Theos-Talk Archives (January 2002 Message tt00236)

January 14, 2002


this is also very interesting


DTB

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L I F E & D E A T H


From: "Caves & Jungles of Hindoostan" -- a conversation with a
Great Eastern Teacher.

HPB Articles II 264.
____________________________


"The spiritual Ego of man moves in eternity like a pendulum
between the hours of life and death...the spiritual Pilgrim is
eternal." (p. 270-1)


"...spirit, force and matter, have neither end nor beginning, but
the shape acquired by this triple unity during its incarnations,
their exterior so to speak, is nothing but a mere illusion of
personal conceptions. This is why we call the posthumous life
the only reality, and the terrestrial one, including the
personality itself, only imaginary." (p. 271-2)



The immortal, permanent Individuality :


"...the real man...dwells in the mind, the seat of
consciousness."(p.264)


"...the spirit is immortal, because being without beginning it is
without end...Atma [ the spirit ], is not Manas...the human
self-conscious soul..."


"...the period between two lives [ is ] only
temporary...Buddhi-Manas cannot die, and cannot lose
consciousness either in eternity of during the temporary periods
of suspension [ between rebirths ]..." (p. 266)


"...Buddhi, we may say...is unconditionally immortal..." (p. 266)



The mortal and changing Personality :


"[ In the case of a materialist who bases himself on the
experience of our five senses ]...without the previous interior
consciousness and the belief in the immortality of the soul, the
soul cannot become Buddhi-Taijasi [ enlightened discrimination ].
It will remain Manas [ the Lower, Kama-Manas or embodied mind ].
But for Manas alone there is no immortality. In order to live a
conscious life in the world on the other side of the grave, the
man must have acquired belief in that world, in this terrestrial
life..." (p. 269)


"...the posthumous consciousness of the terrestrial personality
Lower, or Kama-Manas ] become conditional qualities, depending
on the conditions and beliefs created by itself during its
lifetime. Karma acts unceasingly, and we reap in the next world
the fruit of that which we ourselves have sown in this life." (p.
266) [ Karma is the universal harmonizing Law of Life. ]


"...punishment reaches the Ego only in its next incarnation,
and...immediately after our death we meet only the rewards for
the sufferings of the terrestrial life, sufferings that were not
deserved by us." ( p. 266-7)


" Karma is the child of the terrestrial Ego, the fruit of the
acts of his visible personality, even of the thoughts and
intentions of the spiritual I. But at the same time it is a
tender mother, who heals the wounds given in the preceding life
before striking this Ego and giving him new ones. In the life of
the mortal there is no mishap or sorrow which is not a fruit and
direct consequence of a sin committed in his preceding
incarnation; but not having preserved the slightest recollection
of it in his present life, and not feeling himself guilty, and
therefore suffering unjustly, the man deserves consolation and
full rest...For our spiritual Ego, Death is always a redeemer and
a friend. It is either the peaceful sleep of a baby, or a sleep
full of blissful dreams and reveries." (p. 267)



The Death Review :

"Death is sleep. After the death, there begins before our
spiritual eyes a representation of a programme that was learned
by heart in our lifetime, and was sometimes invented by us, the
practical realization of our true beliefs, or of illusions
created by ourselves...Of course the belief or disbelief in the
fact of conscious immortality cannot influence the unconditioned
actuality of the fact itself once it exists...The
Vedantins...point only to the [ spiritual existence ] as an
undoubted actuality...Our life in the spiritual spheres must be
thought of as an actuality because it is there that lives our
endless, never-changing immortal I...(p. 270)


"...in every new incarnation it clothes itself in a perfectly
different personality, a temporary and short-lived one, in which
everything except its spiritual prototype is doomed to traceless
destruction...it must perish in all its fullness, except this
principle in it which, united to Buddhi [ the spiritual
Soul--discrimination ] has become purely spiritual and now forms
an inseparable whole...Your spiritual I is immortal, but from
your present personality it will carry away only that which has
deserved immortality, that is to say, only the aroma of the
flowers mowed down by death...Your real I is not...your body that
now sits before me, nor the Manas [ thread-soul ], but your
immortal thread of discrimination ] Sutratma-Buddhi." (p. 270)


"...the hours of posthumous life, when unveiled he stands face to
face with truth, and the short-lived mirages of his terrestrial
existences are far from him, compose or make up, in our ideas,
the only reality. Such breaks... do double service to the
Sutratma [ immortal thread-soul ], which perfecting itself
constantly, follows without vacillation, though very slowly, the
road leading to its last transformation. when, reaching it aim at
last, it becomes a Divine Being. (p. 271)


"...without these finite breaks [ between adjacent lives ]
Sutratma-Buddhi could never reach it. Sutratma is the actor, and
its numerous and different incarnations are the actor's
parts...like a bee collecting its honey from every flower...our
spiritual individuality, the Sutratma, collecting only the nectar
of moral qualities and consciousness from every terrestrial
personality in which it has to clothe itself, forced by Karma,
universal Law of justice and harmonic balance ] unites at last
all these qualities in one, having then become a perfect being, a
Dhyan Chohan." (p. 271)


"A bad man, or simply a great egoist, who adds to his full
disbelief a perfect indifference to his fellow beings, must
unquestionably leave his personality for ever at the threshold of
death. He has no means of linking himself to Sutratma...For the
Ego, every separate life is what every separate day is in the
life of man." (p. 273)



Life - Light - Heat - Sun - Higher Self


"The sun is the center of our solar system. The life-energies of
that system come to it through the sun, which is a focus or
reflector for the spot in space where the real center is. And
not only comes mere life through that focus, but also, much more
that is spiritual in its essence. The sun should therefore not
be looked at with the eye but thought of by the mind. It
represents to the world what the Higher Self is to the man. It
is the soul-center of the world with its six companions, as the
Higher Self is the center for the six principles of man. So it
supplies to those six principles of the man many spiritual
essences and powers. He should for that reason think of it and
confine himself to gazing at it. So far as it acts materially in
light, heat, and gravity, it will go on of itself, but man as a
free agent must think upon it in order to gain what benefit can
come only from his voluntary action in thought." WQJ ART I 436


[Creators and Destroyers in Nature at the level of the Lives
SD I 33, 199, 248-250, 261-3 ]