Theos-Talk Archives (October 1998 Message tt00001)

>
>All selfishness must be eliminated from the lower nature
>[personal mind] before its divine state of contemplation and
>impartiality can be reached.  So long as the smallest selfish or
>personal desire - even for spiritual attainment for one's own
>sake --  remains, so long will the desired result elude and be
>put off.
>

This sounds like the requirements for Crossing the Abyss.


>The process of evolution up to a conscious and voluntary reunion
>with the Divine [ in understanding and thought - which does not
>erase the individual in any way ] includes a successive elevation
>from rank to rank of power and usefulness.
>
>

Why do you think that the individual is not erased in any way?
What about the dew drop sinking into the sea? What about
Buddhist anatma?  I think our individuality is purely mayavic.


>The most exalted beings still in the flesh are known as Sages,
>Magi, Rishis, Brothers, Master of Wisdom, Mahatmas, etc...  They
>are greatly concerned with the preservation at all times of the
>wisdom of the world, its evolution, its potential as regards the
>Whole, and, as regards every individual man or woman.  When
>cycles permit, this knowledge is extended and diffused so that
>its influence attracts the inquiring mind of those who aspire to
>know more of themselves - as a Divine Being -- their environment
>and their potentials.
>

I know that you got this HPB, but I think its more poetical than literal.
There simply is no such grandiose organization.


>When such a Union with one's own inner Divine is achieved all
>events and experiences of each incarnation will become known.
>

I don't believe this for a second. Such a "union" is called a
mystical experience, and it happens to millions of people
every year who don't have a clue what happened. The union
has to be fully assimilated first, and this can take many years.


>Regarding the process of spiritual development Theosophy teaches:
>
>1. that the essence of the process is securing supremacy in one's
>life to the Highest Nature that is already in our conscious
>awareness, and which some call vaguely "the spiritual element of
>man's nature."
>

OK

>2. This is attainable along four lines:
>
> A Selfishness is to be eradicated in all forms and ideas, and a
>broad, generous, brotherly sympathy, is to be firmly rooted as
>the practice of doing active good for others.
>

How many of us have been able to do this, I wonder? I agree,
however, that this is the very first step on the Path as outlined
by HPB.


> B The cultivation of the inner man by the use of meditation and
>seeking to commune with the Inner Divine, and the practice in
>personal life of the disciplines outlined in "Patanjali's Yoga
>Sutras" - "the incessant striving to live an ideal life."
>

This is the same as A.



> C Actively controlling the "fleshly appetites" and selfish,
>personal desires - all lower, material interests being
>deliberately subordinated to the needs of the "Higher, Spiritual
>Life."
>

This is the same as A.


> D The careful and attentive performance of every duty of one's
>personal life, without any desire for a "reward."  Leaving any
>results out of the question as a motive for their doing - as
>suggested and urged by Krishna on his pupil Arjuna in the
>"Bhagavad Gita."
>

This is the same as A. You are saying the same thing in different words.



>3. While all the above is performable by any seriously disposed
>individual guided by a sense of duty and his Conscience, there is
>yet a still higher plane of spiritual attainment.  History
>records in fragments, traces of specific courses in training,
>physical, intellectual and spiritual, by which the internal
>faculties of every man and woman can be aroused and then
>developed.  These are known in full to Theosophy which records
>them as part of the history of the development of humanity.
>

The only know "fragments" that I am aware of have all to do with
psychism and/or magic. If these are known "fully" to Theosophy,
where may I find them?  I thought that Theosophy was not supposed
to be a Hall of Magic (which is a valid discipline for spiritual and
internal development).


>The rationale of spiritual development then includes:
>
>1. The process takes place entirely within the individual.
>Within each individual are the motive, effort, and the results
>from making one's self increasingly close to one's interior
>Higher Self.  Results are all derived from this increasing
>closeness to the Higher Self along the lines of self-induced
>evolution guided by a self-enlightened mind.
>

Agreed.


>2 Howsoever personal and interior this process may be, it is not
>unaided, and in fact, is only possible because of the Higher Self
>[ the SPIRITUAL RAY ] resident in each person as the source of
>its Being.  Increasing communion during waking life is the
>supreme source of all strength of purpose.
>

Agreed.


>Concerning the degree of progress through successive incarnations
>it holds that:
>
>1. Even a mere intellectual acquaintance with Theosophic
>doctrines has great value in fitting an individual for a step
>upwards in the rest of this life, and, succeeding ones, as it
>gives impulse in that direction.
>

What about the so-called hundredth money effect? Doesn't
one person's study help others unconsciously?


>2 Still more is to be gained by a career of duty, self-sacrifice
>and assistance to others - treating all as brothers in fact, and
>extending benevolence in one's daily life to all.
>

This is a tough one. You talk about the absolute importance
of selfishness and the lack of any reward, and then you bring in
"to be gained."  I have a real problem with this kind of double-talk.


>3 Greater advance is achieved by practicing the several means
>suggested or outlined above in regard to spiritual culture and
>the process of regular consultation with one's HIGHER SELF - the
>SPIRITUAL BEING resident within.
>

Please be careful with such phrases as "greater advance." Who is
advancing?


>4 In the process of general evolution, each individual and each
>"race" reaches a point called "the Moment of Choice" - it is a
>period when they decide for themselves by a deliberate and
>conscious choice between eternal life or death.  And that
>peculiar choice is the right of every free soul.  It cannot be
>exercised until the individual has realized the reality of the
>SOUL (Mind-being) within himself, and until that Soul has
>attained some measure of self-consciousness in the body.
>

I don't know what you are talking about here. You lost me.
I don't know what you mean by "a deliberate and
>conscious choice between eternal life or death?"  Who,
pray tell, would consciously chose death over life, if given
a choice?


> The "Moment of Choice" is not a fixed period in time, but it is
>made up of all choices made from moment to moment in one's daily
>living.  It cannot come unless all previous lives have led up to
>it.
>

I think this is a terrible idea, and one apparently intended to scare
young children. Where is the God of Love through all of this?


> Any individual can hasten this "moment of choice" under the law
>of the ripening of Karma.  Should one fail to choose right, one
>is not wholly condemned.  For the economy of Nature provides that
>he shall again and again have the opportunity of choice, when the
>moment arises for the mass of Egos, that make up a "race" as a
>whole, reaches the "moment of choice" for the whole.
>

I think you are taking HPB way way too literally in all this.


> After that the wave of reincarnation sweeps those Egos into
>fresh circumstances relative to their chosen progress.  The race
>having "blossomed" it now tends, as a physical "race," towards
>its dissolution.
>

I have asked this question before, and would like to hear your
answer. The question is:
Do we incarnate within a single race, or do we incarnate
between the races?
Which brings up: Is G de Purucker's "life-wave" identical to
HPB's "Root Race.?" I personally think not.
If Theosophy teaches that we are all stuck incarnating within
a single race or that we incarnate in only one race at a time,
then I will turn in my club card.


> A few individuals of it will have outstripped its average
>progress and attained Adeptship or Mahatmaship.  The main body
>having chosen aright pass into a subjective condition, there to
>await the return and influx of the life-wave into the next
>"globe" when they become the forerunners of the races to
>incarnate there.
>

This is a nice paraphrase of HPB, but I ask, is life-wave
the same as race? (I would have asked HPB herself if I
had been there)



> The deliberate choosers of evil, whose lives are passed in great
>spiritual wickedness (for evil done for the sheer love of it),...

Gack. I am sorry Dallas, but my stomach won't let me take any more
of this kind of nonsense. No one, and I repeat not a single
person in this world, does "evil" for the pure love of it. What they
do (their behaviors) is rationalized in their minds as "good" just like
HItler thought that killing Jews was good for the planet. There is no such
thing as an evil person, but there are people who do bad things. But they
always have reasons (irrational, perhaps) for what they do, and these
do not include 'because I enjoy being evil.'  Of course, I could be wrong.
Maybe you can give me some examples of people who are "deliberate
choosers of evil?"  I don't know any.

Jerry S.