Theos-Talk Archives (July 2001 Message tt00312)

Friday, July 27, 2001

Dear Friend:

Let me interject some comments in the text below

Dallas

==========================

-----Original Message-----
From: Moderator [mailto:nous@btinternet.com]
Sent: Monday, July 09, 2001 1:42 AM
To: sd@blavatsky.net
Subject: [bn-sd] Stanza I, sloka 9 continued (pages 50-52)


Friends,

Below is our next passage of study from The Secret Doctrine. It
touches on
the similarities and differences between western and eastern
philosophy as
expressed mainly by the philosophy of Hegel and the Vedantins. A
key
thought seems to be in that sentence which begins, "Only the
liberated
spirit..."


DTB	"Liberated spirit -- is liberated from the bonds and concepts
of physical mater and even of the desires and thoughts we hold
that are centered abut our concept of physical matter and our
present existence if we believe that we live only this one small
period of time we call the present earth-life



If you are an 'old' student, what would you bring forward from
this passage
as the main tenets of the Secret Doctrine?

DTB	If we consider the 3 FUNDAMENTALS, if we consider we are
essentially IMMORTALS, if we consider that our existence on
Earth, in the Universe and in the company of MIND-BEINGS like
ourselves, then we are the STUDENTS OF NATURE.

Karma - justice and law, equal and sure for all. Life that never
ends but picks up incarnation after incarnation from the place
where the previous one ended. The concept that we will all at
some time in the future make ourselves WISE. And meanwhile we
are brothers.

These are to me the most important aspects of Theosophical
teaching.

Dallas

====================================

If you are a 'new' student, what
is it about this passage that most puzzles you that you would
like
clarified?

Any other comments or questions?

best wishes to all,

Peter
===========================
This leads the reader naturally to the "Supreme Spirit" of Hegel
and the
German Transcendentalists as a contrast that it may be useful to
point out.
The schools of Schelling and Fichte have diverged widely from the
primitive
archaic conception of an ABSOLUTE principle, and have mirrored
only an
aspect of the basic idea of the Vedanta. Even the "Absoluter
Geist" shadowed
forth by von Hartman in his pessimistic philosophy of the
Unconscious, while
it is, perhaps, the closest approximation made by European
speculation to
the Hindu Adwaitee Doctrines, similarly falls far short of the
reality.

According to Hegel, the "Unconscious" would never have undertaken
the vast
and laborious task of evolving the Universe, except in the hope
of attaining
clear Self-consciousness. In this connection it is to be borne in
mind that
in designating Spirit, which the European Pantheists use as
equivalent to
Parabrahm, as unconscious, they do not attach to that expression
of
"Spirit" -- one employed in the absence of a better to symbolise
a profound
mystery -- the connotation it usually bears.

The "Absolute Consciousness," they tell us, "behind" phenomena,
which is
only termed unconsciousness in the absence of any element of
personality,
transcends human conception. Man, unable to form one concept
except in terms
of empirical phenomena, is powerless from the very constitution
of his being
to raise the veil that shrouds the majesty of the Absolute. Only
the
liberated Spirit is able to faintly realise the nature of the
source whence
it sprung and whither it must eventually return. . . . As the
highest Dhyan
Chohan, however, can but bow in ignorance before the awful
mystery of
Absolute Being; and since, even in that culmination of conscious
existence -- "the merging of the individual in the universal
consciousness" -- to use a phrase of Fichte's -- the Finite
cannot conceive
the Infinite, nor can it apply to it its own standard of mental
experiences,
how can it be said that the "Unconscious" and the Absolute can
have even an
instinctive impulse or hope of attaining clear
self-consciousness?* A
Vedantin would never admit this Hegelian idea; and the Occultist
would say
that it applies perfectly to the awakened MAHAT, the Universal
Mind already
projected into the phenomenal world as the first aspect of the
changeless
ABSOLUTE, but never to the latter. "Spirit and Matter, or Purusha
and
Prakriti are but the two primeval aspects of the One and
Secondless," we are
taught.

The matter-moving Nous, the animating Soul, immanent in every
atom,
manifested in man, latent in the stone, has different degrees of
power; and
this pantheistic idea of a general Spirit-Soul pervading all
Nature is the
oldest of all the philosophical notions. Nor was the Archaeus a
discovery of
Paracelsus nor of his pupil Van Helmont; for it is again the same
Archaeus
or "Father-Ether," -- the manifested basis and source of the
innumerable
phenomena of life -- localised. The whole series of the
numberless
speculations of this kind are but variations on this theme, the
key-note of
which was struck in this primeval Revelation. (See Part II.,
"Primordial
Substance.")

(from Secret Doctrine vol i, pages 50-52)
=========================================
For those who do not have their own copy of the Secret Doctrine,
you can
find this section on line at:

http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd1-1-02.htm

If you want to look up previous posts/messages on our earlier
topics, then
go to:

http://lists.lyris.net/cgi-bin/lists.pl?enter=bn-sd

(If you have forgotten your password to acccess the archives,
look down
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