Theos-Talk Archives (May 1998 Message tt00340)

I came across this article in the light of W.Q. Judge. I sent it in his
Honor.
Thanks Spencer.

> From: "Dallas TenBroeck" <dalval@nwc.net>
> Sent:	Saturday, May 09, 1998 9:33 AM
> Subject: Re: What is the main problem?
>
> 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
>
> From: "Thoa Thi-Kim Tran" <thoalight@aol.com>
> Date: Friday, May 08, 1998 3:04 PM
> Subject: Re: What is the main problem?
>
> >>Thoa Tran wrote: