Theos-Talk Archives (October 2003 Message tt00048)

Oct 5, 2003
 
Re Music, Mantras, ‘Army of the Voice’ etc…  
 
Dear Jerome and friends:
 
 
Thanks for a review of this study at the Long Beach Study Group. Very
valuable and interesting.
 
 
It evoked some thoughts : --
 
Every syllable and word has a vibration associated with it. Those who
know the secret of true speech can frame “mantras” based on their INNER
KNOWLEDGE of correlations of sound and the forces they evoke in
listeners – emotional, psychic, physiological, spiritual.  
 
How do we secure precise knowledge of the way in which, from plane to
plane, and from principle to principle, the creator (man the free
chooser) affects his environment and Nature around him (made up of
innumerable Monads) –thus creating ripples of Karma that affect not only
himself (as a Thinking-Monad in evolution) but all those associated with
him (skandhas, and also monads of lesser experience) ?
 
We see an instance of this in the MAHATMA LETTERS and in the SECRET
DOCTRINE But this power innate thereto is not always recognized, and
it may take years before it is really sensed for what it is.
 
As I see it, it is the BUDDHI-MANAS in us which (because of its wisdom)
can create true words and put them together so as to produce SOUNDS that
have lasting effects. How much more important is to suggest that those
effects be benevolent, and brotherly, so that they are not distorting of
all growth by selfish motives? We have to adopt a protective attitude
towards our cooperative situation in which we, as “associates,” seek to
help others as best we can all the time. Is this not a duty and a
responsibility? Do we then not have to guard our thoughts, feelings,
words, and deeds?
 
This (a true constructive sound – the result of a pure IDEA) originates
in the Higher Mind, and carries with it – as the sayings of the Buddha
and Krishna and The VOICE OF THE SILENCE do an inner meaning that
touches a responsive chord. This causes a Nidana or concatenation that
finally reflects itself in the use of the human vocal chords. And there
again even the physical chords need training, so as to produce the best
effect on the physical plane. How much more important, then, would be
efforts to train and control our feelings, moods, thoughts, etc… How do
we harmonize our inner principles – and spiritualize our efforts all the
time? How do we attune ourselves as Pythagoras might have said: To the
Music of the ‘Spheres?” (S D II 601-2). He called Music a division of
mathematics. (S D I 433)
 
One may make many deductions using the Lower Manas, analytically, but
that stops at the “Head. Learning” level. To truly penetrate into the
real meaning, one has to be able to adduce the “Heart Doctrine.” The
best”” head potential has to be united to the highest motive. But you
know this as well as I do.
 
“The Army of the Voce” to me evokes a teaching concerning the formation
of the world (and incidentally a similar event occurs – by analogy -- at
every individual reincarnation of the Ego) return of the
“cosmocratores” (the concerned Dhyanis) who assist Nature (or UNIVERSAL
KARMA) in the reincarnation of a world and its associated Monads and
“skandhas.” [The spiritual Monad assists the re-forming of the personal
man (using the skandhas of the past lives) at every rebirth.]
 
The “Anugita” example illustrates the kind of one-pointedness needed in
disciplining the Lower Mind (Patanjali also indicates this).  
 
In India to be a real poet, I learned, one has to be a musician with a
thorough knowledge of the TIME factor and the INTENT, a true poem is
sung at a particular “measure / beat. 
 
It can be narrow or broad based – valid for a specific time and place
and invalid elsewhere and elsewhen, or it may be used for a season, a
day, a month. But the time of day is important in REAL POETRY and REAL
MUSIC in the methods taught of old.  
 
There are a number of very important treatises on this. Tansen, a
reputed singer in the reign of Akbar, has left a well documented
history of the effects he achieved creatively and spontaneously. My
memory is not exact, but, Prof. M, A. Telang (?) in Bombay / Poona
wrote a very thick book well illustrated, about 60 years ago -- a
classic on this. I think the title was PRINCIPLES OF HINDU CLASSICAL
MUSIC – or something like that.
 
H P B in CAVES AND JUNGLES on Karli Caves speaks of an incident where an
attacking tiger was killed by a “word.” Also there is the incident (in
C & J) at the Singing Reeds island and a long discourse there on Music
by “K H Lal Singh”
 
Best wishes,
 
Dallas
 
===========================
 
 
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Jerome Wheeler [mailto:ultinla@juno.com] 
Sent: Saturday, October 04, 2003 1:43 PM
To: study@blavatsky.net
Cc: study@blavatsky.net
Subject: [bn-study] Re: Theosophy itself
 
Re “Army of the Voice” -- SOUND, MANTRAS,
ETC…
 
 
 
At this morning's S.D. class chaired by Peter Gevorkian, President of
the T.S. in Long Beach, we discussed this:
 
 
The “army of the Voice” is a term closely connected with the mystery of
Sound and Speech, as an effect and corollary of the cause—Divine
Thought. As beautifully expressed by P. Christian, the learned author
of “The History of Magic” and of “L’Homme Rouge des Tuileries,” the word
spoken by, as well as the name of, every individual largely determine
his future fate. Why? Because—
 
—“When our Soul (mind) creates or evokes a thought, the representative
sign of that thought is self-engraved upon the astral fluid, which is
the receptacle and, so to say, the mirror of all the manifestations of
being.
 
“The sign expresses the thing: the thing is the (hidden or occult)
virtue of the sign. 
 
“To pronounce a word is to evoke a thought, and make it present: the
magnetic potency of the human speech is the commencement of every
manifestation in the Occult World. To utter a Name is not only to
define a Being (an Entity), but to place it under and condemn it through
the emission of the Word (Verbum), to the influence of one or more
Occult potencies. Things are, for every one of us, that which it (the
Word) makes them while naming them. The Word (Verbum) or the speech of
every man is, quite unconsciously to himself, a BLESSING or a CURSE;
this is why our present ignorance about the properties or attributes of
the IDEA as well as about the attributes and properties of MATTER, is
often fatal to us.
 
“Yes, names (and words) are either BENEFICENT or MALEFICENT; they are,
in a certain sense, either venomous or health-giving, according to the
hidden influences attached by Supreme Wisdom to their elements, that is
to say, to the LETTERS which compose them, and the NUMBERS correlative
to these letters.”
 
 
This is strictly true as an esoteric teaching accepted by all the
Eastern Schools of Occultism. In the Sanskrit, as also in the Hebrew
and all other alphabets, every letter has its occult meaning and its
rationale; it is a cause and an effect of a preceding cause and a
combination of these very often produces the most magical effect. The
vowels, especially, contain the most occult and formidable potencies.
The Mantras (esoterically, magical rather than religious) are chanted by
the Brahmins and so are the Vedas and other Scriptures.
 
The “Army of the Voice, ‘ is the prototype of the “Host of the Logos,”
or the “WORD” of the Sepher Jezirah, called in the Secret Doctrine “the
One Number issued from No-Number”—the One Eternal Principle. The
esoteric theogony begins with the One, manifested, therefore not eternal
in its presence and being, if eternal in its essence; the number of the
numbers and numbered—the latter proceeding from the Voice, the feminine
Vâch, Satarupa “of the hundred forms,” or Nature. It is from this
number 10, or creative nature, the Mother (the occult cypher, or
“nought,” ever procreating and multiplying in union with the Unit “1,”
one, or the Spirit of Life), that the whole Universe proceeded.
 
In the Anugîtâ a conversation is given (ch. vi., 15) between a Brâhmana
and his wife, on the origin of Speech and its occult properties. The
wife asks how Speech came into existence, and which was prior to the
other, Speech or Mind. The Brâhmana tells her that the Apâna
(inspirational breath) becoming lord, changes that intelligence, which
does not understand Speech or Words, into the state of Apâna, and thus
opens the mind. Thereupon he tells her a story, a dialogue between
Speech and Mind. “Both went to the Self of Being (i.e., to the
individual Higher Self, as Nilakantha thinks, to Prajâpati, according to
the commentator Arjűna Misra), and asked him to destroy their doubts and
decide which of them preceded and was superior to the other. To this
the lord said: ‘Mind is superior.’ But Speech answered the Self of
Being, by saying: ‘I verily yield (you) your desires,’ meaning that by
speech he acquired what he desired. Thereupon again, the Self told her
that there are two minds, the ‘movable’ and the ‘immovable.’ ‘The
immovable is with me,’ he said, ‘the movable is in your dominion’ (i.e.
of Speech) on the plane of matter. To that you are superior. But
inasmuch, O beautiful one, as you came personally to speak to me (in the
way you did, i.e. proudly), therefore, O, Sarasvati! you shall never
speak after (hard) exhalation.” “The goddess Speech” (Sarasvati, a later
form or aspect of Vâch, the goddess also of secret learning or Esoteric
Wisdom), “verily, dwelt always between the Prâna and the Apâna. But O
noble one! going with the Apâna wind (vital air), though impelled,
without the Prâna (expirational breath), she ran up to Prajâpati
(Brahmâ), saying, ‘Be pleased, O venerable sir!’ Then the Prâna appeared
again, nourishing Speech. And, therefore, Speech never speaks after
(hard or inspirational) exhalation. It is always noisy or noiseless.
Of these two, the noiseless is the superior to the noisy (Speech) . . .
The (speech) which is produced in the body by means of the Prâna, and
which then goes (is transformed) into Apâna, and then becoming
assimilated with the Udâna (physical organs of Speech) . . . then
finally dwells in the Samâna (‘at the navel in the form of sound, as the
material cause of all words,’ says Arjűna Misra). So Speech formerly
spoke. Hence the mind is distinguished by reason of its being
immovable, and the Goddess (Speech) by reason of her being movable.”
 
This allegory is at the root of the Occult law, which prescribes silence
upon the knowledge of certain secret and invisible things perceptible
only to the spiritual mind (the 6th sense), and which cannot be
expressed by “noisy” or uttered speech. This chapter of Anugîtâ
explains, says Arjuna Misra, Prânâyâma, or regulation of the breath in
Yoga practices. This mode, however, without the previous acquisition
of, or at least full understanding of the two higher senses, of which
there are seven, as will be shown, pertains rather to the lower Yoga.
The Hâtha so called was and still is discountenanced by the Arhats. It
is injurious to the health and alone can never develop into Raj Yoga.
This story is quoted to show how inseparably connected are, in the
metaphysics of old, intelligent beings, or rather “Intelligences,” with
every sense or function whether physical or mental. The Occult claim
that there are seven senses in man, as in nature, as there are seven
states of consciousness, is corroborated in the same work, chapter vii.,
on Pratyâhâra (the restraint and regulation of the senses, Prânâyâma
being that of the “vital winds” or breath). The Brâhmana speaks in it
“of the institution of the seven sacrificial Priests (Hotris). He says:
“The nose and the eyes, and the tongue, and the skin and the ear as the
fifth (or smell, sight, taste, touch and hearing), mind and
understanding are the seven sacrificial priests separately stationed”;
and which “dwelling in a minute space (still) do not perceive each
other” on this sensuous plane, none of them except mind. For mind says:
“The nose smells not without me, the eye does not take in colour, etc.,
etc. I am the eternal chief among all elements (i.e., senses). Without
me, the senses never shine, like an empty dwelling, or like fires the
flames of which are extinct. Without me, all beings, like fuel half
dried and half moist, fail to apprehend qualities or objects even with
the senses exerting themselves.”
 
This, of course, with regard only to mind on the sensuous plane.
Spiritual mind (the upper portion or aspect of the impersonal MANAS)
takes no cognisance of the senses in physical man. How well the
ancients were acquainted with the correlation of forces and all the
recently discovered phenomena of mental and physical faculties and
functions, with many more mysteries also—may be found in reading
chapters vii. and viii. of this (in philosophy and mystic learning)
priceless work. See the quarrel of the senses about their respective
superiority and their taking the Brahman, the lord of all creatures, for
their arbiter. “You are all greatest and not greatest,” or superior to
objects, as A. Misra says, none being independent of the other. “You
are all possessed of one another’s qualities. All are greatest in their
own spheres and all support one another. There is one unmoving
(life-wind or breath, the ‘Yoga inhalation,’ so called, which is the
breath of the One or Higher SELF). That is the (or my) own Self,
accumulated in numerous (forms).”
 
This Breath, Voice, Self or “Wind” (pneuma?) is the Synthesis of the
Seven Senses, noumenally all minor deities and esoterically—the
septenary and the “Army of the VOICE.”
(SDI, 92-96)
 
================================================
There was much discussion about the "two minds" in man, as also the
karmic exigencies of the two. The problem of Phantasy (Olympiodorus) and
the "stream of consciousness" (James Joyce) was also mentioned, since
Olympiodorus asserted that if we can stop the phantasy there is nothing
to prevent us from seeing the future. Why is this so? If the lower the
lower becomes---when its movement or "phantasy" withers---a mirror for
the higher Mind, which is omniscient on its own plane, then it stands to
reason that the barriers of seeing into the sweep of time would begin to
melt.
 
jw
  
 


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