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RE: Theos-World Intellect and 'thinking Ego'

Jul 04, 2000 06:30 AM
by Andrew Basler


Dear Peter,

Your point is well taken. I agree with most of what your wrote and would like to further clarify some issues.

For if we read a few pages further on in THE VOICE the disciple is >told,outright, what it is that must be slain.
"Before the "mystic Power" can make of thee a god, Lanoo, thou must >have gained the faculty to slay thy lunar form at will. The Self of >matter and the SELF of Spirit can never meet. One of the twain must >disappear; there is no place for both." (p12)
That which is to be slain is not 'the Mind', as such, but the LUNAR >FORM, the "Self of Matter", that personal conciousness built up around >the materialistic desire nature and the delusion of separatness - kama->manas, or at least its dregs.
This lunar form is kama rupa and could be permanently destroyed while the mind (lower Manas) has to be paralyzed. The two processes are different though not entirely independent. "Killing out desire" is one of the features that make Theosophy different from many systems that do not emphasize this renouncing nor teach a practical contempt for the earthly life but deal directly with the mind.

Perhaps we can understand this a little better if we keep look for some
correlations between the process described in the above passage and the
process that occurs when the Ego goes into devachan, after death. Each
involves a withdrawal of the lower Manas into the Higher Triad. The >highest Samadhi is carried out 'consciously' by the few who are able >to do so. The after death process and union of the lower with the >Higher takes place automatically for the vast majority of us. The >former leads to 'dreamless sleep', the Turya state. The latter leads >to a 'spiritual dream like state'(devachan).

In either process the Mind, as such, is not destroyed but withdrawn and
MERGED into the higher.
There are many similarities between Turya and Devachanic state as also a major different one. In Turya, Attavada and Sakkayaditthi are completely inhibited while in Devachan they still function. Devachan, though more real than our waking state, is still a state of illusion and occultists try to shorten this period. A master wrote that "The participation of the manas in the Devachanic bliss, does not add to, but on the contrary takes away from, the reality that would fall to the lot of the monad were it altogether free from its presence." (CW V,78) Turya is not 'dreamless sleep' (Sushupti) which is the third state. In the former the mind merges in Consciousness, as in the latter it does in unconsciousness.

The lower Manas, being withdrawn in Turya, ceases to be itself. "When the Green passes upward it becomes a mirror for the Higher, it is then no more Green, having passed from its associations." (IG 193). Its only residual function is to register events in that higher plane. There seems to be no inaccuracy in describing the lower Manas in that state as being slain, inhibited, paralyzed or temporarily destroyed.

Paul Brunton, under the guidance of Ramana Maharishee, has a glimpse of the higher state and described it in A Search in Secret India.

"Finally it happens. Thought is extinguished like a snuffed candle. The intellect withdraws into its real ground, that is, consciousness working unhindered by thoughts. I perceive, what I have suspected for some time and what the Maharishee has confidently affirmed, that the mind takes its rise in a transcendental source. The brain has passed into a state of complete suspension, as it does in deep sleep, yet there is not the slightest loss of consciousness.

I touch, as in a flash, the meaning of this mysterious universal drama which is being enacted in space, and then return to the primal point of my being. I the new I, rest in the lap of holy bliss. I have drunk the Platonic Cup of Lethe, so that yesterday's bitter memories and tomorrow's anxious cares have disappeared completely.

How shall I record these experiences through which I next pass, when they are too delicate for the touch of my pen?"

He did record the experiences contrary to Wittgenstein's advice "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence." Verbal communication is the function of lower Manas. The Truth can not be satisfactorily communicated on our physical plane with the language of earth. However, the effort should not be a vain one, or else the Masters would not promulgate the doctrine through the TS.

-Andrew

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