Theos-Talk Archives (December 1998 Message tt00073)

>Elsewhere HPB speaks of the "Brothers of the Shadow" who have "carnal
>commerce with male and female Djins, Elementals, or Demons, call them
>whatever you will. . . . "   She says that such "intercourse is said to
>give *magic powers* and *Supernal Force*."
>
>Nicholas, is this the kind of Jnanamudra you are referring to?
>

Nicholas can speak for himself, but in my view, no it is definitely not.


>Can one imagine Master K.H (or another member of his Brotherhood) taking
>up his pen and describing this technique [of karmamudra as described in
>John Powers' book or as described even more graphically in Daniel
>Cozort's HIGHEST YOGA TANTRA or the technique of jnanamudra as described
>by Nicholas] in all its details?
>

While I can easily imagine it, I have no evidence to suspect that he did.


>And is Nicholas (or Jerry) suggesting that members of KH's brotherhood
>would practice such rites, ceremonies and techniques?
>

The whole point that I was originally trying to make is that they
HAD to be aware of these techniques. One can be aware of a
technique without practicing it.


>Furthermore, after Tsong Khapa's death, could the Gelukpa establishment
>have accepted an orthodox, literal, materialistic meaning to this term
>and related ones, etc.?
>

No evidence to this at all. I believe that the karmamudra idea is older
than Tsong Khapa.


>Could generations of Gelukpa lamas including the current Dalai Lama have
>fallen into a mistaken, literal interpretation of "karma mudra"?
>

It has always been literally a physical pardner. The jnamamudra is a
mind-created pardner. Not a Djin, Elemental, or Demon, but rather
one's own inner pardner (anima or animus). The idea that we have
an inner component of the opposite sex did not originate with Jung.
It has been known for a very long time that each person is whole
and complete. Every person is a full microcosm of the universe
and Buddhist Tantra simply uses techniques to bring this fact into
consciousness.


>"Such is the cosmic and ideal significance of this great symbol [the
>lotus] with the Eastern peoples. But, applied to practical and exoteric
>worship -- which had also its esoteric symbology -- the lotus became in
>time the carrier and container of a more terrestrial idea. No dogmatic
>religion has ever escaped the sexual element in it; and to this day it
>soils the moral beauty of the root idea. . . . It is the profane of the
>past ages who have degraded the pure ideal of cosmic creation into an
>emblem of mere human reproduction and sexual functions: it is the
>esoteric teachings, and the initiates of the Future, whose mission it
>is, and will be, to redeem and ennoble once more the primitive
>conception so sadly profaned by its crude and gross application to
>exoteric dogmas and personations by theological and ecclesiastical
>religionists. The silent worship of abstract or noumenal Nature, the
>only divine manifestation, is the one ennobling religion of Humanity."
>
>SD (I, 381)


Here she is giving us the opinion of her School. There are other schools
who do not see the lotus sexual symbolism as profane or degraded.
This is the area of my disagreement with HPB and her School. To say
that sex (or anything else) is degraded or "foul" is purely a subjective
and cultural call with no basis in fact. I think that she was saying this
for the benefit of puritanical Westerners who she needed for her TS.

Jerry S.