Theos-Talk Archives (April 2003 Message tt00085)

Thursday, April 17, 2003


Re: Nibbana, Nirvana


Dear Friends:

Many thanks for reminding us of this. I also recall


8. ALONE THE ONE FORM OF EXISTENCE STRETCHED BOUNDLESS, INFINITE,
CAUSELESS, IN

DREAMLESS SLEEP; AND LIFE PULSATED UNCONSCIOUS IN UNIVERSAL SPACE,
THROUGHOUT

THAT ALL-PRESENCE WHICH IS SENSED BY THE OPENED EYE OF THE DANGMA.
S D I 27


also, H P B wrote in the THEOSOPHIST:


"Whether it be orthodox Adwaita or not, I maintain as an occultist, on
the authority of the Secret Doctrine, that though merged entirely into
Parabrahm, man's Spirit while not individual per se, yet preserves its
distinct individuality in Paranirvana, owing to the accumulation in it
of the aggregates, or skandhas that have survived after each death,
from the highest faculties of the Manas.

The most spiritual--i.e., the highest and divinest aspirations of
every personality follow Buddhi and the Seventh Principle into
Devachan (Swarga) after the death of each personality along the line
of rebirths, and become part and parcel of the Monad.

The personality fades out, disappearing before the occurrence of the
evolution of the new personality (rebirth) out of Devachan: but the
individuality of the spirit-soul [dear, dear, what can be made out of
this English!] is preserved to the end of the great cycle
(Maha-Manwantara) when each Ego enters Paranirvana, or is merged in
Parabrahm. To our talpatic, or mole-like, comprehension the Human
Spirit is then lost in the One Spirit, as the drop of water thrown
into the sea can no longer be traced out and recovered.

But de facto it is not so in the world of immaterial thought. This
latter stands in relation to the human dynamic thought, as, say, the
visual power through the strongest conceivable microscope would to the
sight of a half-blind man: and yet even this is a most insufficient
simile--the difference is "inexpressible in terms of foot-pounds."

That such Parabrahmic and Paranirvanic "spirits," or units, have and
must preserve their divine (not human) individualities, is shown in
the fact that, however long the "night of Brahma" or even the
Universal Pralaya (not the local Pralaya affecting some one group of
worlds) yet, when it ends, the same individual Divine Monad resumes
its majestic path of evolution, though on a higher, hundredfold
perfected and more pure chain of earths than before, and brings with
it all the essence of compound spiritualities from its previous
countless rebirths.

Spiral evolution, it must be remembered, is dual, and the path of
spirituality turns, corkscrew-like, within and around physical,
semi-physical, and supra-physical evolution.

But I am being tempted into details which had best be left for the
full consideration which their importance merits to my forthcoming
work, the Secret Doctrine. " -- H P Blavatsky

ISIS UNVEILED AND THE VISHISHTADWAITA H P B Articles, III p.
265-6


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-----Original Message-----


Subject:	RE: Immortality....


See:

THE DHAMMAPADA
Canto VIII - THE THOUSANDS

15. Better a single day in the life of one who sees the deathless
state* than a life of hundred years without perceiving
immortality. (114)


*The unconditioned state of nibbâna, free from birth, decay and
death; it is an ineffable state of pure awareness, which is
signless voidness, i.e., free from and void of all signs and
marks
of passion, hatred and nescience.

-------------------------------

Thanks.


Such a description of 'nibbana' (nirvana) offers an example of
'emptiness' (ie the signless voidness) as 'empty of other', which is
the
Shentong view.