Theos-Talk Archives (April 2004 Message tt00461)

I tried to reply for your email but there was a problem:
Message from yahoo.com.
Unable to deliver message to the following address(es).
<sirrobertcorrington@yahoo.com>:
64.156.215.6 failed after I sent the message.
Remote host said: 554 delivery error: dd Sorry your message to 
sirrobertcorrington@yahoo.com cannot be delivered. This account has 
been disabled or discontinued [#102]. - mta239.mail.scd.yahoo.com

So I am posting my answer here in the group:

Dear Professor,

Thank you for your reply!

"I do believe that we are involutionary souls seeking a 
return to the source or lost object, but the pain seems to outweight 
the joy in the process. I suspect that there is an explanation for 
this, but it hasn't quite landed on my door step yet."

It's a paradox involution and evolution. If life is the 
manifestation of the divine, and this divine is perfect and pure, 
what would be the purpose of manifestation? What would be the 
purpose of our struggles? To reconnect with the divine that once we 
where connected? 

Or there will be not in the universe a static condition and even our 
higher principles would also evolutes and goes through changes? 
Consequently would not exist an ultimate divine, perfect and 
unchangeable stage. 

"The early Buddhism of the Pali texts teaches that in the whole 
empirical reality there is nowhere anything that persists; neither 
material nor mental substances exist independently by themselves; 
there is no original entity or primordial Being in whatsoever form 
it may be imagined, from which these substances might have 
developed." Helmuth Von Glasenapp

Or our higher principles are perfect and do not goes through changes 
and we have to reconnect ourselves to them? The manifestation of 
life in the physical plane would cause a disconnection with the 
divine principles, and we would have to return to our primitive 
stage of union with the divine. Would this divine imply in a 
transcendental existence?

"The early Vedanta formulated an ens realissimum (an entity of 
highest reality) as the primordial cause of all existence, from 
which everything has arisen and with which it again merges, either 
temporarily or for ever." Helmuth Von Glasenapp

Both of the theories might contain relatives truths, but I am more 
inclined into the Buddhist theory, that seems to be more logical. 
For how what is perfect in its very essence could manifest imperfect 
aspects, that would be struggling to reconnect with it's own perfect 
source again?

By the way I would like to read some of your books, but the prices 
are quite spice...

Best regards,

Erica Letzerich

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, Erica Letzerich <eletzerich@y...> 
wrote:

Erica,

For some reason, my lengthy reply to your posting never made it 
onto the group posting. I will try again with a slightly shorter 
post. Plotinus is indeed fascinating because he seems caught 
between a vision of pure light in Nous and a strong abjection of 
matter and the body--which he locates in the realm of nonbeing and 
evil. My students prefer the thought of Meister Eckhart, which is 
more incarnational and gathers up the foundlings of space, time, and 
causality into the feminine power of the divine (die Gottheit). 
I think that theosophy in general is uncomfortable with embodiment. 
While in Adyar I argued for the inclusion of psychoanalysis (Freud, 
Jung, and Wilhelm Reich) in the analysis of the various dimensions 
of the self. Or, put in other terms, some of the flights of fancy 
of esoteric psychology (one thinks of Steiner here) need to be 
balanced by a serious study of the body, the unconscious, and the 
nature of desire.
Your question vexes me as well; namely, why does the dialectic of 
involution and evolution play itself out the way that it does? The 
neo-Darwinian systhesis (genetics added to natural selection, random 
variation, adaptation, and, more rarely, self-organization) tells us 
about the losses suffered in getting here, but not about, of course, 
the reasons. I do believe that we are involutionary souls seeking a 
return to the source or lost object, but the pain seems to outweight 
the joy in the process. I suspect that there is an explanation for 
this, but it hasn't quite landed on my door step yet.

Robert S. Corrington 
> 
> 
> Only when the mind is free of desire to achieve
> something to get a result, consequently free of fear
> can reach a complete state of quietness and silence.
> Only them it's possible to access what Plato says as
> the eternal and abstract ideals. But for the mind to
> be free of desire has to be identified with it's
> higher principles.
> 
> "Thus assuredly Sense-Perception,
> Discursive-Reasoning; and all our ordinary mentation
> are foreign to the Soul: for sensation is a receiving-
> whether of an Ideal-Form or of an impassive body- and
> reasoning and all ordinary mental action deal with
> sensation." Plotinus
> 
> How to be unidentified with the senses of perception?
> Through meditation? If the process of meditation is
> moved by desire to achieve such stage, the very
> process is condemned before even to begin. So which
> inner movement would make possible the higher
> principles to be reflected through the lower?
> 
> Plotinus mentions that the first virtue that one has
> to develop is purification. Purification in which
> level? Apparently in the discourse of Plotinus, the
> purification of the mind, that would be reflected into
> the emotions and consequently reflected as well in the
> physical body as a consequence of self control and
> self knowledge.
> 
> There is an obvious blending between body, emotion and
> mind we could see it technically as separate elements.
> In this sense the body the emotions and the thoughts
> are no more than facets of the sense perceptions that
> one acquires into life.
> 
> But if the higher principles are pure as Plato,
> Plotinus and Blavatsky mentioned, and within it
> contains all the wisdom and it's united with the
> eternal what is the purpose of the manifestation of
> life in the physical plane?
> 
> That question may constitute one of the human
> tragedies because there is no answer. 
> 
> What is the purpose of the manifestation of life in
> the world of form? Some theosophists are going easy to
> give an answer, EVOLUTION! 
> 
> So what would be the nature of Atma and Buddhi? 
> 
> Erica Letzerich
> 
> 
> =====
> Erica Letzerich
> ICQ- 16621711 
> "The Truth will set you free, but first will make you miserable"
> 
> 
>