Theos-Talk Archives (September 1998 Message tt00239)

Sept 18th 1998

Dear Jerry:

Here is the thing that has puzzled me for a long time.

Let me base myself on what HPB says on p. 181 of the SD Vol. 1.

HPB lists 3 lines of Monadic evolution that conjoin in Man.

1. Monadic	(spiritual)
2. Intellectual	(Manasic)
3. Physical    	(Physical and Astral forms)

As I understand it from what is said in the footnote at the
bottom of p. 174-5 SD I, the MONAD is a spiritual duad (in
manifestation), a center of energy if you please defined as
Atma-Buddhi by HPB, since Buddhi is needed so as to afford Spirit
(Atma) any contact with lower planes.  To this is added Manas
(the reasons being given in SD I 243-245 ).  Is this fair so far
?

On SD I 245fn, HPB says that the "personality" has to cling to
the Monad, and to partake of its divine nature to obtain
"immortality."

But, by definition the personality consisting of several
planes/states of conscious experience is itself an aggregation of
non-self-conscious Monads.  An intelligence has caused them to
come to a center and to aggregate and acquire a limited type of
consciousness (a stone becomes a plant, an animal, a man ....)
 3rd division ]

Seems to me that consciousness and awareness, attentiveness,
concentration, will, determination, meditation - under whatever
names - are the forces that we (the REAL MAN, or
Atma-Buddhi-(Higher-Manas) in this, its probationary stage of
evolution can use to make conscious contact from this plane to
the Spiritual base of its primary REALITY.  ( I find I am
scrambling for the right words to express myself in. )  [ This is
the 2nd division ]

Here I am awake, reading your comments, reading mine, seeking for
the bridge of clarity that will illuminate them both and
reconcile what I sense is only a difference in terms, -- why do I
go to the SD ?  To seek for the expressions that HPB has drawn
from the ancient research that helps to disentangle these mixed
threads of consciousness and experience.  I go to TRANSACTIONS of
the BLAVATSKY LODGE ( ULT Edn., pp. 66 to 76) as I find there,
that in discussing dreams, HPB has shown how the waking
consciousness (you and I here and now, enveloped in Kama-desire
and passions) finds it difficult to rise to understand its own
"Father" the Higher Manas (as it (Lower Manas) is a "ray" from
this thrown onto the sensitive surface of our brain matter) and
with still greater difficulty the spiritual qualities that are of
the nature of Atma-Buddhi.

HPB says that
1. It is difficult to still the appeal of our desires and
passions (Kama) which are by definition selfish and
short-sighted.  I say short-sighted, because they do not envisage
goals that pass beyond our physical death in this life.  This
gives us our impatience, pride, and ambition.

2. This process of bringing the Kamic nature to a standstill. Is
said to be achieved by meditation.

3. But, meditation on what ?  The selection of a subject for deep
thought -- this is apparently vital.  Here is where the old books
suggest the ideas of universality, impersonality and generosity
(all comprehended in the idea of Brotherhood as an active way of
life, and based on a grasp of one's essential immortality as the
Atma-Buddhi-Manasic SELF (The REAL MAN).  So the first injunction
is the old:  "Man, know thyself."  And this seems to be a very
slow process, and most of us are very impatient.  We try to by
pass this.  But according to esotericism as explained in HPB's
articles relative to chelaship and the difference between the
Psychic and the Noetic ( see HPB PSYCHIC AND NOETIC ACTION ) such
a knowledge alone enables us, from this waking plane of
consciousness, to purify and refine our inner "tools" in the
physical, psychic, and mental planes/states.  I would say that it
is spiritual aspiration towards the embodiment of the "virtues"
(or Parmitas of the VOICE) that does it, and this is recommended
by all "spiritual" Schools of self-progression and
self-refinement - if one desires to make the inner Spiritual Self
( the MONAD - HIGHER SELF ) active in our lives.

4. If one speaks of forms, colors and other sensations, which we
perceive in retrospect out of our memories (usually incomplete,
as we apparently are rarely able to participate in such "dreams"
or "visions," we may be seeing those forms and ideas which the
WAKING CONSCIOUSNESS, here and now, is able to comprehend.  In
other words, the actual experience may be in quite a different
context or form and we do not know it, because the chain of
consciousness is broken. The surviving impression, perhaps
focused by the HIGHER SELF, is then expressed in terms that we
understand here and now with our waking, physically embodied
minds.

5. If this is true then our real effort is to forge and
eventually use such a "chain of consciousness" which bridges the
gap between those states, whether psychic or spiritual.  It is
the  "Lower-Mind" consciousness, that, realizing the supernal
nature of the interior HIGHER SELF, its "Real" and "True," tries
to reach up to it, and become one with it, so as to employ its
ideals in daily life and work.

6. I tend to agree with your definitions as to the difference
between those sensations and ideas that flow to our waking
brain-consciousness after such an event.  But what troubles me is
that we are passive while those events occur, and what we now see
is only the memory, not the event itself.  How do we learn to
make our waking consciousness awake and active in either the
psychic or the spiritual state, so that we know we are in control
?

And there is where I am, finally, in all this reply.

We have apparently three levels of experience for the eternal
immortal Monads:

1. unconsciousness and inexperience, (Monadic essence, chaotic,
cosmic, cometary, mundial, or "root" matter in general -
mulaprakriti ?)

2. Self-consciousness, (Mankind - embodied mind at various levels
of 'awakening' ?), and

3. Universal Spiritual, Noetic, Psychic, physical consciousness
which being individualized and fully spiritualized is able to
pass through every plane and see all experiences.  (The condition
and work of the Adepts, Mahatmas, Bodhisattvas, Buddhas, etc...
all participating voluntarily in the vast evolutionary processes
of Nature)

Does it make any sense to you ?			Dal.

> From: Jerry Schueler
> Sent:	Friday, September 18, 1998 5:24 AM
> Subject: Re: spiritual versus psychical experiences

>The difference as I understand it between "Spiritual" and
>"Psychic" experience, vision, etc... lies in motive ..

Dallas, I have to disagree here (nothing new, huh :-) ). You can
have a really altruistic motive for either type of experience.
>From my own observations, I have to say that the chief
difference is that psychism always has forms, colors, and
details, while spiritual experiences are formless and have
no detail at all (they are, in fact, "mind blowing" experiences).

After a psychic experience, we simply recall what we experienced.
But after a spiritual experience, we have to clothe it in ideas,
thoughts, and then words in order to understand it and
communicate
it. During this interpretation exercise, much of the actual
spiritual
experience is lost, and it becomes couched in both cultural and
personal details that probably weren't in the original pure
experience
at all.


>What I am trying to say is that we, as a Monadic center that is
>striving to universalize itself, employs imagination and will to
>try to contact those areas of the universal Akasic record where
>(either internally, or from those universal records) we can
>experience the information recorded there, and so, to say, we
>become participants and spectators of those.
>

Here again I take issue. Its a subtle point, but an important
one,
I think. The divine monad doesn't strive to do anything. It
already
is pure and perfect and complete. It doesn't need to read the
akashic
records, nor does it care because it is so far higher than that
stuff.
We human beings are the one who reads these records. We do the
striving, and so on.

Just a few thoughts, for what they may be worth,

Jerry S.