Theos-Talk Archives (November 2001 Message tt00372)

Gerald:

Thanks again for the interesting comments. My
comments below.

JERRY: I am not so sure that Blavatsky uses "maya" in
those (Kantian) terms.

There are certain technical terms in the SD which
point to certain philosophical writings. Noumenon,
which Blavatsky uses frequently, points straight to
Kant's CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. Demiurgus, which she
also uses, points straight to Plato's TIMAEUS. 
"Architect," which she uses as a translation for
Demiurgus, points straight to Philo of Alexandria,
etc.

Gerald: "This teaching suggests that archetypal
ideas/images are "real" and all else is their illusive
manifestations. 

That begs the question because then we have to ask why
the manifestations would be more illusory than the
archetypes. The noumenonphenomenon duality
explains this.

Gerald: "The Buddhist view (and I can't help but
remember here that Blavatsky and Olcott were both
Buddhists, and not Kantians) is that there simply is
no thingititself anywhere.

HPB says she was an objective and not a subjective
idealist, so she would not agree with this. Also,
some of the Chinese Yogacara schools were subjective
idealist, but the Indian Yogacara were not. So I
would not be able to agree either.

Gerald: "The teaching that phenonmena are illusive
expressions of a noumenal reality is one level, and
the teaching that the noumenal reality is itself
illusive relative to a still higher reality is another
level.

Yes, I agree. That is what I said.

JERRY: What I am saying is this: there are even more
noumenal existences and realities behind what we think
of as 
noumenal reality.

Yes, that is what I said.

Gerald: "There are beings/intelligences behind the
dhyanichohans, for example

That is possibly true, but it is not what Theosophy
teaches.

Gerald: "But as to maya, it has to include all seven
planes

It logically would not include the seventh since that
is noumenal even to the highest clairvoyance.

JERRY: It is a stretch to say that thoughts, for
example, are composed of the same matter as rocks
(although in a sense, I agree that they are).

Thoughts are objects of consciousness, else we could
not think consciously but could only intuit. Our
experience of thoughts is different from our
experience of other forms of energy, but remember that
experience is phenomenal and does not necessarily
disclose the true nature of the noumenon. There is no
reason to believe that thoughts and "matter" are not
both energy, experienced differently, but of the same
nature.

Gerald: "There is theory and there is experiential
practice, and the two are seldom equal.

If theory does not explain experience, then the theory
needs to be changed or discarded.

Gerald: "As long as we are here, I would like to point
out that maya, as I understand it, is essentially the
split or bifurcation of the monad into an
INotI duad

No problem with that theory, but bear in mind that
this split presupposes the existence of consciousness,
which means it is phenomenal. That goes back to what
I said, that phenomena is maya since it is a
representation of reality and not reality itself.

Gerald: "This occurs from the very topmost subplane of
the first and highest plane, and continues all the way
down to the "solid" matter on the lowest subplane of
the lowest (the physical) plane.

I think Blavatsky was unclear on this point, since the
highest principle is said to be indiscrete. But then,
since it is inaccessible even to thought it does not
constitute a "plane", being permanently beyond
consciousness.

JERRY: The terms objective and subjective, by
themselves, are somewhat arbitrary. For example, in
which category do we place our body? I use the terms I
and NotI to avoid this problem. However we
want to define our self, or our I, is subjective, and
everything else is the objective NotI.

Let me suggest a minor change. Our EXPERIENCE of
ourselves is subjective, but so is our EXPERIENCE of
the "NotI" as you put it. The objective
reality is the noumenon, of which our EXPERIENCE is a
representation but not the ding an sich. Our
experience of the NotI is therefore as
subjective as our experience of ahamkara. Where
Buddhism gets into a disagremeent with the rest of
humanity is in denying that there is a noumenal self
behint the experience of self, or ahamkara. The
experience occurs, of course, but our inference that
there is a self behind the experience is erroneous. 
Or, more precisely, one can get interesting results by
taking that position whether it is true in an absolute
sense or not.

JERRY: OK, but I don't find this experientially.

With regard to manas, I am sure you have experienced
the waking state, dreaming, and dreamless sleep. 
Whether there are seven or not I cannot say. 
Blavatsky says there are seven but does not say what
they are.

Gerald: "I do know with some degree of certainty,
however, that the upper three planes are disconnected
from the lower four by the Great Outer Abyss

I think that Enochian stuff is fascinating, but
started getting messages to stay away from it when I
started reading about it. Edward Kelly, who channeled
all of that, died in a madhouse as you know. Very
interesting but too risky for me.

JERRY: Buddhimanas and kamamanas can
both be experienced as types of observations. If manas
is considered as thinking, then kamamanas is a
combination of thoughts and emotions with colors and
forms, and buddhimanas is a combination of
thoughts and intuitions that are relatively formless.

I had a different experience. Doing Higher Self
connections I discovered that buddhimanas
appears to be exactly what the ancients say it is, a
mind which seems to function autonomously as does the
unconscious mind, and which has godlike powers. It
can communicate with or without form, as suits its
purpose.

JERRY: I don't recall if HPB says this or not, but
before such
conscious contact can occur, the kama principle pretty
much need to be purified.

Yes, as I said, it can be empirically demonstrated
that guilt, whether rational or not, blocks the
channel to the Higher Self.

JERRY: One yogic goal is to remain in samadhi during
the night, and this is a lot harder.

What I have learned from others and experienced is
that this is not something one does, but something
which begins to happen as a side effect of meditation.

JERRY: I would call atmabuddhi our "higher
Ego" rather than
buddhimanas.

Calling buddhimanas "higher ego" is
Blavatsky's term.

Gerald: "Buddhimanas is not a "monad" per se
without atma.

Yes, but buddhi presupposes the existence of atma,
which is its noumenon, as Blavatsky herself says. 
Hyphenating the two merely recognizes and emphasizes
this fact. There is no buddhi without atma or manas
without buddhi.

Dallas: "As I see it the question is (regardless of
Kant, who approached thinking from the limits of
material experience alone)

I referred to Kant because Blavatsky repeatedly uses
his terms, especially noumenon, and his ideas.

Dallas: "Can we thin of anything, or consider any
proposition if we are not already in some way linked
to is ? ... In other words if we can conceive of it,
we have faculties that are able to operate there."

In theory, we experience representations of reality,
or phenomena. But these representations are not the
realities themselves. Our belief that they are is the
illusion. The reality is inaccessible to perception
and can only be thought, thus it is known as the
noumenon. The noumenon is therefore an object of
consciousness to the manas, being a thought, or rather
an inference from the phenomenon. However, here, too,
it is the thought, and not the noumenon itself, which
is experienced. At every level we have the duality of
noumenon and phenomenon and the corresponding illusion
that the experience is the reality which lies behind
and supports it.

Not an easy concept to understand, but essential to
grasping the SD.

Steve

--- Jerry S <gschueler@earthlink.net> wrote:
> <<<<<<<<<OLD Gerald: "This sense of duality is
> called maya because it
> doesn't really exist, or more to the point, it only
> exists within this
> manvantaric expression and so its reality is
> relative or conditional.
> 
> [Steve:]I won't say that you are wrong, but let me
> offer an
> alternative explanation of maya for your
> consideration.
> HPB uses Kant's noumenon-phenomenon dualism and
> terminology. The phenomenon
> is our internal representation of reality, which
> includes mental creations
> such as color, sound, etc., which do not exist
> outside our own
> consciousness. The noumenon is what Kant called the
> "ding an sich," the
> "thing-in-itself" which is represented in
> consciousness by the phenomenon.
> The phenomenon therefore represents the ding an sich
> but is not the same as
> it. Phenomenon is therefore illusory, and so
> are concepts, such as the ahamkara (I-sense),
> dualisms, etc., all of which
> are phenomenal at the level of the "mental plane". 
> It is a difficult
> concept, but accepted by all philosophers, including
> modern scientists.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> 
> JERRY: I am not so sure that Blavatsky uses "maya"
> in those (Kantian) terms.
> This teaching suggests that archetypal ideas/images
> are "real" and all else
> is their illusive manifestations. The Buddhist view
> (and I can't help but
> remember here that Blavatsky and Olcott were both
> Buddhists, and not
> Kantians) is that there simply is no thing-it-itself
> anywhere. On the
> surface, this Buddhist view always sounds like
> nilhilism, but it is not
> because something indeed does exist, but due to its
> non-dualistic ineffable
> nature, we can't really talk much about it (although
> Blavatsky does so, and
> thereby misleads her readers, I think, into
> personifications and
> reifications that simply do not exist).
> 
> The Path, together with any logical/rational
> interpretation of reality, has
> traditionally been given out in stages to those who
> can understand it. As
> the student/chela understands a stage, he/she is
> gradually led by the Guru
> to the next stage or level. This process usually
> takes many many years until
> finally the "ultimate" view of that particular
> school is given out to that
> particular student. This way of doing things doesn't
> work in the West, nor
> will it. So, when many different levels of teachings
> are given out all at
> once to the public, it is up to each reader to
> digest as much of it as they
> can. And we wind up with a large group of "core
> teachings" some of which are
> preliminary, and meant for all, and others are
> advanced, and meant only for
> a few.
> 
> The teaching that phenonmena are illusive
> expressions of a noumenal reality
> is one level, and the teaching that the noumenal
> reality is itself illusive
> relative to a still higher reality is another level.
> 
> **********************************
> 
> <<<<<<[Steve:] Theosophy uses the
> noumenon-phenomenon concept in a
> way slightly different from that of Kant, inasmuch
> as T accepts the idea of
> modifying consciousness so that noumenal realities
> come into view. This one
> cannot see forces, but can mentally infer that they
> exist from their
> effects. The intuitions are intuitions of
> noumena, which by definition can be thought but not
> directly perceived.
> Blavatsky claims that behind the forces are the
> elementals, which are
> therefore noumenal to the forces. Some claim to be
> able to
> clairvoyantly perceive these elementals, but in
> doing so they create a new
> noumenon-phenomenon duality, since the perceptions
> they have of elementals
> are representations of a reality which remains
> unknown.
> Blavatsky says that noumenal to the elementals are
> the dhyani Buddhas. Some
> chelas are said to perceive them clairvoyantly, but
> then again a new
> noumenon-phenomenon duality arises. This is the
> origin of the concept of
> "planes". Each higher plane is noumenal to the ones
> below it, and the idea
> of "planes" becomes meaningful because we have
> available different sorts of
> consciousness, some of them
> clairvoyant. Thoughts and emotions are objects of
> consciousness, even
> though they are not physical, so we say there are
> "thought planes" and
> "emotional planes," etc.
> 
> JERRY: I agree that Theosophy allows for raising
> consciousness into the
> noumenal, so that one can actually have direct
> awareness of the illusive
> nature of phenomena. One can also perceive
> elementals, deities, and so -
> these are all the inhabitants of the inner invisible
> worlds (subplanes of
> Globe D as well as other Globes, and presumably even
> other planetary chains
> within our solar system of worlds). What I am saying
> is this: there are even
> more noumenal existences and realities behind what
> we think of as noumenal
> reality. There are beings/intelligences behind the
> dhyani-chohans, for
> example, and our seven planes lead gradually up to
> non-duality, which is
> outside the seven. But as to maya, it has to include
> all seven planes - all
> seven planes are based on Space and Motion, and this
> original/fundamental
> duality constitutes the origin of maya for our
> planetary chain.
> 
> *********************************
> 
> <<<<Thus when you say:
> Gerald: "Atma self-expresses also (as above so below
> holds throughout this
> manvantara) and forms principles on the four lower
> planes, which attract the
> appropriate matter on each plane to form bodies.
> 
> {Steve:] I would say there is only one matter, and
> that the "planes" have to
> do with different forms of consciousness.>>>>>
> 
> JERRY: If we want to think of "one matter" than
> solids, liquids,, gases,
> and so on would be different states for the same
> thing - and I agree that we
> can think this way within the subplanes of any one
> plane. But it is a
> stretch to say that thoughts, for example, are
> composed of the same matter
> as rocks (although in a sense, I agree that they
> are). If matter and spirit
> are two aspects of the same thing, then the whole
> seven planes are composed
> of one substance which we, as subjective observers,
> see differently.
> However, we always have to remember that there is
> theory and there is
> experiential practice, and the two are seldom equal.
> In theory, there is one
> substance (a matter-spirit duality) that we perceive
> differently, but in
> practice we have a separate body on each plane (in
> dreams for example, we
> experience a dream body, and the dreamer doesn't
> care much what it is made
> of).
> 
> As long as we are here, I would like to point out
> that maya, as I understand
> it, is essentially the split or bifurcation of the
> monad into an I-Not-I
> duad, and this occurs from the very topmost subplane
> of the first and
> highest plane, and continues all the way down to the
> "solid" matter on the
> lowest subplane of the lowest (the physical) plane.
> 
> *****************************
> 
> <<<<<<<Also when you say:
> Gerald: "Atma is "spirit," the subjective side,
> matter is the objective side
> of the same thing.
> 
> [Steve:] I would agree that atma is subjective in
> the 
=== message truncated ===


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