Theos-Talk Archives (April 2003 Message tt00102)

Monday, April 21, 2003

May thanks Gopi:

Some of what you write I am aware of.

I would add that the remote temples still hidden almost
undisturbed in Jungles and the Pujaris who attend and preserve
them, form the real basis for continued wisdom in India.

Few know of this, but then why trust the "foreigners" to be
anything but destructive? and not to be able to apprehend the
true value of wisdom? H P B gives many instances of this. It is
my belief that much of the wisdom of ancient India (Bharata
varsha) is still concealed.

Have you read through THE CAVES AND JUNGLES OF HINDOOSTAN ?

Have a look at this sample:

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



LIFE AND DEATH

A CONVERSATION BETWEEN A GREAT EASTERN TEACHER, H. P. B., COLONEL
OLCOTT AND AN INDIAN REPORTED BY H. P. BLAVATSKY

Article by H. P. Blavatsky


MASTER," said Narayan to Thakur, in the midst of a very hot
dispute with the poor Babu, "what is it he is saying, and can one
listen to him without being disgusted? He says that nothing
remains of the man after he is dead, but that the body of the man
simply resolves itself into its component elements, and that what
we call the soul, and he calls the temporary consciousness,
separates itself, disappearing like the steam of hot water as it
cools."
"Do you find this so very astonishing?" said the Master. "The
Babu is a Chārvāka1 and he tells you only that which every other
Chārvāka would have told you."

"But the Chārvākas are mistaken. There are many people who
believe that the real man is not his physical covering, but
dwells in the mind, in the seat of consciousness. Do you mean to
say that in any case the consciousness may leave the soul after
death?"

"In his case it may," answered Thakur quietly: "because he firmly
believes in what he says."
Narayan cast an astonished and even frightened look at Thakur,
and the Babu--who always felt some restraint in the presence of
the latter--looked at us with a victorious smile.

"But how is this?" went on Narayan. "The Vedānta teaches us that
the spirit of the spirit is immortal, and that the human soul
does not die in Parabrahman. Are there any exceptions?"

"In the fundamental laws of the spiritual world there can be no
exceptions; but there are laws for the blind and laws for those
who see."

"I understand this, but in this case, as I have told him already,
his full and final disappearance of consciousness is nothing but
the aberration of a blind man, who, not seeing the sun, denies
its existence, but all the same he will see the sun with his
spiritual sight after he is dead."

"He will not see anything," said the Master. "Denying the
existence of the sun now, he could not see it on the other side
of the grave."

Seeing that Narayan looked rather upset, and that even we, the
Colonel and myself, stared at him in the expectation of a more
definite answer, Thakur went on reluctantly:

"You speak about the spirit of the spirit, that is to say about
the Atmā, confusing this spirit with the soul of the mortal, with
Manas. No doubt the spirit is immortal, because being without
beginning it is without end; but it is not the spirit that is
concerned in the present conversation. It is the human,
self-conscious soul. You confuse it with the former, and the Babu
denies the one and the other, soul and spirit, and so you do not
understand each other."

"I understand him," said Narayan.

"But you do not understand me," interrupted the Master. "I will
try to speak more clearly. What you want to know is this. Whether
the full loss of consciousness and self-feeling is possible after
death, even in the case of a confirmed Materialist. Is that it?"

Narayan answered: "Yes; because he fully denies everything that
is an undoubted truth for us, that in which we firmly believe."

"All right," said the Master. "To this I will answer positively
as follows, which, mind you, does not prevent me from believing
as firmly as you do in our teaching, which designates the period
between two lives as only temporary. Whether it is one year or a
million that this entr'acte lasts between the two acts of the
illusion life, the posthumous state may be perfectly similar to
the state of a man in a very deep fainting-fit, without any
breaking of the fundamental rules. Therefore the Babu in his
personal case is perfectly right."

"But how is this?" said Colonel Olcott; "since the rule of
immortality does not admit of any exceptions, as you said."
"Of course it does not admit of any exceptions, but only in the
case of things that really exist. One who like yourself has
studied Māndukya Upanishad and Vedānta-sara ought not to ask such
questions," said the Master with a reproachful smile.

"But it is precisely Māndukya Upanishad," timidly observed
Narayan, "which teaches us that between the Buddhi and the Manas,
as between the Īshvara and Prajnā, there is no more difference in
reality than between a forest and its trees, between a lake and
its waters."

"Perfectly right," said the Master, "because one or even a
hundred trees which have lost their vital sap, or are even
uprooted, cannot prevent the forest from remaining a forest."

"Yes," said Narayan, "but in this comparison, Buddhi is the
forest, and Manas Taijasi the trees, and if the former be
immortal, then how is it possible for the Manas Taijasi, which is
the same as Buddhi, to lose its consciousness before a new
incarnation? That is where my difficulty lies."

"You have no business to have any difficulties," said the Master,
"if you take the trouble not to confuse the abstract idea of the
whole with its casual change of form. Remember that if in talking
about Buddhi we may say that it is unconditionally immortal, we
cannot say the same either about Manas, or about Taijasi. Neither
the former nor the latter have any existence separated from the
Divine Soul, because the one is an attribute of the terrestrial
personality, and the second is identically the same as the first,
only with the additional reflection in it of the Buddhi. In its
turn, Buddhi would be an impersonal spirit without this element,
which it borrows from the human soul, and which conditions it and
makes out of it something which has the appearance of being
separate from the Universal Soul, during all the cycle of the
man's incarnations. If you say therefore that Buddhi-Manas cannot
die, and cannot lose consciousness either in eternity or during
the temporary periods of suspension, you would be perfectly
right; but to apply this axiom to the qualities of Buddhi-Manas
is the same as if you were arguing that as the soul of Colonel
Olcott is immortal the red on his cheeks is also immortal. And so
it is evident you have mixed up the reality, Sat, with its
manifestation. You have forgotten that united to the Manas only,
the luminosity of Taijasi becomes a question of time, as the
immortality and the posthumous consciousness of the terrestrial
personality of the man 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."

"But if my Ego may find itself after the destruction of my body
in a state of complete unconsciousness, then where is the
punishment for the sins committed by me in my lifetime?" asked
the Colonel, pensively stroking his beard.
"Our Philosophy teaches us," answered Thakur, "that the
punishment reaches the Ego only in its next incarnation, and that
immediately after our death we meet only the rewards for the
sufferings of the terrestrial life, sufferings that were not
deserved by us. So, as you may see, the whole of the punishment
consists in the absence of reward, in the complete loss of the
consciousness of happiness and rest. 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 a 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 on the other side of the
grave. 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."

"As far as I remember, the periodical incarnations of Sūtrātmā2
are compared in the Upanishads to the terrestrial life which is
spent, term by term, in sleeping and waking. Is that so?" I
asked, wishing to renew the first question of Narayan.

"Yes, it is so; that is a very good comparison."

"I do not doubt it is good," I said, "but I hardly understand it.
After the awakening, the man merely begins a new day, but his
soul, as well as his body, are the same as they were yesterday;
whereas in every new incarnation not only his exterior, sex, and
even personality, but, as it seems to me, all his moral
qualities, are changed completely. And then, again, how can this
comparison be called true, when people, after their awakening,
remember very well not only what they were doing yesterday, but
many days, months, and even years ago, whereas, in their present
incarnations, they do not preserve the slightest recollection
about any past life, whatever it was. Of course a man, after he
is awakened, may forget what he has seen in his dreams, but still
he knows that he was sleeping and that during his sleep he lived.
But about our previous life we cannot say even that we lived.
What do you say to this?"
"There are some people who do remember some things,"
enigmatically answered Thakur, without giving a straight answer
to my question.

"I have some suspicions on this point," I answered, laughingly,
"but it cannot be said about ordinary mortals. Then how are we,
who have not reached as yet the Samma Sambuddha,3 to understand
this comparison?"

"You can understand it when you better understand the
characteristics of the three kinds of what we call sleep."
"This is not an easy task you propose to us," said the Colonel,
laughingly. "The greatest of our physiologists got so entangled
in this question that it became only more confused."

"It is because they have undertaken what they had no business to
undertake, the answering of this question being the duty of the
psychologist, of whom there are hardly any among your European
scientists. A Western psychologist is only another name for a
physiologist, with the difference that they work on principles
still more material. I have recently read a book by Maudsley
which showed me clearly that they try to cure mental diseases
without believing in the existence of the soul."

"All this is very interesting," I said, "but it leads us away
from the original object of our questions, which you seem
reluctant to clear for us, Thakur Sahib. It looks as if you were
confirming and even encouraging the theories of the Babu.
Remember that he says he disbelieves the posthumous life, the
life after death, and denies the possibility of any kind of
consciousness exactly on the grounds of our not remembering
anything of our past terrestrial life."

"I repeat again that the Babu is a Chārvāka, who only repeats
what he was taught. It is not the system of the Materialists that
I confirm and encourage, but the truth of the Babu's opinions in
what concerns his personal state after death."

"Then do you mean to say that such people as the Babu are to be
excepted from the general rule?"

"Not at all. Sleep is a general and unchangeable law for man as
well as for every other terrestrial creature, but there are
various sleeps and still more various dreams."

"But it is not only the life after death and its dreams that he
denies. He denies the immortal life altogether, as well as the
immortality of his own spirit."

"In the first instance he acts according to the canons of modern
European Science, founded on the experience of our five senses.
In this he is guilty only with respect to those people who do not
hold his opinions. In the second instance again he is perfectly
right. Without the previous interior consciousness and the belief
in the immortality of the soul, the soul cannot become Buddhi
Taijasi. It will remain Manas.4 But for the 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. These are the two aphorisms
of the Occult Science, on which is constructed all our Philosophy
in respect to the posthumous consciousness and immortality of the
Soul. Sūtrātmā gets only what it deserves. After the destruction
of the body there begins for the Sūtrātmā either a period of full
awakening, or a chaotic sleep, or a sleep without reveries or
dreams. Following your physiologists who found the causality of
dreams in the unconscious preparation for them. in the waking
state, why should not we acknowledge the same with respect to the
posthumous dreams? I repeat what Vedānta Sara teaches us: Death
is sleep. After death, there begins before our spiritual eyes a
representation of a programme that was learned by heart by us in
our lifetime, and was sometimes invented by us, the practical
realization of our true beliefs, or of illusions created by
ourselves. These are the posthumous fruit of the tree of life. Of
course the belief or disbelief in the fact of conscious
immortality cannot influence the unconditioned actuality of the
fact itself once it exists. But the belief or disbelief of
separate personalities cannot but condition the influence of this
fact in its effect on such personalities. Now I hope you
understand."

"I begin to understand. The Materialists, disbelieving everything
that cannot be controlled by their five senses and their
so-called scientific reason and denying every spiritual
phenomenon, point to the terrestrial as the only conscious
existence. Accordingly they will get only what they have
deserved. They will lose their personal I; they will sleep the
unconscious sleep until a new awakening. Have I understood
rightly?"

"Nearly. You may add to that that the Vedāntins, acknowledging
two kinds of conscious existence, the terrestrial and the
spiritual, point only to the latter as an undoubted actuality. As
to the terrestrial life, owing to its changeability and
shortness, it is nothing but an illusion of our senses. Our life
in the spiritual spheres must be thought an actuality because it
is there that lives our endless, never-changing immortal I, the
Sūtrātmā. Whereas 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."

"But excuse me, Thakur. Is it possible that my personality, my
terrestrial conscious I, is to perish tracelessly?"
"According to our teachings, not only is it to perish, but it
must perish in all its fullness, except this principle in it
which, united to Buddhi, has become purely spiritual and now
forms an inseparable whole. But in the case of a hardened
Materialist it may happen that neither consciously nor
unconsciously has anything of its personal I ever penetrated into
Buddhi. The latter will not take away into eternity any atom of
such a terrestrial personality. 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."

"But the flower itself, the terrestrial I?"

"The flower itself, as all the past and future flowers which have
blossomed and will blossom after them on the same maternal
branch, Sūtrātmā, children of the same root, Buddhi, will become
dust. Your real I is not, as you ought to know yourself, your
body that now sits before me, nor your Manas Sūtrātmā, but your
Sūtrātmā -Buddhi."

"But this does not explain to me why you call our posthumous life
immortal, endless, and real, and the terrestrial one a mere
shadow. As far as I understand, according to your teaching, even
our posthumous life has its limits, and being longer than the
terrestrial life, still has its end."

"Most decidedly. The spiritual Ego of the man moves in eternity
like a pendulum between the hours of life and death, but if these
hours, the periods of life terrestrial and life posthumous, are
limited in their continuation, and even the very number of such
breaks in eternity between sleep and waking, between illusion and
reality, have their beginning as well as their end, the spiritual
Pilgrim himself is eternal. Therefore the hours of his 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, in spite of the fact that they are finite, do double
service to the Sūtrātmā, which, perfecting itself constantly,
follows without vacillation, though very slowly, the road leading
to its last transformation, when, reaching its aim at last, it
becomes a Divine Being. They not only contribute to the reaching
of this goal, but without these finite breaks Sūtrātmā-Buddhi
could never reach it. Sūtrātmā is the actor, and its numerous and
different incarnations are the actor's parts. I suppose you would
not apply to these parts, and so much the less to their costumes,
the term of personality. Like an actor the soul is bound to play,
during the cycle of births up to the very threshold of
Paranirvāna, many such parts, which often are disagreeable to it,
but like a bee, collecting its honey from every flower, and
leaving the rest to feed the worms of the earth, our spiritual
individuality, the Sūtrātmā, collecting only the nectar of moral
qualities and consciousness from every terrestrial personality in
which it has to clothe itself, forced by Karma, unites at last
all these qualities in one, having then become a perfect being, a
Dhyān Chohan. So much the worse for such terrestrial
personalities from whom it could not gather anything. Of course,
such personalities cannot outlive consciously their terrestrial
existence."

"Then the immortality of the terrestrial personality still
remains an open question, and even the very immortality is not
unconditioned?"

"Oh no, you misunderstand me," said the Master. "What I mean is
that immortality does not cover the non-existing; for everything
that exists in Sat, or has its origin in Sat, immortality as well
as infinity, are unconditioned. Mulaprakriti is the reverse of
Parabrahman, but they are both one and the same. The very essence
of all this, that is to say, 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."

"Why in this case should we call the reality sleep, and the
phantasm waking?"

"This comparison was made by me to facilitate your comprehension.
>From the standpoint of your terrestrial notions it is perfectly
accurate."

"You say that the posthumous life is founded on a basis of
perfect justice, on the merited recompense for all the
terrestrial sorrows. You say that Sūtrātmā is sure to seize the
smallest opportunity of using the spiritual qualities in each of
its incarnations. Then how can you admit that the spiritual
personality of our Babu, the personality of this boy, who is so
ideally honest and noble, so perfectly kind, in spite of all his
disbeliefs, will not reach immortality, and will perish like the
dust of a dried flower?"

"Who, except himself," answered the Master, "ever doomed him to
such a fate? I have known the Babu from the time he was a small
boy, and I am perfectly sure that the harvest of the Sūtrātmā in
his case will be very abundant. Though his Atheism and
Materialism are far from being feigned, still he cannot die for
ever in the whole fullness of his individuality."

"But, Thakur Sahib, did not you yourself confirm the rectitude of
his notions as to his personal state on the other side of the
grave, and do not these notions consist in his firm belief that
after his death every trace of consciousness will disappear?"

"I confirmed them, and I confirm them again. When travelling in a
railway train you may fall asleep and sleep all the time, while
the train stops at many stations; but surely there will be a
station where you will awake, and the aim of your journey will be
reached in full consciousness. You say you are dissatisfied with
my comparison of death to sleep, but remember, the most ordinary
of mortals knows three different kinds of sleep--dreamless sleep,
a sleep with vague chaotic dreams, and at last a sleep with
dreams so very vivid and clear that for the time being they
become a perfect reality for the sleeper. Why should not you
admit that exactly the analogous case happens to the soul freed
from its body? After their parting there begins for the soul,
according to its deserts, and chiefly to its faith, either a
perfectly conscious life, a life of semi-consciousness, or a
dreamless sleep which is equal to the state of non-being. This is
the realization of the programme of which I spoke, a programme
previously invented and prepared by the Materialist. But there
are Materialists and Materialists. A bad man, or simply a great
egotist, 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 the Sūtrātmā, and the connection between them is
broken for ever with his last sigh; but such Materialists as our
Babu will sleep only one station. There will be a time when he
will recognize himself in eternity, and will be sorry he has lost
a single day of the life eternal. I see your objections--I see
you are going to say that hundreds and thousands of human lives,
lived through by the Sūtrātmā, correspond in our Vedāntin notions
to a perfect disappearance of every personality. This is my
answer. Take a comparison of eternity with a single life of a
man, which is composed of so many days, weeks, months, and years.
If a man has preserved a good memory in his old age he may easily
recall every important day or year of his past life, but even in
case he has forgotten some of them, is not his personality one
and the same through all his life? For the Ego every separate
life is what every separate day is in the life of a man."

"Then, would it not be better to say that death is nothing but a
birth for a new life, or, still better, a going back to
eternity?"

"This is how it really is, and I have nothing to say against such
a way of putting it. Only with our accepted views of material
life the words 'live' and 'exist' are not applicable to the
purely subjective condition after death; and were they employed
in our Philosophy without a rigid definition of their meanings,
the Vedāntins would soon arrive at the ideas which are common in
our times among the American Spiritualists, who preach about
spirits marrying among themselves and with mortals. As amongst
the true, not nominal Christians, so amongst the Vedāntins--the
life on the other side of the grave is the land where there are
no tears, no sighs, where there is neither marrying nor giving in
marriage, and where the just realize their full perfection."

Lucifer, October, 1892


1 A sect of Bengali Materialists.

2 In the Vedānta, Buddhi, in its combinations with the moral
qualities, consciousness, and the notions of the personalities in
which it was incarnated, is called Sūtrātmā, which literally
means the "thread soul," because a whole long row of human lives
is strung on this thread like the pearls of a necklace. The Manas
must become Taijasi in order to reach and to see itself in
eternity, when united to Sūtrātmā. But often, owing to sin and
associations with the purely terrestrial reason, this very
luminosity disappears completely.

3 The knowledge of one's past incarnations. Only Yogis and Adepts
of the Occult Sciences possess this knowledge, by the aid of the
most ascetic life.

4 Without the full assimilation with the Divine Soul, the
terrestrial soul, or Manas, cannot live in eternity a conscious
life. It will become Buddhi-Taijasi, or Buddhi-Manas, only in
case its general tendencies during its lifetime lead it towards
the spiritual world. Then full of the essence and penetrated by
the light of its Divine Soul, the Manas will disappear in Buddhi,
will assimilate itself with Buddhi, still preserving a spiritual
consciousness of its terrestrial personality; otherwise Manas,
that is to say, the human mind, founded on the five physical
senses, our terrestrial or our personal soul, will be plunged
into a deep sleep without awakening, without dreams, without
consciousness, till a new reincarnation. [In this article
Sūtrātmā is used for the principle later called the Higher Manas,
and Manas for that later called the Lower Manas, or
Kama-Manas.--EDS.]

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

I think this will give you an idea of how much and how little can
be released t the "West."

Best wishes,

Dallas

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






-----Original Message-----
From: Gopi Chari
Sent: Sunday, April 20, 2003 6:42 PM
To: study@b...
Subject: Re: Maharaja...

Dear Dallas,

'Instruct' is hardly a word I would choose! I saw a few things
that I
would like to share with you (in particular, because you had been
there
and you are acquainted with them positively).

For me, much of this study can be supported by the study of
Indian
Temples!

There are three aspects of study of the Temples.

1. Exoteric history - Kings, dates and lineage of kings. For
example,
Kashmir has a spectacular document of lineage put together by K.
M.
Munshi published by the Govt of India. This lineage starts from
the era
of Krishna when the Kings were Pandavas. Incidentally
'Illustrated Weekly
of India' published a map of India at the time of MahaBharatha,
developed
by a History student as a Doctoral Theses. I have not seen it
again. It
was published in late sixties. India is one of the few countries,
just as
China, that has a documented history of over 5000 years. Do not
forget
that the geography of Bharat (India) is not necessarily the
history of
Bharat. Vindhyas do divide India into two. Sakas were probably
the first
to combine in the near past. That is the reason why India
celebrates New
Year under that name. Saka Rulers in India were very Esoteric.

South India is well known for its temples because unlike North
the
temples of South were not totally destroyed. The temples of the
North
were mostly reconstructed by Maharani of Indore 150 years ago
following
the holy books and searching and finding the idols. Thanks to the
holy
Muslims many of the idols of the temples were broken and placed
on the
walking paths in their mosques such as Jama Masjid.

2. The Brahmins (Pujari) families were moved from one place to
another by
the invitation of Rajas (kings). Even some of the small temples
have the
Pujari lineage. When we talk to them they give a very interesting
and
colorful background of the temples.

3. Esoteric information: Every temple of value, particularly of
the very
old temples (most of them are famous temples) have the main and
subsidiary idols. But if you talk to the Pujaris you might find
very
small areas where the original God appeared. These stories where
God
appeared are very much like HPB's Theosophy. These are strikingly
absent
from the very clean modern temples such as Birla's temples. The
modern
temples are beautiful, airy and have modern facilities but do not
have
the esoteric essence. So, if you want to get the esoteric part
you may
have to go to Ujjain (Madhya Pradesh), Madhura (in South) and so
on. Even
Kashi does not have it because the original temple was destroyed
and an
ugly looking mosque stands in its place. There are many beautiful
mosques
in India, Kashi is not one of them.

Thank you for asking me to share a few facts.

Gopi