Theos-Talk Archives (January 2002 Message tt00021)

<<<<Gerald: "The business, for example, of "every temple has a dark room ..." is bullshit given out to attract the unwary and ignorant.

Notice this was a direct quote from a "mahatma letter." It is therefore hard to see how one could justify the statement that it "is bullshit given out to attract the unwary and ignorant." It seems apparent that such rooms did not exist in Tibetan temples. There may have been such a room in Ramdolph's place on Boylston Street in Boston. >>>

JERRY: Steve, not every sentence in the MLs can be taken literally, or even seriously. "Some temples" would have been better than "every temple" which is patently absurd. I have read and studied a great deal on Tibetan Buddhism, including Tantric rituals and magic, and have never come across a description matching such a room, anywhere. I am willing to bet you that not a single Tibetan can acknowledge seeing such a room. Yet the quote is trying to suggest that these rooms are well-known and well-used, which is flatly wrong. I am not calling it a lie, but I can certainly say that it is inaccurate and misleading.

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Gerald: "And "the astral light is collected in a cup by willpower" is pure poetry because the astral light is not a physical substance that one can gather and place anywhere.

Sounds like a technique to me.>>>>>

JERRY: Yes, and a well-known one, except for the phrase "astral light" which you won't find used anywhere in the East. This is a purely Western phrase, and comes to us from ancient Egypt (the Tuat or Dwat can be translated as astral light).

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<<<<Gerald: "After years of study and practice, one will come to be able to see through these kinds of outer trimmings and poetical fancies, and see what is really going on. Most of the mirror and crystal gazing
descriptions are the very thing that Blavatsky, in other parts of her writings, warns readers against.

Actually, she spoke well of Hungarian colleague Adelma vam Vey's book VISIONEN IM WASSERGLASSE. There was nary a word of protest againat Emma Hardinge Britten's experiments, which were described in detail. Blavatsky said when she looked into the "astral light" it was as if she was gazing into a mirror, etc.>>>>>

JERRY: Agreed. If done properly, mirrors and crystals and such can be extremely useful tools or devices with which to scry. Today's TSs consider such things as black magic. I am willing to bet that Dallas, for example, doesn't own or use a crystal ball (I have several).

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<<<Gerald: "The mirror and crystal (and water sometimes) are simply devices used to allow the mind to imagine, to form mental images

The historical problem here is whether it is a historical fact that Blavatsky used them. The evidence is that it is.>>>

JERRY: She probably did. Crystals were/are used in the East. But most of the occult results from these devices is kama-manas, and unreliable - of course this largely has to do with the ability of the scrier, but if the scrier is good enough to use buddhi-manas, then such devices are no longer necessary anyway.

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<<<<Gerald: "the trick is to be able to distinguish between detailed kama-manas descriptions (which are usually mental projections and not what is really going on) and less-detailed buddhi-manas
descriptions.

In theory the real skinny would be non phenomenal, meaning there would be no sensory content (visions, sounds, etc.) yet there would be content, represented in non sensory terms. This would explain the
"ineffable" quality of such content.>>>>

JERRY: You are talking here of that which is even higher than buddhi-manas, which does contain some sensory data. To get beyond all sensory content (ie form) one has to raise consciousnesss beyond manas into atma-buddhi. The problem with this comes into play when cosnciousness returns to it normal human/manas condition, and then the formless experiences have to be interpreted into manas/form/sensory data in order to understand/assimilate them. This is why people from different religions and cultures can have a direct atma-buddhi experience and describe it very differently.

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<<<Gerald: "Steve's final observation, that mirrors and such can actually work, is quite correct - they CAN

What I said is, that some people really see images that way without fraud or drugs being involved. The experiences are real, in other words. No comment on whether the images were veridical.>>>

JERRY: OK. But gee, even I can see images and the like. My problem is in trying to determine their validity.

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<<<Gerald: "I think that the work done by Dee and Kelly, for example, and some of the flying scroll work of the original Golden Dawn, ranks up there with examples of true scrying.

Question: is that a faith statement or do you have evidence?>>>

JERRY: There is no "proof" for occultism, period. But evidence is that the angels revealed things to Dee through Kelly that they simply could not have otherwise known. Also, Kelly was a rouge and largely uneducated, and yet his scrying resulted in a great deal of scholarly information including a magical alphabet and a whole new language (only partially given out, but enough to indicate more than Kelly could have possibly have been capable of on his own). But it is doubtful that ALL of his scrying was valid, as for example in the famous (infamous?) wife-swapping incident where Kelly told Dee that the angels wanted them to switch wives. And also much of the information diven by the angels is mundane crap, which suggests to me that Kelly was able to combine kama-manas with some occassional buddhi-manas insights - and I submit that this is exactly what most honest scriers do. 

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<<<Kelly did the same thing as Blavatsky, using a "shew stone" instead of a mirror. It is very similar, in fact, to what Joseph Smith did. The question of whether the visions are veridical is a difficult one
which I doubt can be settled because the necessary evidence is wanting. However, the "tattva symbol" visions described in the "flying rolls" strike me as mere eidetic imagery acquired while in a twilight
state of daydreaming. 
Steve>>>

JERRY: Agreed. Some of the results of the original GD folks are pretty amazing. Blavatsky probably needed a device early on, but gradually grew out of it, and near the end no longer needed devices at all.

Jerry S.


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