Theos-Talk Archives (August 2001 Message tt00248)

Sunday, August 26, 2001

Dear Jerome:

I really like what you have written here.

I fully agree with it. I suppose that the real contest is to get to be less
“skunky” --- ethically and morally.

Dal

PS


“Non-Ego, Voidness and Darkness” are (to my understanding and thinking)
qualities which the embodied mind (IN THE LIMITATIONS OF personality) uses
to express its concepts of THE SPIRITUAL DIVINE AND UNIVERSAL ONE SELF.


CONSCIOUSNESS is PERCEPTION and this is expressed in many ways, but it
cannot be eradicated from any “form” And if all forms are finally resolved
at the end of a manvantara, then we are left with the UNIVERSAL ONENESS --
of which we are parts anyway.

Someone said recently all peas are distinguishable one from the other, but
all are identified as one class: PEA. Now why do we have so many, when all
that is needed in the ONE PEA or the UNIVERSAL PEA ?

Why dos the ONE MONAD sub divide itself into innumerable MONADS ? As you
say, of what substance is the “Mirror?” Why does UNIVERSAL CONSCIOUSNESS
have to “know itself” through all the many subdivisions ? Surely it is
because they need that touch of the spiritual as an ideal they can all
aspire to -- as conscious units -- then the re-unite voluntarily (as the U L
T Declaration suggests -- on the basis of a “similarity of aim purpose and
teaching. “


NIRMANAKAYA VESTURE is (Occultism states a “state”) But perhaps the
substance needed there may be (SUDDHA-SATTVA T Glos p 311, 231 ) In any
case is it not the MONAD (ATMA-BUDDHI) ? and is this not innate in all of
us? Are not the “thick dark folds of matter -- as in the jungle growth” the
mental and psychic barriers that prevent us (lower Manas) from “seeing”that
TRUTH. As in the case of Gayatri, the “golden vase”. [ see Voice pp. 77fn;
SECRET DOCTRINE II 615 275-6, 94, 636fn; Glos. p. 343 ]

D


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

-----Original Message-----
From: ultinla@juno.com [mailto:ultinla@juno.com]
Sent: Saturday, August 25, 2001 6:23 PM
To: sd@blavatsky.net
Cc: dalval14@earthlink.net; amerman@pacbell.net; otownley@excite.com
Subject: Re: Is Consciousness per se different from Consciousness of the ONE
SELF

Dear Friends, relatives, and other interested spectators---

Is Consciousness per se different from Consciousness of the ONE SELF or
SELF-consciousness? Why is it stated that, "Non-Ego, Voidness, and Darkness
are three-in-one and perfect"??
=========================
I am sending this to sd@blavatsky.net <mailto:sd@blavatsky.net> because
there we are discussing very similar material.

The Eyeball can't see itself, thus we need a vehicle for self-consciousness.
We need a mirror. In fact, we need a series of mirrors, for nature
o'er-leaps no boundaries but moves gradually.

The only way the eyeball can see itself is inside the mystery of the
Nirmanakaya Path viewed as a hierarchy. When HPB talks about
self-consciousness (svasam-vedana) between two manvantaras for the
"developed" monad, to my mind she is talking about the Nirmanakaya Path.
Not much is said about it, because we are sufficiently degraded at present
for it to be over the horizon.

We are a band of skunks morally and physically, but even skunks can TRY!

Identifying with space in general is far more PRACTICAL as a lever into
eternity than allowing "good-karma" to be the motive for our actions, but
most of us simply cannot generate a sense of reality for a formless
love-affair!! Madame Blavatsky says this:

"Notwithstanding widespread misconceptions and errors— often most amusing
to one who has a certain knowledge of the true doctrines — about Buddhism
generally, and especially about Buddhism in Tibet, all the Orientalists
agree that the Buddha’s foremost aim was to lead human beings to salvation
by teaching them to practice the greatest purity and virtue, and by
detaching them from the service of this illusionary world, and the love of
one’s still more illusionary — because so evanescent and unreal — body and
physical self.
And what is the good of a virtuous life, full of privations and suffering,
if the only result of it is to be annihilation at the end? If even the
attainment of that supreme perfection which leads the Initiate to remember
the whole series of his past lives, and to foresee that of the future ones,
by the full development of that inner, divine eye in him, and to acquire the
knowledge that unfolds the causes [the 12 Nidanas] of the ever-recurring
cycles of existence, brings him finally to non-being, and nothing more —
then the whole system is idiotic, and Epicureanism is far more philosophical
than such Buddhism. He who is unable to comprehend the subtle, and yet so
potent, difference between existence in a material or physical state and a
purely spiritual existence — Spirit or “Soul-life” — will never appreciate
at their full value the grand teachings of the Buddha, even in their
exoteric form. Individual or personal existence is the cause of pains and
sorrows; collective and impersonal life-eternal is full of divine bliss and
joy for ever, with neither causes nor effects to darken its light. And the
hope for such a life-eternal is the keynote of the whole of Buddhism. ….
Once that an Ego lives only ten distinct individual lives he must
necessarily lose his one self, and become mixed up — merged, so to say —
with these ten selves. It really seems that so long as this great mystery
remains a dead letter to the Western thinkers, and especially to the
Orientalists, the less the latter undertake to explain it, the better for
Truth.
================================
Service and sacrifice of the self seems to be epitomized by the Nirmânakâya,
or as HPB puts it:
==================
An Adept who sacrifices himself to live, giving up full Nirvana, though he
can never lose the knowledge acquired by him in previous existences, yet can
never rise higher in such borrowed bodies. Why? Because he becomes simply
the vehicle of a “Son of Light” from a still higher sphere, Who being Arupa,
has no personal astral body of His own fit for this world. Such “Sons of
Light,” or Dhyani-Buddhas, are the Dharmakâya of preceding Manvantaras,who
have closed their cycles of incarnations in the ordinary sense and who,
being thus Karmaless, have long ago dropped their individual Rupas, and have
become identified with the first Principle. Hence the necessity of a
sacrificial Nirmânakâya, ready to suffer for the misdeeds or mistakes of the
new body in its earth-pilgrimage, without any future reward on the plane of
progression and rebirth, since there are no rebirths for him in the ordinary
sense.
The Higher Self, or Divine Monad, is not in such a case attached to the
lower Ego; its connection is only temporary, and in most cases it acts
through decrees of Karma. This is a real, genuine sacrifice, the
explanation of which pertains to the highest Initiation of Jnana (Occult
Knowledge). It is closely linked, by a direct evolution of Spirit and
involution of Matter, with the primeval and great Sacrifice at the
foundation of the manifested Worlds, the gradual smothering and death of the
spiritual in the material. The seed “is not quickened, except it die.”
=================================
This idea shows up in mythology as the asvamedha sacrifice. The creator of
the universe builds a sacrificial fire, gets everything ready, then uses
himself as the SACRIFICE. This, is the primary example come down to us from
ancient texts.
===========================
Now, I suppose we might ask ourselves, “What does all this “metaphysics”
have to do with me when I buy groceries, when I sell my house, when I marry,
when I catch old-age and die!!??”

The above can be boiled down to one occult assertion: WE ALL LIVE INSIDE
EACH OTHER, there is no place to hide! Metaphysics is a way of gradually
showing us intellectually how this might be so.
Devotion is a way of turning the theory into a deep-seated conviction
capable of changing our thought and action.


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