Theos-Talk Archives (July 2001 Message tt00011)

> JERRY: OK with me. How do we distinguish all those monads? Monad1,
Monad2,
> etc?

Fine with me. I think you and I agree that with any consideration of
"the Monad in
Atma", "the Monad in Atma-Buddhi", or "the Monad in Atma-Buddhi-Manas"
we are
talking about the "ray" of the Monad as it manifests in and through
these vehicles
on their respective planes and not the non-dual Monad itself.

It's perhaps confusing at best to keep putting Monad in front of
everything. I'd
be just as comfortable saying "Atma-Buddhi" for example, knowing full
well that
I'm actually meaning the Monad's "Ray" as it manifests in "Atma-Buddhi."

But I can bang a dead horse on the head with the best of them if it
helps
clarification.

> JERRY: There is no Buddhist teaching having to do with Logos or Logii,

> anywhere. The six kingdoms are the inhabitants of the three realms
(desire,
> form, and formless). Blavatsky mentions these six kingdoms, so she
knew
> about them, but she does not include them into her scheme. Yet, her
> "devachan" sounds a lot like the god-kingdom.

OK, I'll go out on a limb here and say that, because the Solar Logos is
said to be
a still evolving being in manifestation, albeit putting its own
evolutionary
progress on hold for the manvantara to act as the Supreme hierarch of
the Solar
System, and that it also is bound by its own karma, that it belongs in
the
Formless realm along with the other Buddhist "Gods." It, by the
definition above,
means also that it has not yet realized Emptiness.

It's own karma probably can be said to contribute, therefore to the
"creation" of
the system.

Does that work for you?

> JERRY: Oh yeah, that clears it up (ahemm!). I always thought of her
"laya
> centers" as being "holes in space." I would note that your
explanation that
> "ultimate atoms" (whatever these are?) "are then aggregated to
form..." is
> exactly what I was referring to when I said that there was no real
> explanation of How? What you are saying above is the Theosophical
> explanation of what is going on, but not how, and it is just that very

> "How?" business that Tzongkapa uses to reject the whole idea of
monads.

Sorry! LOL!

I plead the fifth!

What does Tzongkapa say as a refutation?

> JERRY: That's because the human mind has no problem with a continuing
on of
> evolution into the far distant future. The logic breakdown comes about
when
> we go backward, into the past. A linear progression implies a
beginning at
> some point in time, and it is there where all logical explanations
break
> down.

I don't know. I either just assume an unending scale in both directions,
or a
conscious choice to "play" games.

> JERRY: It is cosmogenic. Buddhists have several intricate cosmologies
> without any Creator-deities. Dzogchen explains it in terms of colored
lights
> and "eight gates" and so on without any references to a divine
Creator.

That explains everything! ;-)

> Virtually all Buddhists schools accept the chain of 12 independent
causative
> links. These begin with ignorance, and the second is action in the
sense
> that first comes ignorance (maya) and then afterwards comes karma. The
whole
> thrust of the Buddhist Path is to eliminate ignorance and thereby
> simultaneous one will eliminate/consume personal karma. You can't
"work off"
> karma by doing good deeds. Bad deeds produce iron chains of karma,
while
> good deeds produce golden chains of karma that are equally binding.
However,
> good deeds do produce merit, and merit is essential for Buddhahood.
All six
> kingdoms are karmic, and we can (and do) enter each of these six
kingdoms
> depending on our karma. The teaching is that after death, we enter the

> bardo, and from the bardo we are reborn into any of the six kingdoms
> according to our karma. Coming back here as a human being is only one
of the
> six possible outcomes for us.

Understood. I don't have a particular problem however, with the ideas of
the karma
of the unrealized "gods" contributing to the creation of the manifest
realms as
well as the sentient beings in the other five kingdoms. I can see this
lending a
larger dimension to the manifestation and human beings playing a part of
it.

I'm reading "Myriad Worlds" at your suggestion and the root text smacks
to me of a
Buddhist parallel to the SD. Lots of possible correspondences there, I
think.
Maybe the truth lies somewhere in between the two.

The most interesting thing that I've gotten out of it so far, which will
probably
come as a shock to Dallas (maybe) is the idea that Karma itself (as
causality),
only operates in the field of manifestation and NOWHERE ELSE. It arises
simultaneously with the manifestation and is related ONLY to it. That to
me was a
golden nugget.

> JERRY: I don't know, but I would assume that they do.

Agreed.

> JERRY: Yes, and therein lies the problem - a logic problem. How can
anything
> that is time-less change? Our entire notion of change is based on the
> assumption of having time for the change to occur. Logically, without
time
> there can be no change, and so if the Divine Monad doesn't change,
what is
> all the manvantaric evolutionary business for?

Play?

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

I posted some stuff to my web site a few days ago. When I got the link
back in the
digest of the list it didn't work. If anybody has tried to look at the
diagrams I
posted there and couldn't get to them, I apologize.

Try this:

http://www.withoutwalls.com/maps_diagrams/

But if it doesn't work just type in "www.withoutwalls.com"

then backslash and "maps_diagrams" (underscore not hyphen).

I think something gets messed up between my post and the digest as I had
copied
the URL directly from my browser. But it didn't work for me and I
apologize again.

I just put up five more images there in a sub directory called
"clarification"
that attempts to articulate the recent Dallas, Jerry, Mark discussion on
Monads.
Please take a look if you're interested. I'll be curious to hear your
responses.

Regards,

-- Mark