Theos-Talk Archives (May 1998 Message tt00213)

May 8th

Dear Thoa:O

Several interesting posts from you today -- as usual.

Vegetarianism and non-violence (Ahimsa) -- does not every living
thing have a right to their life-span ?  Are we "mad-kings" who
rage through life destroying as we go, because we cannot
undersigned that the "Kinship of all Life" includes every living
thing ?  Are we mad [ living carelessly 'as we please'] because
we "think," or is our power of thought obscured at times, because
of some motive of play or pleasure, which denies the rights and
privileges of others ?  Are we bullies and tyrants over other
natural beings and their forms ?  And if so, how is it that we
can do this without any kind of remorse ?  To think that our
great power of thinking alone entitles us to kill and torture
other beings for our sole benefit ?

Is the idea of "survival of the fittest" limited to the term of
life-coherence in  this present form, so that we forget that it
too will die ?  And if we amass great wealth, or enjoy our
selfish pleasures in what we call "our" leisure -- and everybody
else does the same, then does this not explain the fights and
distress we see all around ?  Who among us are totally sane ?
What is our purpose for existence as humans ?  How do we become
"totally sane ?"  And if we do this, then what kind of living
will be ours ?

Surely there has to be something deeper, more logical than the
thoughtless and selfish lives we live ?

When the great Buddha touched the Earth and called it his, as one
of many things he had come to "save," did it not signify that he
understood the relation that it offers to all beings, -- that it
too participated in life,  that it was the source of the "forms"
we all wear ?  That the atoms of the "Earth" ultimately clothe
all of us -- and have their right to progress, to increasing
awareness ?  Was it not to draw attention to the unity and
inter-action of living things ?

I ask all these questions, because they flash into my mind, as a
basis for considering th duty of those (us, the humans, with
minds) who have the kingly power of life and death -- who can
protect or execute ?  In the economy of Nature, what is royal ?
Is it not magnanimity -- a tolerance of all that lives, a
recognition that each is in its own place, and each being not
only has a right to its life, but is given (by Nature, the great
Mother) the kind of balance that makes for the dynamic
cooperation and over-all harmony of all living things ?

Don't we all depend on each other ?  And if we can live off the
vegetable kingdom, is it not taste that induces us to eat meat --
at the expense of the life of the animals ?

However, vegetarianism was not at issue.  It was the use of drugs
that affect the brain and the ability of the Mind to use it and
the rest of our nervous system that resides in a more or less
healthy body.  { I cannot subscribe to the idea that the Brain
alone is the source of our consciousness, and our thoughts.
While the Brain shows activity under the stimulation of thought,
or emotion, is it not rather a responsive reaction to the
stimulus of either input or output, rather than a spontaneous
generation of creative decisions ? It is of course evidence of
the ultimate complexity (with some 12 billion cells) of matter in
cooperation -- but WHO and WHAT  drew all that there ?  What is
the "master Intelligence" in us ? }

I have always tried to "back myself into a corner" to test the
logical validity of scientific or philosophical and religious
statements, theories, and concepts to see if they can be pushed
to their own ultimate conclusion -- or base -- are in fact
coherent and can live with each other in actual fact.  One cannot
take and isolate any theory or hypothesis, and then say (as it is
a construct) that everything else has to agree with that,
especially if it can be shown that it (the theory) does not cover
every aspect of the case of "living together."

In any case we have to start with the basis that Nature as a
whole is the origin of our bodily forms and our living in them.
Science studies Nature in its details, and to be complete has to
find out how any one line of discovery melds with the rest.  It
cannot be totally isolated as the dynamics of Nature
( taken as the total base ) are not static nor are they other
than entirely cooperative.  Life cannot be studied in death.  Our
Science  has not the entire range of tools needed to study living
things -- even with X-rays and MRI, etc... we get a view of
stasis, which by the time we examine it is the past of our
form -- and we assume that the view we get is continuing at this
moment, because we are able to shorten the time of examination --
assuming always that there is slow progression,.  But we do not
have the tools to penetrate and also to integrate our
understanding of the total individual who is being examined.  We
do not know how he got ill, or what he feels, and what he is
thinking -- and whether, if in those aspects of his life reside
the sources of ill-health.

If cooperation is the next fact, then the living becomes a matter
of cooperation with others and with all one's surroundings.
Details can be separated out for further analysis.  But what is
it that makes for those separations, and the basis for the
present, for our continued cooperative existence ?  And what
about the units ?  Are they "dead" and "unresponsive" units
limited to response only (behaviorism) in which case, what was,
and, when was the "first"
cause ?

In using the  "Secret Doctrine," I have found that the question
of living relations is made plain -- that we deal in ourselves,
and in all others, with living beings, and that their life, while
temporary in the forms they/we now use, springs from something
that is peculiar to themselves/ourselves -- there is evidently a
continuity that transcends the "life of any aggregate form."  The
laws of that basic aggregation are not clear.  What is the
nucleus of Power, that center of the "energy field" around us
which draws to any living being the necessary components that
give it a bodily form -- to the minerals a crystal, to the
vegetables, a perfect plant, to animals perfect instinct, and to
man perfect thinking ?  What are those "perfections ?"

Is it not this inability to be completely precise, that causes
Science to qualify the "atoms" and other "sub-atomic" particles
with the concept of a perpetual existence, and perpetual motion ?
They have to endow the atom with an eternal existence, a
perpetual motion -- thus time and space are deemed for those
smallest components of Nature to be continuing centers of fixed
Energy Fields, of individual Force [ but what the ultimate focus
is, they do not know, any more than they can give a definition of
"ether," or of "electricity" ] -- but not isolated !  No.  They
live and work always together with others.  Further they have to
perceive that the relations at that level are all under Law, and
that the study of the many obscure "laws " of inter-action is the
basis for all Science.

Thus we have a vast unity of immortal beings, each being
sensitive, law-abiding in its own way, and thus the progress in
intelligence of each unit is always within the frame-work of the
Whole.  Final stability and immobility is by logic a property
only of the ABSOLUTENESS -- which we cannot encompass in our
minds, and only think of as a "logical background," from which
all differentiation and manifestation springs.  And our unitary
existence has to be necessarily an intimate "part" of the
ABSOLUTENESS -- so we are as Egos divine to the extent that it is
divine also.  At that level we could say that we merge, and thus
the transfer of ideas is instantaneous.  Physical light and life
are obstructions to such instantaneous living.  Are we not trying
to overcome them, and to "live in mind, in the "Eternal ?"

Why and how can we assume that Humans are exempt from this Law of
Life as a Whole ?  What quality other than our sense of freedom
and independence gives us that concept ?  And since we all have
it in some degree, what are we going to do with it ?  Destroy
each other out of fear and ignorance, or attempt to learn the
laws of tolerant and cooperative life ?  What are our faculties ?
what can we do ?  what are our permanent goals ?

Sorry, all these questions emerge in me, one after the other is
my search for meaning.  What do you think  ?

Best wishes,            Dallas

> Date: Friday, May 08, 1998 3:04 PM
> From: "Thoa Thi-Kim Tran" <thoalight@aol.com>
> Subject: Re: What is the main problem?