Theos-Talk Archives (June 1998 Message tt00198)

>According to the Theosophy I am familiar with, tornadoes, tidal
>waves, earthquakes, solar flares, draughts, floods, epidemics and
>in fact all cataclysms are generated by the turbulent aspects of
>our human emotions and thoughts -- their impact on the
>"elements."  In which case even destructive events are the
>product of the destructive aspects of our thinking and choosing.
>They do not happen at random and when they do occur they involve
>those persons who in this life or in earlier ones had contributed
>to their formation.  You may say this is far-fetched.
>

Not far-fetched as long as we agree that such natural events are
the result of our collective karma and not our personal karma.
If I was hit by lightning and died, you would probably say it was
a result of my personal karma--something that I did in a past life.
I see it rather as collective karma and the fact that I am  human
and I equate collective karma with chaos because neither is
predictable nor are they deterministic.


>But, if we are dealing with living beings everywhere, each with
>its own intelligence and a nature that is not destroyed when it
>is dispersed, then we are dealing with the ethical impact of our
>acts, thoughts and feelings on those beings that compose our
>bodies and the rest of our environment, in one way or another.
>To look at such events as fortuitous, chancy, or lucky (or the
>reverse) is to say that we do not yet know the laws under which
>they occur.  But to say that there is no law simply means that we
>do not know of any, yet.
>

This is very deterministic thinking, and a few years ago I would
have agreed with you. Nowdays I tend to think that some things
in life are not deterministic (and therefore, by definition, are
chaotic). It is rather like the Uncertainty Principle in Quantum
Physics: our seemingly deterministic world is based on an
indeterministic foundation. It is not a question of lacking data
or needing more information.


>The Theosophist says as I understand it, that there is a great
>Law that causes all things to be.  And that embodied in this law
>are the concepts of a perfection, or a kind of "graduation,"
>towards which every class of being is progressing, each in its
>own way.  It is expressed as cooperation and as brotherhood.
>

I consider myself a Theosophist too, but I see karma as
causality and I happen to agree with Jung that synchronicity
also exists -- an acausal principle just as real and effective
as casuality. I call karma causality and synchronicity I call
chaos, but a rose is a rose is a rose.



>Now if you say Karma does not operate anywhere, and it is a
>figment of Theosophical delusion then I cannot say anything more.

No, I never said that.


>But there is, as I see it an overwhelming flood of evidence to
>show that causes produce effects according to the aim and
>intensity of the actor or generator.  So why should Theosophy be
>wrong in assigning a probable relationship between cataclysms and
>man's generation of emotional cataclysms ?
>

Theosophy is only wrong when it says, like science said until
chaos theory came along, that causality is all that there is. Now
science knows that chaos exists and can't be eliminated nor
predicted. One of these days I hope Theosophists will also
recognise this.


>When I used the word "chaos" I meant something that did not
>happen under LAW.

But synchronicity is a law too. Chaos also works with laws.
Its just that these laws are acausal--not causally connected,
and are independent of time and space. You need to redefine
LAW to allow for acausal events.


>  And even cataclysms are the result of a rather
>large operation of law.  They are the attempt of nature to bring
>about an adjustment in the disturbance we human minds and wills
>have imposed (as a great mass of thinking beings) on Nature's
>hidden planes.  It is the objective manifestation of those causes
>that are subjective (if you will allow me the use of those
>terms).
>
Agreed. But all storms are unpredictable over time (they can only
be predicted in a very short term). Karma is cause and effect and
is pretty well predictable.


>And while we are at it, we could also ask if there is a universal
>plan of evolution -- not just of the physical body, as considered
>by the archaeologists and the paleo-physiologists, but as HPB
>suggests in SD I 181, also of the soul (mind and emotional
>natures) and the spiritual nature too.
>

I fully agree with HPB.


>Interestingly enough, HPB deals with the questions of returning
>cycles in her article "The Theory of Cycles," THEOSOPHIST,  July
>1880  (ULT Edn. of HPB Articles, Vol. 3, p. 72-3).  On p. 78 she
>writes more on this  ("Ancient Doctrines Vindicated,"
>THEOSOPHIST, May, 1881).  In her article "Stars and Numbers,"
>THEOSOPHIST, June 1881, (p. 405-6 same book) she speaks of the
>relation of conjunctions to the intersection of cycles on our
>earth involving whole populations.  Dealing with epidemics in an
>article entitled "Does Vaccination Prevent Smallpox ?"
>THEOSOPHIST, March 1881,
>(ULT Edn. HPB Articles, Vol. 1, p. 341) she offers information
>about the cycle of the return of diseases.
>

Collective events tend to be cyclic. Again, I agree with HPB.


>If you would like to pursue this further then I will advance more
>data, but I am sure that you are already aware of these things.
>
>Best wishes,        Dallas.
>

Best to you too.

Jerry S.