Theos-Talk Archives (March 2004 Message tt00038)

Dear Etzion:

Mar 6 2004

Do have a look at this, please:

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ANCIENT SOURCE OF THEOSOPHY [ S D I 272-278 ]


(1.) The Secret Doctrine is the accumulated Wisdom of the Ages, and its
cosmogony alone is the most stupendous and elaborate system: e.g., even
in the exotericism of the Puranas. But such is the mysterious power of
Occult symbolism, that the facts which have actually occupied countless
generations of initiated seers and prophets to marshal, to set down and
explain, in the bewildering series of evolutionary progress, are all
recorded on a few pages of geometrical signs and glyphs. 

The flashing gaze of those seers has penetrated into the very kernel of
matter, and recorded the soul of things there, where an ordinary
profane, however learned, would have perceived but the external work of
form. 

But modern science believes not in the "soul of things," and hence will
reject the whole system of ancient cosmogony. It is useless to say that
the system in question is no fancy of one or several isolated
individuals. That it is the uninterrupted record covering thousands of
generations of Seers whose respective experiences were made to test and
to verify traditions passed orally by one early race to another, of the
teachings of higher and exalted beings, who watched over the childhood
of Humanity. 

That for long ages, the "Wise Men" of the Fifth Race, of the stock saved
and rescued from the last cataclysm and shifting of continents, had
passed their lives in learning, not teaching. 

How did they do so? It is answered: by checking, testing, and verifying
in every department of nature the traditions of old by the independent
visions of great adepts; i.e., men who have developed and perfected
their physical, mental, psychic, and spiritual organisations to the
utmost possible degree. 

No vision of one adept was accepted till it was checked and confirmed by
the visions-so obtained as to stand as independent evidence-of other
adepts, and by centuries of experiences. 


LAW

(2.) The fundamental Law in that system, the central point from which
all emerged, around and toward which all gravitates, and upon which is
hung the philosophy of the rest, is the One homogeneous divine
SUBSTANCE-PRINCIPLE, the one radical cause. 

. . . "Some few, whose lamps shone brighter, have been led 
>From cause to cause to nature's secret head,
And found that one first Principle must be. . . ." 

It is called "Substance-Principle," for it becomes "substance" on the
plane of the manifested Universe, an illusion, while it remains a
"principle" in the beginningless and endless abstract, visible and
invisible SPACE. It is the omnipresent Reality: impersonal, because it
contains all and everything. Its impersonality is the fundamental
conception of the System. It is latent in every atom in the Universe,
and is the Universe itself. (See in chapters on Symbolism, "Primordial
Substance, and Divine Thought.") 


CYCLIC MANIFESTATION


(3.) The Universe is the periodical manifestation of this unknown
Absolute Essence. To call it "essence," however, is to sin against the
very spirit of the philosophy. For though the noun may be derived in
this case from the verb esse, "to be," yet IT cannot be identified with
a being of any kind, that can be conceived by human intellect. IT is
best described as neither Spirit nor matter, but both. "Parabrahmam and
Mulaprakriti" are One, in reality, yet two in the Universal conception
of the manifested, even in the conception of the One Logos, its first
manifestation, to which, as the able lecturer in the "Notes on the
Bhagavad Gita" shows, IT appears from the objective standpoint of the
One Logos as Mulaprakriti and not as Parabrahmam; as its veil and not
the one REALITY hidden behind, which is unconditioned and absolute. 



TEMPORARY - ILLUSION -- MAYA


(4.) The Universe is called, with everything in it, MAYA, because all is
temporary therein, from the ephemeral life of a fire-fly to that of the
Sun. Compared to the eternal immutability of the ONE, and the
changelessness of that Principle, the Universe, with its evanescent
ever-changing forms, must be necessarily, in the mind of a philosopher,
no better than a will-o'-the-wisp. Yet, the Universe is real enough to
the conscious beings in it, which are as unreal as it is itself. 


CONSCIOUSNESS -- INTELLIGENCE IS UNIVERSAL


(5.) Everything in the Universe, throughout all its kingdoms, is
CONSCIOUS: i.e., endowed with a consciousness of its own kind and on its
own plane of perception. We men must remember that because we do not
perceive any signs-which we can recognise-of consciousness, say, in
stones, we have no right to say that no consciousness exists there.
There is no such thing as either "dead" or "blind" matter, as there is
no "Blind" or "Unconscious" Law. These find no place among the
conceptions of Occult philosophy. The latter never stops at surface
appearances, and for it the noumenal essences have more reality than
their objective counterparts; it resembles therein the mediaeval
Nominalists, for whom it was the Universals that were the realities and
the particulars which existed only in name and human fancy. 



INNER "SPIRIT" IS ALWAYS ACTIVE


(6.) The Universe is worked and guided from within outwards. As above so
it is below, as in heaven so on earth; and man-the microcosm and
miniature copy of the macrocosm-is the living witness to this Universal
Law, and to the mode of its action. We see that every external motion,
act, gesture, whether voluntary or mechanical, organic or mental, is
produced and preceded by internal feeling or emotion, will or volition,
and thought or mind. As no outward motion or change, when normal, in
man's external body can take place unless provoked by an inward impulse,
given through one of the three functions named, so with the external or
manifested Universe. 


DEGREES OF INTELLIGENCE AND POWER


The whole Kosmos is guided, controlled, and animated by almost endless
series of Hierarchies of sentient Beings, each having a mission to
perform, and who-whether we give to them one name or another, and call
them Dhyan-Chohans or Angels-are "messengers" in the sense only that
they are the agents of Karmic and Cosmic Laws. 

They vary infinitely in their respective degrees of consciousness and
intelligence; and to call them all pure Spirits without any of the
earthly alloy "which time is wont to prey upon" is only to indulge in
poetical fancy. For each of these Beings either was, or prepares to
become, a man, if not in the present, then in a past or a coming cycle
(Manvantara). 

They are perfected, when not incipient, men; and differ morally from the
terrestrial human beings on their higher (less material) spheres, only
in that they are devoid of the feeling of personality and of the human
emotional nature-two purely earthly characteristics. 

The former, or the "perfected," have become free from those feelings,
because (a) they have no longer fleshly bodies-an ever-numbing weight on
the Soul; and (b) the pure spiritual element being left untrammelled and
more free, they are less influenced by maya than man can ever be, unless
he is an adept who keeps his two personalities-the spiritual and the
physical-entirely separated. 

The incipient monads, having never had terrestrial bodies yet, can have
no sense of personality or EGO-ism. That which is meant by
"personality," being a limitation and a relation, or, as defined by
Coleridge, "individuality existing in itself but with a nature as a
ground," the term cannot of course be applied to non-human entities;
but, as a fact insisted upon by generations of Seers, none of these
Beings, high or low, have either individuality or personality as
separate Entities, i.e., they have no individuality in the sense in
which a man says, "I am myself and no one else;" in other words, they
are conscious of no such distinct separateness as men and things have on
earth. 

Individuality is the characteristic of their respective hierarchies, not
of their units; and these characteristics vary only with the degree of
the plane to which those hierarchies belong: the nearer to the region of
Homogeneity and the One Divine, the purer and the less accentuated that
individuality in the Hierarchy. 

They are finite, in all respects, with the exception of their higher
principles-the immortal sparks reflecting the universal divine
flame-individualized and separated only on the spheres of Illusion by a
differentiation as illusive as the rest. 

They are "Living Ones," because they are the streams projected on the
Kosmic screen of illusion from the ABSOLUTE LIFE; beings in whom life
cannot become extinct, before the fire of ignorance is extinct in those
who sense these "Lives." 

Having sprung into being under the quickening influence of the uncreated
beam, the reflection of the great Central Sun that radiates on the
shores of the river of Life, it is the inner principle in them which
belongs to the waters of immortality, while its differentiated clothing
is as perishable as man's body. Therefore Young was right in saying that


"Angels are men of a superior kind" 

and no more. They are neither "ministering" nor "protecting" angels; nor
are they "Harbingers of the Most High" still less the "Messengers of
wrath" of any God such as man's fancy has created. 

To appeal to their protection is as foolish as to believe that their
sympathy may be secured by any kind of propitiation; for they are, as
much as man himself is, the slaves and creatures of immutable Karmic and
Kosmic law. The reason for it is evident.

Having no elements of personality in their essence they can have no
personal qualities, such as attributed by men, in their exoteric
religions, to their anthropomorphic God-a jealous and exclusive God who
rejoices and feels wrathful, is pleased with sacrifice, and is more
despotic in his vanity than any finite foolish man. 


MAN - HIS COMPOSITION AND POTENCY


Man, as shown in Book II., being a compound of the essences of all those
celestial Hierarchies may succeed in making himself, as such, superior,
in one sense, to any hierarchy or class, or even combination of them.
"Man can neither propitiate nor command the Devas," it is said. 


MAN'S PROGRESS


But, by paralyzing his lower personality, and arriving thereby at the
full knowledge of the non-separateness of his higher SELF from the One
absolute SELF, man can, even during his terrestrial life, become as "One
of Us." Thus it is, by eating of the fruit of knowledge which dispels
ignorance, that man becomes like one of the Elohim or the Dhyanis; and
once on their plane the Spirit of Solidarity and perfect Harmony, which
reigns in every Hierarchy, must extend over him and protect him in every
particular. 

The chief difficulty which prevents men of science from believing in
divine as well as in nature Spirits is their materialism. The main
impediment before the Spiritualist which hinders him from believing in
the same, while preserving a blind belief in the "Spirits" of the
Departed, is the general ignorance of all, except some Occultists and
Kabalists, about the true essence and nature of matter. It is on the
acceptance or rejection of the theory of the Unity of all in Nature, in
its ultimate Essence, that mainly rests the belief or unbelief in the
existence around us of other conscious beings besides the Spirits of the
Dead. 


EVOLUTION IS UNIVERSAL


It is on the right comprehension of the primeval Evolution of
Spirit-Matter and its real essence that the student has to depend for
the further elucidation in his mind of the Occult Cosmogony, and for the
only sure clue which can guide his subsequent studies. 

In sober truth, as just shown, every "Spirit" so-called is either a
disembodied or a future man. As from the highest Archangel (Dhyan
Chohan) down to the last conscious "Builder" (the inferior class of
Spiritual Entities), all such are men, having lived aeons ago, in other
Manvantaras, on this or other Spheres; so the inferior, semi-intelligent
and non-intelligent Elementals-are all future men. That fact alone-that
a Spirit is endowed with intelligence-is a proof to the Occultist that
that Being must have been a man, and acquired his knowledge and
intelligence throughout the human cycle. 


UNITY - ONENESS


There is but one indivisible and absolute Omniscience and Intelligence
in the Universe, and this thrills throughout every atom and
infinitesimal point of the whole finite Kosmos which hath no bounds, and
which people call SPACE, considered independently of anything contained
in it. But the first differentiation of its reflection in the manifested
World is purely Spiritual, and the Beings generated in it are not
endowed with a consciousness that has any relation to the one we
conceive of. They can have no human consciousness or Intelligence before
they have acquired such, personally and individually. This may be a
mystery, yet it is a fact, in Esoteric philosophy, and a very apparent
one too. 


PROGRESS IS UNIVERSAL IN NATURE


The whole order of nature evinces a progressive march towards a higher
life. There is design in the action of the seemingly blindest forces.
The whole process of evolution with its endless adaptations is a proof
of this. The immutable laws that weed out the weak and feeble species,
to make room for the strong, and which ensure the "survival of the
fittest," though so cruel in their immediate action-all are working
toward the grand end. The very fact that adaptations do occur, that the
fittest do survive in the struggle for existence, shows that what is
called "unconscious Nature"* is in reality an aggregate of forces
manipulated 

* Nature taken in its abstract sense, cannot be "unconscious," as it is
the emanation from, and thus an aspect (on the manifested plane) of the
ABSOLUTE consciousness. Where is that daring man who would presume to
deny to vegetation and even to minerals a consciousness of their own.
All he can say is, that this consciousness is beyond his comprehension. 
-----------------------------------------------------------

by semi-intelligent beings (Elementals) guided by High Planetary
Spirits, (Dhyan Chohans), whose collective aggregate forms the
manifested verbum of the unmanifested LOGOS, and constitutes at one and
the same time the MIND of the Universe and its immutable LAW. 


PAST -- PRESENT -- FUTURE


Three distinct representations of the Universe in its three distinct
aspects are impressed upon our thought by the esoteric philosophy: the
PRE-EXISTING (evolved from) the EVER-EXISTING; and the PHENOMENAL-the
world of illusion, the reflection, and shadow thereof. During the great
mystery and drama of life known as the Manvantara, real Kosmos is like
the object placed behind the white screen upon which are thrown the
Chinese shadows, called forth by the magic lantern. The actual figures
and things remain invisible, while the wires of evolution are pulled by
the unseen hands; and men and things are thus but the reflections, on
the white field, of the realities behind the snares of Mahamaya, or the
great Illusion. This was taught in every philosophy, in every religion,
ante as well as post diluvian, in India and Chaldea, by the Chinese as
by the Grecian Sages. In the former countries these three Universes were
allegorized, in exoteric teachings, by the three trinities emanating
from the Central eternal germ and forming with it a Supreme Unity: the
initial, the manifested, and the Creative Triad, or the three in One.
The last is but the symbol, in its concrete expression, of the first
ideal two. Hence Esoteric philosophy passes over the necessarianism of
this purely metaphysical conception, and calls the first one, only, the
Ever Existing. This is the view of every one of the six great schools of
Indian philosophy-the six principles of that unit body of WISDOM of
which the "gnosis," the hidden knowledge, is the seventh. 
S D I 272-278


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Best wishes, as always,

Dallas


-----Original Message-----
From: Etzion Becker [mailto:etvionbb@netvision.net.il] 
Sent: Friday, March 05, 2004 8:21 PM
To: study@blavatsky.net
Subject: [bn-study] Re: Illusion?

It is that actually everything is inside us. If you look at things,
where do
you see them? Out there? How do you know? We have built a mechanism that
translates the impulses that our senses deliver to the brain as *out
there*.
This is illusion within illusion. When I see *you*, it is because you
reside
inside my self, and I reside within you. When I see the landscape, it is
a
projection of my inner self, it actually exists within myself and us.
All
this means that we are actually ONE; Illusion causes us to think this
way.
Etzion
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gopi Chari" <ekcvv@juno.com>
To: <study@blavatsky.net>
Sent: Friday, March 05, 2004 5:28 PM
Subject: [bn-study] Re: Illusion?


> Zack,
>
> What you say is lovely!
> The next level is to see the opposites as one, that is the true
beauty.
> To hear the noises of a city and the serenity at the same time and to
> hear the same beauty is apparently where it is at. That may be the
Flute
> of Krishna!
>
> That may eventually lead to seeing God in both Good and Evil. Then we
can
> see the same in the Victim as well as the Criminal.
> That is Forgiveness, Forgiving myself. Then there is no trace of
criminal
> in me.
>
> Gopi
>
> ---
> Distributed by Reed Carson P.O. Box 160 Windham NY 12496 USA
> You are currently subscribed to bn-study as:
[etvionbb@netvision.net.il]
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>



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