Theos-Talk Archives (May 2001 Message tt00061)

Posting this again, as I had problems the first time around. Apologies if it
turns up twice. Peter
================

Jerry,

There was not one single reference to Buddhism - neither affirming nor
refuting - in my post to you. Please read what I actually wrote.

I did not invoke the SD or the Mahatma Letters to refute Buddhism.
Nor did I "rah rah rah" at the idea of individuality.
Nor did I say that Theosophy was Buddhism (especially as I don't believe it
is).
Nor did I say *I* had any desire to be a 'winner' or believe myself to be a
'loser'

The above are all imaginings of your own. They have nothing to do with what
I wrote.

The key ideas you responded to are not mine. They are H.P.Blavatsky's and
the Mahatma KH's. They are simply extracts from the qouted passages from
the SD and the Mahatma Letters. I gave them in response to your statement
that:

> According to the Secret Doctrine, we are
> all evolving as a racial stocks of one huge human
> life-wave, and we will all express each of the
> 7 principles per Round and Race, etc, etc. No work is
> necessary. You don't have to learn or do anything
> except to keep reincarnating for a few
> billion years and then you will be perfect.

Below are the two passages I qouted from the SD and the ML. I have
highlighted what I gave as the key ideas so that you and others can see
these are actually passages from the SD and Mahatma Letters. Please tell us
if they agree with your assertion that "According to the Secret Doctine....
you don't have to learn or do anything except keep reincarnating for a few
billion years and then you will become perfect."

>From the Secret Doctrine:
"...the obligatory pilgrimage for every Soul -- a spark of the former --
through the Cycle of Incarnation (or "Necessity") in accordance with Cyclic
and Karmic law, during the whole term. In other words, no purely spiritual
Buddhi (divine Soul) can have an independent (conscious) existence before
the spark which issued from the pure Essence of the Universal Sixth
principle, -- or the OVER-SOUL, -- has (a) passed through every elemental
form of the phenomenal world of that Manvantara, and (b) ACQUIRES
INDIVIDUALITY, FIRST BY NATURAL IMPULSE, AND THEN BY SELF-INDUCED EFFORTS
(CHECKED BY ITS KARMA), thus ascending through all the degrees of
intelligence, from the lowest to the highest Manas, from mineral and plant,
up to the holiest archangel (Dhyani-Buddha). THE PIVOTAL DOCTRINE OF THE
ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY ADMITS NO PRIVELEGES OR SPECIAL GIFTS IN MAN, SAVE THOSE
WON BY HIS OWN EGO THROUGH PERSONAL EFFORT AND MERIT THROUGHOUT A LONG
SERIES OF METEMPSYCHOSES AND REINCARNATIONS."
(SD I 17)

>From the Mahatma Letters:
"..when the Spirit-man reaches our planet, which is one of the lowest,
having lost at every station some of the etherial and acquired an increase
of material nature, both spirit and matter have become pretty much
equilibrized in him. But then, he has the Earth's cycle to perform; and, as
in the
process of involution and evolution downward, matter is ever striving to
stifle spirit, when arrived to the lowest point of his pilgrimage, the once
pure Planetary Spirit will be found dwindled to -- what Science agrees to
call a primitive or Primordial man -- amidst a nature as primordial --
speaking geologically, for physical nature keeps pace with the physiological
as well as the spiritual man, in her cyclic career. At that point the great
Law begins its work of selection. Matter found entirely divorced from spirit
is thrown over into the still lower worlds -- into the sixth "GATE" or "way
of rebirth" of the vegetable and mineral worlds, and of the primitive animal
forms. From thence, matter ground over in the workshop of nature proceeds
soulless back to its Mother Fount; WHILE THE EGOS PURIFIED OF THEIR DROSS
ARE ENABLED TO RESUME THEIR PROGRESS ONCE MORE ONWARD. IT IS HERE, THEN,
THAT THE LAGGARD EGOS PERISH BY THE MILLIONS. IT IS THE SOLEMN MOMENT OF
THE "SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST," THE ANNIHILATION OF THOSE UNFIT. It is but
matter (or material man) which is compelled by its own weight to descend to
the very bottom of the "circle of necessity" to there assume animal form; AS
TO THE WINNER OF THAT RACE THROUGHOUT THE WORLDS - THE SPIRITUAL EGO, HE
WILL ASCEND FROM STAR TO STAR, FROM ONE WORLD TO ANOTHER, CIRCLING ONWARD TO
RE-BECOME THE ONCE PURE PLANETARY SPIRIT, then higher still, to finally
reach its first starting point, and from thence -- to merge into MYSTERY."
(Mahatma Letter No. 9 signed KH, caps added)


...Peter

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gerald Schueler [mailto:gschueler@earthlink.net]
> Sent: 10 May 2001 19:58
> To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Theos-World Re to Peter
>
>
> I will try to give a quick response to Peter on his three "key ideas." I
> find it interesting that Peter feels the need to invoke the SD and the MLs
> in order to refute Buddhism, but I guess thats life.

> If Peter, or any other Theosophist wants to rah rah at
> attaining a sense of individuality, then fine, but PLEASE don't call it
> Buddhism.

> Peter, your desire to be a "winner" is a clear indication of the grasping
> onto a self that Buddha warns us about. If you think you are a
> loser, then you will be bound to karma by iron chains.
>
> Jerry S.