act of the volition, of the free will, of someone else, yet it affects me. The third question is regarding new versus old karma. When is something but old karma coming back to one, a stored-up experience that is now taking its turn to come out in life, as opposed to new karma, something entirely new to one, that is created by the free will of the moment? These three problems arise when we try to view life from the standpoint of the personal self. When we view things from the standpoint of the separation of you from me, of subject and object, of one being from apart from another, there will be certain aspects of life that just cannot be explained. The higher standpoint of buddhi, of the interconnected nature of life, of how we co-create our world, must be taken in order to find the solution. It is important to realize that we create the world together, cooperatively, as a negotiated action. Our very selves are the living connections with everyone else. We are, in our essential natures, in our buddhic principle, a living bundle of relationships, and not distinct, separate selves. In creating the world together, we draw into manifestation those others who will play a part in our upcoming lives. We bring them into our lives, and they bring us into their lives. It is something negotiated, something that is based upon the living links between us and them. The world is not a puppet show, animated solely by your or my karma! And you or I are not puppets dancing to the show of someone else's karma. We and the others bring about the world, no one has special say over everyone else. An accident can happen because life is not predetermined. The potential for a certain sequence of events in life may be present, but what actually happens is subject to the free will of the moment. When an accident happens, it only seems such from the standpoint of our personality. Other parts of us are participating in the event, and there is always the possibility that the free will of others was involved in making choices that impacted us. When someone interferrs in the karma of another, he is constraining the other's free well, his motivation, his ability to choose and direct his life. Something has been done to the other person, a new state of affairs exists between the two. Their relationship has changed, and the two of them are thereby different. This change has brought the two of them out of a state of harmony, and adjustments need to be made. They will just naturally come to have experiences together again in live, because there are new things between them that need to be worked out. And I would not make a distinction between old and new karma. We are forever linked to all living beings, there is a connection, a tie that binds us, a connection with them that helps define them as being what they are and makes us what we are. Making new karma is really change the nature of the relationship between us and others, changing ourselves and thereby changing the others as well. In fact, as we strive towards nirvana, towards liberation, we cannot help but uplift others towards the same goal. And we cannot fully enter that bliss until every last trailing soul following us also crosses the threshold, because there's a part of ourselves left behind with everyone that follows. We're not truly liberated until all of life can join us in the same bliss! Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1993 05:18:13 -0500 From: Arnold Stoper Subject: from Jim Anderson To John Mead .: Many thanks for starting this group. You have good ideas for its evolving structure. Eldon suggests that articles might be sent by email "to JEM for inclusion in the library ... posting to 'theos-l' the title, length, and a synopsis ... to let everyone know that it is available." Are you agreed? What is the library? Yesterday, November 1, I completed the reading of a 39-page paper I wrote for the Oakland Branch on love, sex, and marriage from the theosophical viewpoint and as seen in the actual lives of the leading theosophists between 1875 and 1925. After the reading, a member expressed the desire to see the paper published. Send it to you as per Eldon's suggestion? If yes, how exactly? James T. Anderson From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1993 05:16:22 -0500 From: Arnold Stoper Subject: from Jim Anderson To Leonard Cole .: The 1992 American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language doesn't have "hypnogogia" either, but it does have "hypnogogic." You were right on target saying, "For me, it occurs in that strange world between full wakefulness and sleep." Abbreviated, here's American Heritage: "'hypnagogic' also 'hypnogogic' ..1. Inducing sleep; soporific. 2. Of or relating to the state of drowsiness preceding sleep. ... Greek 'hupnos', sleep ...+ Greek 'agogos', leading ..." Seems to me the definition should include drowsiness succeeding sleep also. Probably that's left out because the idea of "inducing" the drowsiness after sleep is hard to grasp - but it shouldn't be too hard for theosophists to try to figure out. I suggest that "dreams" induced by medication or other physical substances are more likely than "normal" dreams to focus mostly on the etheric body rather than the astral body, and thus disturb the physical body and cause physical fear. As for the 3rd Object of the T.S., I suggest as one starting point, a careful noting of what are called "coincidences", and careful thought about the ways the "inner planes" might be involved in bringing these events about. James T. Anderson From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1993 05:12:19 -0500 From: Arnold Stoper Subject: from Jim Anderson To Jerry Hejka-Ekins .: Interesting clarification re your "crawling ants" on the wall. Perhaps our experiences are fundamentally different. I'm fairly certain I'm not "interpreting" as spiders some unfamiliar psychic whatever. Every time, over many years, it's a spider plain as day, a nice long look at it (several slow seconds), it crawls, then fades away. For me (my experiences), it's gratuitous over-complication ( at least at this point) to posit anything other than an "astral" spider of some sort - and my question is, Why always a spider? For your experiences, I suggest that you ask yourself if you're absolutely sure that your ants are only an imaginative substitute. It's important, as you say, to distinguish between what's "imagination" and what's "out there", but a common failing of the realization of this importance is to turn a lot of "out there" into mere "imagination." Any other candidates for our insects-and-arachnids-on-the-wall study group? To Everyone .: In the correspondence flowing through this network, I keep seeing the word "tenants" where what is meant is "tenets." Theosophical tenants are a landlord's theosophical rent-payers. Theosophical tenets are basic ideas held by theosophists. James T. Anderson From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1993 05:06:17 -0500 From: Arnold Stoper Subject: from Jim Anderson To Eldon Tucker .: Regarding your October 15 statement,"... a human monad could not exist as many independent human beings, with separate personalities and bodies, at once!", note this from KH on page 285 of "The Mahatma Letters": "The Tchang-chub (an adept who has, by the power of his knowledge and soul enlightenment, become exempt from the curse of UNCONSCIOUS transmigration) - may, at his will and leisure, and instead of reincarnating himself only after bodily death, do so, and repeatedly - during his life if he chooses. He holds the power of choosing for himself new bodies - whether on this or any other planet - while in possession of his old form, that he generally preserves for purposes of his own. Read the book of 'Khiu-tee' and you will find in it these laws." Excellent words from you on the group's openness to material and on the organization of that material. From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1993 23:19:19 -0500 From: Sheldon Butler <71311.3433@compuserve.com> Subject: RE: Invisible Helpers Jay Amundson, Thank you for the reply. I am not familiar with what you called guided meditations or path walkings. Could you elaborate on these for me? Thanks again... Sheldon Butler From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1993 22:30:43 -0500 From: Jerry Hejka-Ekins Subject: AAB, HB and HPB, Science, and Group Karma Arvind Kumar The research of six years ago on AAB and HPB is on a backup disk deeply buried somewhere. There is also a hard copy around, but probably yet to be unpacked. We have been living in this house for about a year, and there are still dozens of boxes still unopened from when we left Los Angeles in the summer of 1990. As I recall, the "research" was more of a compilation of data, comparing parallel passages, then an exposition of conclusions. It wasn't even in the first draft stage. Since it is so incomplete, I would feel a bit embarrassed to make it available until it is in a more comprehensive form. By that time, we will probably have long ago covered everything in that paper anyway. But when I do run across it, I will be happy to share the correlations, as they will save us both a lot of unnecessary work. In order to comment on the passage you cite in the S.D. concerning someone coming in the 20th century to "explain" more the book, I will need to know the page number where I can find this passage. Also, please advise me as to the edition, publisher and date of THE SECRET DOCTRINE that you are using. Editions vary in page numbering, and sometimes are even edited. I'm aware of AAB's statements that the `brothers' formed a part of a "Spiritual Hierarchy of the planet." My concern on this point is that I have never found such a hierarchical structure in HPB's writings. There are several possible reasons for this, e.g.: It was a deeper teaching that H.P.B. couldn't speak of; HPB misunderstood the organization; AAB misunderstood the organization; AAB misunderstood HPB, I misunderstood HPB, The teaching is really there, but in a writing I haven't yet read etc. The connection of the seven rays with a spiritual hierarchy is also, as far as I know, not in HPB's writings. Though this hierarchy idea is a basic point in our dialogue, it probably will take some time before we will have gathered together enough material to come to some meaningful conclusions. Regarding my statement about the Mahatmas being regarded as "demi-gods," I was applying the statement to popular conceptions of them. I didn't mean to imply that AAB referred to them as such. But my impression is that AAB's characterization of them is more consistent with a popular conception than the one given by HPB and in the MAHATMA LETTERS. I'll expand on this idea later when I have a little more time, and after a little more foundation has been laid. But perhaps in the mean time, you will be able to show that I'm under a misconception. You mentioned the writings of Leadbeater. I have had several Bailey students tell me that AAB considered Leadbeater's writings "suspect." Everyone who has mentioned it, has regarded it as common knowledge, and I never was quick enough at the time to question them on it. Do you know the source of this information, and if true, the basis for her saying so? Regarding Benjamine Creme. Yes, we had some representatives from the Tara Foundation do a presentation at the Los Angeles Branch of the Theosophical Society, back in the late seventies. I also have somewhere, a tape of an interview he gave on the radio in Los Angeles. He acknowledges being familiar with the writings of AAB and HPB, but unless he really is the "predicted" messenger for the last quarter of this century, his testimony will throw little light on the present dialogue. At this time, I'm not convinced that he is, nor am I sure that he represents himself to be that "messenger." Regarding Stephenson's book; are you saying that Leadbeater wrote that DK was given the mandate to give out the teachings in three installments? If so, where did Leadbeater write this? I don't have a subscription to the BEACON, so issue and page number isn't necessary. Your citation that the quote is from an article entitled "The Principle of Limitation" by Mary Bailey, and that it appeared in the July-August `93 issue of the BEACON, is sufficient information for me at this time. Brenda Tucker I'm delighted to see that you raised the often repeated complaint that theosophy is outdated. Yet the scientific material that you discussed from THE SECRET DOCTRINE, shows how remarkably up to date Blavatsky's writings really are. This is not only true of her treatment of science, but in other areas as well. Even though her works are over a century old, Blavatsky's writings always remain current. As you may know, Lina Psaltis' DYNAMICS OF THE PSYCHIC WORLD, is a compilation of Blavatsky's writings on that subject. Lina used to remark about how often people would approach her after reading DYNAMICS and talk about how up to date Blavatsky's ideas on the subject seemed to be. Of all of the times that I heard people complain about theosophy being out of date, I've never heard that complaint from anyone who has really sat down and read Blavatsky's writings. I think there are still many untapped hints in THE SECRET DOCTRINE, awaiting for bright and intuitive minds to explore. They don't have to be MIT students either. Eldon Tucker Thank you for your discussion on group Karma. However, I have some difficulty applying your ideas in the way you express them to current events. The recent Los Angeles Riots, for instance--how would you apply these ideas of group karma? Or in the case of the recent fires in Los Angeles, that burned hundreds of homes. How does group karma apply here? Jerry Hejka-Ekins From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1993 10:30:57 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: many bodies for an Adept Jim Anderson: Considering the quote from "The Mahatma Letters": "an adept ... may, at his will .. instead of reincarnating himself only after bodily death, do so, and repeatedly--during his life if he chooses. He holds the power of choosing for himself new bodies--whether on this or any other planet--while in possession of his old form..." There are a number of things that this quote could refer to. First is the power to consciously die, to leave behind the currently physical body and take up a new one by conscious choice. The new body could be a new conception, or the taking over of the body, typically of a child, of someone about to die. The second thing that the quote might refer to is the fact that on any of the globes and planets that an Adept might visit, on either the inner rounds or the outer rounds, there is the possibility of a body to "incarnate" into. When we pass through the other globes in the after-death states, we do so unconsciously, in the bosom of the Monad, asleep and unaware of the outer world, without really taking on bodies on the globes as we pass through them. An Adept could take on a body on another globe, in addition to that on globe D, but I would say that he could not be consciously functioning and active in both at the same time. One of the two bodies would always be asleep or apparently in meditation. The third thing that the quote could refer to would the possession of two bodies on globe D. But again, I would say that only one would be awake and active at a time. Such a situation would be very difficult to deal with, having and switching back and forth between two personalities. One of the two would "sleep" a lot. An example, although not an Adept, would be with W.Q. Judge, who was said to also be a Raja, an easterner, to have a second personality and body at the same time. There is no value to multiple personalities/bodies to switch between, in a general sense, because as we progress spiritually the emphasis in consciousness is away from the personal, and we are increasingly able to live out all of our karma in the (a single) personality. The fourth aspect of multiple bodies might refer to the mayavi-rupa, a form for conscious existence created out of the astral light, a type of existence where we have the full six principles, minus the physical, and still might be seen by people. While apart from the physical body, we could project our consciousness elsewhere, and exist in a temporary, mind-born form. This is not something appropriate, though, for the typical human experience, but is rather a form of existence in the nirmanakaya, the type of existence that sixth rounders, bodhisattvas or buddhas, might take on. Even the Buddha was born as a man in a body of flesh, and Avataras, as well, appear through and in living men. Participation in globe D life requires a physical form, of some sort. Those without either forms, or some means of affecting others with bodies, remain but on-lookers. There are spheres of causes and those of effects. Those of causes are where self-conscious manifested life is possible, like our globe D physical earth. Surrounding it is the astral light, extending from the gross physical forms up to the loftiest akasha. Anything that is to happen self-consciously must be in close proxmity to the earth, which is a staging area for manifestation. When in the after-death states, in the astral, in dreams, new karma is not made, because we are away from such a sphere of causes. We are creating our environment and world, and not subject to the will and rule of law of those beings that make up the laws of nature. To put the whole thing simply, I would say that although we might have more than one car in the garage, we only drive one at a time. When you consider something like a colony of ants, a beehive, or a city of people, there is not a group being that is incarnating as all the separate ants, bees, or people at once. Consider a beehive. The bees are living according to the preprogrammed pattern of consciousness that we'd call instinct. They are born into a certain family, and cooperate and interact as members of that birth family. There is a sense of belonging to a certain hive, a sense of physical kinship with the fellow bees. They perform their functions according to instinct, tradition, the roles that they have been born into, and it just happens that as bees they interact in groups of a certain size. Were they birds, they might associate in flocks. Even as people, we seek out various groups to participate in. I cannot agree with the idea that separate individual entities, all self-consciously functioning apart from one another, are but aspects of a single being. I would consider the idea of group souls, individualization, a parallel path of evolution through the deva kingdom bypassing the human kingdom, differences in essential nature due to being on one of the seven rays, and twin souls as examples of ideas that arose in the Besant/Leadbeater branch of Theosophy. All these ideas arose from, perhaps, a misunderstanding of the essential nature of the Monad, and an attempt to christianize and popularize the theosophical teachings. I think that the nature of the Monad is an important topic to discuss, and we aren't really exploring it when we say "I believe it is this way" and others say "No, I believe it to be this other way." We can use quotes as the start of discussion--not as the final word on anything--and can derive great value from the exploration of the Teachings. The Teachings are explored, to an extent, as an exercise of logic and philosophy. We hold up one Truth, then examine it from many different angles, relating the many other great Truths to it. And when we are finished, the final result is not to have *proved* something, but rather to have *revealed* something new. We never succeed in *converting* others, and there is no value in doing so. What we achieve, if successful, is the slight lifting of the veil of Isis, the giving expression to a new Truth that was not seen before. Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1993 11:40:51 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: James Long biography I received the following from Andrew Rooke a few weeks ago, and thought it might be of interest to share with the list. At about 130 lines, it's short enought to be considered a message, rather than an article. I'm passing it on to help share some information about the Pasadena T.S., form its own point of view, in a sympathetic light. I'm not saying that I necessarily agree with its view of how things happened, or Long's role in theosophical history. Events on the Point Loma side of the theosophical family tree are little known in Adyar circles, and it's good to give them some exposure. Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) ---- > Many thanks for your message of Oct 19 regarding Jim Long's > biography. Please find below the biography published in the > Australasian TS newsletter no7, Sept 1984. Please feel free > to make this available to any others interested. ---- Following upon the death of his friend and mentor, Col Arthur L Conger in Feb 1951, James A. Long assumed Leadership of the Theosophical Society (Pasadena). His leadership marked a major turning point in the organizational structure of the work of the Society and paved the way for the present period of public work and open discussion of theosophical teachings. Jim Long or even "Uncle Jim" as he was affectionately known amongst the thousands of people he met on his many overseas tours, was born at York, Pennsylvannia on August 27, 1898. At four years of age he was severely crippled with polio, long before modern therapy had found the means to relieve its after effects. But typical of his tenacious spirit, he turned this "handicap" into a blessing for it brought with the passing of time a depth of compassion and richness of understanding which come to few in a single lifetime. Graduating from York High School in 1916, he specialized in the study of business administration and entered private business as an accountant and auditor. He later became a business management consultant following his profession in Pennsylvania, Michigan and in the US capital, Washington, DC. At the outbreak of World War 2, Mr Long entered government service as a management consultant in the Office of the Quartermaster General. There, with other consultants, he assisted in streamlining the procurement and distribution procedures in order to epidite the supply of Quartermaster's materials to the US armies at the foreign theatres of operation. In addition to the task of cutting red tape, it became his duty to develop and conduct concentrated training programmes involving the development of training procedures and methods for the proper instruction of supervising personnel. Upon completion of his work with the Office of the Quartermaster General, Mr Long was transferred to the War Production Board in 1944, where he participated in the planning necessary for the readjustments required for the domestic economy at the cessation of hostilities. This involved the preparation of a satisfactory means of making the gradual transition from rationing of commercial vehicles and other major products, as well as planning for the de-control of industrial output and distribution. At the conclusion of the war in 1945, Mr Long was transferred to the Dept of State where he assisted in making necessary organizational changes to meet the Departments peacetime responsibilities. During his assignment there, Mr Long was sent to the 1946 General Assembly of the United Nations then in session at New York as advisor to the United Nations Delegation. Whilst there, he was also commisssioned to fulfill certain Management Consultant's responsibilities for the Control Office of the Assistant Secretary of State in connection with the council of Foreign Ministers also in session in New York at that time. In October 1947, Jim Long resigned from the State Dept and came to California, placing himself at the service of Col Conger, then Leader of the Theosophical Society (Pasadena). Mr Long's association with the Theosophical Society had commenced a decade earlier. In 1935, shortly after taking up membership of the Society, Mr Long assisted in the work of the American Section accepting the appointment of Business manager thereof when Col Conger was made President of the American Section in 1939. Therafter, Mr Long having moved to Washington DC worked closely with Col Conger in his theosophical activities. When Col Conger assumed the office of Leader in 1945, Mr Long was made a member of the Cabinet of the Theosophical Society (Pasadena). In December 1950, Jim Long was sent on a world tour shortly before Col Conger died in order to contact officials and key members with regard to the future work of the Society. Jim Long with the very difficult task of closing down the Esoteric Sections of every country visited for the time had come for the "esoteric has become exoteric and exoteric has become esoteric". This presaged other directives under his leadership which dismantled much of the organizational structure of the National Sections. This in turn precipitated a new age of theosophical endeavour where members were given the opportunity for a long period of reflection and inculcation of the teachings already given out in 75 years of theosophical work. In some sections this unique initiative was strongly opposed by some members who subsequently left the Society. This reflected the depth of the challenge it was Jim Long's karma to present to the membership of adhering to the original programme of the Society rather than becoming entangled in its organizational aspects. From the perspective of the developing work of the 1980s we can percieve the wisdom of this initiative as those servants of the work who adhered to the original programme throughout this long period of challenge, are now doubtless better fitted to convey the essence of theosophy to a generation of seekers. Jim Long as well qualified by training and temperament to this difficult task. he was a man who had little time for what he called "intellectual tennis" or for those who indulged in merely dissecting the shell of the doctrine while the kernel of applied soul wisdom lay unnoticed. In his many tours of the National Sections, his lectures to the young across the country, and in his writing, he re-emphasized the heart doctrine over the intellectual speculation which is a constant temptation as the organizational and consequent "theological" aspects develop in any religious or philosophical organization. This message pervaded the new theosophical magazine he founded in October 1951. Sunrise, which continues today, was founded not as an official or overly learned journal, but as an informal meeting-ground. He envisaged it as a magazine dedicated to the embracing purpose of forming "bridges of understanding" between the seeking restless souls of every generation and the ageless body of wisdom-teachings which are the quintessence of every religious and philosophical system. The beauty of this approach th theosophy is encapsulated in his book "Expanding Horizons" published in 1965. This book provides a straight forward introduction to theosophical teachings yet maintains a depth for reflection the equal of any of the theosophical classics. For this reason it has frequently been used as an introductory book for enquirers and continues to fulfill this function as the basic text for the Theosophical Correspondence Course no1 introduced in 1984. For twenty years Jim Long steadfastly maintained his objective as Leader; to present these enduring spiritual principles simply and directly, so that all who wanted seriously to search out the sources of truth and discover in the process a deeper meaning for man's existence, would have the opportunity to build a sound philosophy by which they could live. This charge was passed to his successor, our present Leader Grace F Knoche upon Jim Long's death in 1971. In this age of renewed organizational activity and public work, today's theosophists have taken up the challenge to convey this core message of theosophy to a new generation of seekers without becoming overly obsessed with personalities or the outer trappings of the Society's work. Theosophists have had the opportunity to learn basic lessons about the true nature of this work and the pitfalls that await its servants due to the efforts of Jim Long and his co-workers. They are therefore better fitted to carry its message of Universal Brotherhood forward to a new century and beyond." ---- > Phew! That was a long typing job and I have no copy on disk as I have > had trouble downloading before and did not want to risk it with this > biography. If you want further information, I suggest contacting the > Theosophical University Library in Pasadena and reading Grace > Knoche's article "The Quality of a Life" Sunrise Sept 1971. From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1993 15:55:31 -0500 From: Arvind Kumar Subject: Re: AAB, HB and HPB, Science, and Group Karma This message is a reply to Jerry H. but I have posed certain questions in between which I hope others on the network will be interested in looking at and possibly answering as well! Hi Jerry, Thanks for your speedy reply to my message. I have a few quick responses/ questions as inserted below. The indented parts are your questions and the ones without indent are my responses/questions. > In order to comment on the passage you cite in the S.D. > concerning someone coming in the 20th century to "explain" more > the book, I will need to know the page number where I can find > this passage. Also, please advise me as to the edition, > publisher and date of THE SECRET DOCTRINE that you are using. > Editions vary in page numbering, and sometimes are even edited. One problem I have is that I can access the 'network' only at work which means that I donot have all my reference material with me when I am writing to you. I will have to look (with a fine-tooth comb!) again into SD to find the exact page number but I'll try to do it over the next several days. The edition of SD that I have is the original facsimile edition which I purchased some 4 years ago (but started reading only a couple of months ago). It is a two-volume set, with each vloume consisting of two main parts, with some addenda at the end. By the way, HPB indicates towards the end of Part 1 Vol 2 that she was ready with Volumes 3 and 4 of SD. Were those ever published? Also, I'd like to buy everything that HPB ever wrote. What is the best way to go about that? You mentioned that you sell a few books yourself; can you ship me a copy of the Divine Plan and also perhaps a catalog of books that you carry? Can you bill me (or I can mail you a check if you let me know your address etc.) > I'm aware of AAB's statements that the `brothers' formed a > part of a "Spiritual Hierarchy of the planet." My concern on > this point is that I have never found such a hierarchical > structure in HPB's writings. There are several possible reasons > for this, e.g.: It was a deeper teaching that H.P.B. couldn't > speak of; HPB misunderstood the organization; AAB misunderstood > the organization; AAB misunderstood HPB, I misunderstood HPB, The > teaching is really there, but in a writing I haven't yet read > etc. The connection of the seven rays with a spiritual hierarchy > is also, as far as I know, not in HPB's writings. Though this > hierarchy idea is a basic point in our dialogue, it probably will > take some time before we will have gathered together enough > material to come to some meaningful conclusions. For me the best place to get an understanding of the organization of the Spiritual Hierarchy of this planet (the "inner government" as some call it) is a small AAB book "Initiation, Human and Solar". Of course there is a famous (but out of print) book published by TSA which has pictures of the Masters (someone gave me a set of these beautiful pictures, which I have gotten framed and hung on the walls of my meditation room... I can probably find the author ofthis book if you rare interested). > Regarding my statement about the Mahatmas being regarded as > "demi-gods," I was applying the statement to popular conceptions > of them. I didn't mean to imply that AAB referred to them as > such. But my impression is that AAB's characterization of them > is more consistent with a popular conception than the one given > by HPB and in the MAHATMA LETTERS. I'll expand on this idea > later when I have a little more time, and after a little more > foundation has been laid. But perhaps in the mean time, you will > be able to show that I'm under a misconception. AAB has stated that even the highest initiates when in physical incarnation exhibit what I can term only as 'negative' traits. But the point has been made by theosophists (e.g. Leadbeater in 'Masters and the Path') that the Masters 'keep' a physical body. AAB has said that the Christ has never really left the Earth (see for example "Reapearance of the Christ" by AAB) so his imminent reappearance among men in a physical body only refers to a widespread recognition of the Christ by those who are not otherwise able to be aware of him. Leadbeater and even AAB has indicated that the Christ has a place in Shigatse where he blesses all humanity every day in the morning, at noon and at 5 pm. I am also in a hurry and must leave this topic for further exploration later... > You mentioned the writings of Leadbeater. I have had > several Bailey students tell me that AAB considered Leadbeater's > writings "suspect." Everyone who has mentioned it, has regarded > it as common knowledge, and I never was quick enough at the time > to question them on it. Do you know the source of this > information, and if true, the basis for her saying so? I think Not everything that Leadbeater has written is suspect; only the books that he wrote about the successive lives of Krishnamurthy ("Orion"?) and someone else are suspect. I donot think that the Tibetan in AAB books has made any remarks about Leadbeater (although I know he has at least at one place referred to Annie Besant). A local Dallas based old-time theosophist shared this with me and I have no basis to question its validity or otherwise. > Regarding Benjamine Creme. Yes, we had some representatives > from the Tara Foundation do a presentation at the Los Angeles > Branch of the Theosophical Society, back in the late seventies. I > also have somewhere, a tape of an interview he gave on the radio > in Los Angeles. He acknowledges being familiar with the writings > of AAB and HPB, but unless he really is the "predicted" messenger > for the last quarter of this century, his testimony will throw > little light on the present dialogue. At this time, I'm not > convinced that he is, nor am I sure that he represents himself to > be that "messenger." I have met only one or two persons (on the phone) so far who have refrained from criticising Benjamine Creme; as a matter of fact Lucis Trust (which never takes a public position on any person) representatives have clearly expressed their doubts about what Benjamine Creme is saying. I subscribe to the monthly magazine "Share International" (SI) published by Creme which is full of issues of human concern and has articles supposedly by a Master of Wisdom (KH?) What strikes me most about this magazine is the accuracy of their forecasts.. for example, right after the Gulf War when Bush was at the top of all popularity charts, SI predicted that he will lose the 92 election (which sounded like an impossibility at that time). He has compared his role as similar to that of "John the Baptist". Let me leave this also for now... > Regarding Stephenson's book; are you saying that Leadbeater > wrote that DK was given the mandate to give out the teachings in > three installments? If so, where did Leadbeater write this? Sorry, I did not mean that Leadbeater said that DK has the mandate to give out the hierarchial teaching. In the book 'How I learnt Theosophy'(if I remember correctly) Leadbeater has mentioned that on one particular occasion he saw during the middle of the night that DK had been giving some info to HPB. Also in Masters and the Path, L. has talked about DK (but I do not remember if he has said that DK gave out SD). > I don't have a subscription to the BEACON, so issue and page > number isn't necessary. Your citation that the quote is from an > article entitled "The Principle of Limitation" by Mary Bailey, > and that it appeared in the July-August `93 issue of the BEACON, > is sufficient information for me at this time. The quote by Mary Bailey is from one of the AAB books (I'll give you the name of the books etc, when I get my copy of the Beacon back from Rose Ewald, who has borrowed it from me; she is on the road right now and I hope to get that issue of Beacon back only after a couple of weeks or so. In the meantime let me leave you with another wonderful quote from the article "Meditations of the heart" in the same issue of the BEACON, indicating again the emphasis on love and service on the part of AAB: "Above all, seek to recover the fervor of your initial spiritual aspiration and self-discipline. If you have never lost it (although many of you have), seek towork out the energy of inspiration into an effective display of definite action on the physical plane. "How", you ask my brothers? By increasing the radiance of your light in this world through love and meditation, so that others can look to you as to a beacon light in this dark night of life which seems in this century to have descended upon Humanity. Seek to love more than you have ever believed was possible so that others, chilled and frozen by life's circumstances and the horrors of modern day living, can look to you for warmth and comfort." The above is not verbatim, it is only what I recollect. I believe it is from DK's message to a group of disciples in DINA (exact page numbers etc to follow later). Bye for now/Arvind From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1993 19:19:17 -0500 From: John Mead Subject: Re: from Jim Anderson > ... Eldon suggests that articles might be sent by email "to JEM for > inclusion in the library ... posting to 'theos-l' the title, length, > and a synopsis ... to let everyone know that it is available." Are > you agreed? What is the library? any essay or paper is welcome for inclusion in the library. just send it to me by e-mail (jem@char.vnet.net). after I get it in the archives you (or whom ever) can send an abstract out on the list letting people know of it's existence. the current listings in the archive retrieved by sending the command index theos-l to the listserver ( listserv@char.vnet.net) Peace -- John Mead p.s. it will be this weekend before I catch up on most mail... From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1993 19:22:07 -0500 From: "Leonard E. Cole" <71664.3642@compuserve.com> Subject: email line length & hypnagogia Arvind Kumar & Jim Anderson Could you set your word processor or editor to limit line length to something between 75 or 80 columns? The copy as I presently receive it runs off the screen and must be printed before reading. If this causes difficulty for you, I can live with it as is, but if it is easily changed it would be very much appreciated. Jim Anderson Thanks for the "hypnogogia" and "hypnagogic" definitions. I see you are using the very latest reference. I initially became interested in this topic through Donald DeGracia who has since dropped from the theos-l list. He and I are engaged in a private exchange on the topic. I have some reading to do before I can discuss this in a meaningful way with Donald, or with anyone for that matter. I have bought a book titled HYPNAGOGIA, the author's name escapes me at the moment, which is Donald's major source of information on the topic. I am curious about these states of awareness. Leonard Cole From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1993 21:56:44 -0500 From: 91484615@uwwvax.uww.edu Subject: RE: Invisible Helpers Sheldon, A guided meditation is a group meditation with a leader who provides directions to guide the group on a "journey" to some objective which may be a place or a service to humanity. The leader is often more experienced than most of the other members of the group. Such a meditation is often carefully prepared by the guide. The path walking is a guided meditation through a place or perhaps a time span. May your journeys bring you what you seek. Take care Jay Amundson From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1993 23:47:12 -0500 From: BALAM@delphi.com Subject: OUTDATED To Brenda and Jerry H-E I am responding to the comments made about those individuals who state that theosophy is outdated. Brenda was referring to me, Sarah (Balam), when she mentioned the impression many have, when first coming into contact with the subject and society, known respectively as theosophy and theosophical. There is a difference; theosophy as a spiritual subject for study is not outdated anymore than the substance of any study, as long as the student is learning something of value. The Theosophical Society on the other hand refers to people. Back in 1975 when I attended my first meeting in San Francisco it appear- ed to me to be attracting those individuals who had yet to experience directly, the metamorphosis that had taken place in our culture in the revolutionary times of the sixties. To this day, I believe, that many of the members of the Theosophical Society are unaware that they behave in a manner that speaks louder than any theosophical concept they may utter. One might look upon the teachings of Buddha or Christ and believe these are outdated, because they were speaking to past cultures and paradigms. If one looks closely however, one can perceive universal and undying principles with- in the structure of their doctrines. These principles are part of the Wisdom Religion Blavatsky refers to in her writings. Whether speaking of these principles of ancient or modern origin, the word outdated, when I use it, means that individuals are not exemplifying in their behavior, what is at the heart of all divine instructions. Sarah............ From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1993 02:35:10 -0500 From: Jerry Hejka-Ekins Subject: ants, theosophy and theosophists Jim Anderson Yes it sounds like our experiences may be fundamentally different. If I were having your experiences, I would ask and try to determine the answer to the following questions: 1. Is the spider three dimensional? 2. can I interfere with its movement in any way i.e. physically, mentally? 3. Can I determine the variety of spider? 4. Are the spider's movements exactly repeated each time you experience this phenomena? 5. Are there any correlations between the spider's movements and your eye movements, or any other body movements? 6. Are there any physical circumstances that repeat with this experience, i.e. time of day/night, light level, location, etc. As for my situation, I have no doubt that I was not seeing ants. For one thing, they moved much too fast. Also, the experience was only a prelude to the wall fading away altogether. Molecular motion is probably a better simile. I don't know to what extent imagination was involved and to what extent reality was involved. The involuntary experience occurred when I was overly tired. I suspect that this condition kicked it off. Sarah Balam Thank you for your response. Your clarification has thrown the subject into a completely different context. Individuals "not exemplifying in their behavior, what is at the heart of all divine instructions" was a problem even in H.P.B.'s time. She made a distinction between a theosophist and a member of the Theosophical Society. She knew lots of members of the TS, but she once wrote to (I believe) AE, that she had only met a half dozen theosophists in her life time. She didn't mention if any of them were also members of the Theosophical Society. But I know of many who are very aware of theosophy as a spiritual practice and use it in their lives. Most of these people would consider themselves presumptuous to use the title "theosophist." They usually refer to themselves as only "students of theosophy." Arvin Kumar I received your reply, and will respond over the weekend. Leonard Cole I received your message over internet. I'm on both services, so you can use either address. Jerry Hejka-Ekins From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1993 19:47:17 -0500 From: "Leonard E. Cole" <71664.3642@compuserve.com> To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Olcott Computer Interfacing Committee To everyone for your information: John Algeo, National President of The Theosophical Society in America (Adyar), is forming a Computer Interfacing Committee whose ". . . purpose is to consider our [Olcott's] use of computers (hardware and software) in the light of what we use them for, how we use them, their cost, etc., and to examine current use, to propose changes, to evaluate possibilities, and finally to make recommendations. . . Olcott. . . will do a study of current computer use, as a starting point. Then the committee will review that study, to consider possible improvements, expansion, retrenchment, innovations, etc. The committee should look both at immediate use and needs and at long-range developments in the light of possible changes in our programs and operations." The proposed members of the committee were the following: Staff Consultants John Algeo Mary Abdill Rubin Cabigting Dean Barnum Jeff Gresko Leonard Cole Floyd Kettering John Kern Steve Schweizer John Kunz Elisabeth Trumpler John Mead Leonard Cole From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1993 10:07:35 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: hypnotism and mesmerism The general rule in Theosophy is that mesmerism is good and hypnotism is bad. This bears some qualification, but generally holds true. Mesmerism involves the sharing of prana or raw life energies, which is primarily a physical activity. Hypnotism, on the other hand, involves the psychological nature, and has psychological consequences, both conscious and unconscious, on the part of the hypnotist. It is fine to give someone the raw materials of life, both substance and energies from which he can live as he chooses. With this kind of sharing, there are no strings attached, neither apparent nor hidden. The other's ability to perceive things, his free will, his volition are not impacted. He is still in control of his life and his karma has not been interfered with. With hypnotism, the other is lead to perceive things that aren't there, to change and live out suggestions of the hypnotist, to come under some form of control by the hypnotist. Some physical and psychological suggestions that are made can have a dramatic effect. But was there any real change? Will the individual go back to the was he was before, after the power of the suggestion has been removed? Hypnotism is really a form of magic, where one is casting a spell on someone else, it is a way of imposing one's will on another. That person is living out *our* ideas, rather than his own. Perhaps he has been changed for the better, apparently so, for the moment. But later in life, or in a future lifetime, he'll be back to the was that he was before, with time lost that could have been spent learning that lesson and solving the problem that the hypnosis covered up. It has been suggested that hypnotism is not really the suggestion of someone else, that the subject has control, and allows some suggestions and rejects others. This idea is that the subject is really making the suggestions himself. I'd disagree, and say that it just was that the subject was more successful, in some cases, in resisting the spell cast on him, than in other cases. Another idea is that the power of suggestion is a good thing, and that it should be used to solve one's personal problems. And futher, that there is a form of self-hypnotism, where one is just suggesting to himself changes that he wants to happen in his life. The power of suggestion is a form of magic, an element of the occult arts, and should generally not be practiced. When you try to bring about specific concrete changes in yourself, the world around you, or in the personality of another, you are creating and strengthening karmic bonds that hold yourself and the rest of us back. This is different from general well wishes, the sharing of love, the giving of healing, vital energies. When you share in an unqualified manner, without any form or structure imposed, the other is able to use your gift, and continue his own self-directed progress in life. In mesmerism, the subject is given raw, vital energy, unqualified by the mind and will of the mesmerist. There is no twist put on the energy, no direction given to it, no conditions attached, no specific imposition on the subject that a specific change in the subject or event in the subject's life happen. The main experience that we have when using hypnotism--which I've noticed in my personal experience, when I was very young and did not know better--is the sense of power and the ability to produce phenomena. To the hypnotist it is an *ego trip* to be able to do such apparently fantastic things to other people. But it is something that both harms the other, and strengthens the sense of personal self in the hypnotist. The world is not a better place for it to have been done. On rare occasions, hypnotism may be necessary, say to cure an opium habit. (Blavatsky refers to this in her "Inner Group Teachings".) This is an exception to the general rule, and does not justify its general use. We are taught in Theosophy a spiritual practice, an approach to life that makes such powers as hypnotism unnecssary. We learn to change he world by changing ourselves and changing our actions in life. We uplift others by *living in ourselves* high and noble qualities that cannot help but change the people that we meet. Our influence is a lofty, spiritual, moral one, one based on the power of the spirit, not an influence of the imposition of the psychological will on another. By living in our highest nature, we help others sense it, feel it, and yearn to live there too. Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1993 17:55:23 -0500 From: Arvind Kumar Subject: Writing Styles X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0a -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Jerry S., Sorry it took me a little while to get back to your comment on the Bailey books.I want to thank you for sharing your thoughts on the various related authors; I myself had ordered all (or most) of Dion Fortune's books as well but I have never had the time to read even a single one of them so far! I guess I am just building my library at this time! I never ordered anything by Steiner (and do not intend to in the near future anyways). I have to admit that many people find the Bailey writing style pompous or difficult to understand, but if you persist in reading (day after day like I did when I was trying to get entrance into the Arcane School four years ago), you may find that the words that she has used are chosen with extreme care, to convey very precise meaning. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading (but only a few pages at a time) several of the Bailey books and I do believe that the teaching that she has given is a continuation of what HPB started. Best Regards and hope to keep in touch/Arvind > > > Arvind. I have never read Alice Bailey, and have never really > had any desire to do so. For one thing, her writing style (a bit > pompous)is very hard to follow (I tried once years ago, and gave > up). For another, I feel that she simply took HPB's ideas and > "elaborated" a bit on her own. I would rather read HPB. But I > have heard many people tell me that her stuff is great (including > a high muckty-muck in the Golden Dawn) so I certainly don't feel > free to criticize. However, I have read several books by R. > Steiner (Anthroposophy) and as far as I am concerned, he simply > Christianized theosophy to the point of it being rather silly. > But to give each their due, many people consider both of them > (ie, Bailey and Steiner) to have been very developed psychically. > Another that comes to my mind here is Dion Fortune whose 'The > Cosmic Doctrine' is very theosophical. But Fortune is at least > easy to read, and she doesn't make hash of Christianity. > > The problem with finding both HPB and Bailey "equally appealing" > is that there are several differences in teachings and in > emphasis. Which one is right? > From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1993 21:02:51 -0500 From: Gerald Schueler <76400.1474@compuserve.com> Subject: Karma There are two main types or classes of karma: personal or individual karma, and group or collective karma. The first, personal karma, is relatively well known. There seems to be some confusion about the second. In a sense, there is a difference between group karma and collective karma. According to HPB, de Purucker, and others, groups have their own karma. By "groups" I mean organizations or recognized sets of people. HPB stated that the TS has its own karma. Every organization does. Modern leaders in Administration talk about the birth and death cycle of organizations and define organizations as open complex dynamic systems much like living systems. Every family, city, state, and country has its own karma. Each race and sex has its own. Every kingdom, including humanity, has its own karma. Here we can see a hint of what group karma is about - relationships. A friend of mine once went on a business trip to a foreign country by airplane. When he mission was over, he needed to return quickly. When he boarded the filled plane, it just didn't feel right to him. He told me that a wave of fear hit him. He left the plane, making up an excuse. After he calmed down, he took the very next flight. Upon returning, he discovered that the first plane had crashed, killing everyone on board. Somehow he had been warned, and had avoided the certain death that awaited him on the first plane. The above actual story is an example of collective karma. The "group" was the mixture of people on the plane at the time. In a sense, group karma is a subset of collective karma which, by definition, is any karma linking more than one person. Collective karma comes about through the psychic and spiritual linkages that exist between people. We are in communication with countless other living beings at all times, but these are usually unconscious to the personality. Everyone on the doomed airplane unconsciously agreed to go down, for one reason or anoher (presumably each had theier own personaly reason). My friend unconsciously picked up on this thought and decided that he did not want to participate. Freud stated that everyone has a life wish and a death wish, and in a sense, I think that he was right. When our unconscious desire for death becomes strong, we may unconsciously seek out others who share the same wish. Jerry S. From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Sat, 6 Nov 1993 00:46:20 -0500 From: daratman@aol.com Subject: NDE, OBE & Spirituality This is a follow-up comment to Eldon Tucker's message of 3 Nov about a presentation at Krotona by Dr. Robert Ellwood, and his wife, Gracia Fay Ellwood, about Near Death and Out of Body Experiences... I'm not a writer nor a typist. It is difficult, even painful, to translate my thoughts into this clumsy language. I just got on-line last week dreading all the reading I was going to have to do. But I appreciate this opportunity to share a dialogue with someone about these subjects. It seems that a lot of people talk about such things, but I hear very few personal accounts. Actually, I really don't believe most of what I read. Years ago I found "AN ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF PSYCHIC SCIENCE" which contains descriptions of some of the things I've experienced (by Nandor Fodor, Citadel Press 1966). Most of my experiences themselves have been non-verbal, so words will not appropriately describe them. Maybe they will serve to comfort those who may still feel alone and confused with their own enlightenment.Your messages during the past week have been of considerable help to me. I came close to death last spring. I survived with the realization that I had shared my personal experiences and thirty years of study with only a handful of people. We each hold a small piece of some cosmic puzzle and in this "extra" life I believe it's my responsibility to give my contribution. This medium, this forum, allows me to do so without seeking a publisher. We are living books. Why wait to read the edited carcasses of each other's thoughts? I was about ten when a small star came out of the night sky and gently floated down to about twenty feet outside my bedroom window. It became about two feet in diameter and hit me in the head with a beam of white light. Emerging from the star was a small blue creature, similar to the little ones in Close Encounters, but only about a foot tall. I then seemed to be drawn into the beam and the light, but I have no memory of anything else. My mom said it was a dream. It wasn't. I had no related experiences until I was twenty, in the Service. For some time I had been depressed and really wanted to die. One night, as I was about to drift off to sleep, there was a humming sound inside my head and I felt like I was falling. It was frightening. I had felt this several times before but I had always fought it, struggling to move and force myself awake. This time I let myself fall. There was nothing for a long time, just the sense of falling in total darkness, straight down. Then it seemed I was moving sideways through a large dim tunnel. A small light appeared in the distance. I flew toward it. I came out of the tunnel into a starfield. Another time I found myself floating in my room, looking down on my body in bed. I drifted to the open window and thought about heading out into the stars. But I felt that if I did I would not come back. So I consciously returned to my sleepy head. That same year I was hypnotized and regressed beyond my birth. Same tunnel thing but when I came out I tried to go straight into the Light. I couldn't. It hurt my eyes and gave me a bad headache. I had various other "psychic events" over the next few years, but they're different. They're more like learning a visual vocabulary. The Light itself is a more awesome thing. My dad and I had been taking care of my mom at home as she struggled with cancer. One night, about two weeks before her death, she cried out in pain, asking to die. I was overcome with grief, helplessness, despair and anger. I pleaded with the Great Unknown to be taken in her place or at least be allowed to ease her suffering. Through the tears, the humming came, the falling, the tunnel. This time I didn't get out. Instead, the Light came in - straight into my head. A sense of calm and peace came over me as I beheld this most beautiful, slowly spinning wheel of rainbow light, with a center of moving liquid mercury. These words are now here because of those experiences. I don't know what comes next. I study sacred geometry and music. As technology progresses maybe I'll be able to paint you a picture or play you a tune online. I'm an artist, so I'd feel better about that. And I'm a cartoonist, so I'm really not as serious as this sounds. Thanks for being here. Love, Daniel From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Sun, 7 Nov 1993 03:39:33 -0500 From: Jerry Hejka-Ekins Subject: The Secret Doctrine, Bailey, Besant and Leadbeater Arvind Kumar Regarding your questions concerning THE SECRET DOCTRINE, I'm answering your question in a historical manner, and in greater detail than your original question suggests. My reasons for doing this, is to build up some background that will be helpful later on. Vols. one and two of THE SECRET DOCTRINE were the only ones published. Blavatsky did promise the publication of vols. three and four, but they never appeared. Various reasons have been suggested for this. Some say that they were completed, but withdrawn by the masters. Others suggest that H.P.B. herself with held the volumes, because the world wasn't ready for these teachings. The least sensational reason was given by Boris de Zirkoff (Blavatsky's last living blood relative, who compiled together all of Blavatsky's writings), who concluded that the volumes were never completed. This, on the surface sounds contradictory to Blavatsky's statement in THE SECRET DOCTRINE that these volumes were *almost* completed. But de Zirkoff, argues that "almost completed" to Blavatsky met that she had the plan for them in her head, and perhaps had a small part of it written. This would be consistant with the way she wrote ISIS UNVEILLED, where the bulk of the book was written during the typesetting and proofing stage. Based upon my own study of Blavatsky, her personality, and the way she turned phrases in her letters, and based upon the evidence of the unpublished writings she left behind, I personally find de Zirkoff's explanation to be the most plausible. In 1893, Annie Besant came out with a "third and revised edition" of the first two volumes. The changes Mrs. Besant made were extensive. Some U.L.T. students did a correlation between the first and third editions, and reported an excess of 10,000 changes. Many are as trivial as correcting an obvious typographical error, while others were more extensive, such as editing in such a way as to change the whole meaning of statements, or in some cases, editing out material altogether. Of note in this editing process, is that she removed all references to, and descriptions of the forthcoming 3rd and 4th volumes. On page xl of the original edition, H.P.B. does give an overview of what we were to find in vol. III.: "In that volume a brief recapitulation will be made of all the principal adepts known to history, and the downfall of the mysteries will be described;..." In 1897, Besant published THE SECRET DOCTRINE vol. III. But in light of Blavatsky's description of what this volume was to contain, Besant's volume III is obviously not Blavatsky's intended volume III. Besant says that the papers were "given into my hands to publish, as part of the Third Volume of the Secret Doctrine..." She then goes on to explain that much of the writing is confused, and cautions that "I cannot let them go to the public without a warning that much in them is certainly erroneous." An analysis of Besant's third volume shows that the bulk of the papers "given into her hands," was for the most part previously published material. Much of it is the E.S. Instructions, but edited by Besant. In one case, it is an earlier draft of a previously published article. However, there are some sections which undoubtedly were intended to go into that third volume. In 1938, These three edited volumes were republished at Adyar, into a six volume work. Volume I was broken into two volumes, as was volume two. Volume three became volume five, and volume six became the index. By 1978, Boris de Zirkoff made an agreement with the Theosophical Publishing House in Wheaton to reprint THE SECRET DOCTRINE in its original forms, but with the addition of his annotations. This was to be done with the understanding that the six volume Adyar edition be allowed to go out of print, and the material in Besant's "third Volume" be printed in its chronological order in the Collected Writings. This agreement was pretty much carried out, except that for some reason, Wheaton reprinted the third volume in paper under the new title: THE ESOTERIC WRITINGS OF H.P. BLAVATSKY. Regarding the writings of Leadbeater and Besant. I think we have come to a point, where I need to make some clarification, before we go any further. I do not make the assumption that Blavatsky, Besant and Leadbeater are in agreement in what they teach. That includes emphases, definitions of terms, and the teachings themselves. It is not only Besant and Leadbeater, but I also do not make this assumption for Judge, de Purucker or Crosbie. The reason for doing so is a simple matter of good scholarship. I realize that in some circles, my position is very unpopular, but substantial evidence has been gathered by a number of students over the years, that more than justifies taking this position. Therefore, I cannot accept on face value any statements made by Besant or Leadbeater as being representative of Blavatsky or of the Masters. If, however, you are arguing that Bailey's teachings are partially or wholly based upon Besant and Leadbeater, rather than Blavatsky and her teachers, then we will have to shift our inquiry into another direction. I still look forward to your finding that citation in the S.D. concerning someone coming in the 20th century. In reading Occult books, I make a habit of making very brief (one or two word) notations, with the page number, and organizing them according to catagories. By the time I finish the book, I then have a mini index of what I found to be the most important points in that reading. I use the front and back inside covers, the fly pages and whatever other blank areas I find. I also learned to write very small. I recommend that you take up this practice, as you will find it to be a great help when you want to look something up. If you have an aversion to writing in books, you can use separate sheets of paper. Until later, Jerry Hejka-Ekins From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Sun, 7 Nov 1993 10:46:00 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: four models of Theosophy A number of different models regarding the place of Theosophy in the world and who speaks authoritatively for it are held by its students. Understanding the model that someone is using, we can better understand what he says. The first model is that Blavatsky is the sole authority for the expression of Theosophy, that she is, perhaps, the avatara for this 2160-year period of humanity, that she is not only the final word for theosophical discussions, but is it *only* word. Everyone else, in this model, are secondary writers. No one may go beyond what she has said, because everyone else are commentators on Blavatsky. The second model is that after Blavatsky, there were additional representatives for the Masters. HPB may have given the initial impulse to the theosophical cycle, but others followed her, speaking equally with the authority of the Masters. Where the later Teachers appear to differ from HPB, we need to carefully study, because it is our own lack of insight that leads us to think that there is a difference, whereas, with deeper study and anaylsis, we would come to see that there was no difference after all. With the second model, there is considerable room for disagreement and many different groups of people, on the many branches of the theosophical family tree. I'd consider my branch the one that might be called the Point Loma Tradition, where W.Q. Judge, K. Tingley, then G. de Purucker, were all representatives of the Masters, and of which any could have given out additional teachings, with equal authority and weight, to what Blavatsky had given. I recognize that other branches of the family tree also have similar claims. Besant and Leadbeater, followed by others like Jinarajadasa, Arundale, Hodson, etc, form another line of teachings. They have their followers who equally believe that what they taught is either consistent with Blavatsky, or if not apparently consistent, then a revelation of deeper teachings that could be recounciled with further study. In my study, I would say that there could be a few dozen major points where the Besant/Leadbeater ideas go off in another direction, and that their ideas drifted farther and farther away from HPB's over the years after her death, with, say Annie Besant's earliest books being more theosophical, and her later books having a more psychic New-Age Christian slant. I'm saying this from a Point Loma perspective, and I recognize that it would not be seen as such by her students. I know that, for myself, years ago, when I read primarily Leadbeater's books, I thought that his works were the best that could be found, and thought that Blavatsky was too dense to be useful to study. That was years ago, I'm different now, and personally perfer, now, a study of Purucker, Judge, and Blavatsky on an equal basis. The writings of Alice Bailey, Steiner, and Rudyhar, also characterize different schools of thought. A third model is that Blavatsky, and everyone else that followed, were all seekers of truth, pioneers in religion and philosophy, but without any special authority nor special access to hidden Teachings. In this model, they were all part of the general trend of humanity's evolution. This model includes types of thought including the Jungian theosophist, someone that takes the whole process of the theosophical movement as a psychological phenomena, and discounts the content of the teachings. This individual would say that the theosophical teachings are but one of many types of unconscious content from our society, without value when taken literally, but only to be approached as one would interpret a dream. The fourth model is that the theosophical movement is one of many forms of New Age delusions, an escape for people unable to face the harsh light of modern science and the empirical truth that it reveals. In this model, Theosophy is meaningless, a jumble of mystical nonsence, and the only fragments of truth to it are psychical techniques and revealations, to the extent that the psychical knowledge can be reproduced in a scientific manner. The people that populate organizations like the Society for Psychical Research might characterize this mentality. Now given all these different ways of looking at Theosophy, how is someone new to it to make sense of it all? Which appeal to authority should be taken? HPB as the one-and-only Messanger? A succession of Teachers from the Masters? One source of unconsciousness content of our modern society? A compost heap with an occasional buried jewel of the occult arts? I certainly cannot conclusively *prove* one approach to the general satisfaction of all. I can say that I am *personally* convienced of the Point Loma Tradition. Other readers may express similar conviction in other successions or models of Theosophy. It is a simple fact of human nature that we all, perhaps, feel our own approaches are the best, the most true, and are waiting others, over time, to come to see the light and join us. And if they don't, we feel that they are just not ready, and are simply at some earlier stage of development. We are waiting for the brilliance of our ideas to win over others to our point of view, and do not usually entertain the idea that what the other people are saying might contain something more for us. Given the differences of viewpoint in the world, even within the theosophical movement itself, how do we tell the real from the unreal, the true from the false, the wisdom teachings from the deluded psychic babblings of a medium? This itself is quite a difficult, though valuable and profound question, that we can, I hope, explore more in the future. Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Sun, 7 Nov 1993 13:19:47 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: Elementals, Dhyani-Chohans, and Group Karma Earlier, it was suggested that we study something, and the idea of "karma" was brought up. I've written a few times on it, and there's a good piece by Jerry S. on group karma. It's a profound area, and we have a lot to explore. ---- Group karma is the karma of a group. It is more than simply the sum of the individual karmas of the group members, or the karma that they have in common. It is an expression of something that is independent of the particular members. A group could be a race, a nation, an organization (like the T.S.), a study class, even the people that share the flight on an airplane fated to crash. There is a particular draw, a particular attractive force, that brings together the involved people. The force is both external, from one point of view, and from the people themselves, from another viewpoint. Since we co-create the world, we can both say that the group itself brings together the people, or that the people, in a form of negotiated existence, have come together and created the group. Both are true. Take a study class. A collection of people have been meeting to study a book. The class takes on a life of its own, which acquires a particular personality, which persists even as people quit the class and new people join. The group is a form of life, where there is self-feedback, leading to stabililty, growth, and the acquisition of specific characteristics, attributes of personality. Looking at the class, though, it is not an entity in the way that we'd ordinarily consider one. It does not have a specific, concrete form that it calls its own, something to say "this is me". It has a specific area of activity, but its effects are directly on the surrounding environment, and not through a form. In other words, from its vantage point, our physical plane is a *formless world*. It is a step removed from direct manifestation on this physical plane. The force, power, energy, life that a group expresses comes from some being, somehere, and we are drawn together to share in its expression. Our existence and activities in life are not due to membership in one group or another, although we are affected by many overlapping influences, we participate in a multitude of groups. The unseen influences in life, which take on a life of their own, which we may in some cases call groups or group karma, and in other cases call the laws or phenomena of nature, come from the two classes of beings which are a step removed from direct, embodied manifestation on our physical world. The first class is the elementals. These are Monads, individual sparks of life, eternal and deathless, which have not yet progressed to the point where they are able to sustain embodied existence. They are more spiritual that we are, but are not yet self-conscious, and are driven by an *intense* hunger for that precious Treasure, which the term "self-consciousness" does not do justice to. The elementals contemplate the material, seek concrete expression to themselves, but must, for their stage of development, settle for helping organize, direct, and carry out the laws of nature in the world. They bring organization to the physical. They are apprentices in thought, feeling, and action, and pattern themselves after what we think, feel, and do. They give lasting expression to what we experience. They are the recorders of the events of life, and the sustainers and accumulaters of the experiences that we have, that helps build and give substance to our personalities. The second class is the Dhyani-Chohans. There are Monads which have gone beyond the need to have sustained material, embodied existence in order to acquire "self-consciousness". They have, as former men, found and reclaimed this Treasure, and drawn it within. They exist in the formless worlds and have the final step before them of taking the Treasure deeper within, from the spiritual into the deepest seat of the divine. Their evolutionary step is to bring this "fire" into the darkness, into the unmanifest worlds, still buring, bright, intact. The elementals are felt thoughout the material world. Their influence is downward, material, psychical, on our lower nature. In their proper place, they pattern themselves after us, and empower us to fucntion in life. When wrongly related to, they lead us, they draw us down, they affect us with their downward yearning, they attract us to the dark side of life. The affects of the Dhyani-Chohans are felt in the world, in a more universal sense. They set the patterns, the keynotes for the various great evolutionary periods of humanity, the various Races and subraces. They uplift us, they draw us along the Upward Arc, they lead us to center the seat of our consciousness in the spiritual nature, rather than in the lower parts of ourselves. They are behind the great upward sweep of nature; they set out the grand plan. Their affects are felt in our human kingdom, and we participate in that work as well. The elect of mankind, the Mahatmans, Bodhisattvas, and Buddhas form a living link to that work, and are collectively known as the Hierarchy of Compassion. Of all possible groups, this certainly is the best one to belong to! Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Sun, 7 Nov 1993 20:32:30 -0500 From: BLAVATSKY@delphi.com Subject: Vol. 3 of the Secret Doctrine After reading Jerry Hejka-Ekins' comments on the 3rd volume of the Secret Doctrine, I thought members of the group might be interested in an unpublished article I wrote last year on this very subject. For the past 5 years I have been doing a detailed analysis of the Wurzburg MSS of the S.D. which is in the Adyar Archives of the T.S. Also I have been going through all the primary source material on the writing of the S.D. from 1885 through 1891. Anyway, last year John Cooper of Australia wanted to know the results of my studies, so I wrote up in rough draft form my conclusions. My thesis is that Vol. 3 of the S.D. published in 1897 is more or less what H.P.B. intended to publish as Vol. 3. [excluding the E.S. Instru- tions appended at the end of vol. 3]. The Ms of vol. 3 did not disappear. We have it in vol. 3 published by Annie Besant. I sent copies of my article to a number of Theosophists. John Cooper of Australia, Michael Gomes, David Reigle, Doss McDavid, and Geoffrey Farthing of England all agree with my conclusion. Dara Eklund, Ted Davy of Canada and Richard Robb all disagree with my thesis. Further study since then convinces me even more of the correctness of my thesis. I will be happy to send a photocopy of my article to interested parties. A copy of this article of 20 pages will be sent for $4.00 (includes postage and handling.) My address is The Blavatsky Information Center, P.O. Box 1844, Tucson, Arizona 85702. Check or m.o. should be made out to Impossible Dream Publications. Thanks. Daniel Caldwell at: blavatsky@delphi.com P.S. For those interested in a comparision between H.P. Blavatsky's teachings and those of Mrs. Besant and Mr. Leadbeater, I have a copy of a paper entitled "Misleading Mayavic Ideations: The Neo-Theosophy of C.W. Leadbeater and Annie Besant." by Ray Morgan and published in 1976. 43 pp. A copy can be obtained from me for $6.00. This publication was mentioned in Gregory Tillett's biography of C.W. Leadbeater. Enough for now. From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1993 09:42:43 -0500 From: "Eldon B. Tucker" Subject: purification by Brenda Tucker. I'd like to respond to Eldon's article of November 2, 1993, subject: religion, philosophy, and science. First, your discussion is so unbelievably separatist where I would hope there might be more of a unifying note. For instance: > A scientist seeks practical knowledge of the outer > world. The philosopher works with pure thought, > things that cannot be outwardly manipulated. And the > religious student deals with matters of the spirit, > matters of perfection, unity, divinity, relatedness > to the fountainhead of life. In my mind, you are suggesting that our job is to choose one area over the other and make it our specialty, as you have done. You also stress the presence of a "materiality" in all three domains. I think we have all found your own general leaning to be towards philosophy, as much as you might like to be considered a scientist, it hasn't provided you with the grander plan and so the category is seriously lacking. Well, this would be true except that every scientist, philosopher, and priest are much more than just a scientist, philosopher and saint. They have an inner self, a higher self which can exert its influence on what each man or woman does through actions, thoughts, and feelings. I propose to you that all three areas are seeking practical knowledge, generating pure thought, and running quarterback for the "divine." Perhaps your comprehension of a "material age" is the real limitation at issue here. People can fall victims of their materiality within their philosophy as well as through emphasis and manipulation of "things" scientifically. You've heard in THE YOGA SUTRAS about obstacles to soul cognition, and while material studies may take our minds away from higher ideals, our feelings are still present to raise our consciousness above the mundane. Our feelings of awe, wonder, discovery, altruism all have tremendous impact on the way we are able to accomplish our work with matter. The mind labeled "slayer of the real" in THE VOICE OF THE SILENCE, can make such intricate, amazing systems of thought and study that we may experience difficulty "going beyond" what we know. Our philosophy may engulf us and shut others out. My real purpose in writing today was to inquire of the students here about their purification practices. Has austerity found its way into your life in the form of vegetarianism, abstention from alcohol, cigarettes, drugs? Does a celibate life present its ideal as one worth striving for? The purification practices are for the body its true, but the brain substance would be made especially attuned to receiving the higher impulses, would it not? As much as I feel theosophy provides an excellent insight into inner realms, I refuse to allow my consciousness to stop with a grasping of the fine points of consciousness. One man's work is as good as another's and should be judged not only by the effect it has on us, but by its usefulness over the entire life period. If I went through a period of time studying in one particular manner, I would never say that I since discovered that that was bad and what I'm doing now is good. Each period in my life accomplished something by which I would not have been able to travel on to the next area of study. I'm more than content saying someday we leave them all for something "better." As I look back there isn't one lesson that I would omit in order to travel to the more advanced studies. (Well, maybe the purifications weren't that pleasant.) The people that I knew in different life periods are still able to receive good wishes and blessings through thoughts of our prior association. It's not only a road to their blessing, but by removing steps of the ladder now and tossing them off as useless, you make it less appealing to people in the present who might benefit by using that rung of the ladder for a while. If people are going to compare philosophical systems by author, they can exercise their minds, but I don't know if they can obtain a better life or get any nearer to the goal. Isn't it the system of morality that strengthens the inner nature to the point that we are better able to receive the light? And that system is alike in the sense that each step, whether through striving for true speech, or not to steal from others, or to stop adultery is one which we are freely able to accomplish in our own time-frame. Once the initial purifications are accomplished, there are many, more subtler purification activities awaiting. One question I have is about how this works, and I think I would prefer to ask a scientist about the rarification of matter. Through strict conformity to dietary laws and moral ones, we've set up such a momentum that we can't just stop reaching for more of the same activity. Okay, let's say that matter now is luminescent with light, do thoughts follow correspondingly by becoming more and more light-filled? Does anyone have any theories about extracting all of the negative from our physical-feeling-mental nature and thereby allowing the higher planes to completely control what's left? Or why life springs eternal from a mechanism that seems so thin? Maybe it only seems that way and what we've really done is built it up to withstand the "weight of the world" on our shoulders? Any comments? I sometimes end up visualizing a great, big, garbage heap. Sure, let's clean the air, water, and land from toxicity and debris, but what about the astral and mental plane. There's a great big area here which needs to be cleaned cleaned cleaned and I still feel like using my powers to rid these atmospheres of negativity and debris, so that only the good is left. This would really be an aid to those seeking soul cognition. I know that I would appreciate it immensely if someone would step into my atmosphere and all inharmonious, all discordant, energies disappeared. What freedom and relief from an engulfing "spralldom." With perfect order restored, I would feel myself participating in ways I never dreamed possible. Is this just a big dream? From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1993 11:07:25 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: there is one truth There is a view that everyone, being equally good, and ultimately rooted in the divine, in going through their respective roles in life and stages of personal development, can believe whatever they want. Whatever anyone believes, from this standpoint, is equally true. This form of belief is relativism. I would have to reject this view, and say that there is a Truth, one Truth, and it *can* be known, albeit progressively, bu degrees. Some--a few--may come to know it. Most do not. This is not rejecting the value of the lives of those who do not know, and it is not an arrogant assumption of superiority on the part of those who have found an approach to it. If you see 50 people, and they all have their different beliefs, from the standpoint of the personality, it may not be possible to know what's right. Everything may seem just differing forms of personal experience of life. Everyone has a role to play in life, and a spiritual nature that has some affect on their lives. Taking that standpoint, it may seem arbitrary to take a position, to say these ideas and this philosophy is good, important, valuable, that the other is not. But the ability to discriminate is an important step on the way. And when we take a position, it is not an inflexible, rigid, parroting of words that we have heard. The position is something that is deeply rooted in a *knowing*, that is based upon a type of personal experience derived from the association of the philosophy with our spiritual natures. The ideas are living, growing, dynamic, and subject to continual reexamination and development. They are not arbitrary assertions of opinion, like "I say it's green" to someone else's "I say it's red." Working with the philosophy is a high form of spiritual training, something that affects the highest parts of our natures. It produces lasting changes within us. Regardless of our job, our activity in life, be it a writer of books or a chemist that does routine lab work, we can have the philosophy at the back of our minds, an presence that serves to keep alive an awareness of the inner god. We should seek after the higher, even though it may not be apparent to most people. We should strive to step beyond the personal realm of experience, to function in the impersonal, even though it is not a common thing to do. It is not something to be denied because most people will not feel a calling. Following it does not mean that we appreciate any less the value and worth of other people, or the divinity that can also be found in their hearts. Regardless of the type of life that we live in the world, be it in some speciality in the field of religion, philosophy, or science, we can cultivate a part of ourselves that is apart from, above, that goes beyond our merely personal existence. Following this calling, we find our feet approaching a new, different, additional way to grow and develop, a process called the Path. There is no less love for others when we seek deeper truths. There can be a bakti devotion, a unqualified love that may or may not need a symbol to center upon. There *is* an awakened mind, awakened in a sense that the person you meet on the street wouldn't understand. And this mind is illuminated with the spirit. It is deeply rooted in the fountain of knowledge of nature itself, Mahat, and has a "true north", like a compass, that it always returns to. I would say that if we look with open minds, and an unveiled spiritual perception, that we will see, that we will sense and come in touch with this fountain of knowledge, and it *will* take us beyond the practical, common, everyday knowledge to be found in our western world. Look to the light and you will know. Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1993 11:38:35 -0500 From: Arvind Kumar Subject: Re: The Secret Doctrine, Bailey, Besant and Leadbeater This message is in response to Jerry Hejka-Ekin's recent message to me and deals with the work of Alice Bailey (AAB), the objectives of the Lucis Trust that she founded and why I think her work is similar to that of HPB and in fact only a continuation of the periodic Hierarchial efforts at enlightenment/ guidance of the Humanity. Comments from all are welcome! Jerry, Thanks for the background on SD, it helps me a lot. A quick response to your question about my belief as to whether the Bailey teachings are based upon Besant and/or Leadbeater: No, I donot believe that. AAB has stated at several places that much of what has been believed and/or published by 'theosophists' is wrong or misleading; in fact AAB herself belonged to the ES until she was 'driven out' due to the many 'personality conflicts' or should I say, 'an undue emphasis on the personality aspects' by the theosophists of that day. I do believe that the AAB teachings build upon whatever had been given out along 'theosophical' lines by the Hierarchy till 1920, so to that extent there is value in reading all 'generally accepted' theosophical literature upto 1920 (to get familiar with terminology and basic concepts perhaps). But within the AAB teachings themselves, nowhere is it said that they build upon the writings of Leadbeater or anyone else (except that the 'Treatise on Cosmic Fire' expands on SD). There is neither a condemnation in the Bailey teachings of any other authors nor a recommendation to read anything other than the Bailey material itself, as far as I can tell. Having said that I should add that in the AS (Arcane School) they recommend reading of SD and there are a few references to the works of Besant but I did not see any reference to Leadbeater during the approx. 4 year period of my association with AS. AAB as you probably know has at several places in her books spoken of HPB, "...that great initiate', and in fact even to this day, Lucis Trust materials refer to HPB in glowing terms; you may be interested to know that I bought my copy of the HPB biography by Sylvia Cranston thru Lucis Trust, after reading a review of it in their bimonthly magazine "Beacon'. By the way, for those who may not be aware of it, Lucis is a Latin word meaning Light; Lucis Trust was set up by AAB to carry out the work that she had started i.e. 1. the work of preparation for the Re-aapearance of the Christ (by distributing the Great Invocation on as large a scale as possible) 2. World Goodwill network (to promote Unity and Right Human Relations - individual, communal, national and international) 3. World Triangles network (to transform the planetary etheric vehicle to receive and circulate the energies of the Soul and the Triad i.e Atma, Buddhi, Manas) 4. Publication of books and the furtherence of the Hierarchical teaching, publication of Beacon, establishing of the Arcane School for the training of would-be disciples 5. Discovering the members of the New Group of World Servers and strengthening their hands 6. Letting known the fact of the twelve spiritual Festivals (twelve periods of the Full Moon, which permit a closer contact between the Hierarchy and the Humanity as permitted by the universal law of cyclic manifestation) If you read the above list of what AAB left for 'posterity', you will see, I hope, why I think that she (AAB) was only continuing the work of Serving Humanity that HPB started. All organizations manned by mere human beings tend to mature and 'crystallize' and die (it seems) and whereas I only have the best wishes for all the theosophical organizations myself (having only recently sent in my Lifetime subscription or membership dues to the TSA), I cannot help but wonder what may have happened had the 'theosophists' of the day let AAB work within the boudaries of the theosophical organization to which she belonged. I am now also trying to hit (hard) carriage returns at the end of every line, so to all those who were having problems reading my messages, I hope this one has been easier to read than my messages of the past. If it has not been, please let me know and I'll try to figure out something else! Love and Best Wishes/Arvind From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1993 13:26:54 -0500 From: Arvind Kumar Subject: Re: purification Thanks Brenda, for this beautiful piece; before I forget I'd like to put in a few questions/comments that come to my mind/Arvind > > My real purpose in writing today was to inquire of the > students here about their purification practices Has > austerity found its way into your life in the form of > vegetarianism, abstention from alcohol, cigarettes, > drugs? Does a celibate life present its ideal as one > worth striving for? The purification practices are for > the body its true, but the brain substance would be > made especially attuned to receiving the higher > impulses, would it not? The purification process is a prerequisite for meditatation, as enunciated in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali i.e. the 5 Rules and the 5 Commandments. It is said that meditation can have a devastating impact on him who has not taken the initial step of building up his chraracter by implementing in his life the 5 Yamas (Rules), namely 1.Harmlessness 2.Truth to all beings 3.Abstinence from Theft 4.Abstinence from incontinence (Desire) 5.Abstinence from Avarice (or covetouness) and the 5 Niyamas, i.e. 1.External and Internal Purification 2.Contentedness 3.Fiery Aspiration 4.Spiritual Reading 5.Devotion to Ishvara I have been trying to implement these into my daily living, with great benefit to the extent that my family has noticed a significant change for the better in my attitude towards everyone around me; I have myself felt more at one with myself as well I am following the 'Yoga Sutras of Patanjali' as translated by Alice Bailey ("Light of the Soul") but am curious about whether HPB has written anything similar (about purification etc.) Matter of fact, a fellow theosophist told me that HPB was a chain smoker (it appears in Cranston's biography of HPB as well) and a non-vegetarian Where did the teaching in theosophy about vegetarianism come from, is it in any book? Bailey has said that 'purification' and esp. vegtarianism is a prelimnary step and a requirement for the initial stages of the path (before the first initiation) and one or more 'lifetimes of celibacy' may be spent by someone on the path As a person advances on the path it is not necessary to maintain a strict vegetarian diet according to Bailey; I can only infer that the mental purification and mental work then becomes much more important and the stage of physical purification involving demonstration of control over physical appetites falls below the level of the 'conscious' daily living Bailey has left the question of being a vegetarian or not for advanced disciples to themselves, hinting that some may require non-vegetarian diet to meet the needs of their physical constitution This reminds me of my 15 year old daughter Rita who became a strict vegetarian after coming in contact with theosophists and reading an article on this subject by Radha Burnier Recently though she had to re-think her strategy in the light of a medical exam which revealed (confirmed our suspicions) that she was not getting all the nutrients she needed from her vegetarian diet She has been asked to take some fish oils and eat fish products (which she has started eating reluctantly and in the minutest quantities now). Bailey has said that advanced disciples who wish to work on the Astral or emotional planes must continue with their vegetarian diets; others can eat whatever seems appropriate to them, and not emphasize what they eat (i.e. other items of daily 'mental' living should take precedence over what is eaten). > I sometimes end up visualizing a great, big, garbage > heap Sure, let's clean the air, water, and land from > toxicity and debris, but what about the astral and > mental plane There's a great big area here which > needs to be cleaned cleaned cleaned and I still feel > like using my powers to rid these atmospheres of > negativity and debris, so that only the good is left. > This would really be an aid to those seeking soul > cognition I know that I would appreciate it immensely > if someone would step into my atmosphere and all > inharmonious, all discordant, energies disappeared. > What freedom and relief from an engulfing "spralldom." > With perfect order restored, I would feel myself > participating in ways I never dreamed possible > > Is this just a big dream According to Bailey the work of occult meditation (Raja Yoga) involves invocation and evocation of the energies of Light, Love and Will-to-good, automatically resulting in cleansing of the astral and mental planes The extent of the cleansing depends on the effectiveness of the one-pointedness during the meditation process Different persons are at different stages of the path and the level of 'soul contact' achieved determines the effectiveness in bringing down the 'cleansing' energies into the lower concrete planes of matter (i.e. mental, emotional and etheric planes). The 'salvation' for all on the path lies in intensifying their work of study, selfless service of Humanity, and meditation as a Service activity. From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1993 15:55:53 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: the lessor maze I have just sent via email to John Mead the file 'big.ig3', which I would like to make available to the list. I've asked him to post a notice about its availability after he has put it into our "theos-l" library. Following is a description of the file's contents, and a little about its background. ---- In his many books on Theosophy, L. Gordon Plummer explores the platonic solids, and shows how they all interrelate. He describes them as forming the pattern of the universe, and creates what he calls the "lessor maze". It is composed of an icosahedron, enclosing a dodecahedron, in which are inscribed five cubes. Each cube has a pair of interlacing tetrahedrons, which each enclose an octahedron. In all, there are 22 objects: 1 icosahedron 1 dodecahedron 5 cubes 5 upward tetahedrons 5 downward tetahedrons 5 octahedrons The lessor maze is constructed from 62 points: 20 on the dodecahedron, 12 on the icosahedron, and 5 x 6 points from the centers of the faces of the five cubes in the dodecahedorn. I have created a three-dimensional model using Design Cad, then converted it to an 3-D IGES file. Each object is defined in a different drawing plane in the CAD model. An objects is formed by a collection of polygons (triangles, squares, or pentagons), positioned in three dimensions, specified by the coordinates of its points. For example, one triangle on the icosahedron is positioned at points -2.618, 1.618, 0.000 1.618, 0.000,-2.618 2.618,-1.618, 0.000 and 30 triangles are necessary to specify the icosahedron. In order to make the coordinates as simple as possible, the whole model is build up around a cube at +-1.000, +-1.000, +-1.000, around which the dodecahedron is formed. To prepare various drawings from the lessor maze: (1) a copy of the whole model can be rotated and scaled (2) various planes, containing the different objects, can be hidden, so that only some of the objects are shown, and (3) the whole model can be copied and scaled smaller, to show a smaller icosahedron and dodecahedron within the bigger ones. The problem that I am currently working with, is how to convert, touch up, and make printable the resulting illustrations from the CAD program. It could be a few months before all the technical details are worked out, and I am able to include them in Gordon Plummer's new book, "Three Steps to Infinity." Anyone interested in experimenting with the model can pick it up from listserv@vnet.net, according to John Mead's instructions for getting files from our libraries. If anyone is able to make some good postscript illustrations out of the model, please let me know how you did it, and send me a copy for possible inclusion in Gordon Plummer's book! Thanks. Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1993 18:50:49 -0500 From: John Mead Subject: lesser maze available Hi -- I placed the file3 big.ig3 and readme.ig3 in the theos-l archives as well as the FTP directory. send to listserv@char.vnet.net the message index theos-l get theos-l big.ig3 get theos-l readme.ig3 The listserver will forward them to you. I suggest you look at readme.ig3 (or re-read eldon's prior theos-l posting) before you get big.ig3 It appears that you need the CAD software to make this work (?). I have also added a file to the FTP directory ( /pub/theos-l at vnet.net) and our theos-l Library (through listserv) called electric-mystics-guide-v1.txt This has information regarding Religion/mysticism/etc.. that is available on Internet. It is pretty thorough. It is a valuable guide to seekers on Internet. Peace John Mead From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Tue, 9 Nov 1993 00:24:00 -0500 From: Gerald Schueler <76400.1474@compuserve.com> Subject: Some Responses Multiple Bodies. Although Eldon's four "aspects" or possible meanings of the quote from the Mahatma Letters are all perfectly valid, there is no doubt in my own mind that the quote refers to multiple physical bodies on Globe D. Although it is probably true that "there is no value to multiple personalities/bodies to switch between" as Eldon says, nevertheless this is a well known magical ability for very high Adepts according to Eastern tradition. Has anyone ever read the biography of the Tibetan saint, Milarepa? I have an old dog-eared copy via Evans-Wentz (Dover), but I understand that a new translation is now available from Snow Lion. Anyway, Milarepa, after becoming a very high Adept indeed, was able to make his physical body appear in several places at once in order to teach more people than he could reach in only one body (Tibetan mountains being rather sparsely populated). I highly recommend his biography to everyone, as it is a demonstration of how a "normal" person can reach enlightenment in one single lifetime (ie., not easily). I believe that the theory behind this has to do with the fact that the Reincarnating Ego expresses itself in multiple bodies over long periods of time, and by manipulating your sense of time, you can express many bodies at once. It may sound bazaar, but there it is. After-Death Experiences. Both my wife, Betty, and I have had an after-death experience. Hers was very vivid and occurred early in her life. She was taken to a valley where she met with me and my family and the children that she would have (i.e., she foresaw future events in some detail). I, on the other hand, sat in a rather drab room waiting and waiting for something to happen. We were both sent back. An account of Betty's experience was published in FATE magazine a few years ago (I do not recommend FATE for theosophists). My own experience was not flowery enough to write up. However, I apparently had a mild stroke one night while sleeping (my doctor says that it is almost certain, because my eyesight was effected in a way that is indicative of a stroke). Betty says that I was grey and cold and she revived me by rubbing me while talking to me. I remembered little, except that I was in a room and the atmosphere seemed very heavy as if the room was below ground. I sat on a bench and waited for something to happen. Finally, someone arrived and told me that I had to return now (I have no recollection of what this person looked like). I awoke as if from a very very deep sleep. I can't remember if I have told anyone of my encounter with a real ghost (?) but if so, please skip this. My older brother died from a gun that wasn't supposed to be loaded, many years ago (before I knew anything about theosophy - he was 25 and I was 22 at the time). A few months after he died, I "met" him in a dream. I was standing in a very pleasantly furnished room. There was a fireplace with a nice warn fire blazing. I stood in front of the fire and watched the flames for awhile. I was happy and comfortable. I heard someone enter the room behind me, and almost immediately I "knew" who it was. The icy thought "but you're dead" came to me and a shiver ran up my spine. How could my brother, who died, be here with me now? I slowly turned, while already feeling pangs of fear run through me. And then I saw him standing right in front of me. It was very real. Too real. At that moment, fear overcame me, and I turned back to the fire and literally dove into it as if it was a swimming pool. My dive brought me back into my physical body, but way too fast. I awoke in a sweat, dizzy and with a headache, and moaned so loud that it woke my wife. I can't remember ever being so scared. I was not able to go back to sleep at all that night. Soon after the experience I chided myself for being so scared and have wished many times since for the experience to be repeated. After studying theosophy, I wished that I had another chance to talk with my brother, but my own fear had preventing me from learning anything at that time. I don't think that I would react the same way today, but I haven't had an opportunity to test that out. Anyway, this experience convinced me that ghosts are very real. Suggestion and hypnotism. While I agree pretty much with Eldon on hypnotism and mesmerism, I fail to find anything wrong with self-directed suggestion. It may be considered magic, but then so is most of life. Eldon writes "We learn to change the world by changing ourselves and changing our actions in life." Exactly. But just how do we do this? I submit that suggestion and imagery (not only were these tools used by ancient yogis, but modern psychology has proven their value as well) are useful techniques that we can use to bring these changes about. The changes, if they are to be beneficial, must take place in our worldview. We can begin by suggestion and imagery, which when developed over time, lead to belief. We are told, for example, that we are inherently divine, that we each have an inner god/goddess. We can then either accept this on faith, or imagine our inner divinity until it becomes a reality. How such spiritually uplifting imagery can create and strengthen "karmic bonds that hold yourself and the rest of us back" is difficult for me to understand. I once went to a dentist who practiced hypnotism on many of his patients (not on me or my family). He told me that patients who let themselves be hypnotised became easier and easier to control. Some fell into a hypnotic trance almost immediately. He also told me that he conducted an experiment with a female patient. He got her to let him come home with her to spent the night. Then he laughed and admitted that he never did it, just tried to see if she would go alone (which she did). Anyway, this kind of thing convinced me years ago that hypnotism was a very bad thing to do, and I agree with Eldon that it is a form of black magic. Jerry S. From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Tue, 9 Nov 1993 08:07:15 -0500 From: daratman@aol.com Subject: One Truth & the Lesser Maze Re: Eldon & Brenda Subj: One Truth, Purification & the Lesser Maze Understanding Infinity requires but one viewpoint: "no matter where you are, you're always in the middle". The 63rd point of the lesser maze is in the center. From that point you can construct what Fuller called the "Vector Equilibrium", which will intersect the maze at specific locations, forming a 3D Yin-Yang arrangement. Optical illusions and hidden points will complicate your problems of computer display and printing. Before I had any computers I built them by hand. First I did it out of poster board (which allows everything to fold flat - if you cut the triangles appropriately). Next I found a plastic construction kit called "Ramagons" that allows you to build the various structures with and without surfaces. These can be digitized at any angle and put into the computer, printed out and animated. This may be something you'd like to try. I have several 3D software programs on my Amiga computer. One of them is called "Imagine", which is also available for IBM compatibles. The object files are interchangeable across platforms and many people have made objects available rather inexpensively. For example, I purchased a set of platonic solids and their stellations for $18. The Amiga will animate and record the renderings to videotape. (That's why I got it in the first place). In a while the new Multimedia PCs will be doing the same thing. You might want to consider putting your book on video or CD-rom. But then you'll have to consider adding sounds. Here comes the One Truth part... The mathematics of the Vector Equilibrium provides the formula for translating geometric shapes into sound. "Architecture is frozen Music". This is neither poetic nor theoretical. It works like this: Picture the Great Pyramid as the top half of an octahedron. The relationship of its height to half its base is 14:11 (the square root of Phi). 14 is the radius of a circle with a Circumference of 22/7 x 14 x 2 (C=Pi x d) or 28 x 22/7 = 88. With half the base being 11, a side is 22 and four times the side equals the perimeter = 88. C=P. This is the meaning of "The Circle Squared". Drawing a circle inside the square (radius 11) gives a Circumference of 69.142857 which, when squared again and another circle drawn within it, (radius =8.6428571 and C=54.326528) yields a relationship to 88 of one to Phi. The missing capstone is 1/16th the height (14/16). The circle of its radius has a Circumference of 22/7 x 14/16 x 2 =5.5 (11/2). This is the unseen, unheard building block of music: the Interval. A Major chord is in the mathematical relationship of 4 : 5 : 6, the note divisible by 4 being four times the interval and called the "key" note. (A minor chord is in the relationship of 4 : 4.8 :6 or 5 : 6 : 7.5). In this case the key note is 4 x 11/2 =22. This relationship is true of any harmonic sequence regardless of what the key note is. The Great Pyramid is four octaves carved in stone (11/2 : 11 : 22 : 44 : 88). It is the physical manifestation of the One Law, The Law of the Octave: The One Truth. By using measurements in its construction that create a base perimeter of 36524.24 units (100 Earth years) it can be seen that The Law also defines Time and is more than just a poetic reference to the "Music of the Spheres." It works because shape has energy and energy has shape. Healing and Purification come when external vibrations are in harmony with internal vibrations. Our very own bodily molecules follow this same Law. We are held together by Harmonics. Since a circle with a diameter of 28 has a Circumference of 88, a string of length 28 can also be tuned to 88 cycles per second, providing a perfect iconic correlation between what is seen and what is heard. Retreating from the chromatic scale and returning to the diatonic of A Major pure, 88 cycles per second becomes what we call F, the key note, the home note, the Mother of the "gods". F A C E G B D = 4 5 6 7.5 9 11.25 13.5 Then times 22 ..... 88 110 132 165 198 247.5 297 and up 2 octaves: 176 220 264 330 396 495 594 352 440 528 660 792 990 1188. These cycles/dimensions can be translated into degrees merely by multiplying by 12/11. Then you get a set of numbers that Pythagoras preferred to discuss (132 becomes 144, etc,) The tuning of A becomes 432 instead of 440, dividing the note by 6 rather than 5. Of course you'll find other variations from culture to culture, but the notes can all be geometrized into one interconnected grid. To truly comprehend this, however, one must measure the frets, build the instrument, tune the strings, play the chords and feel the tones vibrate through the body. Then you'll feel the Truth. Give it a whirl. It's the trip of a lifetime. Daniel Hampson From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Tue, 9 Nov 1993 10:23:34 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: signs of genuine mystery schools How do we know when we've found a genuine school of the mysteries? What can we use to judge our experiences? How do we tell that what we have is real, true, with teachings deeply-rooted in the fabric of Nature itself, and not merely the produce of someone's personal philosophy, however many gems of truth he may offer? The first is that we find the ring of Truth, a signiture of majesty, a sense of the absolute rightness in what we learn. There is a feeling of expansive beauty, love, and wisdom, that cannot be contained. We do not grasp it, rather, it surrounds and embraces us. We are looking at a magnificent ocean or a beautiful, golden sunset, rather than the canvas of someone else's painting of it, and we are filled with awe and respect for what we behold. This is a genuine spiritual experience, and quite different than where someone may tell us to visualize things, to tell us that we must strive for the light, that we must try harder. We are not being preached to, in the mysteries. When we study, the words take us to perceive, in the mind's eye, the wonders of the inner world, with the same sense of reality as any physical experience. But this is not psychic perception of other planes, it is in terms of grand vistas of thought. We may describe the experiences to ourselves in our own ways, one person using philosophical terms, another images of form, color, using art, and a third person using hugs, smiles, and acts of kindess to people. There are different ways that we might give form to the wonders in our personalities and personal life. There are a number of things to look for in a Mystery School. One is the manner of teaching. Does it teach according to the time-honored method of repetition, of examination of a subject from different angles, revealing a bit more with each return to it? Or it a subject taught in the western manner of trying to exhaustively cover one subject then moving on to the next? Another is the content of the teaching. Are the teachings given as a fixed set of rules, steps, names, structures to life, with rigid interpretation? When you've studied a subject, can you say that you now really know it? That would not be good. There should always be gaps, hints at something more, higher after higher understandings of the materials. As soon as you feel that you've learned the final word on a subject, you're dead, as far as really understanding it. And a real Mystery School is ever teaching its students to break the molds of mind, to not crystalize their thoughts, to continually reexamine and review and expand what they thought they have learned. The study is a fludic process where the student grows and changes. Progressing to deeper and deeper understandings of the Teachings, he sees new ways of understanding things, *without rejecting what he has learned before*, because the study is along a path of Truth, towards the one Truth, one step closer. Moving from one understanding to the next, the student finds the deeper understanding better explains what has gone before, and nothing is rejected. The student goes further into the same Truth rather than just exchanging one idea for another. Another sign of a real Mystery School is that it awakens an authoritative voice within. We find a source of teachings within that supplements, complements, goes along with the teachings we receive from without. We can almost say, from *knowing*, what our teacher might next tell us, even before he speaks, because we too know, deep within, what is being said. We have a living connection to the theosophical thought current, to Mahat, and are experiencing a living process that one day will make of us living representatives of Mahat itself. What is studied enriches the experiences of life and leads the students to see and experience it in a new way. There is a sense of beauty and harmony to what we study, no bitter pill to swallow. This is not to say that suffering is denied. It is accepted as a natural part of life. There is no aversion to living life to its fullest. But our deepest nature is touched. There is no depressing moment in the morning, say, when we just wake up, where doubts come flooding into our minds, thoughts that what we're doing may be phoney, a delusion, a sham. The ideas that are taught are interconnected. None can be understood without knowing and referencing the rest. They find practical use in our life, are are not something that are turned off when we put down a book or leave a meeting hall. They are rooted in love, compassion, wisdom, the heart of our being. They have a beauty and symmetry to them. They seem plainly logical, obvious, simple, until we try to explain them to someone else. What is taught in such a school does not lead the student to fixed, rigid opinions, because what the student believes is subject to continue change, and the student is quickly brought to see that he can never rest and say "at last I've got it!" The type of thinking he is taught is not rigid, demainding, but rather illuminating, expansive, inspiring. The school teaches a spiritual practice, where we come to open up in a natural fashion, like a flower bud opening, over time, due to the continual radiance of the sunlight. There is a process, a period of time, a period of growth. Nothing is promised as a gift. There is not any instant gratification. There is a sense of growth and movement in accord with the nature and life. This is not to say that there is no hastened development because of the school. The reverse is true. We find ourselves opening up at a hastened pace. We are ripening out of season, so to say, because of an extra influence on us, something that touches and stimulates our spiritual natures, and awakens us when we would otherwise have stayed asleep. Look at the affects on your life. What is brought about by the training, by the study? Do you have a feeling of superiority, and a mind full of slogans, ringing in the mind's ears like some aweful television commercial that keeps coming back to haunt you? Or is a sense of the holy, of the divine, of the grandess of life starting to permeate your every activity, always at the back of the mind, when not actually being thought of? You could be a secretary typing, a cook preparing food, a mechanic working on a car, and yet have this *presence* in the back of your mind. It is a quality of consciousness, a coloring of the experience of life, that lends something new to every experience of life. It is like a part of yourself has become a thing of beauty which you are in constant, awestruck admiration of. We find, in a genuine school, an awakening of the intuition, of insight into life. There is not just a new way to describe things, where you substitute metaphysical words for some other verbal description of things, e.g. "this is caused by the throat chakra blockage as seen in the etheric double" being substituted for "this unconscious complex manifests as this form of neurosis". We are not simply taught one set of empty words to use to label the things of life with, to replace some other set of words. There are a number of keys to identify a real school from a would-be school. No one can be *told* where and how to study, told the location of the schools. It is not a matter of simply saying that this school is false, and that one genuine. We will each go where we are attracted, and until we reach the right stage of readiness, we just won't see what is there, regardless of what others would tell us. We have to reach the appropriate stage of readiness, and give the right knock, and then we'll be admitted. One thing that we'll find, though, that is a distinguishing charactersitic of a Mystery School, is in its study, we find growing in ourselves an unshakeable faith, belief, certitude in the living, dynamic ideas that we receive, both as thoughts and as a living influence in our lives. This faith is as strong as the very will to live, because we have become the teachings, they have become an integral part of ourselves, and they are our lifeblood, they are us, they are our very lives. Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Tue, 9 Nov 1993 12:33:27 -0500 From: "Jessica L. Coker" Subject: various This is from Nancy Just as I caught up with all the letter on the Net, more come in and I'm behind again. Is everyone reading ALL the mail? Is there an intelligent way to organize this that I am somehow missing? I love the conversation but I am two weeks behind in answering mail. To Jerry HE Thanks for recommending THE DOUBLE -- I'll get a copy of it. I am enjoying the conversation on Bailey as so many correspondents and students are familiar with her, I would like to understnad the differences and similarities between she and HPB better. To Andy Yes, I'm famliar with Lozoff's works -- he is just becoming active again after 3 years quiesence. Thanks. Good to hear about your prisoner program. Any possibility any of your prisoners would want American prisoner pen pals? Some are so lonely, that their letters are small books -- would be nice if they could have others to write to who are in similar positions. to the Group Regarding the March meeting at Krotona on Theosophy in the 21st century -- I'd be happy to carry messages from this group to the meeting -- any thoughts? Pasadena HQ was spared any fire damages (Our buildings are in Altadena and it was scarey for a while) but some friends lost their house. Brenda -- I guess this was one giant purification practice huh? Bye. Nancy From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Tue, 9 Nov 1993 15:30:32 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: finding the real A big question that faces every seeker in life is how do we distinguish the real from the unreal? Especially in metaphysics, where there is no authority that everyone can agree to that would be the final word on any issue, this question is of vast importance. We can start off, in this search for Truth, by examining where it is not to be found. If we find some words that are dead, dusty, lifeless, a corpse of thought, meaningly jibberish to us, there is nothing of value in them to us. Perhaps the words contain a living truth that we just are not ready for. It doesn't really matter, for at this point in time the spirit is not contained therein, and we are looking for Truth where it *can* be found, not where it *should* be found. The important thing is to seek out that which works for us, and not hang onto anything just because someone else says that they find it special. Wisdom, truth, reality is not found in affirmnations, chants, demands for something to happen. It is not based upon visulations of colors, deities, energies. You do not achieve it by closing your eyes and trying for existence on other planes. There is no special advantage derived from membership in any group nor by professing a belief in something. It is not found by giving special consideration to words from someone claiming to channel Jesus, some Master, or some high being of another plane. Some of us may join an esoteric school. Even membership in such a school, if it goes with any feeling of superiority or exclusiveness, is a detriment, a obstacle, a barrier to spiritual development. Many things may be tried as *aids* to spiritual cultivation, to the acquisition of wisdom, to a finding of the Truth. When we forget that they are just that--aids--and mistake them for the thing that we aspire, we've lost sight of our true goal and are, at best, wasting our time. The Wisdom is not to be found in some arbitrary set of numbers, rules, steps, formula. There is no special spell, incantation, or prayer that will do the trick for us. Our future progress has not been held back simple because we haven't been told the easy way to progress. There is no short-cut to inner development. There is no special "secret" that only has to be told to us to enable us to rapidly move forward. And Wisdom is certainly not found in external possessions, equipment, tools--be they the latest of modern science--nor in reading about and quoting the latest scientific speculations and theories. Wisdom does not come by association with any external belief system, regardless of its apparent success in the world; it does not come as a glory derived by association. What, then, can we say of a genuine source of the Wisdom Teachings? How can we know when we've found it? What are the characteristics of it, and how can we recognize changes in ourselves that show that we're in touch with it? We cultivate the spiritual in our lives, we train ourselves in noble though and action, we learn to function in the impersonal, the selfless, and we fill ourselves with a genuine love for humanity, a love that seeks to find expression in the outer world. By making ourselves into agents for good in the world, by striving for the highest within, we have brought ourselves in touch with the higher side to life, and find doors opening that we never new existed! Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Tue, 9 Nov 1993 15:45:08 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: less-expensive internet access For users needing a less-expensive means of access to "theos-l", I'd suggest netcom.com, if it has a local phone number for you. It costs under $20/month, and has numbers covering different areas in the USA: For local access numbers: 1. much of California is covered 2. (818)585-3400 - pasadena ca - local area 3. (206)547-5992 - seattle area 4. (214)753-0045 - dallas/ft worth including plano texas 5. (617)237-8600 - boston ma - greater metro area 6. (703)255-5951 - washington dc area including arlington, vienna, fairfax Additional information about netcom.com accounts can be obtained via email to "support@netcom.com" or calling (408)554-8649 (voice call). ---- The file that I made available yesterday on the lessor maze, as John Mead mentioned, requires a CAD or graphical-display program to examine and work with. It is not self-sufficient. The file is in IGES format, a common format for the interchange of CAD data, which all the different programs should support working with. ---- Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Tue, 9 Nov 1993 17:29:25 -0500 From: Arnold Stoper Subject: To Eldon Tucker : From Jim Anderson Thanks for your reply to the KH quote I sent you to counter your view that no individual can operate more than one body at once. Prior to reading your answer, I saw your stuff opposing the concept of group souls. I think you are quite wrong on those subjects - surprisingly so, considering the very thoughtful nature of your remarks generally. Your reply to the KH quote I sent reminds me of the story on this network about the Los Angeles theosophist who refused to believe that Morya smoked a pipe, despite all the plain testimony from Morya himself and others. Theosophists often tend to have too active minds, using their lively intellects to speculate and imagine so much that simple truths become obscured and distorted. I fear you have fallen into this tendency. KH's words on the Tchang-chub adept are pretty simple and clear. Your suggested interpretations show knowledge of theosophical material, but not close and open attention to what KH said. That said, I'll try again with KH words, not sharing your absolute pessimism about the possibility of "converting" people. From page 43 of "The Mahatma Letters": "When our great Buddha - the patron of all the adepts, the reformer and codifier of the occult system, reached first Nirvana on earth, he became a Planetary Spirit; i.e. - his spirit could at one and the same time rove the interstellar spaces in full consciousness, and continue at will on Earth in his original and individual body. For the divine Self had so completely disfranchised itself from matter that it could create at will an inner substitute for itself, and leaving it in the human form for days, weeks, sometimes years, affect in no wise by the change either the vital principle or the physical mind of its body. By the way, that is the highest form of adeptship man can hope for on our planet." Surely it is impossible to believe that KH meant to say that, during those days, weeks, and sometimes years, the human form was, as you would have it, fast asleep or meditating. Consider the exoteric story that Buddha died at 80, and the esoteric one that 80 really refers to his Nirvana, he having lived to 100. Teachings about group souls and individualization are not, as you have it, due to Besant/Leadbeater theosophy. The intelligence evident in a single ant is localized in that ant? Consider the path from androgyny to separate sexes back to androgyny. Ask theater people about "group soul" theater audience behavior. Think about the "one flesh" of the traditional marriage concept. HPB had her cigarettes, Morya his pipe. . James T.Anderson From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Tue, 9 Nov 1993 22:34:04 -0500 From: "Eldon B. Tucker" Subject: stepping through atman I mentioned "stepping through atman into the manifest worlds" in an earlier note, and Jerry H-E asked what I meant. Here's a brief note on Atman, which explains my meaning. ---- When we speak of the process of coming into manifestation, of first moving out of the unmanifest planes into outer existence, it might be said that we *step through atman* on our way out. In the world of matter, the highest, the seven aspect of matter is single, unified, a dissolving point, a laya center into which matter passes from one plane to the next. In a similar fashion, Atman is a laya center for our manifest existence. It is a dissolving point, a element of consciousness that is single, unified, the manifest consciousness of total union, of a manifest sense of nirvana, but one step removed from the actual experience. Atman is universal, an aspect of conscious where there is total unity with all of live. It is the point of view where one realizes that all life is one, because it is the shared consciousness among all beings, a consciousness that is completely above and beyond any sense of separateness, or even of relatedness to others. We are, at this level, everyone else, all at once. Atman is the dissolving point where all sense of separate being has departed, and we are removed from being unmanifest by the thinnest veil of awareness. We are reduced--or raised to, depending on one's point of view--a simple awareness of being, an awareness of being alive and participating in it, but not of being separated out in any particular relationship to others. It is, in other words, the dharmakaya vesture, the highest form we can manifest ourselves in, when in a particular world. When this thin veil is removed, there is nothing left, we are completely unmanifest. Even Atman, though, has a "personality" to it. It is the root consciousness of the world, the globe, the universe into which we assert *I exist* and choose manifestation in. Each globe, each planet, each universe, each realm of manifestation has its own unique Atman, and this is the derived consciousness that we obtain by association with the greater being, whose existence, whose outer form, we use as the world we will exist in. Apart from existence, without our seven manifest principles, we dwell in the highest triad, the three unmanifest principles, number eight, the Auric Egg, nine, Swabhava, and ten, Paramatman. The Auric Egg has the seeds, the storehouse of karma, and in a sense it could be considered the seventh principle, since Atman is not really a principle of *our* consciousness, it does not personally belong to us. Coming into manifestation, we first take on Atman, but the first sign of us as apart from the whole, as distinct in life, is in Buddhi, where we come into relationship with the other beings in the world and participate in co-creating it. And then with Manas there comes the distinct self, as apart from relationships from others, the sense of Ego. From the lowest unmanifest plane, the home of the Auric Egg, our storehouse of being, we take on Atman as we enter the world, but the experience is one of *stepping through Atman*, directly taking on Buddhi as well. We don't acquire the atmic consciousness, then dwell in it for a while, before taking on Buddhi. At least, there is no awareness of such. Atman is stepped through, much like a laya center is passed through, in passing from the higher to the lower. There is no self-consciousness in passing through it, because there is no possibility of any sense of self in it. *I* pass through it unaware, I first find *myself* in Buddhi. Atman is passed through, rather than being a place to exist in itself. This is not to say that there is no consciousness, per se, in Atman, and that it does not represent an active element of our constitution. The reverse is true. It is the most basic, the most elemental, the most profound part of what makes us up. Learning what it means and dwelling it leads to Atma-Vidya, self-knowledge of the highest kind, and leads to our ultimate perfection. It is our living nature, as rooted in universal life, our conscious oneness with all, the mystery behind our personal existence. Atman is not a place, it is the very highest expression of who and what we are. It is the summit of all that we have actualized in life. It is the highest that we can experience of life before passing beyond. Atman is the finest granularity of consciousness that can every possibly exit in the world, its Ring Pass Not, beyond which we can no nothing more but more on to other worlds, other stages of manifestation, other spheres of causes. As with all of the seven principles of consciousness, it is an active element of our consciousness. We experience it at every moment of our lives. It is never absent. What is absent is our attention that we fail to pay to it, our granting of awareness to the experience that it represents, an experience that we always have. What is missing, in our lack of awareness, is a sense of self-consciousness, and this is the Treasure of existence that we come into life to awaken the spark of, to fan into a fire, and to raise within, one principle after the next, until we take it to Atman then bring take it further, taking it *home* deep within. Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1993 10:54:15 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: being in more-than-one body at a time James A: The idea of group souls is one of perhaps a few dozen in which the teachings of Theosophy in the Adyar T.S. have changed from the original Theosophy. These changes were not made in the ULT or Point Loma branches of the theosophical family tree, though they were picked up and elaborated upon by many New Age teachers and movements in this century. Someone finding themselves most at home in the study of Besant and Leadbeater would consider them, perhaps, improvements. Someone from a Point Loma background would consider them mistaken. I don't think that an idea that anyone may hold is so blindingly apparent that everyone would be converted, merely by hearing it told. The deeper truths cannot be plainly told. The Mahatmans have said that their Teachings, if simply told to Sinnett, would sound like insane gibberish. A point of philosophy is different than a factual historic event. Blavatsky did smoke, and there have been written the reasons why in certain cases smoking was necessary. Some people want to deny that she smoked, because that was inconsistent with their view of how she should be. They may have the mistaken impression that simple physical piety, like not smoking, being vegetarian, etc., is a necessary prerequisite to spiritual progress, and her smoking is inconsistent with that view. There is a lot of historic information about a number of people in the Movement, and not just about Leadbeater and the Adyar Society, but about people in all the different groups, that their followers would rather not know, and would likely deny if they heard it. Speaking from the Point Loma standpoint, what I say may not always be agreed with, and I won't agree with everything said from the Besant/Leadbeater teachings. It is okay for us to disagree. We have to remember that the others are expressing what they've been taught and have been trying to observe about them in life. And because the ideas are so inter-connected, we cannot change a single idea of the other's without altering or affecting all the other theosophical ideas. When we discuss group souls, what the term means and what is involved with such an idea, there are two things that we can do. The first is to find some interpretation that gives a sufficient "twist" to the idea that it might be workable in describing things in life. The second is to analyse it from a philosophical standpoint and see what it really says and how that fits in, or fails to be consistent with the theosophical teachings. For any idea, it is not enough to say that it is "self-evident", that it is a "simple truth". The self-evident do not need to be pointed out. It may come to mind as the best explanation for someone of what he sees in life, in certainly did so for Besant, Leadbeater, Jinarajadasa, and others that followed them, but is not so to me, or to the theosophical writers that I've studied. Let's briefly considering the quote from "The Mahatma Letters". The Buddha is spoken of as becoming a Planetary Spriit upon reaching Nirvana. This allowed his spirit to roam space in full consciousness. "... the divine Self had so completely disfranchised itself from matter that it could create at will an inner substitute for itself". He could leave the human form for days, perhaps years. This form was the mayavi rupa, the mind-created form, the carrier of consciousness for a being manifesting on a plane apart from having a physical form on it. Otherwise known as the nirmanakaya, it is the way that one's consciousness can become manifested on a plane, apart from the process of obtaining a physical body through the normal process of birth for that plane or globe. The entering of Nirvana by the Buddha is a complex subject. The human part of the Buddha, who would be considered a Sixth Rounder human, stayed in active existence, when his higher part, the overshadowing divinity, passed on. The Buddha still had a physical body, but had attained liberation from needing to be born into one, something that even the Mahatmas had not completely attained. During the remaining 20 of the Buddha's 100 years of life, he was active in his physical body. The power to travel to other worlds, to exist in the mayavi rupa, was one what could allow him to function apart from the idle physical form for perhaps years, but that does not mean that he did so. Having a cooperative effort, an association of beings in life, however close-knit the group, we do not have any less an individual consciousness to the participants. There may be a cooperation, an harmonizing, a synchronizing with the actions of others, but no loss of identity. One can at times raise his consciousness to the sambhogakaya, the consciouss of non-separation, the experience of life where subject and object are merged and there is no awareness of being apart from the activity one is participating in. One is still an individual being, but has risen his awareness to a level where such distinctions don't matter. When a single-celled creature divides into two, there is not one being, now in two bodies. When a mother gives birth to a child, the body has organized into two forms, each with a life of their own. There is not one Monad animating both. When a fertilized human egg cell spilts, creating what will become identical twins, if both are to live, another person has to be willing to be born, the one person does not now have two bodies. We draw the contents of our seven principles of consciousness from surrounding life. We take physical elements to make up and feed our bodies. At the mental level, we take in ideas and thoughts and nourish our minds. For animals, the taking of ideas is not self-conscious, it is preprogrammed, in a way, and is by a process that we'd call instinct. Because a particular animal Monad is born as an ant for a period of time does not mean that it will always be born as an ant. Perhaps it may be reborn later as a spider or some other insect. Being born into a particular class of animal creatures, the Monad partakes of the characteristic nature of the class, its archetypes, in the same manner as we, as human personalities, partake of the nature of the culture or society that we are born into. There is not, I would say, a single being looking out through 10,000 eyes as a multitude of ants, doing thousands of things at the same time and being fully aware of each and every action at the same time. Each ant is the living expression of an individual being, but partakes of the influences of the nature of anthood and of the particular anthill that he is born in. With an anthill, there is the pattern of consciousness that represents the ground rules of living, the pattern of expressing and fulfilling life, that the individual ants all share in. But they are individuals, and have been so, even before they started the long downward evolutionary journey ages ago, entering the first Elemental Kingdom and beginning the evolutionary descent into matter. When we speak of a great being teaching or ministering to a many people at the same time, it is not through his self-consciously being aware of acting in the many places at once. It is rather a projecting of a ray of consciousness, an influence, to the many people, without being specifically aware of an one particular person, but rather a projecting of an influence that is felt by those people who by their natures and relationship to him are able to attune themselves to it. There are additional issues involving a number of theosophical teachings that we could get into, in spending more time on this discussion. They include (1) the composite nature of man, of how he (and other beings) are composed of a host of Monads, (2) the relationship of an informing life to the hierarchy that it creates, and (3) the eternal existence of the Monad and the ultimate purpose in life. The ideas are all interrelated. The important thing to avoid the crystalization of the mind, the locking in of fixed thoughts, the hanging on to specific words that express ideas, and instead to move on to a living process of study of the teachings where they start to reveal themselves. We need to be ready to continually reexamine and explore ideas that we take for granted. When someone raises a question with us, we need to see anew how the idea relates to the other great teachings and to our experience and understanding of life. The opportunity to reexplore ideas that we've taken for granted should be appreciated. It is one of the many forms of training that we have, that we can use to deepen our understanding. We may not change any particular position, but we're better for the experience. ---- In our future discussions on "theos-l", there may be a number of times when we'll review our ideas and try to give our best, most-clear expression to them. This is a valuable experience. What we have is not a debate platform with a "winner" and a "loser", but rather a forum for the free exchange of ideas. A subject like "group souls" can be pursued as long as any of us, pro or con, feel we can even-better expression why and how we understand it a particular way. There are no winners nor losers, and it is obvious from the start, for almost anything that one of us might say, that some will say "I agree" and others "I disagree". Given the different theosophical schools that we represent, we'll see many different topics for discussion, and they will be interesting to follow, because of the stimulation resulting from the diversity of views. Say something, take a position, and others will comment, and we'll have a lively discussion. That's one of valuable aspects of our list. Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1993 22:25:30 -0500 From: Jerry Hejka-Ekins Subject: AAB & HPB The following message is a continuation of an ongoing discussion comparing the teachings of Alice Bailey and H.P. Blavatsky. This message is in reply to Arvind Kumar's remarks of Nov. 8th. Arvind, I like your idea of putting an information header at the beginning of these discussions responses, as it identifies the nature of the discussion, so that others can decide whether they want to join, or to read. Perhaps we can adopt some wording like the above. O.K., to sum up some important points in your last message: You *do not* believe that Alice Bailey's teachings are based upon Besant and Leadbeater. You paraphrase Bailey to say that "much of what his been believed and/or published by `theosophists' is wrong or misleading . . . " (please give a reference). I take it that this is to be understood that much of what was published by Besant and Leadbeater (among others) is wrong or misleading. Does this statement also include the writings of Blavatsky? You further say that: "I do believe that the AAB teachings build upon whatever had been given out along `theosophical' lines by the Hierarchy till 1920, so to that extent there is value in reading all `generally accepted' theosophical literature up to 1920 (to get familiar with terminology and basic concepts perhaps)." In light of the above, are you saying that much of what was published between 1875 and 1920 is "wrong or misleading? Assuming that what was "given out by the hierarchy" are the correct teachings, how are we to know what was "given out by the Hierarchy," and which are the incorrect teachings given out during that period? Were the E.S. teachings, that Bailey received, in error? Were some of Leadbeater's writings correct? Which? How can we tell? Regarding the purposes of the Lucis Trust, I understand why you "think that she (AAB) was only continuing the work of serving humanity that HPB started." Though the altruistic motivations of the Trust are evident, that does not convince me that the Lucis Trust is a continuation of H.P.B.'s work, as intended by her teachers. To convince me of that will require a comparison of Blavatsky's goals with those of the Lucis Trust, and an extensive investigation of the implied teachings and assumptions the lie behind those goals. But I hope the purpose of this discussion is to compare the teachings of these two writers, rather than to convince anyone of anything. Jerry Schuler wrote a while back that "there are several differences in teachings and in emphasis. Which one is right?" His statement typifies students who have done close comparative readings among different authors, and did not begin with the assumption that all of the writers were saying the same thing. I hope that Jerry will someday expand upon his statement and show us his findings. In exploring this question, there are several possible conclusions, but we must first be aware of our assumptions, before we evaluate these possibilities. First, we are both working under the assumption that H.P.B. gave out spiritual teachings of extraordinary worth, and that these teachings came from her teachers. This assumption is worthy of questioning, but I suggest that we wait until everything else is resolved first. I believe that you hold the assumption that A.A.B. is sort of a spiritual successor to H.P.B., that is she gave out further teachings. Is this a fair statement? I don't hold this assumption. (By the way, you suggested that A.A.B. was predicted in a passage in THE SECRET DOCTRINE, but you haven't yet come up with the reference. I'm still waiting on that.) I may be holding other relevant assumptions that you don't, but if so, they don't come to mind. Now, the possible answers fall between two extremes: One possibility is that there are no significant disagreements between Blavatsky and Bailey. Such a conclusion will require a close comparison of the two authors. But if it is found to be so, it would be a compelling reason to adopt your assumption that A.A.B. is H.P.B.'s spiritual successor. Another possibility is that the disagreements are extensive and significant. If this is found to be the case, then an investigation into the reason for the disagreements is warranted. Here is why: Many studies were done over the years comparing the teachings of Blavatsky, Besant and Leadbeater. Early studies were dismissed as biased, or ill motivated etc. As more studies appeared, many people in the Theosophical Society finally acknowledged that the discrepancies existed, and took the position that Besant and Leadbeater's teachings prevailed over Blavatsky's because they were giving out deeper teachings. Others insisted that the differences were illusionary, and will be resolved through a deeper understanding of the subject. Both reasons were really rationalizations. These rationales begin with the very assumptions that they were trying to prove. They are very much like Saint Anselm's argument for the existence of God, which begins with the assumption of the existence of God. By the way, the study that Dan Caldwell recently mentioned, is one of those later studies. It is well done, and worth reading. That's it for now. Jerry Hejka-Ekins From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1993 00:39:30 -0500 From: "Eldon B. Tucker" Subject: nirvana Nirvana is an important teaching in Theosophy, something with considerable depth to it, something that plays a key role in the process of human evolution and the functioning of consciousness. Literally meaning "blown out", much like the flame of a candle can be extinguished, nirvana, in its first level of meaning is just that, meaning self-extinction, annihilation. And this is taught in some popular religions. Going deeper, the second level of meaning leads us to see that we persist, and re-emerge from nirvana at a future date. It is something that is gone into, but is not a final, irreversible state. But how and when we re-emerge is an involved topic. The third level of meaning shows us that our experience in it has a scope based upon individual capacity, that there are qualities, if we can use such a word, to the experience. Nirvana is not *the* end to the existence, the manifestation of a Monad, just *a* end. A Monad has neither beginning nor end, being rooted in the timeless, the unknowable, Tat, but can obtain final release from birth and rebirth, from having to exist, for an eternity, for a manvantara. This release that has been obtained, though, is for the current evolutionary period, and when the Monad is swept back into the evolutionary current with the next manvantara, it must resume its evolution where it had left off. It has not escaped, only postponed the lessons of life. The experience of nirvana is perfection, since we are beyond all sense of finite limitation. It is the experience of unmanifest existence, where no conditions are imposed, no other is needed to co-create anything. In nirvana, when there is no blockage between us and everything else, and no veil over our consciousness, we cannot be more that we have made ourselves. Even here, there are no "gifts", nothing added to us that we haven't made a part of ourselves. We are able to express consciousness freely, without qualification, and embrace all of life, *but* there is a scope to that embrace, a reach to our arms' embrace, a Ring Pass Not that even here is the horizon to what we experience. For bodhisattvas, remaining behind in the world to aid suffering humanity, when their eventual reward does come, their experience of nirvana is vastly superior, richer, more wondrous, than that of the Pratkeya Buddha, one who has sought rapid liberation for himself and left the world behind early on in life. Nirvana is both a state of consciousness, one that can be final with destruction of our higher vehicles for the duration of the planetary manvantara, as well as an experience of life. It is the overshadowing awareness of the unknown, the void, sunyata, the unmanifest, that comes from our eighth principle of consciousness. And it finds expression, but thinly veiled, in our Atman, the seventh principle, the principle of the unity of life as it expresses itself in manifestation. Nirvana can be experienced in a part of our constitution, and we can still function on earth. It is an unqualified way of embracing life. It is a higher sense of fulfillment, of completion, than personal bliss, bakti, than a sense of union with the beloved. It is a form of completion that goes beyond needing something to be united with. Nirvana has two poles, it represents the ultimate completion of life on the one pole, and the utter failure in life on the other. There is a nirvana of perfection on the upper pole, and a Avichi Nirvana, one of utter misery, on the other pole. Each is the reward for following the path in one of the two respective directions. As a reward for completion of the human evolution, one to be had before the evolution in the next kingdom begins in the next planetary manvantara, nirvana might be compared to summer vacation from college, where the student is free to go and do what he likes. It is a time to withdraw into the spirit, stepping away from life, as the forces of destruction tear apart the world, during the period of dissolution, the pralaya, that our world enters into upon its death. Nirvana is a subtle, complex, difficult to grasp, and without a solid basis in the core teachings, it would be easy to be led astray and not understand it right, or to reach a roadblock where no further understanding of it can arise, because of some blockage in ones thoughts, a rigidity in understanding it, the forming of a mold of mind. Like many terms, when used in the Teachings, there are many meanings that apply, and sometimes the simple meaning is a blind, something to hide what is really being said from those who are not ready, who have not been given the right keys to see what is there. It is a worthy subject, though, one deserving the deepest thought. Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1993 10:17:24 -0500 From: Arvind Kumar Subject: Miscellaneous I have several miscellaneous comments/questions: 1. Did you see the Special on NBC yesterday on the Sphinx, based on John Anthony West's research of the last 20 years, pointing out that the Sphinx is much much older than the 4500 years or so assumed by 'scientists'? The host, Charlton Heston, described it(i.e. John's results/thesis) as 'history in the making'. There was mention of Atlanteans and the 'fact' that there is a cavity under the front paws containing information on the ancient civilization that built it, as indicated by Edgar Cayce. HPB in SD has indicated the age of the Sphinx as closer to 78000 years, and the proof in yesterday's presentation on NBC seemed to point in that direction, although no mention was made of either HPB or 78000 years. There is a 800 number that was given for anyone wanting a copy of the full 2-hour tape of this presentation (NBC showed only one hour) at a cost of some 30 dollars (I can probably find that number in the videotape that I made of NBC's show, if anyone is interested). 2. Eldon talked in a recent piece about esoteric schools. I have had a wonderful experience as part of such an esoteric school (which to me anyways appears as a genuine esoteric school) - it is the Arcane School, of which I have talked about earlier in several of my messages. I am temporarily out on a 'sabbatical' and am currently NOT affiliated with it (but perhaps will go back when the 'time is right' again). I will be very interested in hearing from others on this network about their experiences with any esoteric schools. In particular, I am very interested in the 'Esoteric Section' of TSA and any other theosophical schools that may be in existence. 3. Is anyone familiar with the service "America On-line" (AOL) -- apparently you can access Internet on it. I have a package to try them for 10 hours for free and if I like all I have to pay is $ 10/month for the first 5 hrs and incremental charges after that (I donot remember the fine print!) How does it compare with Netcom? I do not have a service for my home PC, all the communication that you get from me originates on my office UNIX workstation. One of its drawbacks is that I cannot access via FTP the archives/library of Theos-L. 4. Since I cannot access John Mead's 'guide' to Internet via ftp, can anyone tell me of what is available of interest to potential mystics or occultists via Internet? I am aware of Soc.Religion.eastern and Soc.Religion.Misc but is there anything else out there? 5. I had asked the question before about the best way to acquire all of HPB's writings (and also the ones she has referenced extensively, like 'Esoteric Buddhism'), in particular Volume iii of SD. Any advice? Many thanks and best regards, Arvind From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1993 09:57:55 -0500 From: Dewey Val Schorre Subject: Re: Miscellaneous >3. Is anyone familiar with the service "America On-line"(AOL) -- > apparently you can access Internet on it. I have a package to try > them for 10 hours for free and if I like all I have to pay is > $10/month for the first 5 hrs and incremental charges after that (I > do not remember the fine print!) How does it compare with Netcom? I > do not have a service for my home PC, all the communication that > you get from me originates on my office UNIX workstation. One of its > drawbacks is that I cannot access via FTP the archives/library of >Theos-L. America On-line is very popular among Macintosh user, of which I am one, because of its excellent GUI, ie. graphical user interface. I truned down a similar offer because netcom, which was described by eldon in a previous message, gives me much more. For $20.00 per month, discounted to $17.50 if you let them charge to your credit card, you get unlimited access at 14,400bps. With Netcom you can FTP the archives/library of Theos-L. When you do this, the files will be in your account on netcom. You can read them there with the editor, vi, or download them with zmodem. One warning! Don't let lots of files accumulate in your account, because you will be charged extra if you take up too much space on their disk. Best way to handle the files that you FTP is to read the them or download them and then delete them all in one session. Leaving the files in your account for just one day wan't cost much, but it you keep procrastinating for weeks, the cost mounts up. From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1993 09:58:23 -0500 From: Dewey Val Schorre Subject: Autopoiesis The following articles appeared in the Alife Digest Volume #114. I wonder if theosophists ever discuss autopoiesis and what they think of it. ---- > From: George Kampis > Subject: Autopoiesis matters Autopoiesis matters In a recent note, suggested new computer simulations for autopoiesis. As a long-time follower of autopoietic theory, let me be critical with respect to what such a simulation can bring us, and let me make some remarks about the very concept of autopoiesis at the same time. 1. Autopoiesis - Its Contribution Defined by Maturana and Varela in (1973), autopoiesis means "organizational closure" (well, yes the *word* itself means self-production), a state where the preconditions and the results of existence coincide, in a self-referential way. Although vague and often misinterpreted, and resting heavily on less known earlier developments, the notion is an important one, characterizing life on the basis of a *dynamic* instead of a *structural* existence, and focusing on a mutuality between the products and the producers of the living state -- in the small, on the mutuality between the genes and the proteins, or the knowledge and the knower. 2. The Computer Model Let me be very explicit: taking the above definition seriously, there can be no such thing as an algorithm for an autopoietic system. Algorithms are prototyped by machines where there is no feedback from the outputs towards the defining primitives. No formal system can depend on axioms that it produces as theorems. An algorithm is, by definition, an "allopoietic" system, one that produces something else than itself, whereas an "autopoietic" system should be the way around. So, for instance, the model described in (BioSystems 1974, vol 5, 187--196) depicts a unidirectional process, which proceeds from a given input towards a given output. So, this Uribe model is clearly not an autopoietic system at all. There is no organizational closure in it. The model does not produce its basic components, only a few derived ones. Who produces * (the catalyst), for instance (on p. 189-90)? It has to be introduced in the system by hand, and it is not subject to any production or degradation process. What we see here is a dependent or controlled process, and not an autonomous process. In fact any autocatalytic reaction system shows more "autonomy", as there are at least *cycles* in autocatalysis. It would be false to look for a tricky outway now, by means of fabrics that allow for a "better" simulation, where we would have, instead of the above seen straightforward and crude dependence on what in chemistry is called a pool substance (one that is never deployed), a situation where the supporting scaffolding becomes better concealed behind the clumsiness of an intricate definition and behind the use of a vast amount of different compounds. The issue is not a matter of degrees but a matter of principles. There will be no better simulation, there is no algorithm for self-reference. 3. But Why Autopoiesis? Here we come to a different issue: what is it that we want, after all? A model of autopoiesis at any rate, whatever that might be, or a model of the living state? Autopoiesis may just not be the right concept to begin with, if we want *models*. Autopoiesis is not a modeling methodology at all, it is just a way, and it is a different way, of looking at things. It is different metaphysically, much as Zen buddhism is different from science. As it is a wrong question to ask, what the point in Zen buddhism is, for if you ask that, you know nothing about Zen buddhism, and, with this start, you will probably never learn anything, it might be similarly wrong to ask for a model of autopoiesis. Autopiesis is just a third kind of metaphysics, besides physicalism and vitalism, containing elements of both but making allies with neither. This metaphysics can be best characterized as that of the Kantian "Ding an sich", the Thing to Itself. This metaphysics involves self-reference as a third logical primitive besides "truth" and "falsity", as indeed implied by Varela s own work (see his Principles of Biological Autonomy, North-Holland, 1979). In such a system, you have no mathematical decidability, and hence no possibility for modeling any more. Whereas this system has a high emotional and intellectual attractiveness for an adventure of thought, it may be a cul-de-sac with respect to various goals of ordinary science. So why adopt this system? What do we learn by that for our models? What should be done differently with it than without it? In its original form, this approach is just not accessible for such a treatment. But that does not mean no treatment of life itself (or perhaps, Life Itself, smile) is possible. 4. Processes, Not Units What we may need, then, is a *constructive* instead of *descriptive* characterization (as in autopoiesis) of the circularity between the system and its components. For instance, the circle from genes to proteins and back can be cut off, by making reference to the process that brings it about. There is clearly no self-reference and hence nothing "autopoietical" at all in the process in which a given gene yields a given protein, or a given protein contributes to the expression of a gene. It is only our perspective (a false perspective now), a birds-eye view that defines the cell (or the brain, for that matter) as a global and self-referential unity instead of a web of local causal processes. To go for a causal description and to reject the object description is not reductionism. It can be process thinking (in the tradition of Heraclitus and Whitehead) instead of the essentialist thinking of Parmenides and Plato. It is thinking in terms of emergent integrities instead of in terms of persistent unities. From the causal point of view, the cell is not a *thing*, it does not *exist*, in this sense. There are various ways of trying to characterize emergent integrity. There is connectionism, that tries to transcend the static symbolic descriptions of the unity called brain, by going to levels below. It may be an attempt, nothing more. In my view, it is an attempt that fails, in its essential points. Yet the idea is there. Then there is dynamical structuralism, with all its oddities, but with its emphasis on temporal becoming, and on the unfolding of trajectories, instead of the existence of pre-fixed solutions. How long it can go along that road is another question. But again, the attempt is there. (Artificial Life is, at best, something that pertains to dynamic structuralism, in its present form - maybe it can be called "computational structuralism"). And there is, somewhere in this list, a suggestion by myself, which offers to consider the logic of component production on its own. Developed under the name "component-systems", this theory depicts productive processes of the kind that may interest the biologist, the brain theorist and the cognitivce scientist, as complex and unpredictable dynamic processes, that generate radically new variables, yet at the same time can be *understood* and in an at least approximative sense simulated while resting on some ordinary metaphysics of materialism. Or there are so many other candidates. Autopoiesis is, in the form described, an old hat, not necessarily promoted even by its inventors today - they just dont seem to use this word any more (instead, Varela uses *enactment*, for instance). But that would be another story. -- George Kampis From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1993 10:50:00 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: the theater of life My first posting of this was cut short after three paragraphs, because I made a mistake and used the "F" work, "From", in starting a line. Since the first part was so short, I'm reposting the first three paragraphs along with what was lost. ---- The human kingdom has been compared to a grade in school, and the analogy is useful. Considering how a school works, we can see how a great period of evolution begins for us, the start of the school year, the evolution proceeds through successive lessons or unfoldments, then it ends with completion, graduation, our passing onto another grade. The school itself does not progress. Even though the students may, most of them, passed through, say, fifth grade, and are now ready to enter sixth grade, the fifth grade remains behind. A new batch of pupils enters the grade, and the same cycle of learning has begun anew, with new students, but the same grade, the same humanity as before. There are two ways to view the workings of a world. A world has a dual nature to it. One way is from the standpoint of the creatures in the world, its inhabitants, its life atoms. From their standpoint, the world exists as a home or stage for existence. This world both is their host, and educator. The cyclic changes and sweeps of consciousness that the world goes through are experienced as grand sweeps of evolution. It appears that the world's purpose is to educate, to teach, to lay out a plan of evolution for its beings. Taking the other point of view, a being is embodied, has a form, and it is a single, living body. Upon close examination, it is comprised of a collective hosts of beings of vast numbers, all active in their own lives, but this is not seen nor experienced at the bigger, the macrocosmic level. The being, the Heavenly Man, goes through his daily life, his activities, and as he goes through a day, he repeats the same routine as he may have for thousands of days before. There is a rhythm, a pattern, a typical routine to how he lives his life. Or taking the microcosmic point of view, as a being in the universe that his existence has created, these "days" are vast evolutionary periods. A "day" of brahma is a vast evolutionary period for us. Otherwise known as a planetary manvantara, it comprises the time of the entire evolution through one of the kingdoms of nature. And a "week" of brahma would be called a solar manvantara, where we've passed through the entire seven kingdoms and completed a cycle of evolution. This vast cycle of evolution, though, seeming to comprise all that there is to be learned, as we have passed through the seven, actually ten, kingdoms, from the lowest Elementals through the highest Dhyani Chohans, is but a single cycle of evolution. We have started from a state of perfection, with a burning desire, a "tanha", for self-consciousness, and begun the evolutionary process. Contemplating matter, seeking concrete existence, we go through seven stages of materialization, through the Elemental Kingdoms to our final goal of the Mineral, then seek a return, raising the acquired self-consciousness higher and higher, through the Vegetable, Animal, Human, then Dhyani Chohanic Kingdoms, until we've returned with the Treasure of self-consciousness. Having done this once, is this all there is? Do we simply keep going in a single direction, higher and higher? No. The cycle is repeated again. We continually repeat the cycle, as do all beings, at whatever scale of being. The cycle repeats eternally. First is the silence. Then the hunger for self-consciousness. Then the contemplation of the material and seeking of self manifestation. Then the acquiring of concrete existence. Then the evolutionary return to our source, reaching perfection. And a period of silence, deep within, follows. But a time comes again where we again come forth. And again. And yet again. It is an eternal thing. There is more than one week in the live of Brahma, and we participant in many, if not all, of them. Our total time in existence is not limited to a single pass of evolution, a single week, a single evolutionary dip into matter. We, Brahma, and still loftier Gods and beings, at however high a scale, all follow the pattern of nature, all follow the course of life, all exist according to the same plan. And it is a grand plan, full of hope and wonder, with no end to things or lack of challenge and experience to come. Enjoy life. Participate in the Plan. Realize that there is an underlying order to things. Experience both the living nature of things, the structure to life, and its eternal flow. And let's break, discard, free ourselves of those terrible molds of mind, rigid patterns of thought that put blinders over our eyes and prevent us from gazing on the wonderous panorama of the theater of life! Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1993 14:33:10 -0500 From: Arvind Kumar Subject: Theos-L subjects plus Misc. The following message is a continuation of an ongoing discussion comparing the teachings of Alice Bailey and H.P. Blavatsky. This message is in reply to Jerry Hejka-Ekins' previous messages on this topic (his previous comments are shown indented in this message). ---- But before I get into AAB/HPB related discussion, let me share a few other thoughts that come to my mind as I write this. The great advantage of this media is the capability to interact and put forth questions, howsoever stupid they may appear to the questioner! I have enjoyed reading several pieces written by various persons on Theos-L but I can always read in the privacy of my home or office excellent books and periodicals. What this network enables me to do (which reading a book or an article by myself does not enable me to do) is to ask questions and get their replies, if the authors of the releavnt message are willing or able to do so. I'd like to continue to see the excellent pieces appearing on Theos-L but I'd like to make a suggestion to everyone to (a) please try to respond to all questions asked, as far as possible! (b) ask questions; let us make this a truly group effort. I certainly hope that nobody feels intimidated by any preconceived notions of 'scholarship' or other requirements in order to write a question or an information piece on the network. I also want to take this opportunity to thank all those who have participated in any discussion on Theos-L (I feel wiser because of their efforts) and pledge that if anything is directed especially towards me, I'll do my best to respond to it within a week or so. We all have our individual 'busy' lives to lead (and it is said that the reward for 'work well done' is more work, so we as disciples have to learn to live the 'busy' life while continuing to meet all spiritually important obligations). So much for 'my two cents worth' of thoughts for the day! Let me try to respond to at least a few of Jerry's recent comments. ---- One general comment on AAB and HPB comparison from my standpoint: I have read both Bailey and Blavatsky from the standpoint of imbibing the wisdom teaching as far as possible, without references to which para or which page or indeed which book contains a particular teaching. This is proving to be a short-term hindrance in this comparison as Jerry'd like to have a reference for everything (which I agree is the hallmark of any 'scintific' work). I do make notes for myself within the pages of a book but they are (or at least they were) never made from the standpoint of undertaking a comparative study later! I plan on providing quotations, but as time goes on hopefully I'll be providing more and more references as well for these quotations! Another comment on my last message. I had indicated that I was not aware of any reference to Leadbeater in DK's (the Tibetan teacher who appears to have worked together with AAB in giving out the teachings) work. I checked yesterday in the Master index to AAB books published by Torkom Saryadarian (one of the 'direct disciples' of DK as I understand; he was one of the disciples in the book 'Discipleship in the New Age' by AAB) and found that there is, after all, one reference to Leadbeater and that one appears on P.303 of Esoteric Psychology Vol.II. DK says there that (I am paraphrasing here) '...it is a common mistake to confuse the raising of the Kundalini experience with the raising of the energies from the solar plexus to above the diaphragm, and many disciple make this mistake. Leadbeater was one of these, his relatively high discipleship status notwithstanding...'. In addition, there are a number of rather unflattering references to Leadbeater in AAB's own book "The Unfinished Autobiography" (for example see 170-171), where AAB has given an unequivocal thumbs down to at least 'Man: Whence, How and Whither" indicating her belief that this book carried '..a strong note of Astralism,... proving to me the untrustworthiness of what he wrote..'. AAB has also spoken in somewhat harsh tones about the role of Annie Besant in '..promoting personality cults, preoccupation with persoanlity affairs/attacks as opposed to wisdom teaching, psychism...'(my words paraphrase what is written on pp 170-171). The rest of my comments appear alongside Jerry's comments below, Best Regards/Arvind ---- > O.K., to sum up some important points in your last message: > You *do not* believe that Alice Bailey's teachings are based upon > Besant and Leadbeater. You paraphrase Bailey to say that "much of > what his been believed and/or published by `theosophists' is > wrong or misleading . . . " (please give a reference). I take > it that this is to be understood that much of what was published > by Besant and Leadbeater (among others) is wrong or misleading. > Does this statement also include the writings of Blavatsky? The statement about 'misleading or wrong information' definitely does NOT apply to HPB; we know from my comments above that at least some of what Leadbeater and Besant have given out is untrue. See also p. 255 of the Unfinished Autobigraphy for comments regarding the misleading picture of the Masters '... painted by the Theosophical Society..'. > You further say that: "I do believe that the AAB teachings > build upon whatever had been given out along `theosophical' lines > by the Hierarchy till 1920, so to that extent there is value in > reading all `generally accepted' theosophical literature up to > 1920 (to get familiar with terminology and basic concepts > perhaps)." In light of the above, are you saying that much of > what was published between 1875 and 1920 is "wrong or misleading? > Assuming that what was "given out by the hierarchy" are the > correct teachings, how are we to know what was "given out by the > Hierarchy," and which are the incorrect teachings given out > during that period? Were the E.S. teachings, that Bailey > received, in error? Were some of Leadbeater's writings correct? > Which? How can we tell? It is difficult for the average aspirant to verify the truth of much of the true wisdom teaching, and there is always a danger of falling into a trap in the form of wrong or harmful teaching. How can that be prevented? I believe that you have as good an answer to this age old question as I do. My position is to take what is given as a working hypothesis and assume it to be correct (until proven wrong) ONLY if it agrees with my intuitive thinking. But we all need to improve our discriminatory faculty, and intensify the inner link through "study, meditation and service". That is why I had asked Eldon recently to comment on meditation, for it is said that that is the technique par excellence '...to know th truth, to verify for oneself as to what is real..'. My assumption is that all that HPB has given out and ALL that DK has given out through AAB is real. > Regarding the purposes of the Lucis Trust, I understand why > you "think that she (AAB) was only continuing the work of serving > humanity that HPB started." Though the altruistic motivations of > the Trust are evident, that does not convince me that the Lucis > Trust is a continuation of H.P.B.'s work, as intended by her > teachers. To convince me of that will require a comparison of > Blavatsky's goals with those of the Lucis Trust, and an extensive > investigation of the implied teachings and assumptions the lie > behind those goals. But I hope the purpose of this discussion is > to compare the teachings of these two writers, rather than to > convince anyone of anything. Again, I'll refer you to p.255 of the Unfinished Autobiography, where the Tibetan has referred to HPB as "AAB's predicessor". To date I have NOT seen even a single instance of any divergence in the teachings of AAB and HPB, even though you and I have repeatedly asked people to come forward and let us know where the difference of teachings is. > Jerry Schuler wrote a while back that "there are several > differences in teachings and in emphasis. Which one is right?" > His statement typifies students who have done close comparative > readings among different authors, and did not begin with the > assumption that all of the writers were saying the same thing. I > hope that Jerry will someday expand upon his statement and show > us his findings. > In exploring this question, there are several possible > conclusions, but we must first be aware of our assumptions, > before we evaluate these possibilities. First, we are both > working under the assumption that H.P.B. gave out spiritual > teachings of extraordinary worth, and that these teachings came > from her teachers. This assumption is worthy of questioning, but > I suggest that we wait until everything else is resolved first. > I believe that you hold the assumption that A.A.B. is sort of a > spiritual successor to H.P.B., that is she gave out further > teachings. Is this a fair statement? I don't hold this > assumption. (By the way, you suggested that A.A.B. was predicted > in a passage in THE SECRET DOCTRINE, but you haven't yet come up > with the reference. I'm still waiting on that.) I may be holding > other relevant assumptions that you don't, but if so, they don't > come to mind. I have not been able to give you the relevant page of SD where HPB prophesied that a discple will come in the 20th century to expand on what she (HPB) has given out on the three types of fire (Electric, Solar, and fire by friction), and also a second key to the Secret Doctrine. The reasons for this are many, including the fact that I own a copy of SD which has different page numbers than the references in AAB's work, and the fact that I donot have a comprehensive index to SD. But I can refer you to the Introduction in 'A Treatise on Cosmic Fire' and also p. 236 of the Unfinished Autobiography, where AAB has written "..HPB stated that in the 20th century a disciple would come who would give information concerning the three fires with which the Secret Doctrine deals...'. > Now, the possible answers fall between two extremes: One > possibility is that there are no significant disagreements > between Blavatsky and Bailey. Such a conclusion will require a > close comparison of the two authors. But if it is found to be > so, it would be a compelling reason to adopt your assumption that > A.A.B. is H.P.B.'s spiritual successor. > Another possibility is that the disagreements are extensive > and significant. If this is found to be the case, then an > investigation into the reason for the disagreements is warranted. > Here is why: Many studies were done over the years comparing the > teachings of Blavatsky, Besant and Leadbeater. Early studies > were dismissed as biased, or ill motivated etc. As more studies > appeared, many people in the Theosophical Society finally > acknowledged that the discrepancies existed, and took the > position that Besant and Leadbeater's teachings prevailed over > Blavatsky's because they were giving out deeper teachings. > Others insisted that the differences were illusionary, and will > be resolved through a deeper understanding of the subject. Both > reasons were really rationalizations. These rationales begin > with the very assumptions that they were trying to prove. They > are very much like Saint Anselm's argument for the existence of > God, which begins with the assumption of the existence of God. > By the way, the study that Dan Caldwell recently mentioned, > is one of those later studies. It is well done, and worth > reading. I has sent a message to Don to let me know if he (Blavatsky Center) also carries other books etc. but there has been no response; anyways I have mailed $10 to him asking for a copy of both the articles he had mentioned in his message. You have not told me how to order the books available through you, either. > That's it for now. > Jerry Hejka-Ekins From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1993 14:11:32 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: a world and its beings I tried to post this yesterday evening at about 9:11 pm PST, but never got it back from the list, on either of my accounts on the list. Since there was noise on the phone line, I now think that it never made it and am reposting it below. ---- The theosophical view of things is similar to the steady state theory of astronomy. There are some resemblances. The idea is that no matter how big a world, a solar system, a universe that comes into being, exists for a while, then disappears, there is always something bigger, whose current existence allows for everything else to be present. At whatever scale that we look at life, a universe comes into being in and through a currently-existing bigger one. And it is the same at our scale. We, as humans, are born into existing worlds, existing embodiments of vastly greater lives . When we are born, and take on a physical body, we've effectively created a world in which our cells can live and exist. Our life is the organizing element that brings it together and makes it function. When it withdraws, the cells begin to die, and to go their own ways. The cells come into being through or find their lives in the environment that we create by our bodies. And as we step into our seven principles on a globe, into manifest existence on it, we're like cells entering or being reborn into a human body. Looking at the higher functioning of the body, there are various organs, and systems, like the nervous system. There are various specializations of the life that the body expresses. The organs are not self-sufficient, independent beings with a life and consciousness of their own, they are reflections of various types of consciousness in the activity of the body. The higher functions of the body are to express the consciousness of the man therein. He has an arm and reaches with it. A cell in the arm has no idea what an arm is or what is going on. The cells, the inhabitants of the "universe" that the body comprises, are guests, in once sense, and children in another, of the man. As we life in the body, we do not see life through the eyes and experience life through the countless activities of the billions of cells in our bodies. We are not simultaneously and separately aware in each and every cell. Our connection with the cells is collective. They change because of who we are and what we do. We are limited or helped by what they have become. The same is true of us in the world in which live. Brahma does not see life through each of our eyes, all the time, simultaneously. The high, lofty being whose body our world consists of, is as unaware of what we experience as we are of individual cells in our bodies. There is no down-looking, all-seeing God, ruling over our world, distinctly and simultaneously aware of every activity of every creature therein. Because everything in life is interconnected, the experiences of all are felt. But like any being, even as the highest one, there is a single focus of consciousness, a single point of attention, and that attention is directed towards happenings at his own scale of being, happenings with beings of a similar class. As Monads, we were never created by anyone, but as individual beings in a particular world, in some existence, we come into being due to the courtesy of the being whose living form comprises our world. We have a birth, grow old, then die. Apart from existence in a particular world, though, we are rooted in the Timeless, at that level there is no such thing as a beginning. We bear an eternal family relationship to other Monads. A relationship that is deeply rooted in our natures. One relationship is to others at the same scale, as companions in the drama of eternity. Another is one of hierarchy, world-creating, life-giving, to others at a different scale. We are forever parents to a host of lessor Monads, our children, who may live as cells in our bodies, and more particularly are our life atoms. At the other scale, we are children of the same Parent Star, the same Inner God or Divine Monad, and trail behind in the shadow of its splendor and glory. Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1993 16:30:11 -0500 From: Arvind Kumar Subject: Re: Original Cause? The following dialog may be of some interest to theosophists.../Arvind In article d54@gap.cco.caltech.edu, verma@pfeast.enet.dec.com (Virendra Verma) writes: > In article <2buffg$8ba@gap.cco.caltech.edu>, pjm@isis.cshl.org > (Pat Monardo) writes... > > > >if i watch consciousness emerge (from nothingness) as it does indeed > >every day, i notice the following transformation. i discern a > >remarkable > >consciousness which is an "observer" consciousness. it watches the > >REM dream play but is affected in only subtle ways. nothing painful > >in a "physical" way can enter into this consciousness. that is, > >if the person who later becomes "me" in the dream is shot or > >hurt in any way, "i" ignore it and dont fully comprehend the > >situation. however, this dreamscape soon pulls "i" into te > >picture at which time, i am affected by the dream forms, > >a notable increase in fear arises. so in my dream scapes, > >more than one consciousness is apparent. neither of these, > >however, is a soul. the first consciousness, i believe, is > >that consciousness which "lasts throughout the duration of > >samsaric existence". so where is soul? where is god? neither > >are apparent in any of this. so your ability to observer > >this maya and equate it to God is fictional. > Here the consciousness is not coming out of nothing but is undergoing a change of state from 'surface consciousness' to 'sublimal consciousness' in which soul, the witness of all your external/surface/physical experiences, goes to her final abode of blissfulness while mechanical machinery of mind plays with photographs (sort of) or impressions captured by the buddhi during surface consciousness. Mind, Buddhi and Pran (these together are called sukshma sharira) are all physical manifestations. Pran is energy, the first inertial matter and with preponderance of tamasic guna; Mind has preponderance of rajas guna which is the indicator of dynamism; Buddhi is intellect with preponderance of sattwic guna and contains photographs of data. When soul comes out of her blissfulness state, the data are arranged in proper manner and interpreted by the mind which generates thoughts. This is how 'surface consciousness' comes into being. So to answer your question about soul, it is still in the body but goes to her final abode of Bliss. All this lila takes place within the body of God. Mere existence of you is an indication of the existence of God. > >i am not > >criticising God, only your love of fiction. > > That's fine with me as long as it is an opinion. BTW, sometimes, 'fictions' (a subjective term) are useful to understand various phenomenon of nature. That helps divert attention to more useful things from wasting ones energies by getting entangled into intricacies of non-sensical beliefs. If a fiction can satisfy the mind from the reason point of view, that indeed, IMHO, will help control the mind. If left wandering into non-sensical beliefs, the whole purpose of life is not going to go anywhere. The purpose of models is to simply understand the phenomenon, to prove their validity is futil. The reality or truth must be 'realized' not proved. namaste, -- Virendra Verma ---- "To dwell in our true being is liberation; the sense of ego is a fall from the truth of our being" - Mahopanishad "All is the Divine Being" - Gita XVIII 61 From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1993 16:06:33 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: scales of being The theosophical teachings do not fit in with the common idea of God and universe, what is found in the modern exoteric religions and philosophies of the world. There are certain doctrines that are kept secret, hid, unspoken because they would be subject to misunderstand and misuse, where they plainly taught, as they were in ancient days, before the Mysteries were founded. A number of the doctrines are mentioned in the theosophical literature, and more are hinted at. The materials are not contrived, made-up, one of many arbitrary philosophies, an empty content to be used as a form of practice, with the emphasis entirely on *process*. No. The doctrines are high truths formulated in early races by the elect of mankind, a living expression given to the supernal knowledge given humanity by the Dhyani-Chohans upon awakening the fire of mind in men. We should first consider the concept of creation. When we say that something is created, we mean that it is fashioned from already-existing materials. When we say that we "create something out of nothing", it is a blind, and does not mean what it might seem to say. A creation is when an informing life brings a higher sense of organization to other existing things, other creations. The "something" is the life that gives a higher form of order to things that were there before. And the "out of nothing" is the unmanifest state that the life, the Monad, has come out of, when coming into manifestation. The other aspect of creation is a "transformation", where the expression or form of an already existing life has been changed. That life now gives expression to something of ours. We have manifested an influence that has affected it. A new karmic link has been forged. As a creator, we are a channel for other, smaller, lives to come into being. We are not their owner, but are like a parent, giving birth to and helping raise them. The metaphor of a parent, though, is not good to apply to the universe. A parent is a being of the same scale of existence, of the same class, kingdom, that provides for the continuation of life, that provides for the entry into life of a fellow being. The higher kingdoms and the governing of our universe is not, though, along those lines. The metaphor to use is that of adults or grownups, as opposed to children. We are looking at entire classes of beings who have reached a greater development, unfoldment, spiritual and material maturity than we have. As a class, they run the world, know what there is to know, and see that we are taken care of. These are the Dhyani-Chohans. The spiritual Law ruling the world is not the directed will of a single being. It is the action of a higher class of spiritual beings--or rather classes of spiritual beings. The world is not a game, a puppet show, an experiment, of a single, all-powerful being, for whatever purpose, be it amusement, or something practical like testing the creations molded out of animated clay to see which have good qualities and are worth keepint and which are not and need to be discarded. And the world is not an attempt by some being, otherwise unable to express itself or to attain consciousness, other than in and through all of us as its multitude of eyes. In order to acquire the keys to the wisdom teachings, to penetrate to the hidden doctrines, to approach the esoteric thoughts regarding the matters, we have to discard the heavy burden of mental baggage that we carry with us from our upbringing in the western world. We have to leave behind both deism, the idea of a personal deity, as well as materialism, and all the companion ideas. We have to see things freshly, openly, without preconception. Because of this, it is often easier for an innocent, simple youth to approach the Teachings than an educated adult, because of the *barriers to thought* created by false, but sincere beliefs. Every Monad is eternal, timeless, and has an equal right and basis for existence. Where and how it exists depends upon what is already there. It must have an existing universe, world, sphere of causes, present, that can *host* it. A stage must be sought for its drama of life. It does not get created out of nothing and is not owned by the world it uses to come into being. We all exist in a world of a certain *scale of being*. All Monads are at a certain scale of being and this is, for them, eternal, unchanging. It is something rooted in their timeless nature, their highest principle, and places them in the scheme of things. We all progress, develope, evolve at different speeds, and it is possible for our fellow humans to fall behind us, or to outpace us, so that in distant ages in the future, they will be in a lower or higher kingdom than we are. But always, we are at the same scale. The creatures about us, planes, animals, humans, are all on one scale. The scale includes the Dhyani-Chohans, and future evolutions beyond our globe chain as well. But we do not become planets, suns, nor find entire universes to be our forms, our bodies, until *all of life* has expanded to that point. There will come a point where we all are parent stars, and our life atoms, trailing behind us, are the beings that populate our kingdoms. That time will come, when *all of life* itself has progressed to that point. The next idea to consider is the being/universe duality. There are two sides, two views, two ways of experience the embodiment of a life. Taking the standpoint of the being embodied, there is a form that functions according to laid out laws, that functions automatically, that is alive and has a limited awareness of its own. The other standpoint, the dual side of it, is from that of the many, the countless multitudes of beings, lifeatoms, Monads, who have come together to make up that body, form, universe. These beings are coming into manvantaric existence in their world, now that it has left pralaya and is in active existence again. Taking their standpoint, there is no single, paternal being that sees all, knows all, that understands every feeling, action, thought of each individual being. We do not, for instance, watch over every individual cell in our physical bodies. The paternal compassion that is felt in life is from a ruling class of beings, rather a hierarchy of many classes of beings, one above the other, all of which order and control the workings of the universe. They architect and build the world. They carry out the laws of life. As the creator of our earth, the biblical Elohim, they-- note the plural term--are the Dhyani-Chohans. Compassion is the law, and there is unity at the highest of the world. But there is no all-seeing being, no individual person, in direct charge. The mystery of manifestation and how life can exist is revealed in the duality of the embodied being as the informing life and the created universe as an organized realm of many classes of beings. This duality contains an esoteric truth that holds the key to magic. We do not control nature by saying our world is like a man so we put ourselves in his place. We control it by understanding how the "underside" of a life, the as-a-universe side, works, and relates to the indwelling life. This dual nature to things is different from the macrocosm/microcosm duality, for that duality talks about the fact that there is the same pattern of life to all scales of being. We are all of the same pattern, regardless of scale, all essentially embodied Monads. Our universe is the embodiment of a Monad and we follow the same pattern. This pattern is the same throught existence, with but minor variations due to individual temperament. To understand ourselves, then, is to understand our deity as well. The macrocosm/microcosm teaching, though, misleads us when we seek to use it to understand the inner workings of our universe. Those inner workings, the higher nature of our world, refer to the uppermost realms of the microcosm, its topmost levels, and not to the individual whose existence is the macrocosm. The very highest classes of beings approach the threshhold of nonbeing and when they pass on, in their evolution, they enter classes in a higher world. They have not changed scale. They have not become worlds as we know them. They have moved on to other theaters, other stages to play out the drama of life. The highest classes of beings do not necessarily decrease in numbers, shrinking down to one being, who becomes the one whose form makes up the universe. This is wrong, a blind. When we read of single beings ruling our world, like the Dhyani-Buddhas, they are *not* individuals, they are classes of beings too. Reaching up to the highest classes, there is no change of scale. The beings of one scale do not become those of another scale, as they become more and more advanced. They pass on to other worlds of the same scale of existence. The scale is eternally fixed. The unity of life at the highest of our world is not from all lives eventually becoming a single being, but from the functioning of a shared background to consciousness. In Atman, we share the same consciousness, that of our *host*, our *creator*, and we are but one level removed from dissolution of the manifest, of nirvana. But we are still ourselves, though unaware of it at this level of being. The unity of life is not due to a divine being *who is us* and who we become if we go deep enough within. The unity is from a shared life of the being of our world, and takes on the nature of that being's attributes of consciousness, which become the type of experience that we are able to have on its plane, in its sphere of causes. What we find about us in life is a *radiant tree of life*, coming into being in an infinite chain of manifest worlds within worlds, collectively called the Boundless All. We are one such branch on that tree, in life, and share the responsibility of passing on the life and light that flows within us. We have a responsibility to all that trail behind, all our companions in life and all the lifeatoms that call us home, that find us their universe. We are in one big web of life which is based upon the principle of sharing, giving, compassion, selflessness, and play our part in the great drama of life. Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1993 21:28:09 -0500 From: "Eldon B. Tucker" Subject: prophecy and purification by Brenda Tucker Some people believe that when you discuss or represent another author in your own work that you should do it in a way that some additional sense has been added. What you write about what someone else writes is a worthy enhancement of the other's work. Anyone who adheres to the "dead letter" of a text by repeating it and refrains from adding his own knowledge of the subject in some way is doing an injustice to the original author. Why can't Bailey be the one coming in the Twentieth Century? Why can't we all be? I remember my first experience with theosophy. It was through reading a book given to me by a man who had received "knowledge" from Guru Maharaji after seeking through European and American cities for someone who could give him this "knowledge." He had seen Guru Maharaji speak on a mountain top in Switzerland. Now, most Christians have lived this vicariously by hearing the stories of Jesus speaking to crowds in his few short years as "National Lecturer." (Just kidding.) To return to my story, he showed me in the introduction where the author of the book makes approximately the same claim as "someone in the Twentieth Century" only it contains a year, I believe. And this year was the year of Guru Maharaji's birth, so his idea was that this person with great destiny was his beloved Guru. If he was right, I don't know why I missed out entirely on knowing about it. The book was THE LIGHT OF THE SOUL with commentary by Alice Bailey. Everyone "adds" a sense to what they read by repeating it in a way that perhaps you could think of it as "veiling" another persons work. So it makes sense that all people who come in the Twentieth Century add to the work done prior in the world, or that those who come in the Twentieth Century fulfill prophecies of those whom they greatly admire and respect. Would anyone out there work consciously to fulfill the prophecies of a beloved author just for the sake of thanking them if it were within their means? If I could do anything to aid H.P.B's work and make it more credible, I certainly would try to do that in hopes that the relationship I've developed with her work could continue, that a strengthening of the karmic bond would occur. The same with the other writers I've been privileged to read and admire; what it is they are speaking of is something special to the point that I've missed it tremendously in the years when I didn't have access to it. And believe me, I hope I never have to live a single life without this wonderful occult science, but if necessary to fulfill some other condition, I'd be resigned to. If you consider Leadbeater to be untrue, this must be because you refuse to see the light in his work. There must be details which don't ring true to you because of prior conditioning or is it because he's speaking in some detail about areas of experience in a way that his version of life, whether in the future or on the inner planes, can serve as fill-in. This fill-in can prove valuable to a student of theosophy because it's message is one of encouragement in an area that remains a vast mystery in most people's experience. What I wrote in my last message of a week ago about not enjoying the purifications which I undertook in the past, I have reconsidered and would like to say that each time I was able to take a major step in refraining from drugs, alcohol, sex, etc. it was in concert with my association with a group of "devotees." In this way then, I was not unhappy in undertaking purifications, but was greatly aided and blessed by the support of a community of "servers." These were the most enjoyable and instructive times of my life and not in a sense unenjoyable, because I was surrounded by those of like mind, who were either behaving similarly or had done so in the past. It was probably being admitted into the Esoteric School that gave me the strength to abstain the first time. After leaving the Esoteric School however about two years later, I returned to my old habits. This time it was my desire to associate with and learn from the I AM Temple that allowed me to take my life under control and this time firmly and finally. I liked it better because it was not a formal, written vow. I could continue to attend or I could miss as many classes as I chose. No questions asked. No reporting to any superior. Just free to participate or not participate, but before I was originally allowed to attend classes, I was instructed to use violet flame exercises for six months, due to my digressions, I believe. I never wanted to be refused admission again, so I never allowed myself to drink or smoke again. (Being vegetarian has never been a point of negotiation. That took place only because of my love for the "kingly science," which by the way has made me definitely a SERVANT and I don't really expect to ever live like a king, except when in my HIGHER SELF. Which makes sense, I think, because the LOWER SELF is or should be servant to the HIGHER SELF. And I am very, very, happy in my HIGHER SELF. It's just I haven't been able to figure out how to create a continuation of consciousness on that level yet. So good luck to everyone in their efforts and Arvind, I want to thank you for answering my question about progress in this direction. I really enjoyed your piece. From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1993 10:10:20 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: engage the process When we approach a study of Theosophy, how seriously do we take it? Is it something interesting to think about, but is soon forgotten as we set down our books and resume life in the so-called real world? There is a lot more to the theosophical literature than a clever, entertaining mental puzzle! Theosophy is literally real! That means that it can be relied on as readily as the science and technology that we learn in our modern classrooms. It is not empty words, it is something that can be tried out in life and known to be true by our personal experience. We won't really experience it in life--not fully, truly, as a living Truth--until we put in it as much confidence as we do in the simple things of life. We know that we will fall down if we lean over too far; we know that to touch something burning hot will hurt us; we know that the sun will rise in the morning. These are all simply facts of life. And Theosophy, too, needs to become a simple fact of our lives. The numerous Teachings like the globe chains, karma, and the seven principles all have to become as real as money, housing, and food, as waking and sleeping, as physical exercise and meditation are in life. This does not mean that we take ourselves too seriously. A sense of humor is important. There are many times in life when we need to be light, cheerful, and humorous; we are not expected to go about life with long faces, always somber and heavy, always gravely saying "do this" and "don't do that!" Theosophy deals with real things. They may sometimes involve knowledge of life far removed from the experience of the moment, like the nature of our after-death experiences--and I'd certainly hope that I'm far removed from after-death experiences! And they may involve things that happen about us at every moment, things that we simply haven't been paying attention to, things that are a part of our life that we have simply been ignoring. We should be willing to look for Theosophy in unexpected places. And it can be found in the ordinary as well--there but simply unseen until we know to look. There is a lot to life that stares us in the face, but our eyes, unfocusing and glazed over, do not take it in. A wonderful spiritual insight may await us by just stopping for a moment, and looking around in the room in which we not sit. The man that walks by in the hallway could very well be a Mahatma, but we just did not notice it. Making that phone call to a friend, needing encouragement and support, could be the spiritual experience that we most need to undertake; and it just awaits our recognition and action. When we speak of being a true Theosophist, or a chela, we should not put up such a lofty, high, unapproachable ideal that we can never hope to experience it, to make the experience a part of our lives. The Masters have said that even if we approach their precincts in thought, that we are drawn into the vortex of probabation, that we have engaged the process. The Path is a process, a natural process in life. It can be engaged, started, entered upon. It is as natural as eating or sleeping. There is a way that it works, a real way; it is a real process. It is not something imaginary, a delusion, a make-believe fantasy, like that of a three-year-old child wanting a magic carpet to fly through the sky on, because of seeing it in a movie. The Path is *real*, it is a thing that can be done. And it is not an arrogant claim to superiority, a sign of pride and egotism, to start living it. A chela may not be able to say that he has undertaken certain training by a specific Teacher, becuause of being pledged to secrecy, but participating in the general process of hastened development, the Path, is not a secret thing. It is pointed out, in many different ways, as the noble life, the saintly life, the spiritual life; the many religions of the world all mention aspects of it. It is not a secret thing, it is talked about widely, under a multitude of names. And the Masters are not unapproachable deities. They are men in bodies of flesh, such as us, and only are fully Mahatmas when they have engaged their higher natures, and stepped aside from physical life. We should neither deify them nor the Path. They are not so unapproachable, so rare, so removed from life that we can only humbly bow our heads and pay homage to them, if not give them our prayers and worship. That is nonsense! They are *real* and their participation in life is as actual men. They are *somewhere* and are doing *something*. They do not merely exist as the painted faces on pictures in someone's shrine room! The difficult part, though, is knowing where and how to look. While giving the written word the high respect it is due, and deeply studying the Teachings, we do not allow ourselves to worship the dead letter, finding and giving proper citation to a nice quote is far removed from an actual experience of a deep insight. And when we look about us at the ordinary events of life, we do not allow us to take for granted our ordinary interpretation of what happens. There is a deeper mystery behind what happens to us, and we only need look at things with the right eyes, with the right awareness, with the right experiencing of the world. Stop and listen correctly. Look again at what is before you. Consider again what the other person said. Look at your friend's face more closely. Be aware of the room you are talking in. Lose yourself in the activity of the moment. See it in the big picture of the life, a little but highly-important drama in a meeting room, in a city, in a globe racing through space, in vast, dark space lit up by starry orbs. Recognize that the whole universe is present in the moment, in your discussion with your friend. See greater mysteries behind ordinary life. And *engage the process*, begin that long road that leads to spiritual perfection, start to awaken the inner nature to the realities that reach beyond our outer world, that go deep within, that lead us to our inner divinities! Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1993 13:43:14 -0500 From: "Michael W. Grenier" Subject: Re: prophecy and purification Brenda, you wrote: > If you consider Leadbeater to be untrue, this must be because you > refuse to see the light in his work. Could it be that Leadbeater didn't always tell the truth (perhaps unknowingly)? I have no reason to doubt him but raise this question because I'm uncomfortable in stating that the Leadbeater or any other writer ALWAYS writes the truth. We all have limitations, both the authors and the readers. Brenda also writes: > This time it was my desire to associate with and learn from the I AM > Temple that allowed me to take my life under control ... I was > instructed to use violet flame exercises for six months, due to my > digressions, I believe. Brenda, what is the I AM Temple? The use of the violet flame reminds me of Church Universal and Triumphant and the Keepers of the Flame under guidance of Elizabeth Prophet. Are they related? From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Wed, 17 Nov 1993 10:56:37 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: spheres of causes and spheres of effects One teaching we find in *The Mahatma Letters* is regarding spheres of causes and spheres of effects. We read how, in the globe chain, that one follows the other, like alternating beads on a necklace. The spheres of causes are where we make new karma, where we are active in manifest life, where we interact with other beings, where our relationships with others, our karmic links, grow and change. That is, they are places of manifestation, places where we take actions. In the spheres of effects, new karma is not made. This is where we experience the results of our actions. Our state is unconscious and dream-like here, and we create and populate our surroundings out of our own consciousness. Some friends we know in life may, for example, appear to us here, but we have created them, creating the living images of them and animated the images. The friends are not there; they are of these images of themselves and do not live in, do not inform the images. We are related to others, and each relation is a karmic link of living experience. Like a rope with no one to pull on the other side, such a relationship is not active now. What we experience of another now is a memory, an image inside ourselves of the other. An example of this state is in devachan, where we, between lifetimes, have beautiful dreams of gread deeds, of wonderous experiences, of living life with people we know and love. These are *dreams*, though, and not actual experiences where the other people are actually, consciously present, interacting with us. Our earth, Globe D of the earth chain, is a sphere of causes. It is a staging area for manifestation. It is created by the informing life of a higher being's incarnation, by it taking on a form. Apart from such staging areas, things cease to exist. That is, they drop off into unmanifestation. As we move between one globe and the next, we drop our seven principles and then clothe ourselves in seven principles appropriate to the next globe that we are coming to. This process of dropping of the seven principles, takes us out of manifestation. It happens at night when we sleep. It happens in our after-death states. And and happens as the grand sweep of evolution takes the human kingdom from one globe to the next. As we die, we let go of the seven principles in stages. The first to go is the vital-astral-physical, the very lowest principles. At each stage, we must exhaust the unspent energy in the principles. The unspent desire energy, for instance, is dealt with and dissipated over time, as we release ourselves from Kama. And the unspent spiritual energy is dealt with as we release ourselves from still higher principles. We go through a process of letting go until we are freed of existence in one world, one sphere of causes, and then move on to the next. We have really entered a sphere of effects upon death of the physical body. Our personal self-consciousness is blown out like the flame of a candle being extinguished. There is continued consciousness, but it is not self-aware, there is no objectivity nor is there the clarity that we had before. We no longer sense that we are in life and that it is happening. There is but a sense of passive awareness. After we have dropped our lower principles, our experiences are based upon exhausting the unfulfilled energies of our prior life. We are living out the effects of the life that has just finished. We are not doing new things and making new karma. Any unfulfilled energy that we carry in ourselves, in whatever principle, will have its turn in being worked on, fulfilled in our mind's eye, and ultimately released and let go of. It is much better to give personal, tangible, concrete expression to the impulses of our nature in life. Constructive, or at-least non-destructive ways should be found to live out our harmful impulses. Noble, helpful, uplifting impulses should also be expressed. To dream grand dreams, but not take action to live them out in life, is to create a long, happy devachan, but does not make the world a better place! There are many examples of where we experience spheres of effects. One is in the after-death states, in the stages of giving up our principles of consciousness. This is our between-globe experience, as we transition from one world to the next. Another experience is in a part of our nature that watches, experiences, observes our life, taking in and experiencing what has happened, the experiencer. A third is in alternating cycles of activity and growth with cycles of inactivity and rest, periods of evolution and quiet. Another is when we are inactive in the human Ego, when we are elsewhere on the Outer Rounds. And another is in the moving horizon of the future, racing ahead, as the effect that follows the dynamic nature of the present, the causal realm. We exist in a golden chain of light, reaching endlessly upward, a causal hierarchy of being without end. It is life itself. This tree of life is existence itself, causality itself, and outside it, watching it, moving in response to it, is the passive, receptive, reflective, root nature of being. Our manifestation is due to the courtesy of the world at one scale, and of the universe at still a higher scale, due to the courtesy of the beings whose existence provide the staging area for life to come about. Nothing exists outside such areas, outside the organizing influences of such lives. We are both the guests of great beings, beings that in one sence are our gods and creators. But at the same times we play the same role to lessor beings, to beings of a smaller scale, to our lifeatoms, who owe their existence to our informing life, to our coming into being. We all participate in the golden tree of life on an equal basis, as both creation and creator, and share in the grand scheme of existence! Life follows the same universal pattern, regardless of scale, and our contributions are as important, as far-reaching, as ultimately valuable as those of the smallest lifeatom or grandest parent star! When we gaze upon this magnificent panorama of life, we cannot help but be changed, enobled, uplifted. There is mystery beyond mystery to life, level after level of deeper understanding of how things are. We must always be looking, searching, reaching for what lies just beyond. Even in taking a simple phrase such as "spheres of causes and spheres of effects", we can push back the limites to what we know and go deeply into the Teachings, and find that we've discovered things therein that we never knew existed. Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Wed, 17 Nov 1993 15:40:12 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: manas and *pushing* through ideas When we have acquired a solid foundation in the core concepts of the theosophical teachings, we are then ready to try something new, something in addition to the regular study of the classic literature. What we can try is to take an idea and then *push* it, to push on it and go through to the other side. We find that the idea tells us much, that there is a lot more to be found behind it than an exercise of imagination or free association. Each idea is a window on the world, and we can step through them. But this only works if the mind is prepared, if it has the core ideas and foundation in the Teachings to "push from". We have to have done the intellectual groundwork and awakened a glimmer of the buddhic splendor within for this to be successfully tried. We are talking about an act of magic, but an act of mind magic, not of the magic of the phenomenal world. We are talking about the ability to create and invoke in our minds knowledge and wisdom that we did not before have. And even as we read this, we have the opportunity to try this out: dive into the very idea of *pushing* itself, and give it a try! With manas-kama, we push a thought into action. With manas-manas, we push a through into the realm of learning, and learn something more, and with manas-buddhi, we push a through into enlightenment, into direct realization of things. Imagine a soap bubble. Picture yourself pushing against it from the outside, from all directions at once. Imagine it giving way. And instead of going inside, see yourself diving into a new and different world. The idea, then, acts as a sort of laya center. Now when we are speaking of knowledge, of knowing, of functioning in the manasic principle, we are talking about that aspect of consciousness wherein the distinct sense of self, of individual egoic consciousness arises. Like the other principles, manas is seven-fold, it has seven selves or egos to it, each corresponding to a different aspect to the individual nature to ourselves. Manas is also knowledge, and this knowledge is the understanding of the self or distinct nature of other beings, situations, events in life. Knowledge is really an embracing or realization of another, someone else, *as a separate being*, distinct in his own right, apart from any relation to us. This is one level at which we experience life. Knowledge is not merely a visual memory of appearances of things, a tape recording of sounds, an animated movie flic of how something else is. That is but the sensory (linga-sharira) aspect of manas, one of the lowest. Is is but the lowest form of understanding another as a distinct being, in our mind, in manas, when we is to contain in ourselves, when we are able to recall or create in ourselves, in our mind's eye, the image of him, his physical appearance, the sound of his voice, an animation of him in action. Imagining the sensory appearance of the other is but the lowest form of knowing. We understand or experience the unique of separate self of others in many ways in manas. Considering the subprinciples of manas, in helping us know of another person, we (a) are physically familiar with him (sthula sharira), (b) know his life energy (prana), (c) know his purpose, goals, motivations, and ambitions in life (kama), (d) know his viewpoint, understanding, ideas (manas), (e) know his relation to others, his karmic web (buddhi), (f) know its essential nature-- which is ours as well (atman), (g) know his total being, his totality at this moment (auric egg), (h) know his eternal ideals, virtues, purpose, destiny (swabhava), and (i) know his ultimate being (paramatman). With each aspect of our manas, we know the distinct, separate, individual nature of another, operating from, in its deeper sense, from the nirmanakaya, the sense of distinct subject and object nature to manifest being. And when we say that we *know* something, we can create and contain within ourselves what otherwise exists as a separate thing, a being without, apart from ourselves. It is partly an act of imagination, the creating of an image, but it is much more. At a higher level, in buddhi, we are inseparably linked with the other. At this lower level, where self is manifested and we are different than him, we experience the two ends of the link, subject and object, and the sense of interaction is perceived as a process of interchange. Knowing the needs of another, caring in the mind, is experienced as *pity*, where we look upon them as apart from us, and feel genuine concern for them. When we raise that caring to buddhi, it becomes experienced as *compassion*, when we do not look on another, and feel concern, because there is not someone else apart from us. We feel genuine concern, because we are that other person, there is no separation, our needs and the needs of the other are one. And this buddhic understanding (as reflected in manas) is what enobles us, what raises us, what leads us one day to tread that Path that leads not only to our own individual liberation, but to the making of us as the liberators of humanity as well! Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1993 19:42:52 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: kama: making things happen After manas, at which the sense of ego, of distinct, separate self is acquired, comes the principle of kama, of desire. We live in a sea of desire, and if we were to give in to it with abandon, it would not just be deluding, it would be consuming, and end up in our destruction. Kama is not just desire, but *will* as well, and is the sense of volition, of creative energy. In itself, it is colorless, and takes on the nature of the thoughts and actions that it is applied against. It its aspect as will, kama is the volition, the choice to take certain actions, the directing of our life. In its aspect as desire, it is cravings, complusion, a force that attracts and draws us. The will aspect involves self-consciousness, action initiated from within. The desire aspect is instinctual, action drawn from without. It is the energy that brings about action, driving or impelling us into live and activity. Kama is needed to take manas from self-contemplation and a devachanic state, and bring one into activity in the world. Choosing to build a bridge, to climb Mt. Everest, to write a book, to help tutor a child in mathematics, to eat a dinner--all are examples of the action of kama. Kama takes us from the general nature of thought and engages us in the activities of life. When inactive, we become disengaged from the world, lacking in initiative, lacking in purpose, not knowing what to do and not caring. Kama draws us into outer life, and when fully active, provides us with so many things to do that there's simply not enought time for them all! We become fully engaged in life and are never without things to so. When se speak of killing out desire, reducing it to nothing, doing away with it, we have a similar situation to the killing out of karma, to freeing ourselves from the chains of karma. We *never do it,* in an absolute sense, because as it is killed out at one level, in one part of ourselves, on one plane, it is at the same time being unfolded, developed, expanded on the next. Kama is an essential element of a fully-conscious, manifest being. We seek out certain kinds of experience because of attachments we have, because of desired that we've acquired, and we want to reexperience those things again and again. We derive enjoyment in life from going through them. It is the same on a larger scale, as *tanha*, the desire that continually draws us into rebirth into the world, the desire for existence in the personality drawing us into repeated experiences as a person, as a Globe D human ego. We choose to *be* a particular person *by* doing certain things, or expressing ourselves in a certain way. The key term is *by*. With Atman, we say that I am, there is no me, not a particular here nor there. With Buddhi, we say that I am, still no me, just this particular situation. With Manas, we say I am me, apart from others, an individual self. And now with Kama, we finally say I am me, a separate self, expressed in the world *by* these habits, by these activities, by these expressions. At Kama, we seek to give expression to, we interact, whereas before, at Manas, we are only separate selves, but with no activity, no interaction. Kama follows Manas because we need others to act on, to influence, to change, touch, inspire; there must be separate selves before action can happen. The term *by* is an aspect of the self where the object of desire, the activities of life, are a further qualification of *self* or a further limiting or more-concrete expression our consciousness takes on. Our desires and the resultant activites further define us. We are what we want. We do and become what we desire. We need the desires for our outer existence in a world. When we kill them out, we loosen our ties with living in a world; when we intensify them, we strengthen our ties with that world. Taking our point of view, our desires lead us into activity, we experience things and express ourselves, we make and create things, we've been active in the world and fashioned and shaped it. These individual acts of self-expression, the personal creations, are experiences by others as *influences*. An influence has a life of its own, but is not a manifest being per se, but rather the object of contemplation of an elemental, a passive sort of being. The elemental watches existing things but does not make them happen, it does not yet have forms or direct embodiment of its own, it gives awareness to something happening, like to the shape of a cloud or the flow of water in a stream, but does not have any active control over what it does. There are different aspects to kama, different subprinciples. We can crave physical experiences like eating. We can want to experience certain feelings, and put on music of a certain type. We can want mental experiences, and are drawn to read a particular book or perhaps work of fiction. We can be drawn to enlightenment and the Path, as well. Kama is needed and very important to have. It is the will to live that keeps an injured man alive in the hospital. It is the driving will that keeps a mother going through her long, exhausting day. It is the desire or will to know that keeps a student at the books late into the night. Kama is *not* a place, not a plane, not an astral body. It is an element of consciousness, a part of our nature on any plane of existence. We have to take care, when saying this, because theosophical terms are used in many ways--a blind--because we can also say that there is a desire plane. But the desire plane is where the base quality of consciousness, the unique flavor of atman there, the characteristic nature of the place is that the seat of consciousness is in kama. The laws of nature and activities of life on that plane readily *arise out of* the kama principle. It would be wrong to say that everything there is *made out of kama.* We are centered in kama if it is the prime motivator in the arising of experiences. It is not inferior to the higher principles, each is an ingredient of full consciousness. The quality of kama, though, makes one an evil-doer or a worker of good. It is very personal, selfish, evil, without the light of the higher principles. Our Kama is drawn from surrounding energies of life, from Fohat, in much the same way as we fill our minds with Mahat, the universal intelligence. We can contain only so much desire. It is deluding if it is allowed to be the driving force in life, if we let it control us. It is available in all qualities, a whole spectrum of types, from the most base to the most sublimely spiritual. And we personalize it as we take it in, contain it, and express it in our lives. Our actions are compulsive until we attain self-consciousness in it, until we desire from choice rather than from instinct, until we choose what we will do rather than be driven by the attractions of our environment. Kama is basically the will. One says that *this* is what I choose to create, to do, to be, to make happen. It is different than the seat of consciousness, which could be in any of the seven (or ten) principles. All the principles, though, act as a living, organic whole, and we must understand and make the best use of each of them. There are deep mysteries associated with the sevenfold (tenfold) nature of man. The principles of consciousness provide one key to understanding them. Turing the key, let us see what we can behold. As part of that key, Kama shows us how the immaterial consciousness, the sense of selfhood, applies itself to the material world and creation happens. It is a significant doctrine, worthy of a deep study. Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Fri, 19 Nov 1993 09:40:51 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: dual nature of kama As with the other principles, Kama has a dual nature. It can gravitate upwards, or be drawn down. When is it drawn down, our principles function as: Highest Triad (Paramatman, Swabhava, and Auric Egg) Upper Triad (Atman, Buddhi, Manas) Lower Quaternary (Kama, Prana, Linga Sharira, Sthula Sharira) Function in this manner, Kama drives the outer existence, the fourfold outer form. This is our current state of things. We are driven by desire, driven by the need to give expression to ourselves and to experience life. As Kama is mastered, and united with our spiritual natures, it will gravitate upwards, and our principles will function differently: Highest Triad (Paramatman, Swabhava, and Auric Egg) Intermediate Quaternary (Atman, Buddhi, Manas, Kama) Lower Triad (Prana, Linga Sharira, Sthula Sharira) When we have reached this point, we are active in the formless worlds. Our actions now are indirect upon outer life. Formless existence, though, really can go down as far as the nine principles, minus only the physical body, where we can be localized at a particular palce, will full sensory input and possibly the ability to cast an image of ourselves, but have no organic physical body, no body of living flesh to act from. When Kama is turned inward, upward, towards the spiritual, we find it directed towards self-creation, towards self-actualization, towards individualization. When it is turned downwards, towards the material, outwards into the physical world, we find it directed towards acquiring material things, towards physical experiences, towards giving tangible, concrete expression to ourselves. The dual nature of Kama, though, is not a division between good (upwards) and bad (downwards). Both aspects of it are useful and needed in a full expression of our lives. We must be drawn to the spiritual, to uplifting ourselves, to the inner light, and yet at the same time be driven to give outer expression to the love, wisdom, and beautiful inner qualities. We need to both be drawn deeper within as well as to give greater outer expression to ourselves. The nature of Kama takes on a good or a bad face depending upon where our *seat of consciousness* is. Where are we centered? What part of us acts as the originator, the instigator, the initiator of the consciousness? From what point within does the consciousness of the seven principles arise in unison? Are we centered in lower Kama, with the viewpoint on life and draw of consciousness thereby downwards and away from the spiritual? Or are we centered in higher Kama, with the orientation upwards, towards the holy? We have all the principles, and they are all active, but where is the point from which our consciousness arises? Where among the seven principles? That point determines the quality and nature of our consciousness. It may seem a paradox when we say to make Kama active, both inwards towards the Self, and outwards, towards the world of forms, wherein we can express ourselves and affect others. It may seem a paradox when we say to do that, and at the same time say to keep our seat of consciousness deep within, in the highest possible principle, in its most upward orientation. It is not really a paradox, because it refers to two different teachings. One is the essential nature and elements of consciousness, the seven- or ten-fold principles. The other is regarding the origination of consciousness, how it arises, and the monadic nature of man. We have a multitude of selves within, and are composed of many centers of consciousness. These are called the Monads. Kama is the bridge, the link between our essential self, our unique sense of being, and the outer world, the world of live and activities and forms. Like Fohat, which unites the driving life of the universe with its outer manifestation and forms, Kama unites our natures with the world of forms. Kama is a useful, important part of our lives, both now and long in the future. No matter how far we evolved, how high a plane we are able to exist on, how vast a being we have become, we will always have Kama and depend on it. It is an essential ingredient of consciousness, an esential part of our makeup, and we depend on it. Think of all the beauty that could exist in the world, if only we would will that it would happen. Think of all the happiness and wisdom that could be done. Dwell on the expression of all the noble sentiments that we contain. Make things happen in life. Become a spiritual force for good in the world! Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Fri, 19 Nov 1993 16:11:10 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: the second death When we initially die, we lose the three lowest principles, the physical, astral, and prana. A period of them is then spent in the state of kamaloka, wherein we free ourselves of the unspent desires that we've been carrying with us in life, the desire energy that we are filled with at the moment of death. This period is like a purgatory, wherein we suffer the absence of the objects of our desire, and gradually let go of the desires. It is a state when we are wholly centered in the Kama principle of consciousness. In this state, we are cut off from the world of forms, and because we are unable to express ourselves in the formless realms, we are in a dreamworld, a world made up out of contents of our own personalities, a world of intense longing and of the pursuit of the objects of our desire. We are, however, frustrated at every point, and the desires will exhaust themselves after a period of time. The kamaloka is a state where we are apart from the earth, globe D, and just into the sphere of effects that surrounds and follows it in our globe chain. We are not yet on a different plane, nor on a different globe, but reside in the astral light surrounding the earth. No new karma is made in this state, we are not in an outer world, we are not engaged in activity with others, we are not participating in co-creating this or any world at the time. New karma can only be made should we come back in touch with someone in physical embodiment, if we can latch onto them and reacquire some slight degree of self-awareness through them as our proxy. Kamaloka is a passive state, with no innate self-consciousness. We are not fully ourselves. Eventually, we've freed ourselves of the desires of the personality that we've departed, and we drop Kama, entering into the upper traid and going into a beautiful, but equally passive spiritual sleep, our devachan, the reward for our spiritual aspirations of the former lifetime. This departure, this entering of a new state, is called the "second death." When we die physically, we leave behind a corpse, composed of the momemtarily still-living cells. Our life has departed, though, and the body becomes subject to the decay of death. The lifeatoms perish too, and then seek reembodiment elsewhere until our return in the next lifetime. It is the same with the second death. In this case, we've left behind a living bundle of desires, of desire forms, a collections of kama lifeatoms. This could be called a psychic corpse, that will, with time, itself decay and go back to the elements. Our skandhas at this level, the substance of our being, is returned to nature until our next rebirth. There is a time, though, where this psychic corpse has not reached complete dissolution, and bears the image, the impression, the feeling tone of our previous personality. While still persisting, it is animated, as a passive sort of life, by one or more elementals, and can take on our appearance, if it should show up in a seance or to a psychic. We are not there, our consciousness has departed, but our characteristics, and some physical and psychical impressions of us remain. Like in psychometry, where someone can take an object from the sceen of a crime and from the memory of the event, impressed upon the object, recreate in his mind's eye the crime, so can we recreate something of the feelings, the desires, the interests of the departed person from his psychic remainders. The psychic corpse is called the kamarupa, and persists for a number of years after the second death. Its duration depends upon the spiritual nature of the departed man, and upon the amount of unfulfilled desires in his life. It can have a degrading influence upon people, if they come in contact with it, but could also, in rare cases, have an uplifting, spiritualizing influence. There is a sence of death, of decay, of dissolution to it. Most have no influence on us, since we are already infilled with the same desires. Some have a degrading influence. And a few are relics of saints, and could, in a strange sort of way, affect our spiritual interests. The kamarupa is composed of tiny lives, our lifeatoms, which basically compose a certain portion of our skandhas, the materials of mother nature that come together to form us, to make us what we are in life. Until those lives go their own ways, and the remaining cohesion in the form is gone, we have a passive structure, a psychical form that is given life by various elementals. In kamaloka, we've exhausted our Kama energy before breaking free and reaching the second death. So how does the kamarupa have any energy to it? It is an influence, rather than a causitive agent in life, its effects are only through the life energies of the living, the desires of living people. When the kamarupa is nearing its end, and contains but the faint impressions of our desires, our habits, our tendencies in life, it is called a "shell". Eventually, nothing remains. We are gone. Nothing remains behind in the psychical world of the man that has departed. Nothing remains, that is, except the images, the memory, the record of the departed life, recorded in the history of the world, in the highest reaches of the astral light, in akasha, wherein not a single deed, no matter how apparently insignificant, is forgotten. Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1993 01:06:29 -0500 From: OSMAR DE CARVALHO Subject: Karma in Kamaloka To Eldon: >No new karma is made in this state, we are not in an outer world, we >are not engaged in activity with others, we are not participating in >co-creating this or any world at the time. New karma can only be made >should we come back in touch with someone in physical embodiment, if >we can latch onto them and reacquire some slight degree of >self-awareness through them as our proxy. Kamaloka is a passive state, >with no innate self-consciousness. We are not fully ourselves. I do believe that in the Astral plane the Law of Karma functions in the same way of the others dimentions, and would be a very weird situation if the "Cause and Effect" principle stops its activity in the "kamaloka" as said Eldon. A interesting questions is: Do we make Karma in the "dream" states? I think the answer is yes, because emotional or astral energies are strong ones to generate great causes. The "kamaloka state" or the "dream state" are both able to create Karma because it generates vibrations wich affects the surroundings and people, and do not matter if the "dreamer" or "dead" is self conscious or not of his emissions. Perhaps the effects generated will reach only the astral body or astral conditions in both cases, but there is no a halt of cause and effect. Osmar osmardc%bra000.canal-vip.onsp.br@uicvm.uic.edu From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1993 01:08:18 -0500 From: Gerald Schueler <76400.1474@compuserve.com> Subject: Cause & Effect Globes I think that we need to be careful about calling a globe of our planetary chain either a cause or an effect. To say that Globe D, our Earth, for example, is a cause-globe implies that we generate karma here. The fact is, we also receive the effects of our past karma here as well. Everyone on Earth both generates new karma and is effected by old karma. Globe D is a globe of both cause and effect. The fact is, this is also true of every one of the 12 globes. When the Masters wrote about spheres of cause and effect, they meant emphasis. Globe D emphasizes causes. However, both are present. The same is true for every globe. Let me give one example. I had a dream once, several years ago now, in which I was a coyboy riging a horse. A pesky kid was following me, and giving me a fit. So, I pulled out my revolver and I shot him. When I woke, I remembered that dream very vividly. How could I shoot and kill someone? I asked myself. Even if it was *just* a dream, I thought that I had enough compassion for others to be beyond that sort of thing. Besides, I am convinced that the way you act in a dream is the real you, without the masks that we put on during the waking state. The net result was that the dream caused me to change my whole way of thinking of myself, and since then I have never killed or hurt anyone, even in a dream. Did not this dream cause me to have an effect after I woke up? How can such a nightly dream be said to be nothing more than the effect of my day. And lots of people are effected by their dreams - which thus surely become causes and not just effects. Besides, cause and effect are two sides of a duality and you simply can't have one without the other. But I agree that each globe tends to emphasize one over the other - and I think that this is what the Masters meant. From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1993 01:13:28 -0500 From: John Mead Subject: T-Shirts Hi -- The Charlotte Study Group now has T-shirts for sale. They are light-blue, and have the TS logo on them (without the motto.... sorry). You can get them in any size you want (S,M,L,XL) Our treasurer wants to receive checks first before sending out the shirts (I was out-voted on this). However, if you receive it and do NOT like it, we will refund your money (with return of shirt!) 1 T-shirt --- $10 Shipping/Handling $1 Total --- $11 send checks to: John E. Mead 10105 Hanover Woods Place Charlotte, NC 28210 (Attn: T-shirts) Peace--- John Mead From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1993 08:44:50 -0500 From: Jerry Hejka-Ekins Subject: messages exchanged and truth Arvind, Received your message of November 18th. The reason for the message from John Mead is because he is trying to help me find you why I'm unable to send you messages directly to your mail box. I have tried many times without success. Once I'm able to reach your mailbox, I will send you the information that you requested. Regarding your earlier question about Blavatsky's writings: All of her books are in print. He published articles are collected into fourteen volumes plus a cumulative index in a separate volume. I have all of these on hand--Books by Bailey too. I will give you details when we figure out how I can get through to your mailbox. I can make you a copy of THE PSEUDO OCCULTISM OF ALICE BAILEY if you are interested, but I think we can do a more thorough and better quality inquiry than was done in this pamphlet. There is also an annotated version of this pamphlet by Victor Endersby. Brenda Tucker, Whether or not Alice Bailey was predicted by Blavatsky is an issue we are currently looking at. You ask "Why can't we all be?" Why not? As to whether or not Leadbeater is "untrue," that is a much more metaphysical question than appears on the surface. I see truth as more of a personal matter. Leadbeater can be true to some and untrue to others. If the study of Leadbeater makes one a better person, and put them on the road to spiritual fulfillment, than I recommend that this person read Leadbeater. I would say the same thing about Blavatsky, Bailey, Lee Iococca and Adolf Hitler. I realize that there are other ways of defining truth. We can talk about "objective truth," if we come from a positivistic view of "reality." We can also talk about metaphysical TRUTH. But these are all very problematical to discuss, especially between people who come from widely differing assumptions concerning the nature of reality. I prefer to talk about personal truths--there is a better chance for communication. From another perspective: one way to test relevance of the message of a teacher is to see how long it lasts before it is forgotten. Leadbeater's books are still being reprinted, but each edition has less and less material in it. I suggest you ask why the editors at Wheaton keep editing out portions of Leadbeater's writings. I mentioned earlier that over fifty pages were removed from the last printing of THE INNER LIFE. At this rate of editing, there won't be anything left of his writings to print in fifty years. Jerry Hejka-Ekins From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1993 18:17:58 -0500 From: "Leonard E. Cole" <71664.3642@compuserve.com> Subject: purification & vegetarianism Brenda Tucker - purification practices - 08-nov-93 message You asked I don't think "austerity" is the appropriate word to characterize the life style implied by the elements you list, especially when healthful, delicious vegetarian food is available in such abundance and the health hazards associated with alcohol, and use of tobacco and drugs are so well known. In other words, eating a vegetarian diet and avoiding the other items mentioned does not appear to me to be a life style of austerity. How is this related to [spiritual] purification? I don't know. It is well known that H.P.B. smoked cigarettes a great deal, although we don't know what was rolled in the paper she smoked, and Mahatma Morya "used" a pipe, although we don't know what was in it. Both of them appeared to have been reasonably well developed in the spiritual realm. Assuming they both used tobacco, it is difficult to say whether they would have been even more highly evolved if they had abstained. I am glad to share information about life style practices in this household. My wife Rauha and I have been vegetarians for quite a while, I for 39 years, and she for 47. In fact, she introduced me to vegetarianism in 1954 when we met. I had never heard of such a thing before, but I was an easy convert. After we married in 1955, we first practiced "lacto-ovo" (included dairy products and eggs), but in recent years we have mostly avoided them. Why are we vegetarian? For a variety of reasons: respect for other sentient forms of life, health, ethics, ecolo- gy, to mention a few. We drink a glass of wine occasionally, maybe once or twice a month. We could easily give it up if there was a compelling reason to do so. We do not smoke and never smoked habitually, just a little experimenting many years ago. The only drugs we take are by prescription, Rauha by a homeopathic doctor, and I by allopathic. Our physical conditions that require drugs are not life threatening and seem to be under good control. So we are content with our life style. Would you like to tell us about yours? Arvind Kumar - purification & vegetarianism - 08-nov-93 message I appreciate your many thoughtful comments. You asked I don't know, but I guess it becomes a matter of individual conscience as one becomes more and more aware of the impact our life style has on our fellow creatures and on our home, planet Earth. To live as healthfully as possi- ble and as unobtrusively as possible seems to me to be a worth- while goal. Regarding your daughter Rita's problem with vegetarianism, I would like to offer some words of encouragement. It IS possible to live healthfully and vegetarian. Many people are doing it and have been doing it for many years. It may require some reading and study to ensure one is eating a healthful, nutritious diet. DIET FOR A SMALL PLANET is an excellent reference book. Vegetar- ian Times is an excellent monthly magazine. There are many books and magazines available on the subject of vegetarianism. One thing to take care about is to eat a variety of foods, vegetables (cooked and/or raw), grains, nuts, and fruit. Only a very few should be avoided, e.g., palm oil and coconut. Another thing to watch out for is vitamin B12. An adequate supply of this vitamin is generally not found in vegetarian foods. We get ours from a product called "Yeast 550," formulated and distributed by Nutritional Specialties, Inc., Anaheim, Cali- fornia 92805, and sold in health food stores. One level table- spoon daily mixed in fruit juice provides a wealth of vitamins including 100% of the recommended daily allowance of vitamin B12. Unfortunately, the yeast also contains minuscule amounts of honey (bee vomit) and the dairy product "whey," but we haven't found another source of vitamin B12 that is "pure." So, Rita, may I wish you success in your vegetarianism quest. If you have questions, please ask. I am not an expert on this subject, but I still might be helpful. Best wishes, Leonard E. Cole CompuServe 71664,3642 From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1993 21:09:59 -0500 From: John Mead Subject: new article in archive... I have placed the following article in the theos-l archive, and am forwarding the following summary as supplied by Eldon. John Mead ---- An article, "The Path is Life Itself", by Eldon Tucker, has been stored in the 'theos-l' archives. It originally appeared in THE THEOSOPHIST, Adyar, Madras, India, in two parts, in the August and September 1975 issues. (The article is about 640 lines.) An excerpt: In summary, there are dangers both in becoming too smug in one's daily life and losing sight of the spiritual possibilities that life holds, and dangers in an extreme, irrational enthusiasm that often results in pledge-fever. The process of self-genesis, of getting one's feet on the hold path, is one of self-conscious SELF- EVOLUTION. And this is something that is best handled by paying attention to one's actual place in life, and in making the impersonal, unselfish choice at every crossroad in life, which occurs in reality every moment. We should remember that a study of the theosophical teachings is not so much a learning of terms and concepts as it is of learning through experience of the mysteries that life holds. From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1993 10:58:51 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: the power to create and express Prana is usually spoken of as the vital life energies of our body. When it is plentiful, we are healthy, vital, active, and when it is lacking, we become slow, sluggish, subject to disease, and even, should it be insufficient, to withdrawal from life and death as well. Like the other energies of life, which to go make up our complete consciousness, we contain it, we fashion shape, we give our impress to it, but we did not create it out of nothing. It is the life energy, and is called prana when we contain it. Outside of ourselves, it is called jiva. This life energy is not owned by us; we contain it and have as much as we can expand ourselves to hold. It flows through us as quickly as we allow it. Prana is force in nature. It is what *makes* things happen. It could be called *will power*, where the emphasis is on the word *power*, beause it is the power that makes the desire manifest. Kama without prans is impotent desire, where things are wanted but they cannot be made to happen. As Prana relates to our physical body, it allows for growth, change, sustaining the body's life throughout the continual death of its cells and loss of its energy. It is the force that heals sickness, but is also the disease energies that we experience as well, for whatever purpose they may have come into our lives. Desire shapes the action, but it is Prana that gives it power. The desire is a focusing or patterning of consciousness, but by itself is powerless to make things happen. Prana is a generic energy, and we can exchange or give it to others, as in mesmerism. It is the life energies that under instinct, under the direction of nature, power and animate physical, living forms. It is also the energy that in magic can be used to produce phenomena. It includes the vital airs, kundalini, the forces to manifest the psychic, paranormal, and spiritual natures. Prana in touch with kundalini, is really it's direct connection with Jiva, and is similar, for example, with Kama being in direct touch with Fohat, or Manas with Mahat. It is also an aspect of self, of further manifesting the unique nature of a particular being, of a Monad, in the outer world. It takes us from the sense of *desire and will*, which in themselves are static, to *create and do*, the putting into motion, into change, of what we would have. Prana brings us from static selfhood into motion. It is needed for us to interact and participate in the world, to cause things to change states and happen, to move upon the spaces of space. To experience karma, to interact with others, to changes states, we must be different from the moment before, we must give *action*, activity to what we will do and will experience. Prana is the that power of causing action. Prana allows for the actual *building* of what was patterned or *archetyped* in kama. It is the crown of physical nature, of outer life, ruling over perception and actual forms. It tops the triad of outer life, the vital-astral-physical triad. The mighty forces that fashion life in our physical world are from Jiva, given shape and direction as Prana, in individual beings, or under the direction of elementals, directing elemental forces of nature, shape and fashion the face of our earth. Prana is an important principle of consciousness. All the principles, in fact, are integral to the whole being, and the lower ones are no less important. All are needed, essential to coming to life, to becoming a full being, to existing in the world and becoming subject to the drama of life. With Prana, we are able to give a *push* to things in life. To change and grow, and not just experience a state of static being, we need it. When apart from the oceanic flood of energies of life (Jiva) in the world of causes, we can fashion out of the astral light creations of our own. We can, when apart, function as our own creators, as in dreams, and our life energies hold sway over the "physcial world" in which we find ourselves. But when here on Globe D, our earth, we are swept along in the vast life energies of our world, and are compelled to follow how *it would have things to be*. The collective co-creating of the world happens here and we have a very distinct way that things are to contend with. In death, with the loss of the vital-astral-physical portion of our constitution, we find the end of growth and change, outwardly, in the after-death states. We are now without the principle of growth and change, and are static, fixed, unexpressive, at least as far as being able to go outside ourselves onto the waters of space, into manifestation. There is a pranic subelement to our higher principles, which we still have, but it is incomplete, cut off from the root nature of Prana itself, only a reflection of the principle, which is now indrawn, latent, out of action, asleep in ourselves. Looking to the divine, it might be seen as radient, brilliant, in a lofty tower of thought, filled with grand plans for what shall be in life. But without Jiva, the plans may exist, and may be sensed, but there is no sweep over the face of life, over the waters of space, no fashioning of the outer world and the carrying out of the divine will. Besides this aspect of Prana and Jiva carrying out the forces of creation, they also relate to flexibility in life, to the ability of a being to grow and change and be different. Changing one's habits, becoming different, taking on new karma all are *made to happen* with Prana. Prana is associated with our very deepest principles as well, and is concerned with the Path and the most far-reaching changes that we can make in our lives as well. Consider two men, seriously sick, in the hospital. Both have a strong will to live, but only one survives. The surviver had the energy to effect that will on his body. Consider two people with the same desire to trod the Path. One penetrates deeply into the Mysteries and is profoundly changed; the other cannot change himself and soon forgets the object of his desire. The one who was radically changed did so through the pranic consciousness, the aspect of his consciousness that enables him to effect changes and see his will is carried out. When applied to the mind, Prana-Manas is experienced as flexibility of mind, the ability to have creative thought, to change what we think, to break the molds of mind and fashion new thoughts out of the existing content of our minds. And turned outwards, it is seen as thoughts put into action in life. Applied to our will, Prana-Kama is experienced as creativity, the ability to take thoughts and turn them into plans of action, into the *would be's* of life, into the ties or bonds that lead us into life in the world. Turned outwards, it is seen as the shaping or fashioning of the actions we take, as desire or will given expression in life. Looking higher, Prana-Atman involves the changing nature of being, the ability to change the quality or experience of life in our world. This quality can dynamically express itself, and it not simply an idle, static sense of perfection, of unity. The root nature of our world, our plane of being, is self-expressive and itself is subject to change and growth. Applied outwards, it is seen as the changing nature of the quality of life, the meaning and purpose and *suchness* of what it means to be alive. It is seen as the changing nature of Idam, *this*, the quality of being, as constrasted to Tat, *that*, the quality of the mystery behind being. And reflected back onto itself, Prana-Prana involves the ability of life to grow and change, the active participation in life, the generic ability to not just *be*, but to *change* or *grow*, one's power to create and express in life. Within ourselves, it powers the emanation of latent capibilities, and ultimately our new evolution of qualities not previously had. Turned outwards, it involves the mastery of life and the forces of nature, and our ability to do things in the world. Besides, in one sense, being the "volume control to life", where we set how much or how little it will be, how much of ourselves will be seen and felt in the world, there are yet other aspects to Prana. Think of what it means to take desire or will, and to fashion the world with it. What we know of other beings is through their effects on us, and that is observed from the actions powered by their Prana. Looking inwards, towards our deeper nature within, we perceive the effects of our Higher Self or Manasaputra, a being that is ourselves, in one sense, but not us, in another sense. It is through that being's Prana, its power to make its effects felt and known, that we come to realize it. The changes that we are led to make within, coming from this Higher Self, are effected by its Prana, they are one form of expression of it in outer life, as coming out *through* us. Our Self, similarly, is expressed in and through our Lower Self, the being in our constitution one lower than our Human Monad or Ego, our animal nature in which we, as humans, sit in and *ride* (much as we would ride a horse). It is changed and effected through our Prana as well. This chain of beings, of Monads, from the Divine, through many levels or stages down through the Human, and yet lower, forms in ourselves a personal representation of the Tree of Life, which we see outsides ourselves, forming the golden chain of manifest universes, stretching upwards without end. In us, it involves mysteries regarding how the animals enter the human kingdom, and how we eventually enter the Dhyani-Chohanic kingdom as well. These are mysteries that were not openly talked about in the earlier years of the theosophical movement, but rather were discussed under secrecy. Written records of some of the materials have become public, but the keys to them have not been given, so they still, in a sense, remain secret to this day. Considering that Tree of Life, reaching upwards into the divine until we can no longer see where it goes, reaching upwards without end, we find ourselves rooted in a grand scheme of things, a grand hierarchy of life in which there is never a end, never a top, never a finish to what life has in store for us. And this entire plan is made manifest, is empowered to live and move and have its being, through its all prevasive life, which we collectively know as Jiva, and in ourselves as we are able to contain it, as Prana. It is a wonderous power! Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1993 11:38:02 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: some comments Osmar de C. and Jerry S: Thanks for your comments. I'm looking forward to making a reply, but it may take a few days until I have time. I appreciate the feedback because it points me to those things that I'm writing that I need to go back to, rethink, reevaluate, and improve or expand on what I've written. The feedback is helpful. Jerry H-E: While I do not personally concern myself with the writings of Leadbeater, because I do not derive much value from them, and do not find reading them a learning experience for myself, I'm not sure that we can use their ability to stand the test of time as showing their intrinsic value. The ability to gather a following, to create a market for certain ideas leads to those ideas persisting. "The Book of Mormon," for instance, could have perished as a work of spiritualist literature of the last century, had a following arisen, giving it a current readership of who knows how many millions of people to this day. I would see Leadbeater's ideas gradually blending in with other New Age popular ideas, because they contain a strong element of spiritualism and are heavily christianized. Leadbeater was a precursor to the modern hippie, with long hair, bare feet, liberal attitudes towards sex, and a strong blending of the psychic with an appreciation for mother nature. He may not have met the higher standards that we would apply to students of the mysteries, but could serve as a role model for some people seeking a break with the materialistic western world and wanting to reestablish their links with the spiritual. His writings do not appeal to me because they do not contain a *something* that I find in Blavatsky and a few others in the theosophical world. But there is something to them, or they would not attract a readership and a following. We could perhaps leave it to a matter of personal preference and taste, with the idea that we all have the time where we know that something is missing in our lives and search for more. That which the writings of Leadbeater do not provide, will eventually be missed by his readers, and sought for elsewhere. Eldon Tucker From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1993 15:52:14 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: perception and understanding The sixth principle, counting down from Atman as the first, is the Linga-Sharira, spoken of by Blavatsky as the "astral". It is, like any of the higher principles, with the exception of the Sthula Sharira, the lowest, not a "body." The astral is the sensory input, like sight, touch, and taste. It comes, for us, primarily through the physical body, with the sense of signt, for instance, realized through the physical eyes. It is not limited, though, to the physical body for imput. Apart from the physical form, the Linga can provide a form or formless awareness of happenings on a plane. If we are localized to a specific place, we can, with the assistance of Prana, affect it and make things happen there. We can see without the physical eyes, and such sight is called psychicalor clarivoyance. There is a higher and lower form of such perception. The higher form is allied with our higher principles, and comes with penetrating insight. The lower is allied with matter, and tends to be delusional, mayavic, based upon wish and fancy rather than what is actually happening before our "eyes". As with the other principles, it is an essential element of consciousness; we are incomplete without it. Unfolding from Atman, through the lower principles, we have not perceived the effects of others until acquiring this faculty. We were not fully self-conscious until now, in acquiring the Senses, because there was no material feedback to what we do in life (via Prana). As perception, this element of consciousness is passive, reflective, receptive, impressionable. It is also a state of mind that a psychic person can get into, one that is not so good to experience! We are watching the effects of Prana on the outer world, and take them in. The Linga Sharira is our *receptive* nature. It is the receptive side of Self where we take on impressions of the outer world, and are changed thereby. It is the passive side to Prana, where our effects change others. We cannot have one principle without the other; Prana and Linga-Shara are inseparable. There are seven--actually ten--modes of perception, one per principle. When we talk about sight, touch, and other physical senses, we are really talking about aspects of but one mode, of the Linga Sharira as realized through the physical world, through the lowest principle. The Linga Sharira of the other principles is not *seeing* of things on other planes. The other principles are not *bodies* on different planes of being. Speaking of the Senses as applied to the other principles is metaphorical speech, not something literally true. As it related to the physical world, our lowest principle, we create the world or bring into conscious being in our lives that part of the world we choose to perceive. We cooperate in co-creating the events in life that we give our attention to and conscious participation in. This room, this table, this book is created before my eyes, and exists at this moment partially due to my perception of it. I helped give it its existence. The flowers and trees outside do not, to a certain extent, exist at this moment, since I am not helping them be, I am not gazing upon them and granting them the additional existence that my awareness would add to them. There are a multitude of physical senses, and they unfold in different races and evolutionary periods in the history of mankind. Like the seven principles on a grander scale, the seven senses are all contained in one another. We have sight, taste, smell, touch, and hearing. Other senses regard different modes of perception of physical things. Paranormal sight or hearing are not additional senses, but rather extensions of the sense of sight or hearing. Different senses may include things such as awareness of position in space and dimensionality to our physical form, sensing the forms of other via bouncing light off them (like bats seeing via radar), or other means of getting input on the shapes and forms of the outer physical world. Our senses and perceptions are not limited, though, to the physical world about us. We have sensory input in terms of all the different principles of consciousness. We perceive the feeling atmosphere about us, and the thought currents about us (like "lodge force" in theosophical meetings). There is a passive, perceptive aspect to each of our principles. Taken by itself, Linga-Sharira - Linga-Sharira is pure vision, pure hering, pure perception unencumbereed by forms, by any type of qualification, by any sense of self or egoity. It is passive, not volitional, and provides its own unique way of manifesting ourselves, pure, immaterial, eternal Monads, in manifestation. It is the consciousness by which we directly perceive the material forms, and is a living link to them. We are linked to all of manifest existence through our power of perception, and even though we direct our awareness here and there, from one object to the next, the link still exists between us and what is, for the moment, unperceived. As such, the Linga Shara is the flip side, the mirror image of Buddhi. In Buddhi, we are inseparably linked to all *in being*, where in our Senses we are linked to all *in materiality*. Allied with Prana, we have our life energies affected by what we perceive. We have a flavor or quality to our life energies, a mood. This is our feeling nature, as opposed to our desire nature, where we are not creating objects of desire (via Kama) and not particularly engaging in action with that object (via Prana), but rather a quality, a coloring, a tone is set to our life energies (Prana), based upon the effects on it of what we experience in life (Linga Sharira). There is a coloring of the life energies that we perceive, that flow through us, that result in our feelings, moodes, ways we enjoy or dislike what happens to us in life. This is the interaction of the Senses with our Prana, our life energies. When in relation to Kama, our will, we perceive and are affected by the reults of the desires of others upon us. We perceive their Kama in action, as it impacts us. What they would have us do and be does have an influence, and in our receptive nature we sense, we perceive, we take it in. Allied with Manas, we have images or sounds that represent ideas, like the word that we "speak" in our minds as we think something. When reading, we have the perception of imagination, creating images within ourselves. Our visualizations, our clothing of thoughts in words and forms in the mind, are related to this. Those ideas that originate within, created in us via self-origination, where we first have them within rather than being told them by someone else, are created by Manas-Prana, then perceived by Manas - Linga-Sharira. Those that are received from another person, not yet our ideas, not yet understood and made a part of ourselves, are just manasic perceptions, just Manas - Linga-Sharira by itself. In combination with Buddhi, the Senses allow us to understand the nature of being of others in the world. We feel and receive impressions of their essential natures. We experience empathy and compassion by seeing things from the point of view of the other people, through our inseparable, living links to them. And in combination with Atman, the Senses provide for a perception of the nature of existence, *as qualified by the world or universe into which we are manifesting ourselves.* We take in the effect on us, timeless, eternal Monads, of the nature of participation in life and being *in and through that particular world.* The Senses are an essential element of our consciousness. They are not a mere by-product of existence, something cast off or thrown out by the higher principles, in the sense of being something lower, something inferior, something less worth of being a part of ourselves. They are as essential and needed as the higher Triad, including Atman itself, and we are not complete, whole, fully-manifest without them. Taking the seven principles, they all are essential and needed. Any one of them could be considered *the top* and all the others as coming down from them, even the Linga Sharira. The usual ordering, enumeration of the principles has them starting with Atman, the Self, as the top, and coming down into various degrees of increasing concrete selfhoold. We could, though, take other approaches and start the list differently. The basic nature of the principles is independent of order. They may be described in various orders in order to teach some basic truth about the nature of consciousness, but all are needed for consciousness to be active, functional, present in life. Without some of them, we cannot participate in the world, we cannot act in full consciousness, we cannot make new karma, as we know and understand it. It might very well be possible to enumerate the seven principles starting with the Linga Sharira, or, in deed, any of them, besides our usual starting point of Atman. We could, for instance, take one of the Platonic Solids, one with twelve points, lines, or faces, and assign the twelve to the names of the principles. See how they are ordered starting with Atman. Then turn the solid, and look at the new ordering when starting with another of the principles. The ten (or twelve) principles, taken together, form something bigger than any individual one of them, and this *bigger thing* is represented by the solid. Perhaps different solids help describe different *bigger things* within us? We have to be careful with the taking of such an approach. There is the danger of pushing an analogy too far and going off into falsehood. We don't want an analogy to lock a concrete model of things in our thinking, to create another mold of thinking that we'll have to later come back to and break apart. And we are dealing with uncharted waters, unknown territories, areas where we are taking the Teachings and going beyond what we have been taught, trying to *push* our knowledge a bit farther and some away with new insights into life. We should adventure with caution, with care taken at each step, as we move into the exploration of the Unknown, taking the Teachings we have received and moving onto deeper understandings, moving into the unknown. But this adventure is the very process of inner growth, of the awakening of the mind's eye, of the flowering of the inner voice or Teacher within, as we ally our mind with the knowledge of the universe and come to learn by association with Mahat itself, by directly tapping into the wisdom and understanding of the very world we live in. Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1993 08:48:04 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: various replies by Brenda Tucker Mike G. I appreciate your question about the I Am Temple. This is a place where one of the students (as they are referred to) asked me, "Who created the animals, God or men?" My answer of "God," is not what they believe. They believe that men created the animals, so this gave me food for thought, my mind trying to remember what THE SECRET DOCTRINE teaches. Does anyone know more about this subject? Also, this is the place where it was stated during a group meeting, "Man comes into existence as one flame, and departs from existence a three-fold flame." My best interpretation of this is that our love and knowledge expand to the point where we choose to associate strongly enough with the energies of the adepts that we hold their flame close to our heart, and the last flame would necessarily seem to be the flame from the sun, the flame that associates our existence with the life of all the kingdoms. My own three-fold flame would be a self-created flame, an adoration flame ensouled by the adepts, and a cosmic-solar flame which ties all life together. (I also, confidentially and secretly, hope that through some decision by the "flame of the sun" there can be a metamorphosis that allows my flame to merge with that of the adepts and never part from that great energy to become human again.) But really, why don't you try to find an I Am Temple and inquire there? Arvind and Jerry H-E. The quote you are looking for was supplied to me by a friend and fellow student. It is found in the Introductory of THE SECRET DOCTRINE, p. XXXVIII, which I would like to predicate here from p. xxxvi of the same work. Religious founders are TRANSMITTERS, not inventors nor original teachers. An example is Confucius who says, "I only hand on: I cannot create new things. I believe in the ancients and therefore I love them." Blavatsky goes on, "The writer loves them too, and therefore believes in the ancients, and the modern heirs to their Wisdom. And believing in both, she now transmits that which she has received and learnt herself to all those who will accept it. As to those who may reject her testimony, -i.e., the great majority - she will bear them no malice, for they will be as right in their way in denying, as she is right in hers in affirming, since they look at TRUTH from two entirely different stand-points. Agreeably with the rules of critical scholarship, the Orientalist has to reject A PRIORI whatever evidence he cannot fully verify for himself. And how can a Western scholar accept on hearsay that which he knows nothing about? Indeed, that which is given in these volumes is selected from ORAL, as much as from written teachings." "For in the twentieth century of our era scholars will begin to recognize that the SECRET DOCTRINE has neither been invented nor exaggerated, but, on the contrary, simply outlined; and finally, that its teachings antedate the Vedas. (Footnote inserted here: This is no pretension to PROPHECY, but simply a statement based on the knowledge of facts. Every century an attempt is being made to show the world that Occultism is no vain superstition. Once the door permitted to be kept a little ajar, it will be opened wider with every new century. The times are ripe for a more serious knowledge than hitherto permitted, though still very limited, so far. End Footnote) "Speaking of the keys to the Zodiacal mysteries as being almost lost to the world, it was remarked by the writer in "Isis Unveiled" some ten years ago that: "The said key must be turned SEVEN times before the whole system is divulged. We will give it but ONE turn, and thereby allow the profane one glimpse into the mystery. Happy he, who understands the whole.!" "One turn of the key and no more, was given in "Isis." Much more is explained in these volumes. In those days the writer hardly knew the language in which the work was written, and the disclosure of many things, freely spoken about now, was forbidden. In Century the Twentieth some disciple more informed, and far better fitted, may be sent by the Masters of Wisdom to give final and irrefutable proofs that there exists a Science called GUPTA-VIDYA; and that, like the once-mysterious sources of the Nile, the source of all religions and philosophies now known to the world has been for many ages forgotten and lost to men, but is at last found." Well, I'm very glad to here of these mysteries and would myself like to mention a mystery. As the four or seven kingdoms inhabiting the planet Earth are very much dependent on each other for their food and air in order to just live, it is difficult to think of the Earth as a being independent of these kingdoms, but it is possible. If you were to remove every possible trace of these four kingdoms, minerals, vegetables, animals, and humans, what would be left in my imagination is a very thin skeleton of magnetism or gravity, a cycling energy, rotating and revolving around the sun. The mystery is this: What are we doing here? On this solid being, the suns rays bring its kingdom children to "suck up" through a combination of energy a lesson or an ability. In exchange for this energy-ability I have learned from earth which I can someday present to the sun as a gift, I offer the earth my sum total of experience to keep and make whatever it will of. Earth mother, may I please be set free and allowed to return to the sun? I also pledge to help all others gain their freedom and ascension. I'd like to respond to Eldon in regards to kama, but I've run out of time. Leonard. Loved your purification and think you would be a great aid to stimulating vegetarian practices because of your interest and knowledge. I thought I mentioned before what my own practices are, but will say again, I have FINALLY attained vegetarianism, abstention from alcohol and illegal drugs, and also a good measure of abstention from sex. My husband and I both follow these rules and I think we should also emphasize the purification of our emotions and minds so that there is no obstacle or a dissolving of all obstacles to the cognition at a soul level. Beyond this human existence exists a being that is loving, aiding, and serving the growth of others into enlightened beings. Although I am content to "miss" that existence, my way back to the work there is through LOVING the higher self from the lower self and through purifying and removing any obstacles at the level of the lower self. I was only higher self for about a total of 5- 10 minutes today. Not a great average. It's like raying out help in the form of enlightenment, protection, and love, and while there are many rays to other beings, only certain ones may be stimulated at any particular time. This may be based on need, merit, or the working out of the great plan. Thanks for your time. From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1993 10:40:59 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: the farthest reaches of our consciousness Although it might seem that the physical principle of consciousness is the most obvious, the most apparent, the easiest to study, a careful look at it reveals it to be as mysterious as Atman. Called Sthula Sharira, the physical is the lowest principle. We can go no farther. We can express our consciousness in no deeper materiality on a plane of consciousness than this. To push farther, we simple leave the plane and pass on to a lower plane. There is no farther lower degree of qualifying the sense of self, we have reached the end. The physical is a mystery, in a sense, since it consists of something that is apart from what the senses (the Linga Sharira) perceives. It is sometimes not considered a principle, and at other times is combined with the senses, with the astral, to be considered together as a single principle. When the principles include the physical, we have full consciousness, and are in possession of all its necessary elements. Each principle is important and we are incomplete until we are in possession of all the necessary parts to what makes us a fully-manifest being on this plane. The physical is somewhat hidden and secret, since we do not perceive it directly. It gives us an acctual sense of place or locality; we are locked in place. It is the ultimate degree of materiality, we have in it objects *per se* with a reality of their own, apart from our sense perception of them. The physical, in the manifest world, is the mirror opposite of Atman. In it, we have a distinct separateness for every being, with interaction but not connectedness. The world is mayavic, easily misperceived, and has an appearance of permanence and durability when really it is the most subject to continual change. This principle is part of an inseparable triad of Prana, Linga Sharira, and Sthula Sharira, the fashioning power, the passive perception, and the objects that are fashioned. The three compose the world of forms and our participation in it. In the higher reaches of the Astral Light, the Sthula Sharira is the recorder of events, the repository of images, a passive library of images of things that were or things in formulation for possible physical existence. The physical could be called our experience of the most material state of being, but paradoxically it is full of holes, of gaps, of errors and approximations to what we would be. It is not a perfect media for the expression of our consciousness. It is the ultimate, in fact, of unperfection. The physical is the root nature of materiality for our world. It is not really ourselves anymore than Atman is. Atman is the shared One Life of the informing being whose embodiment creates the world in which we live; it is a consciousness that we share with that being and with each other; it is not individually our consciousness. The same is true of the Sthula Sharira. It is our life at its fullest extent, at the point where it can reach no farther; and at the same time it is the One Life to the billions of lifeatoms who call our embodiment their world. In either case, we have reached the end of our scale of being on this plane. At the physical, we are the informing life, the Atman, to the lifeatoms that exist in and through us. This is the level where our being transforms from the one to the many and becomes the informing Hierarch for a world of lessor beings. We have gone as far as possible as an individual consciousness *on this plane,* and we can go no farther. Further effects by us on this plane are only in and through the smaller lives that we host. But for us, though, we can go farther. But this takes us out of this plane, onto a lower plane. We can only go down so far before we have to pass through a laya center and end up on a lower plane, where we exist in the same *scale of being.* Below the physical we drop through *mystery*, a sort of linking principle, into the unmanifest planes of a lower plane. And in the opposite direction, about our tenth or highest principle, we can push upwards, we can rise through *mystery* into yet a higher plane. It is not really possible to talk about this *mystery,* but it is there, both behind and within everything. If we look at our individual consciousness, as manifested in the principles, it starts at Buddhi and ends as Linga Sharira, since the two linking principles, the two that deal with our participation in the multiple scales of being to life, to our participation in hierarchy, are not really *individual* principles of consciousness. The two linking principles, Atman and Sthula Sharira, are experienced by us, but not individually ours alone. There is a sharing of consciousness in them. They are the dual sides to the experience of hierarchy, and passing beyond them, we drop off into unmanifestation. They both link us to different scales of being, and represent yet another way in which the life of the Boundless All is passed onward: from a higher scale of being to us, at our scale, then from us onto yet a lower scale of being. We carry on the Golden Chain of life from one scale of being, through us as a living link at our scale, down to the next, a lower scale. Life is carried on in a multitude of ways, and this is one of them. We have a responsiblity at three levels. First, to both give the fullest, the most complete expression to the life of our god, the creator of our world. Second, to fully express ourselves as we interact with others in the world in which we find ourselves. And third, to pass on the noblest qualities and virtues to those who might call us god, our lifeatoms, the creatures of the world that exists due to our informing life. We have an important role in the drama of life, and should live the part with the best that we have to give. Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Wed, 24 Nov 1993 10:27:27 -0500 From: jim meier <70242.1611@compuserve.com> Subject: Vegetarianism and spirituality This letter is in response to recent posts regarding vegetarianism and spirituality. I am neither a vegetarian nor an expert in the matter, but I do know of at least one TS publication on the topic, and that is a small pamphlet entitled, "Vegetarianism and Occultism" by C.W. Leadbeater, first published in 1913. In its forty pages, he outlines several reasons for abstaining from flesh-eating, including a section on "Occult Reasons" where he says (among other things), "The man therefore who builds gross and undesirable matter into his physical body is thereby drawing into his astral body matter of a coarse and undesirable type as its counterpart." -- p. 31 I seem to recall reading somewhere that vegetarianism is absolutely essential for those psychics involved in reading the Akashic Records, but only for that group -- and that for the rest of us, it is not what goes in our mouths that defiles us, but rather what comes out... Jim From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1993 22:59:59 -0500 From: Katinka Titchenell Subject: absence Dear theos-l folk, eis.calstate.edu has been down for a week and all mail to any of us at that address has gone astray -- I don't know if it bounced or not. If there was anything directed specifically to Nancy C., the TS Pasadena library center, or myself, please send again. At least we're back on line again Thanks, Kim From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Wed, 24 Nov 1993 11:34:45 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: vegetarianism and spiritual progress Regarding vegetarianism, I can say for myself that I started in high school, based upon my heavy reading, at the time, of Leadbeater's writings. From reading him, I got the impression that the next step to spiritual progress was to be clairvoyant, as he said that he was. Wanting to be like him, I stopped eating meat, because he had written that it was necessary for psychic development. I became a vegetarian, and have continued since then, since 1968, though my reasons have dropped away and I continue because it is the thing that I choose to do. I'm not doing it *for a reason* anymore than I drink coffee *for a reason*. It is just a part of my life, an aspect of my personality. We may need a reason to become a vegetarian, to change from eating meat. But once we've changed, no reason is needed to persist in staying one. The problem that I found, in reading Leadbeater, though, which I did not realize until years later, was that with his writings you quickly ran out of philosophy and were left with nothing to do but go onto other writers or to try to acquire paranormal powers like he said that he had. Books like "Invisible Helpers" make you, if you believe his experiences, want to do similar things. The problem is that the reader is side-tracked from the philosophy and from spiritual development, and led into an interest in psychical development. The deeper parts of our nature are awakened by far-reachings thoughts of the highest philosophy, not by visions or other-worldly experiences. There is a difference from higher faculties of consciousness and the sense perception of other planes. In an abstract sense, vegetarianism is the best approach. It is the most harmless. The least sentient life has to die in order to feed our bodies. The simpler plant substance is easier to assimilate into our natures. There is no impression in the food of the horror and awareness of impending death that an animal, killed in the slaughter house, may have made on its dying body. Like all physical things, though, there is compromise, and that is based upon both personal and cultural circumstances. We may have to eat meat for dietary or health matters. We may even be too spacey, too psychical, too disassociated from physical life, and need the engrossing effect of the meat to keep us focused on the life we are trying to live. In a cultural sense, the eating of meat may be based upon what the environment is able to support. Meat is an important part of the diet in Tibet, the people, including monks, there eat it. Because it is not possible to produce a wide spectrum of vegetable produces in the Himalayas, the eating of meat is an accepted practice. It is interesting to observe Tibetan monks, in visiting the U.S., getting meals with meat prepared for them by their vegetarian American followers. In India, on the other hand, the climate allows for the production of a vegetarian diet, and so it is possible to be one there. I would not say that Tibetan monks are less spiritual than their Indian counterparts, nor less able to penetrate to the other worlds. A vegetarian diet, then, is a good thing to do, but not a prerequisite to spiritual development. Smoking of tobacco is also considered in the same class, something that is sometimes necessary depending upon certain psychical considerations, but generally not a good thing to do, if we can avoid it. The drinking of alcohol, is considered far more harmful. It prevents the perception of the spiritual. The higher centers of the brain are rendered inactive, and there is a subtle element of the highest part of ourselves that is blocked from expression. Worse than any physical thing that we can do with our bodies, though, is to harbor false, but sincerely held beliefs. In "The Mahatma Letters," we read how although selfishness is the cause of 1/3 of the world's problems, the biggest cause of problems, of 2/3 of them, is wrong belief. The religions of the world, as we see them, their orthodox, exoteric, dogmatic presence in the world, are singled out as the chief cause of these false beliefs. What is the cure for false beliefs? A readiness to continually break the molds of mind and consider new truths. A constant re-evaluation of what we believe and know. An ever-striving for a deeper understanding of things that seem plain, simple, obvious, things that we already think that we have the last word on. And a continual eagerness to approach the Mysteries of life as *mysteries*, with the deep respect of a truly religious person combined with the eager curiosity of a young child first learning about life. There is a wisdom whose depths cannot be fantomed, a wisdom that goes into the heart of life, a wisdom that is an endless fount of deeper meanings to life. This wisdom does not depend upon what we had for breakfast nor what we dreamed about last night. It is a living presence in our lives that can infill us, or we can turn our backs on it and be unaware. It is up to us to decide how it will become part of our lives. Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Wed, 24 Nov 1993 16:23:13 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: egos, planes, and making karma The mysteries of consciousness, of existence, of how and where we can come into being, are of the deepest sort, they are things that are extremely difficult to communicate. There are various levels of hints at them in the theosophical literature, but nowhere do we find one of our Teachers coming out and directly stating things. These mysteries relate to karma and volition. Karma is not a magical power, a magical force, apart from the laws of nature and the workings of the universe, something that exists apart from life and somehow regulates and directs it. Karma is a description, a view, a single viewpoint on the functioning of the overall process of life, at its deeper levels, at a level but one revmoed from self-annihilation, from the very start of existence of individual being. We are connected with all of life, and if we change ourselves, we affect everyone, everywhere. Our being, ultimately, is their being, and we all change. These changes that happen, though, are of our root natures, of our inner selves, and do not show up in our outer forms, in our personalities. We must have some form of conscious interaction with another, a two-way exchange, where we take an action and there is an effect on the other, for individual, personal karma to be made. If we do something that affects another, and there is not a conscious interchange, than anything that may eventually come back to us will not have a known source and we'll be unaware of why it happened. It is important to note that we cannot make karma unless we exist. And we cannot make karma with another, if that other person does not exist. Both we and the other person must exist, must have clothed ourselves in principles of consciousness on a plane, for us to interact and make karma there. If we do not exist, there are no living bonds or links with the other on a plane, and there is no way to interact with, to affect the other. In existence on a plane, we are clothed in at least Atman and Buddhi, where upon we start interrelating with others and have some connectedness with them, with the others as they likewise have clothed themselves in Atman and Buddhi. Clothed in Atman alone, we cannot have karma, since we only have a general awareness of the world, but not of personally being there, not of our state of *being* on that plane. We cannot make karma on a plane that we do not exist on. If we are functioning on another plane, that is where we have clothed ourselves in the principles of consciousness, where we participate in the co-creation of that world, where we interact with others and make karma with them. When we are on another plane, and not on this one, we make karma there, and not here. But even there, we only make karma if we are sufficiently manifest to do so. In the after-death states, we begin to drop the seven principles that we have on this plane, that we clothe ourselves in on Globe D of the earth planetary chain. We cast off the principles, one after the other. After we've let go of the physical, we have no concrete form to interact with others. But we still can affect them and have sensory input from the world. Then we drop the senses, and no longer perceive the world, but still can affect both ourselves and outer things. But when we drop our third principle, Prana, we cannot affect things, we have given up volition, action, motion, the ability to grow and change and affect others on this plane, and enter into a state of withdrawal, a state of static selfhood, as regards the outer world. We still have to give up the desire to do things, which we do in the state of kamaloka, and then in devachan the higher aspirations, their unfulfilled, unspent energy. After dropping the higher principles, then, we move on to Globe E in our after death states, with a brief stopping at each station along the way, until at some future time, we find ourselves coming back into birth again here on Globe D. The external ability to change, the volition, the ability to interact with the world, goes with the lowest three principles, the vital-astral-physical portion of ourselves. They are all aspects of consciousness, and the dropping of them must be done before we can go onto another plane. They are all part of this plane on which our Globe D exists. When we have departed, and given up our seven principles, as they were, for our Globe D ego or self, we no longer exist, for the time, on this plane. There is no link with what happens there. There is no manifested bond between us and the others of that world, except in potential, and we do not affect others. We are gone. We do not exist anymore. The only way, once departed, that we could continue to affect others is if we could somehow start to come into being on Globe D again, and clothe ourselves in our principles, at least through Prana, again. We would have to direct our consciousness here again, to this plane, to Globe D, to affect someone where, and that would be contrary to what we are doing. We are travelling along the circulations of the cosmos, the curents of being that sweep us along the Outer Rounds, in some fashion, the process of the after-death states that to us is unconscious, but is consciously followed by high Initates, at the proper time. The *you* that exists here, on Globe D, the ego that makes karma here, it is a separate *being* from each of the ones that you have on the other globes, a separate self that you have evolved forth from within for those worlds, appropriate to the type of experience that is had in those worlds. These selves have their own karma and their own interaction with the whole of live, and that interaction is through *their* buddhic principle. Going from one globe to the next, experiencing each in a self that is appropriate to each globe, it is really *you* that is the experiencer, the higher self, the individuality, that has a continunity of consciousness that spans the experience in one ego, then the next. Each ego, though, has a scope to its own karma, which is derives from its atmic and buddhic principles, built up from experience in that particular world. Shortly after our physical death, we make no more karma for our Globe D ego, our personal self that we know and experience life through. His karma does not carry over between planes, but is made uniquely for our selves as they have been fashioned on each world, fashioned out of the wholeness of life as experienced on each particular plane. In the after-death states, we alternate between withdrawal from existence--being unmanifest--and a brief, momentary, but not-fully self-conscious existence on the other planes, on the other globes. We make a brief visit to the other globes, but do not fully manifest ourselves on them. We are not fully ourselves on those other globes, and cannot make karma on them, at this time in our development, since we are unable to clothe ourselves in the seven principles on those globes. We go as far as static selfhood or egoity, Atman-Buddhi-Manas, but not into desire (Kama), volition and the ability to make karma (Prana), sense perception (Linga-Sharira), nor taking on a physical form (Sthula Sharira). We pass through the other globes just in the higher Triad, and experience our selfhood, in terms of the qualities of those globes, but do not enter into interaction with other beings on those globes. We have now thrown out from ourselves the lower principles, that part of ourselves needed to experience growth, change, interaction with others, and the acquisition of new karma. We experience things in terms of a dream, a self-created world fashioned out of our own consciousness, with no external restrictions imposed by the participation in it by other beings. Our full consciousness is not manifest, and we do not interact with others. In order to avoid confusion, it's important to not try to recouncil this worldview, this description of how things work, with the typical view found in the spiritualist and new age literature. There are a few correspondences, but there are also some distinct differences. We must not carry analogies too far or we find them break. It is not necessary for someone in reading this, though, to have to *believe in it*. There are many levels of understanding to the Teachings, and we all find the one that most satisfies ourselves. The scheme now being written about is only intended for people who may find it of value, or who might derive some benefit from some of the ideas. When we die, it is not as simple as to say that we drop a physical body, then later an astral body, then a lower mental body, and so forth. The seven principles are not planes, nor are they "bodies" on any plane, with the exception of the physical principle, Sthula Sharira. The planes where we can exist are defined by the location, in the cosmos, of the globes of our planetary chain. When we are on Globe D, we are on the plane whereon it, the globe, resides. When on Globe E, we are on the plane that Globe E is on. And the same is true of all the other globes. Each globe is on a different plane and provides for us a place whereon we can come into existence. (And half of the globes have a downwards flow of life, the descending arc, and the other half an upwards flow of life, the ascending arc. This qualifies the type of experience that can be had on the globes. This, though, is another story.) The seven principles are an necessary ingredient to manifest consciousness, and must *all be present* for us to exist and make individual karma, in the regular, ordinary way that we understand karma. Shortly after the death of the physical body, when we've lost Prana and the Linga-Sharira, we stop making karma because we have given up the ability to change and grow. We enter into a static state of being. The globes, like our world, Globe D, are called spheres of causes, as contrasted with spheres of effects, because it is on the globes that we clothe ourselves in our seven principles, that we manifest ourselves, that we enter into interaction with other beings and thereby make karma. We both produce new causes as well as experience the effects of the causes that we've engendered. As we depart active live on a globe, we drop the principles. We quickly reach a point where we have lost our external volition and the ability to make karma. The experiences that we have at this time, where we are dropping our skandhas, where we are letting go, where we are exhausting the built-up energies that we carry within ourselves-- these experiences are in what would be called a sphere of effects. We experience and work out the effects of the life energies that we've set into motion within ourselves, in the process of going out of existence. Between globes, there is a brief rest, when we are not clothed in any of the seven principles. We are unmanifest, dwelling in the highest Triad, the three unmanifest principles. The solitary state that we find ourselves in, one of static but absolute perfection, as far as we are able to experience it, is yet a third state, different from the sphere of causes and that of effects. It might be called the sphere of solitude, if we can make up a term for it. Now the very purpose of coming into manifestation, of leaving our solitude and coming into existence, is to grow and change and acquire additional self-consciousness, to change from a solitary god to a *being* emerced in the flux of life and to then withdraw into solitude again, with a treasury of additional self-consciousness, and a new content of consciousness as well. The literal view of the world, where the higher planes are simply places where we do things through "higher bodies" is an exoteric blind, a veil that conceals or hides deeper truths. We should try to penetrate behind the veil and see what hides concealed from untrained eyes. Do not take the common idea of an "astral plane" too literally. There is not an objective astral plane for our earth, something that is part of Globe D. Surrounding Globe D is a continuous spectrum of materiality, of substance, a spectrum of astral light that reaches from physical forms up through the highest reaches of Akasha, but there is no separate world, peopled by the newly-dead humanity, as part of our Globe D earth. There is no such place for the bulk of humanity, the only ones awake and aware, apart from their physical bodies, are adepts or sorcerers. The astral plane that we read of, that new age literature writes about, that some theosophical psychics may think that they've experienced, is but an image in the astral light, a reflection of Globe E experience, a presentiment of what the life for humanity might be like when it moves on to Globe E, many millions of years in the future. Much of what we see psychically has a basis in fact, but care must be taken to not take it too literally. We may see or experience things, apart from our bodies, but when our senses depart the physical world, they gaze into the astral light, and untrained, they mislead. There is a vast storehouse of images in the astral light, and apart from direct training under the direction of a Master, a Mahatman, we really can't say, with certainity, what we see. The true source of wisdom, though, of understanding the inner workings of life, come not from the senses, be they physical or psychical, but from the small voice with in, the inner Teacher, the faculty that we have within wherein we can *know* directly, where we can take the ideas that we've studied in the Teachings and *push* them further, into deep understandings of the workings of life. Look within, study, contemplate, meditate, dwell in the highest and noblest part of your nature, and you'll Know. Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Thu, 25 Nov 1993 12:29:09 -0500 From: John Mead Subject: new library/archive entry ... The following is a brief description of an article which is now available in either the theos-l archive and/or the /pub/theos-l directory (from FTP access). the filename is: schueler01.txt to obtain a copy, send to listserv@char.vnet.net the message lines: index theos-l get theos-l schueler01.txt Peace -- John Mead ---- The following is an excerpt from an unpublished typescript that my wife and I wrote some time ago. Space doesn't permit me to include the background and pictures, which would doubtless help to make it more meaningful for many. Those already familiar with Chaos Science should have no trouble. What I have done is to take a look at Chaos Magic (yes, there really is a branch of magic by this name) in light of the new Chaos Science. The result of my research is nine special laws that pertain to the subject and seem to be true, albeit somewhat out of our ordinary way of thinking. Although specially written for followers of magic, I think that theosophists will find it interesting as well. Throughout the article are quotations of an abrupt and sosmewhat mysterious nature. These were written over several years of study as reminder notes, and actually formed the basis of our thesis. Gerald J. Schueler From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Fri, 26 Nov 1993 17:43:43 -0500 From: John Mead Subject: chaos and Quantum Mechanics... Hi -- I was pleased to get Jerry Schueler's new essay on Quantum magic. I still need to read it in depth. A friend of mine is very much interested in Magic AND chaos theory (from a practical viewpoint rather than a theoretical one.) I will pass Jerry's article to her (and possibly a few others). She seemed ecstatic to hear about it. There is also a book out (called Chaos Magic) that I saw reviewed recently in a popular magazine (popular in some circles anyway). I found it interesting that Einstein had originally proposed a chaos-systems alternative (conceptually) in a paper published early this century. It went unnoticed until recently. Of course, the problem I have with chaos theory is that is inherently classical and can not explain many of the truly QM events that exist. However it is definitely a good approach for understanding the quasi-classical realm approcahing the dimensions/parameters of QM systems. Even the stodgiest of the Physicists are now being forced to believe in the non-deterministic REALITY of QM. The experimental evidence has gotten too overwhelming to ignore and pass off. A recent review of Measure theory has caught my attention, in the sense that the mathematics of the theory separates out the exact requirements (logically speaking) for a system to obtain the status of Measure vs truly empty (insignificant is a better word) of physical properties such as a definable Length. It strikes me that the boundary between a collection of objects which exist mentally, and those which exist mentally WITH an additional quality of physical measureability is very close to describing the difference between the physical plane and the lesser planes... John Mead From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Fri, 26 Nov 1993 19:50:45 -0500 From: John Mead Subject: T-shirts The Charlotte Theosophical Study Center has had to raise their price on the T-Shirts by $1. The price is now $12. If you have already sent a check, do not worry. We will honor all postmarked before Nov. 27. The mistake was mine. I had mis-priced the postage by $.50 and the shipping envelope by $.50 .... (sorry) Peace - John Mead 10105 Hanover Woods Pl. Charlotte, NC 28210 (please attn: T-shirts on the letter). proceeds will be used to offset the Charlotte TS expenses of our study group (books, news letter, etc...) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Sat, 27 Nov 1993 01:31:01 -0500 From: Jerry Hejka-Ekins Subject: misc Eldon: Thanks for your comments concerning C.W. Leadbeater. We've known each other for many years, so I don't need to tell you that I also don't derive much value from his writings either. If that means as Brenda suggests, that my lack of appreciation for Leadbeater indicates that I lack some spiritual perception, then so be it. On the other hand, my point concerning Leadbeater is that there are people who do find value in his writings and are inspired by him to become a better person and to live a more spiritual life. For these people, it really doesn't matter about C.W.L.'s sexual beliefs and practices. His followers are offended to hear about these things, and deny or rationalize the documentation in such a way as to maintain their belief in Leadbeater's spiritual status. Don't forget, many theosophists believe Leadbeater was an Arhat. H.P.B. also understood that certain people and institutions can have less than ideal pasts, yet serve towards a spiritual good. When she wrote ISIS UNVEILED, a large portion of the book was dedicated to the origins of Christianity and makes a distinction between the teachings of the Biblical Jesus, and the practices and teachings of the churches. She exposed the Churches as the power institutions that they are; yet, in the Introduction, she expressed the hope that devout Christians who's lives have been strengthened though their belief in Jesus, *not read* what she says about the church in ISIS UNVEILED. In other words, she did not wish to destroy the faith of those who live and practice the ethics of true Christianity, by exposing them to the rather unpleasant facts concerning historical Christianity and of the Church. Therefore, I will still hold to my opinion that "one way to test relevance of the message of a teacher is to see how long it lasts before it is forgotten." Take for instance your example of the BOOK OF MORMON. The very reason that a following had arisen is because people found spiritual meaning in this book. It really doesn't matter that many of the animals it describes never existed on the American continent, or that the Indians are not generically related to the Jews. What is important is that the devout followers of this religion try to lead better lives because of it. When the Mormon religion ceases to have relevance to its followers, then it will die as a movement. But I wouldn't waste time waiting for this to happen soon. Presently it is one of the world's fastest growing religions. As the Maha Chohan said, religion is mostly superstition anyway. The Theosophical Society was intended by the founders to be a place where people would have an opportunity to separate truth from superstition through study and realization. Yet there are many members of the Theosophical Organizations who read and absorb theosophical books and the pronouncements of the leaders in the same manner as a devotee to a religion. They treat the teachings as *revelation*, rather than helps to realization. It has been my experience that followers of Leadbeater more often take his teachings as revelation. But I have also seen this with many students of Blavatsky. This, I believe, is contrary to the purpose of the theosophical movement, and is the real problem here. I agree with you that Leadbeater's ideas have blended with New Age popular ideas. The popular understanding of theosophical terms such as "astral" "Mahatma" "karma" "after death states" are all consistent with the teachings of Leadbeater, and contradictory to those of Blavatsky and the Mahatmas. Gregory Tillett in the first part of THE ELDER BROTHER did a very good analysis of this phenomena. What is sad to me, is that people, including most Adyar theosophists attribute Leadbeater's definitions to Blavatsky. I find this very sad and personally frustrating when I try to carry on a conversation with these theosophists. On this note, I appreciate your essays on theosophical teachings, and hope people are finding value in them. I would suggest, however, that you take care to distinguish when you are drawing information from Purucker's writings and when you are drawing from Blavatsky's writings. Also, it might be helpful for you to give references, where students may read these things for themselves. If for no other reason--it is a good practice of scholarship. Arvind: Received your message of November 22. The problem is as you already understand it: You can send messages to my mailbox, but I can't send any to you neither through Peacenet nor Internet. I'm sure there is a solution, but this is all over my head, so I asked John to help us, as he understands these things. Regarding your question concerning vegetarianism in the Theosophical Society, it started with Besant and Leadbeater. Blavatsky, Olcott and Judge all ate meat and smoked. Though Olcott tried vegetarianism for a while but went back to meat, because it endangered his health. Blavatsky does discuss vegetarianism briefly in THE KEY TO THEOSOPHY (pp. 260-61), where she argues for physical and psychological benefits in a vegetarian diet. However, elsewhere, she argues that people do not become more spiritual merely through being vegetarian. Even "elephants are vegetarian" she says. Besant and Leadbeater were vegetarians and were very influential in making a large portion of the membership vegetarian also. When Besant took over the Esoteric Section, she changed the rules, making vegetarianism a condition for acceptance. During Blavatsky's time, an E.S. member could smoke and eat meat, and the only dietary prohibition was against the use of alcohol. For the most part, members in the Theosophical Society (Pasadena) and the United Lodge Theosophists are not vegetarians. Smoking has gone down among these members, but I think this has been more because of the influence of our past Surgeon General (Koop) than any Theosophical teaching. Robert Crosbie, founder of U.L.T. smoked and so did G. de Purucker. Purucker was a vegetarian part of his life, but I understand that he ate meat during his time as Leader of the Theosophical Society (Pasadena). I believe Crosbie also ate meat. Regarding the smoking of cigarettes: I have often wondered if the chemicals that they have been spraying on tobacco leaves since WWII, (or earlier?) might be carcinogenic, and perhaps more dangerous than the cigarettes. If this is so, than tobacco may have been much safer in H.P.B.'s (1831-1891) or even Purucker's (1875-1942) time than they are now. But not surprisingly, I have never seen a study done on this. I once jokingly asked an E.S. member if the Mahatma Morya would be allowed to attend an E.S. meeting at Krotona (the national E.S. center for the Adyar Theosophical Society). She replied: "Of course we would, providing he leaves his pipe at the bottom of the hill!" Brenda Tucker: The quote that we are looking for is somewhere past the middle of the book, and, according to Arvind, relates to a prophesy of a coming teacher in the 20th century who will expand on H.P.B.'s teachings. Regarding the issue of "Truth," that I mentioned as "a much more metaphysical question than appears on the surface"--I didn't go into this in my last communication because of time. But in my opinion, it is a subject that doesn't receive enough attention. In our new study group here in Central California, we began with an inquiry into the subject "Truth," and had some ten hours worth of discussion and debate, before we had to cut it off to cover other things. I think the first thing that we have to realize is that most people unconsciously operate under the Comtian- Positivistic conception of "truth." Auguste Comte (1798-1857) is probably the least known of the influential philosophers that we have. His philosophy of Positivism permeates all of the sciences and the entire educational system that we grew up under. Positivism has continued from the 1850's into the 1960's without any serious opposition. Even now, though it is being openly questioned, it still maintains as strong of a toe hold as even on the institutions that shape our thinking. Positivism begins with the assumption that truth exists "out there" and can be known through observation and experimentation. H.P.B. made great sport out of Comte in ISIS UNVEILED, trying to discredit him, because of all of the underlying materialistic assumptions within his philosophy. Another conception of truth that H.P.B. was trying to promote was the Platonic idea that TRUTH (i.e. absolute truth) exists and is symbolized in this idea of forms, but this TRUTH is not knowable on this plane of existence, and is in fact only knowable by Brahman (to use a theosophical phrase). Therefore, the only thing that is knowable are relative truths. We can know chairs, and even have a generalized concept of "chair" but we can never know (as embodied beings) "chairness," that is the true "form" of the chair. After "absolute truth," and "relative truth," we get down to "personal truth." Those are the ones that we know best, but unfortunately, the vary from person to person. They don't exist "out there," but "in here," and are discoverable through experience and dialogue. Sometimes they lead us to greater truths--sometimes not. Jerry Hejka-Ekins From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Sat, 27 Nov 1993 19:20:25 -0500 From: "Eldon B. Tucker" Subject: bliss & evil Bliss is one of the most sought-after experiences in life, an experience that is both one of the most common, yet one of the most rare to be found. With bliss, one is filled with something greater. He is swept out of the world and forgets himself. He is engulfed in beauty, ecstacy, something vast and grand. There is a sense of a remembered reality. Something elsewhere, long forgotten, dearly wanted, is seen again. One experiences a combination of an emotional intensity and extreme quiet at the same moment. We could be in the arms of a dearly loved family member, long lost, but now reunited with us. We could be saying a sad farewell to a beloved friend, at his death bed. As a teenager, we could be having our first experience of sex, with a strong sense of deja vu, of knowing that this is something that we've known before, something beyond the personality of the day. We could be swept into a deep reverie through a poignant passage of music. We could be diving into writing or painting, lost in the wonder of the creative process. Or perhaps we're shaken by a brilliant idea, one that opens up wondrous vista of though in our minds. We are seized, taken captive, filled with the sweep of a higher power. There is a momentary sensation of perfection, completion, where we've obtained a glimpse of a higher reality. At a lower level, bliss comes from the achievement of the object of desire. We are fulfilled for an instance. We have cast out a desire, and drawn it back in. It has been fulfilled. Something has been created and achieved its purpose in life. In this momentary sensation of completion, we have become bigger, better, more complete. A part of ourselves, which we lost when casting it forth as a desire in the world, has returned, and become united with us again. Now if we could only not cast it out again! To fully understand something, now, requires us to know the opposite as well. We must understand anger, rage, and evil as the polar opposite to bliss, which comes from perfection and transcendence. The opposite to bliss is horror, regret, shame, emptiness, a total lack of value and meaning. We have gone down, become abandoned by the higher nature, and corrupted in some new way. This corruption is to lose an essential quality, to have the effects of the higher nature diffused, weakened, dispersed, disassociated with our lives. The evil side to nature would tear apart ourselves, the destructive forces would rip us apart. We would be left, in our hearts, with but regret, shame. With the uplifting of bliss, of the holy side of our spiritual natures, our lower natures are changed, transformed, and also destroyed. But in this case the destruction leaves the seeds of growth, green shoots of future grander selves. Evil, though, leaves us with future shoots of evil, a bud, a sapling of corruption. At the level of the personality, the evil side to life is experienced as a burning rage, fierce in its lower aspect, burning hot, fiery, destructive. It's emphasis is self-destruction, as opposed to self-sacrifice. We die to achieve our revenge, our vengeance, in honor of teaching others 'a lesson.' Slights against us, small harms that others have done us, are magnified in our hearts to matters deserving of killing ranges. Like the enraged motorist who slams his car into yours, he is consumed with the fulfillment of universal evil. The opposite tendency, to contrast it with this, is where a small act of kindness of another is magnified in our hearts to a wave of love and kindness and appreciation in our hearts. In either case, for good or evil, we are embraced by something higher than our personal selves. And it comes at many different levels. For the personality, bliss is pleasure, joy in doing activities. And in a still higher part of our natures, it is joy in being, in pure selfhood, in pure relation, unqualified relation, with others. Likewise, evil, at its highest, is joy in pure selfishness, pure destructive relation, unqualified by any sense of one's personal self, in pure relation to the others. Bliss is, in one aspect, a cyclic experience. At the end of a cycle, the goal or reward for the experience of life is bliss. Bliss is also a background consciousness, something that stands behind and colors our every moment of manifest life. And a third aspect to bliss is that it represents the joy of reaching something higher, to breaking through to a higher stage of life, to achieving manifestation on a higher plane of nature than before. There is a sense of beauty and rightness to it. As a periodic experience, bliss comes to us, we are filled with it, and experience it in a passionnel sense. It can be very emotional, but the fiery energy exhausts itself, and we are left drained, feeling better, cleansed, uplifted, but at the same time it has departed. It will return, when our energy has picked up again, but it has for the moment left us again. We are back to our ordinary lives and it is gone. The higher bliss, though, is cool, quiet, a background to the experience of life. It does not exhaust our vital energies but like the gentle radiance of the sun, it shines on us through the myriad experiences of the day. The same is true, unfortunately, with spiritual evil, as well. The coolness is an attribute of the spiritual, be it good or evil, and the higher levels of spiritual evil come with an icy coldness that is awful to experience. With spiritual evil, there is an enjoyment of the sense of doing cruelty, of doing harm, of hurting others, and feeling nothing! The more violent the pain, the injury inflicted on another, and still feeling nothing but the icy sweet coldness of not caring, the greater the experience of spiritual evil. It is really anti-Buddhi, the shadow side of the buddhic principle. Instead of acting as co-creator of the world, one is acting as co- destructor, manifesting isolation and more separateness beyond the material world, raising those qualities, those elements of evil, into the higher principles, making them self-conscious at spiritual levels. Individuals on the path of evil, the Left Hand Path, are really on the track of separation from our world, and not just separation from the other people of the world. The ultimate result is a Avichi Nirvana, an annihilation of unspeakable horror, and a following manvantara of abject misery as a Mamo Chohan. One has left the school of life and suffers an existence in nature's reform school. The path of evil is not a natural thing. It is not a mere symmetry, an equally-valid opposition direction that we could take. It is not the second of two valid choices in life. It rather represents a temporary failure, a malfunction, a lack of success in life. On the bright side of life, on the side of bliss, we find a perfection where a much grander scale of being has been obtained. The ray of consciousness has been withdrawn into the Monad, and one's existence has been grandly fulfilled! A personal self was fashioned out of the substances of nature, filled with life, and given consciousness, then returned home in glory, with the treasure of self-consciousness! It is a beautiful thing to behold. This perfection, which is experienced as bliss, is the natural course, the natural order to things. Nature is moving in this direction. We are on the Upward Arc, ascending into the spiritual, and it is the natural course of things to raise ourselves, to ennoble ourselves, to experience the bliss of the achieving of perfection. Let us follow it. Let us deeply experience it. And let us lead our fellows about us to find it as well! Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Sat, 27 Nov 1993 22:29:04 -0500 From: John Mead Subject: reminder to subscribe to theos-news Hi -- this is a reminder to those subscribed ONLY to Theos-buds and Theos-roots that EVERYONE really SHOULD subscribe to Theos-News!! This is the *main* mailing list which is used to send announcements which are of interest TO ALL theosophists. Peace -- John Mead p.s. to others.... note that theos-roots and theos-buds may be used ANYtime you wish. a reminder: Theos-Buds is dedicated to newer emmergent ideas and trends.. Theos-roots is dedicated to existant and developed ideas and trends... If anyone shows interest... we can start a Theos-Span list for Spanish speaking people (as suggested by Eldon). This is not at all difficult to do if there is any interest (i.e. 3+ people who use spanish as their native tongue). From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1993 15:52:22 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: levels of study The theosophical Teachings, at their source, are said to be a divine revealation, a passing on of the fire of mind, of an body of knowledge and intelligence, to the elect of mankind in the third race. What we get in our theosophical books, though, is merely a hint, a shadow of the Teachings, which are preserved by the Masters to this day. The pure knowledge inherent in the theosohical Teachings is a revealation, a showing of something previously hid to mankind, but when we first open the books, we see words, not what is behind them, and these literal words are a study aid for us to use. What we find in our theosophical books are quotes from the literature of the world, with statements of agreement or errors being pointed out, and we find new, original teachings, ideas that were not before publically available. These Teachings, though, are not simple truths, easily said, and told us in plain language. They are hinted at, talked around, but not directly stated. This is because they deal with ideas that by their very nature cannot be communicated by just being told to someone. There is a purpose to this manner of teaching, where ideas are hinted at, talked around, but not directly stated. It is an ages-old, tried and proven method of teaching the Mystery Teachings, one that has been used and proved to work over countless generations. The intent is to lead the student to develop his own innate faculties. The stage is set for the understanding to arise in the pupil, a supportive, nurturing environment is set, and the pupil *knows*, the pupil originates the idea *from within.* The teachings cannot be communicated by someone simply telling them to us. We are told that chelas are left up to their own device and council, even up to the last and supreme initiation. This is important. Were the Masters to take us by the hands and lead us along and tell us what to do at every step of the say, they would assume karmic responsibility for our actions, and create a state of dependency of us upon them. The purpose of the training is to make us independent forces for good in the world, not merely good errand boys for the Masters. We are in training to be active intelligences, with self-initiative, not the opposite, elementals, with obedience to the behests of nature, but no self-initiative. The best role of a Teacher is as midwife for the birth of the spiritual nature and innate wisdom in the student, and not as parent, with the continual responsibility for the upbringing of a dependent. In our theosophical studies, when we study the philosophy, our study is a spiritual practice, a form of mediation that leads us to an awakening of our own inner philosopher. When someone learns to repeat back the words that they have read, this is not a sign of their having penetrated to the Truths. We can learn to parrot the iedas that we read in an book. And this is not bad, but is only the first of three stages to the learning process, to the study of the Mystery Teachings. We must be able to read and study and absorbe what we see, to hold the raw ideas in our mind, to recall them, to start to put them together with one another, before we can go further. The second state is a form of mental discrimination. There *are* true and false ideas, and we need to be able to distinguish them. Until we reach this point, though, everything seems equally valid, and it's all a game as to which ideas we take up and which we cast aside. Without the necessary mental discrimination that can distinguish the real from the unreal, we can study any arbitrary set of ideas, rules, descriptions of things, and feel equally happy. People who tell us that somethings are wrong and others are right seem confused, narrow-minded. It all seems a big game and we may quickly tire of all the--to us--nonsense and want to do something more "real" like feeding starving people or clothing and housing the poor and homeless. This discrimination is the start of mental vision, where there is a sense of sources of light, as opposed to darkness, but not yet clearcut images. Like someone legally blind, perhaps 95 percent blind, we see areas of brightness or darkness, but no distinguishable objects. In our mind's eye, we see sources of light and places where it is absent, but are not yet clearly focusing in on the truths before us. At this stage, we are beyond being a simple follower, a member of some organization or school of thought, since we now have an ability to know where to look for the Truth and where not to look. We can tell where and what are good sources. When we speak of a devotee, it could be of someone with or without this discrimination. Someone could be a follower because of an arbitrary, or perhaps emotional choice; someone could follow because of finding a genuine source of the Teachings. With the right source, being a devotee is a good thing. Devotion is essential to the process of inner development. Dedication, committment, and utter loyalty are necessary qualities, necessary virtues. Being a devotee does not indicate the lack of readiness to penetrate deeply into the Esoteric Philosophy. Just because most people who may be devotees are followers, without this sense of discrimination, does not mean that there are not others, perhaps but a few, who are real students of the Teachings. Our understanding ultimate comes *from within.* The whole process of study is aimed to awaken our innate ability *to know,* and this is not merely training in creative imagination. And we now come to the third stage of training, the third stage of studying the Teachings. With the first stage of study, we acquire an intellectual understanding of the ideas, we first open the books. Then with the second stage we learn discrimination. Now, with the third stage, we find that we are able to break free of the words that appear in the books, we are able to clothe the ideas in our own words. We find our own thoughts allied with the Esoteric Philosophy, where we can sit and almost say what will appear on the next page, in the third stage. We are then learning at yet another, deeper level, using our innate ability to *know* on our own. Our progress at this point is limited by our background of study in the core concepts of Theosophy. Each primary teaching gives us a key whereby we can open new doors to understanding. At this stage of learning, we do not go from one idea to another, continually rearranging our mental furniture. We do not reject an idea, later embrace it, and reject it anew at some further stage of understanding. The sorting out of what is real from what is unreal is at the second level, that of discrimination. At this third level, we are taking *true* ideas, and diving into them. We take the central ideas, and our understanding gets progressively deeper over time. Going from one level of understanding to the next, say of the concept of nirvana, we arrive at a better, a more-complete picture of how it works. But each new level to the understanding embraces what we've learned before, it complements our previous learning, it provides a bigger picture. We are at a stage where we are not seeking, but exploring. We are not prospecting for a gold mine, we have one, and are mining it. The limits to what we can understand at this point are self-imposed. Some come from our own inadequate preparation. We have not acquired a solid foundation of the core concepts of Theosophy, so we come to a point where there are doors before us for which we do not have the keys, and we are blocked from going further. It is dangerous to talk about this method of learning, because it is subject to considerable abuse. The approach is not often mentioned publically, because we don't want someone unprepared to try it, to fool themselves into thinking they have come to deep understandings, then telling others their misconceptions as though they were the actual Teachings. There is no authority to appeal to, beyond a certain point, beyond a certain depth in going into the Esoteric Philosophy, so we should either keep quiet, or write with extreme care. We bear the responsibility of the affects of our sharing of the philosophy with others, and do not wish to mislead and inflict harm. On the other hand, if we never go beyond the dead letter of the books, we are limited to doing compilations of quotes and not any actual writing. We become scholars, librarians, publishers, but not true philosophers. We embalm the living truth, and preserve it, but do not carry it in our minds and hearts as something alive. It is a wonderful thing to take a profound Teaching, a beautiful picture of the inner workings of life, and to take it further, to enter into it and go to yet deeper levels of meaning behind what we have previously known. And, with care, we can share some of what we have found. We can talk about Theosophy, and write on it, and not have to weave a web of quotes. Even a beautiful necklace of quotes, a nosegay of flowers of the most brilliant color, a collection of the most inspiring passages of our literature, when strung together, does not allow us to grow and make our own individual contribution to the work. There's always a chance that we might make a mistake here or there, that not 100 percent of what we write is completely correct, that if a Mahatma had a red pencil, he'd mark up our writings with corrections. But that is ok, as long as we don't lead people into wrongful living, nor put our writings *before* those of our Teachers, like K.H., M., H.P.B. and a few others. An informed reader, in touch with the theosophical current of thought, will recognize when we are true to the Teachings, and can benefit from the good in what we've written. With a basis in the core Teachings and a developed sense of discrimination, the reader can make sense of what other students have written and readily pick out the good parts. Unfortunately, though, there is no "public" esoteric body, an organization that we could participated in where we could publish materials for the discriminating eye, but not add to the confusion of the general public, the many in need first of a study of the core writings. We live in a democratic society, here in America, where there are supposed to be equal rights for all. Everyone here has an equal say in how the land will be governed. Nature, though, is not democratic, it is aristocratic. There are great souls, the common masses, and laggards. The great souls lead the way. We are priviledged to know of them and to have some sense of the direction that life is taking. Most people are not ready. The theosophical Teachings, the deeper parts, are not meant for everyone, and most people could not--even if they would--penetrate them. The ideas meant for them, meant for helping our materialistic western world, are the simplier ones, those than can blend into popular thought and help found a new religion for the west, a religion with perhaps a New Age slant to it. The Theosophical Society, and Theosophical Societies, for there are many of them, not just the one with international headquarters at Adyar, India, has multiple purposes. One is to promote the core concepts and to disseminate them into popular thought, to the extent that this is possible. Another is to provide a school for chelas, at least in Blavatsky's time, although such may not have been always publically proclaimed, and even, at times, denied. We can, as students, look at the great books in our literature, the great writings of our Mahatmas, H.P.B., and G. de Purucker, and learn much thereby. But we also should, when ready, be willing to take the next step: to emerse ourselves in the Teachings--to dive into them--to make them so much a part of ourselves that they become our ideas too, and not just something that we read. We need to know, then become the Teachings, and then we will really begin to learn! Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 00:03:28 -0500 From: BALAM@delphi.com Subject: Leadbeater again?! To Jerry H.E. and others, There has been discussion back and forth and pro and con over the value and acceptability of the C.W. Leadbeater contribution to theosophy and to the theosophical movement as a whole. At this point I would like to contribute a perspective on the sub- ject that perhaps will add dimension to the picture thus far painted. During the 1960's there was a conjunction of the significant planets Uranus and Pluto in our macrocosm. This revolutionary energy not only represented conflict between social classes and political ideologies; it presented as well, an open door to hitherto hidden and ancient, occult and spiritual knowledge. The New Age ideology of 1993 can claim it's origins in the re- birth of the enlightenment movement of the 60's. I submit that C.W. Leadbeater's writings do not so much blend with New Age philosophy as suggested by some on this network; no, on the contrary, I believe C.W.L.'s work actually had a great influence on the birth and molding of the present day new wave of thought. I say this because when the subjects of yoga, meditation, astrology and natural healing came to life again to a broader audience in the 60's, the demand for literature on all these subjects grew. Today one can visit ones local New Age bookstore and be happy to find a host of books written on the common subject of the Chakras. Among them one can invariably still find the book with the very title "The Chakras", authored by none other than C.W. Leadbeater. I say one can *still find* this book because it was the only one available and in obvious view, in the metaphy- sical book shop of the inquisitive 60's. If you were in- terested in yoga or meditation and wanted to to investi- gate the inner workings of these practices, no doubt you would be led to this famous book. It's extreme popu- larity can be seen by taking a look at the publishing dates found in it's beginning pages in any older edition. I have in my possession a 1972 edition which lists the first publishing to be 1927, then 1938, 47, 52, 58, 61, 66, 68, 69. Of course it would be interesting for a more scientific study, to have the count of printed copies and number of actual sales for a truer picture of the point I am making, however I do not have access to these figures. Actually no matter how many copies were printed, the closeness of the dates 1966, 68 and 69 somewhat re- flect the popularity of the book during that time period. This does not validate the truth or falseness of the con- tent of this piece of literature; instead it reveals the influence of his ideas upon the minds of the 60's genera- tion. Now what I found most important about his influence, were the references in that book, "The Chakras", to another book with the most intriguing title "The Secret Doctrine". Was this *bait* ("The Chakras") presented to the spirit- ually inclined reader of those times, cast into the waters of mental receptivity on purpose by the Quest publishers, or shall it be said that this is all part of a greater plan instigated by the very hierarchy of the Masters of Divine Wisdom themselves? Either way, I was hooked! I then pro- ceeded to search for a copy of this mysterious Secret Doc- trine, as it was not as apparent or visible on the book- shelf as it's pointer, the very controversial C.W. Leadbeater's, "The Chakras". And so whether believing or not believing in the value of this man's ideas, it is true for me, and I am sure for others outside the influence of the Theosophical Society, that this book can lead to a discovery of theosophy's existence, as to this day, "The Secret Doctrine" is not on the shelf, but "The Chakras" is. So be thankful to Leadbeater for participating in the scheme of things as a whole............................Sarah...... From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 02:04:42 -0500 From: 91484615@uwwvax.uww.edu Subject: RE: chaos and Quantum Mechanics... John, I enjoyed your comments on qm, perhaps you might comment on qem. Thanks for your continug support. Take car Jay Amundson (which ever brand you prefer, I like Fords) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 08:48:35 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: St. Louis news This is from Brenda Tucker. Dear Friends In the November-December, 1993 (Vol 59, Num 5) issue of ANCIENT WISDOM, The Theosophical Society of Saint Louis Newsletter, published bimonthly, there is a page (page eight) filled with questions and the page is entitled DO YOU KNOW? I'd like to share this page with you here today. DO YOU KNOW? That one does not join The Theosophical Society to learn how to be good? That it is taken for granted that one has, at least in a measure, overcome the grosser vices and failings or he would have no desire to become a Theosophist? That the moralities and virtues are taught in every Church and Sunday School and such teaching is not the work of The Theosophical Society, which has its own specialized tasks, undertaken by no other body? That The Theosophical Society exists to impart true spiritual knowledge of a nature which is obtainable from no other known source? That this knowledge is not acceptable to everyone and that an unusual type of inquiring mind, not satisfied with conventional "explanations," or lack of them, seems to be necessary to reception of theosophical truths? That rejection of these truths ranges from indifference or ridicule to violent antagonism? That one of the reasons why many people are able to accept the improbabilities and impossibilities of some of the religions, while rejecting the probabilities and possibilities of Theosophy, appears to be due to a curious preference of the human mind for wanting the material to be logical and the spiritual illogical? That as the greatest intellects, which penetrate far beneath the superficial reasons with which average intellects are satisfied, have expressed beliefs closely akin to what is now called Theosophy, a Theosophist need not be disturbed if he finds his views on spiritual matters at variance with those of his neighbors? That Theosophy, though the oldest system of spiritual thought in the world among the ILLUMINATI, is questionably too potent for rank-and-file thinkers of the present generation? That informed Theosophists recognize this and understand that they are pioneering for remote generations to come, when Theosophy will be accepted by all as the only logical or possible explanation of life, its problems and purpose? That they have their reward in the understanding, peace of mind and enhanced efficiency their unusual knowledge gives them? That while they work with an eye to the future, they do not neglect opportunities to spread their "gospel" in the present to all who will receive it? That while much may be done to simplify the presentation of theosophical teachings, if they were of a nature which could be instantly grasped in all their ramifications, they could not possibly be the true "Divine Wisdom" which is Theosophy? IT IS IN YOUR EVERYDAY LIFE THAT YOU MUST REALIZE ETERNITY -J. Krishnamurti. This newsletter is available for $3.00 per year by writing to Ancient Wisdom, 1219 Craig Rd., St. Louis, MO 63146 From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 10:23:15 -0500 From: eldon@raider.sandiegoca.NCR.COM Subject: approaching the esoteric A lot has been written about the esoteric, the occult, the hidden side to life. There are many, many books to be found on the subject, with every possible imaginable description of it. And there are a large number of groups promicing to give us esoteric teachings. The word *esoteric*, though, refers to something that is not apparent, not readily knowable, not easy to learn or communicate. And this can be for many reasons. The first reason is that the key to understanding a truth has not been given, so we have the literal words, the exoteric husk, the outer form of the idea, but not the right idea, the right teaching, the right manner of interpreting it, that we can use to unlock its real meaning. Even were someone to explain things to us, though, there are truths that we may not be ready for. There is knowledge that relates to something above and beyond our everyday world. There are things that we simply cannot learn in the ordinary way. The esoteric is not acquired by membership in any self-professed esoteric school. There may be organizations that are associated with theosophical societies, and they train us to be better Theosophists, but they make it clear that they are preliminary training grounds, and not the actual schools directly overseen by the Masters. This is okay, since there is no pretense here, they effectively state that they are *pre-esoteric* organizations. But other organizations may claim to have the Masters directly heading them, and to be giving teachings to anyone who cares to join and profess their beliefs. These are *not* esoteric, but are just, in effect, New Age churches with their congregations. The estoeric does not come by correspondence course. It does not come by becoming a priest or bishop in some church. It does not come by the practice of paranormal powers, nor faith healing. It is not from any normal activity of the personality. The esoteric refers to a wisdom that goes beyond the personality, and seeing the astral light does not make one any closer. We are not any closer from seeing astral writing, than from taking a book home from the library to read, or talking to a friend on the phone. Astral travel and psychic visions are not a sign of spiritual development, and confer no esoteric knowledge. The esoteric is not an extrapolation of anything in the personality, it is something different, a different direction to experience. To penetrate the esoteric, it is not what you'd think. It is not just something more of anything that you'd currently know. It is something *different,* really diferent, yet simple at the same time. If we look for it and see nothing, we must look again, and look yet again, with genuine expectation, and it will eventually appear to us. In trying to be esotericists, we seek to see through the surface, the skin of life, to deeper levels. But this deeper is not in terms of the senses, it is not seeking to see auras or produce psychic phenomena. It is deeper in a different way that we'd think, and not knowing how or where to look, it may simply escape us. It does not mean anything to just say the word *esoteric*, to use it and give it whatever meaning we might like. That does not really help us in our search for the actual esoteric side to life. We do not learn it by becoming familiar with the words in a metaphysical book on the subject. The *apparent* meaning of the words in theosophical books on the hidden side of life do not directly reveal it to us. A realization of the estoeric may not be possible to fullyl hold in the mind without stilling the personality, and possibly paralyzing the mind, or at least quieting it, holding it very still, making it the least distraction to where we go within ourselves. The esoteric relates to things removed from what is possible to know and experience in humanity in this race and time, from what can exist in our Globe D world at the present. It involves experiences that are removed from us, removed in either time, dealing with future races, or space, dealing with the experiences of the other globes or of the Outer Rounds. An esoterisist is someone who has a certain penetrating vision into the inner workings of life, that allow him to see, know, and be something greater, something bigger, something better that life would otherwise allow. And this person could act to influence others, in the sense of being a teacher or guru to them, to awaken their ability to delve into the esoteric as well. Katherine Tingley, who succeeded W.Q. Judge and H.P. Blavatsky, was considered by her students to be one, to be a great esoterisist. The esoteric involves a shift of the normal frame of reference, the paradigm of life that we operate with, shifting away from the view that we are a human personality, to something else within ourselves. We do not end up feeling better than anyone else, but rather are enfilled with something that can't really be talked about. We can look about us and see the vast sea of humanity, and appreciate their value as people. We watch the experiences that they have and share in their happinesses and sorrows. We continue to work for the common benefit of all. We do not lose our brotherly love and appreciation for our fellow man. But there are levels to life, and it is possible to feel the call of the next one, the call of a higher level that we have been living in. Feeling the call of something higher is not a rejection, not a devaluing of our fellows, it is not an elitism. It does not make us spiritual snobs. Any such feeling would betray the experiencer to be a pretender to the estoeric. When someone acts out of wanting to be better than others, acting out of a comparison to others, a wanting to push others aside, then he is motivated by selfishness and still centered in his personality. The call of a higher beauty, a higher truth, a higher perspective on life, is a growth, an expansion, an unfolding. It is not a pushing away from something, not motivated by a rejection of the previous life nor a feeling of superiority to what one was before. There may be a sense of saddness in seeing people mislead, but we realize that all experience is self-initiated, and a time will come when others will ripen and ready the proper readiness on their own. We can encourage, assist, and provide resources for the others to draw upon, but cannot make them to be ready nor taken the steps for them. We may feel that we want to protect others, seeing the vast array of pretenders to esoteric truths about us. But it is best to simply ignore them and leave them alone. There is no value in attacking, in denouncing, in trying to point out the errors of a group to its followers. Someone does not change their mind and see their errors because we've simply pointed them out and said that the ideas are wrong! It does not matter how clearly we expose certain errors, or point them out. Until someone is ready to give up an idea for something better, they will not be receptive. We, too, much reach the proper state of readiness before we can approach the esoteric.We cannot expect someone to simply tell us something, to have us do some technique, to give us a book to read or a meditation to perform, and we will thereby experience the esoteric. The esoteric is a new, a different experience of things, hidden from our ordinary consciousness. We have to give the proper knock, and the door to it will open. But we also have to be ready, to be prepared, to have cultivated our inner lives. Consider the Path. We are told that we are not ready for it until we want it as much as a man wants air, as his head is held under water. This analogy is true, to a point, but we cannot sustain that level of desire, and the desire is not one of passion, as experienced in the personality. A closer analogy to the necessary feeling is that had by a man who has lost his legs in an accident, and wants them back. There is a sense of something close, familiar, an active part of life of his that has been cut off from him, and he wants it very much! While this *wanting* is experienced in a certain part of ourselves, another part experiences great peace. We simply contemplate the true and beautiful in life. We dewell on, express, and share the good that we find. We force and impose nothing on others. We stay away from the ugly, malformed ideas, and do not seek them out to do battle. And we popluate the earth with ideas and sentiments of the highest beauty, leaving the rest behind. We must look for the esoteric in a *different* way, a way that may seem mysterious or to simply not exist, until we are ready. And we work on our spiritual nature, our higher side. We grow and unfold and someday we'll look about us and see something truly wonderful! Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com) From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000 Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 18:57:03 -0500 From: Gerald Schueler <76400.1474@compuserve.com> Subject: childhood Nancy Coker: I would like to add a bit more to your question of the importance of our personal history and our childhood experiences. I just finished a book by Pia Mellody, FACING CODEPENDENCE (Harper Collins, 1989) where she says, "I tell evey patient I treat, "The secret to your recovery is to learn to embrace your own history. Look at it, become aware of it, and experience your feelings about the less-than-nurturing events of your past. Because if you don't, the issues from your history will be held in minimization, denial, and delusion and truly be behind you as demons you are not aware of. And this situation will continue to make you miserable through your own dysfunctional behaviors.""" (p XXIII - XXVI) This book was given to me by the Dept of Social Services for Harford County, Maryland, as part of my training for being a theraputic foster parent. But Mellody uses her own past problems to help others, and her theories are generally accepted by theraptists and psychologists. The central problem is that unless we are fully conscious of our past, we will tend to repeat the same mistakes over again. Children from dysfunctional families tend to have dysfunctional families themselves, and so on. Jerry S.