Theos-Talk Archives (October 1999 Message tt00087)

Oct 19th

Dear friend:

There are large and small yugas, and yugas that affect particular
races or sub-races and even those who are peculiar to "family-races."
Of course the word race is used here in its Theosophical sense and not
in the current general ethnological sense.  It relates more the mental
and emotional environment of our natures -- our character and
capacity, rather than to physiological race, although that is one of
the factors of trait transmission for the body that we are currently
using.

Thus to confuse everything well -- there are wheels within wheels:
physiological, emotional, mental, and inspirational -- as we are
fundamentally a many faceted beings and we are developing our
faculties all the time -- either improving them and harmonizing them
or we are delaying and distorting them.  The great truth to be
recognized is that WE THE MIND are always at the BALANCE POINT of
DECISION.   WE  (as MIND-BEINGS) are building our future from moment
to moment and as we live we all meet the effects of our own PAST.  The
confusion within lies in regard to the two opposite poles of our own
being.  We have on one hand our desires, likes, dislikes, etc... very
strong and demanding.  On the other hand we have wisdom, an knowledge
of the laws and truths of our world and the whole Universe that we can
call on.  Those are also INNATE to us, as they come from that interior
SPIRITUAL SOURCE which gives us life and reason for existence.

Problem:  Can we learn to distinguish between these two forces as to
what is more valuable and long-lasting and the least painful to live
with ?

The whole intermeshing time series of various levels and kinds related
to the general Karma of many, many Egos.

Get the idea that the Ego as such is an immortal and reincarnation is
the process of evolution for all mind-souls (Egos).  Then as Karma is
generated in the past and present so all the future relations will be
affected by it in general and specifically by ours which, of course,
are the most forceful -- things like "unfinished business' that we
have to settle.

I am going to include here a good article that deals well with the
subject

-------------------------  COPY  -----------------------------

FRIENDS OR ENEMIES IN THE FUTURE


THE fundamental doctrines of Theosophy are of no value unless they are
applied to daily life. To the extent to which this application goes
they become living truths, quite different from intellectual
expressions of doctrine. The mere intellectual grasp may result in
spiritual pride, while the living doctrine becomes an entity through
the mystic power of the human soul. Many great minds have dwelt on
this. Saint Paul wrote:

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not
charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And
though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and
all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove
mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all
my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and
have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

The Voice of the Silence, expressing the views of the highest schools
of occultism, asks us to step out of the sunlight into the shade so as
to make more room for others, and declares that those whom we help in
this life will help us in our next one.

Buttresses to these are the doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation. The
first shows that we must reap what we sow, and the second that we come
back in the company of those with whom we lived and acted in other
lives. St. Paul was in complete accord with all other occultists, and
his expressions above given must be viewed in the light Theosophy
throws on all similar writings. Contrasted with charity, which is love
of our fellows, are all the possible virtues and acquirements. These
are all nothing if charity be absent. Why? Because they die with the
death of the uncharitable person; their value is naught, and that
being is reborn without friend and without capacity.

This is of the highest importance to the earnest Theosophist, who may
be making the mistake of obtaining intellectual benefits, but remains
uncharitable. The fact that we are now working in the Theosophical
movement means that we did so in other lives, must do so again, and,
still more important, that those who are now with us will be
reincarnated in our company on our next rebirth.

Shall those whom we now know or whom we are destined to know before
this life ends be our friends or enemies, our aiders or obstructors in
that coming life? And what will make them hostile or friendly to us
then? Not what we shall say or do to and for them in the future life.
For no man becomes your friend in a present life by reason of present
acts alone. He was your friend, or you his, before in a previous life.
Your present acts but revive the old friendship, renew the ancient
obligation.

Was he your enemy before, he will be now even though you do him
service now, for these tendencies last always more than three lives.
They will be more and still more our aids if we increase the bond of
friendship of today by charity. Their tendency to enmity will be
one-third lessened in every life if we persist in kindness, in love,
in charity now. And that charity is not a gift of money, but
charitable thought for every weakness, to every failure.

Our future friends or enemies, then, are those who are with us and to
be with us in the present. If they are those who now seem inimical, we
make a grave mistake and only put off the day of reconciliation three
more lives if we allow ourselves today to be deficient in charity for
them. We are annoyed and hindered by those who actively oppose as well
as others whose mere looks, temperament, and unconscious action fret
and disturb us. Our code of justice to ourselves, often but petty
personality, incites us to rebuke them, to criticise, to attack. It is
a mistake for us to so act. Could we but glance ahead to next life, we
would see these for whom we now have but scant charity crossing the
plain of that life with ourselves and ever in our way, always hiding
the light from us. But change our present attitude, and that new life
to come would show these bores and partial enemies and obstructors
helping us,

aiding our every effort. For Karma may give them then greater
opportunities than ourselves and better capacity.

Is any Theosophist, who reflects on this, so foolish as to continue
now, if he has the power to alter himself, a course that will breed a
crop of thorns for his next lifes reaping? We should continue our
charity and kindness to our friends whom it is easy to wish to help,
but for those whom we naturally dislike, who are our bores now, we
ought to take especial pains to aid and carefully toward them
cultivate a feeling of love and charity. This adds interest to our
Karmic investment. The opposite course, as surely as sun rises and
water runs down hill, strikes interest from the account and enters a
heavy item on the wrong side of lifes ledger.

And especially should the whole Theosophical organization act on the
lines laid down by St. Paul and The Voice of the Silence. For Karmic
tendency is an unswerving law. It compels us to go on in this movement
of thought and doctrine; it will bring back to reincarnation all in it
now. Sentiment cannot move the law one inch; and though that emotion
might seek to rid us of the presence of these men and women we
presently do not fancy or approve--and there are many such in our
ranks for every one--the law will place us again in company with
friendly tendency increased or hostile feeling diminished, just as we
now create the one or prevent the other. It was the aim of the
founders of the Society to arouse tendency to future friendship; it
ought to be the object of all our members.

What will you have? In the future life, enemies or friends?

EUSEBIO URBAN

Path, January, 1893

 -----------------------------

also


TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS


IS there any foundation for the doctrine of transmigration of souls
which was once believed in and is now held by some classes of Hindus?"
is a question sent to the PATH.

>From a careful examination of the Vedas and Upanishads it will be
found that the ancient Hindus did not believe in this doctrine, but
held, as so many theosophists do, that "once a man, always a man," but
of course there is the exception of the case where men live bad lives
persistently for ages. But it also seems very clear that the later
Brahmins, for the purpose of having a priestly hold on the people or
for other purposes, taught them the doctrine that they and their
parents might go after death into the bodies of animals, but I doubt
if the theory is held to such an extent as to make it a national
doctrine. Some missionaries and travelers have hastily concluded that
it is the belief because they saw the Hindu and the Jain alike acting
very carefully as to animals and insects, avoiding them in the path,
carefully brushing insects out of the way at a great loss of time, so
as to not step on them. This, said the missionary, is because they
think that in these forms their dead friends or relatives may be
living.

The real reason for such care is that they think they have no right to
destroy life which it is not in their power to restore. While I have
some views on the subject of transmigration of a certain sort that I
am not now disposed to disclose, I may be allowed to give others on
the question "How might such an idea arise out of the true doctrine?"

First, what is the fate of the astral body, and in what way and how
much does that affect the next incarnation of the man? Second, what
influence has man on the atoms, millions in number, which from year to
year enter into the composition of his body, and how far is he--the
soul--responsible for those effects and answerable for them in a
subsequent life of joy or sorrow or opportunity or obscurity? These
are important questions.

The student of the Theosophic scheme admits that after death the
astral soul either dies and dissipates at once, or remains wandering
for a space in Kama Loca. If the man was spiritual, or what is
sometimes called "very good," then his astral soul dissipates soon; if
he was wicked and material, then the astral part of him, being too
gross to easily disintegrate, is condemned, as it were, to flit about
in Kama Loca, manifesting itself in spiritualistic séance rooms as the
spirit of some deceased one, and doing damage to the mental furniture
of mortals while it suffers other pains itself. Seers of modem times
have declared that such eidolons or spooks assume the appearance of
beasts or reptiles according to their dominant characteristics. The
ancients sometimes taught that these gross astral forms, having a
natural affinity for the lower types, such as the animal kingdom,
gravitated gradually in that direction and were at last absorbed on
the astral plane of animals, for which they furnished the sidereal
particles needed by them as well as by man. But this in no sense meant
that the man himself went into an animal, for before this result had
eventuated the ego might have already re-entered life with a new
physical and astral body. The common people, however, could not make
these distinctions, and so very easily held the doctrine as meaning
that the man became an animal. After a time the priests and seers took
up this form of the tenet and taught it outright. It can be found in
the Desatir, where it is said that tigers and other ferocious animals
are incarnations of wicked men, and so on. But it must be true that
each man is responsible and accountable for the fate of his astral
body left behind at death, since that fate results directly from the
mans own acts and life.

Considering the question of the atoms in their march along the path of
evolution, another cause for a belief wrongly held in transmigration
into lower forms can be found. The initiates could teach and
thoroughly understand how it is that each ego is responsible for the
use he makes of the atoms in space, and how each may and does imprint
a definite character and direction upon all the atoms used throughout
life, but the uninitiated just as easily would misinterpret this also
and think it referred to transmigration. Each man has a duty not only
to himself but also to the atoms in use. He is the great, the highest
educator of them. Being each instant in possession of some, and
likewise ever throwing them off, he should so live that they gain a
fresh impulse to the higher life of man as compared with the brute.
This impress and impulse given by us either confer an affinity for
human bodies and brains, or for that which, corresponding to brutal
lives and base passions, belongs to the lower kingdoms. So the
teachers inculcated this, and said that if the disciple lived a wicked
life his atoms would be precipitated down instead of up in this
relative scale. If he was dull and inattentive, the atoms similarly
impressed traveled into sticks and stones. In each case they to some
extent represented the man, just as our surroundings, furniture, and
clothing generally represent us who collect and use them. So from both
these true tenets the people might at last come to believe in
transmigration as being a convenient and easy way of formulating the
problem and of indicating a rule of conduct.

HADJI

Path, March, 1891
=====================================

I hope that some of the ideas there will prove to be useful to your
study.

They have been so for me.


Best wishes
Dal



dalval@nwc.net 


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-theos-talk@theosophy.com
[mailto:owner-theos-talk@theosophy.com]On Behalf Of Street, Nicholas
{QA~Welwyn}
Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 1999 9:10 AM
To: 'theos-talk@theosophy.com'
Subject: RE: Theos-World Yugas and Karma



	Dallas,

	Thankyou for your response. I am certainly not advocating that I can
"blame" the universe and be free of any personal responsibility for my
actions. I am merely trying to understand something that appears to me
as a
contradiction.

	There is much in your response to digest. I had understood that the
yugas were "imposed as a blanket", that there was a fixed universal
cycle of
ages. You have given much food for thought that this isn't the case.
If I
understand you correctly then we are born into a yuga appropriate to
our
karma. This would appear to resolve the apparent contradiction. But it
still
seems to me that there are "blanket" cycles. Each of us experiences
night
and day, winter and summer regardless of our virtue or lack of it. I
am
grateful for the words of the Masters but I hope you will agree that
we each
need to follow these issues through in the light of our own reason and
experience in order to truly understand what is being said. I need to
ponder
this further...

	-----------------------------------------------------------
	With regard to Peter Merriott's response.

	Thankyou Peter,

	You said:

	"...we can't stop the earth going around, or away from the sun, but
we see in the 	darkness what we project from our own consciousness and
act
thereon."

   	I agree. I am aware of an innate sense of right and wrong and can
observe the 	effects of my actions regardless of whether it is day or
night, so even if I do not 	understand the larger scheme of things I
must come back to observing myself and my 	direct experience. I expect
the "Divine Plan" will remain a matter of faith for me, 	certainly
for the time being!


	Kind Regards,

	Nicholas John Street

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