Theos-Talk Archives (May 2004 Message tt00176)

May 20 2004



Some quotes from THEOSOPHY on "Initiation."



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I N I T I A T I O N, M A H A T M A S, A D E P T S 






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MAHATMA





"A visitor from one of the other planets of the solar system who might
learn the term Mahatma after arriving here would cer-tainly suppose
that the etymology of the word undoubtedly in-spired the believers in
Mahatmas with the devotion, fearlessness, hope, and energy which such
an ideal should arouse in those who have the welfare of the human race
at heart...The whole sweep, meaning, and possibility of evolution are
contained in the word Mahatma. Maha is "great," Atma is "soul," and
both compounded into one mean those great souls who have triumphed
before us not because they are made of different stuff and are of some
strange family, but just because they are of the human race.



Reincarnation, karma, the sevenfold division, retribution, reward,
struggle, failure, success, illumination, power, and a vast embracing
love for man, all these lie in that single word.



The soul emerges from the unknown, begins to work in and with matter,
is reborn again and again, makes karma, develops the 6 vehicles for
itself, meets retribution for sin and punishment for mistake, grows
strong by suffering, succeeds in bursting through the gloom, is
enlightened by true illumination, grasps power, retains charity,
expands with love for orphaned humanity, and thenceforth helps all
others who remain in darkness until all may be raised up to the place
with the "Father in Heaven" who is the Higher Self." WQJ --
ART. II, p. 39-40







SPIRITUAL STAR OF THE SOUL





"...every class of adept has its own bond of spiritual communion...by
bringing oneself within the influence of the Spiritual light which
radiates from one's own Logos. ... such communion is only possible
between persons whose souls derive their life and sustenance from the
same divine RAY, and that, as seven distinct rays radiate from the
'Central Spiritual Sun,' all adepts and Dhyan Chohans are divisible
into seven classes, each of which is guided, controlled, and
overshadowed by one of the seven forms or manifestations of the divine
Wisdom."

S Row quoted by HPB, SD I 574.







ATTUNING ONE'S CONSCIOUSNESS TO THE SEVEN CHORDS





"... Whenever you are able to attune your consciousness to any of the
seven chords of 'Universal Consciousness,' those chords that run along
the sounding-board of Kosmos, vibrating from one Eternity to another;
when you have studied thoroughly 'the music of the Spheres," then only
will you become quite free to share your knowledge with those with
whom it is safe to do so. ... Do not give out the great Truths that
are the inherit-ance of the future Races, to our present generation.
Do not attempt to unveil the secret of being and non-being to those
unable to see the hidden meaning of Apollo's HEPTACHORD--the lyre of
the radiant god, in each of the seven strings of which dwel-leth the
Spirit, Soul and Astral body of the Kosmos, whose shell only has now
fallen into the hands of Modern Science..."

S D I 167











ADEPT LIVES TO SERVE THE WORLD





"[The Adept]...serves humanity and identifies himself with the whole
world; he is ready to make vicarious sacrifice for it at any
moment--by living not by dying for it. Why should he not die for it?
Because he is part of the whole, and one of the most valuable parts of
it. Because he lives under laws of order which he does not desire to
break. His life is not his own, but that of the forces which work
behind him. He is the flower of humani-ty, the bloom which contains
the divine seed. He is, in his own person, a treasure of the
universal nature. which is guarded and made safe in order that the
fruition shall be perfected. It is only at definite periods of the
world's history that he is al-lowed to go among the herd of men as
their redeemer." LIGHT ON THE PATH p. 72-3







SECLUSION OF THE ADEPT





"Through all time the wise men have lived apart from the mass. [ That
the chief body of these wise ones should be under-stood to dwell
beyond the fastnesses of the Himalayas...p. 70 ] And even when some
temporary purpose or object induces one of them to come into the midst
of human life, his seclusion and safety is preserved as completely as
ever... they are only known as mystics by those who have the power to
recognize; the power given by the conquering of self. Otherwise how
could they exist, even for an hour, in such a mental and psychic
atmosphere as is created by the confusion and disorder of a city ?
Unless pro-tected and made safe their own growth would be interfered
with, their work injured. And the neophyte may meet an adept in the
flesh, may live in the same house with him, and yet be unable to
recognize him, and unable to make his own voice heard by him... No
voice penetrates to his inner hearing till it has become a divine
voice, a voice which gives no utterance to the cries of self... Until
a man has become, in heart and spirit a disciple, he has no existence
for those who are teachers of disciples. And he becomes this by one
method only--the surrender of his personal humanity." L ON P
p. 74-5







"If, for generations we have "shut out the world from the Knowledge of
our Knowledge," it is on account of its absolute unfitness; and if,
notwithstanding proofs given, it still refus-es yielding to evidence,
then will we at the End of this cycle retire into solitude and our
kingdom of silence once more...We have offered to exhume the primeval
strata of man's being, his basic nature, and lay bare the wonderful
complications or his inner Self...and demonstrate it
scientifically...It is our mis-sion to plunge and bring the pearls of
Truth to the surface...For countless generations hath the adept
builded a fane of imperish-able rocks, a giant's Tower of Infinite
Thought, wherein the Titan dwelt, and will yet, if need be, dwell
alone, emerging from it but at the end of every cycle, to invite the
elect of mankind to co-operate with him and help in his turn enlighten
supersti-tious man. And we will go on in that periodical work of
ours; we will not allow ourselves to be baffled in our philanthropic
attempts until that day when the foundations of a new continent of
thought are so firmly built that no amount of opposition and ignorant
malice guided by the Brethren of the Shadow will be found to prevail."
M L p. 50-1







TRANSITION CYCLE





"We are the bottom of a cycle and evidently in a transitory state,
Plato divides the intellectual progress of the universe during every
cycle into fertile and barren periods...We are in a barren period the
eighteenth century during which the malignant fever of skepticism
broke out so irrepressibly, has entailed unbelief as an hereditary
disease upon the nineteenth. The divine intellect is veiled in man;
his animal brain alone phi-losophizes." ISIS I 247

[WQJ I 211, LET 71-2, OCEAN 4, 50 55, 126, IS II 366-9] 







"...I told you long ago to expect many and great disturbanc-es of all
kinds as one cycle was closing and the other beginning its fateful
activities. You already see in the seismological phenomena of late
occurrence some of the proof; you will see a great many more and
shortly..." M L 396







HARMONY OF THE ADEPT - CHELA





"...an adept may be compared to that one key which contains all the
keys in the great harmony of nature. He has the synthe-sis of all
keys in his thoughts, whereas the ordinary man has the same key as a
basis, but only acts and thinks on one or a few changes of this great
key, producing in his brain only a few chords out of the whole great
possible harmony...the brain of the chela is attuned by training to
the brain of the Master. His vibrations synchronize with those of the
Adept...so the chela's brain is abnormal...(425) ...the adept sees all
the colors in every color and yet does not confuse them together...the
highest adepts [ have raised their vibrations so as to have them the
same as those of nature as a whole ]...He can produce a sound which
will alter a color. It is the sound which produces the color, and not
the other or opposite. By correlating the vibrations of a sound in
the proper way a new color is made...on the astral plane every sound
always produces a color...these are invisible because not yet
correlated by the human brain so as to become visible on the earth
plane....His astral senses may see the true color, but the physical
eye has its own vibrations, and these, being on the outer plane,
overcome the others for the time, and the astral man is compelled to
report to the brain that it saw correctly. For in each case the outer
stimulus is sent to the inner man, who then is forced, as it were, to
accept the message and to confirm it for the time so far as it goes.
But there are cases where the inner man is able to even then overcome
the outer defect and to make the brain see the difference...."


WQJ ARTICLES, Vol. I, p. 423-426.







DAILY AND HOURLY INITIATIONS -- TESTS OF DAILY LIFE





"It is supposed by some that initiation is always and in every case a
set and solemn occasion for which the candidate is prepared and
notified in advance. While there are some initia-tions surrounded by
such solemnities as these, the daily one, without success in which no
aspirant will ever have the chance to try for those that are higher,
comes to the disciple with almost each moment. It is met in our
relations with our fellows, and in the effects upon us of all the
circumstances of life. And if we fail in these, we never get to the
point where greater ones are offered. If we cannot bear momentary
defeat, or if a chance word that strikes our self-love finds us
unprepared, or if we give way to the desire to harshly judge others,
or if we remain in igno-rance of some of our most apparent faults, we
do not build up that knowledge and strength imperatively demanded from
whoever is to be master of nature."
WQJ ART II 497-8







MOMENTS OF CHOICE





"It is in the life of every one to have a moment of choice, but that
moment is not set for any particular day. It is the sum total of all
days; and it may be put off until the day of death, and then it is
beyond our power, for the choice has been fixed by all the acts and
thoughts of the lifetime. We are self-doomed at that hour to just the
sort of life, body, environment, and ten-dencies which will best carry
out our karma. This is a thing solemn enough, and one that makes the
"daily initiation" of the very greatest importance to each earnest
student." WQJ ART II 497-8







UNIVERSE OF CONSCIOUSNESS -- RANGE OF THE INITIATE





"That High Spirits work on Earth in bodies of men, while those spirits
are still in the highest spheres [ see SD I 233-4 &fn, 235fn ]...it is
clearly explained that the author [HPB] does not mean that which is
called among the spiritualists "control" of mediums by a spirit, but
the actual continuance of the status and functions of the incarnated
spirit in the supersensuous regions, while actually using as its own
and working in a mortal envelope on earth. So that, according to her,
there are certain persons on this earth, living and working as
ordinary human beings and members of society. whose informing divine
part is so immeasurably high in development that they as such high
beings have a definite status and function in the "supersensuous
re-gions." 



We should say...that she herself was such a case, and that "H.P.B.,"
whether hourly in the day and night when all around was still, had a
status and functions" in their spheres where she consciously carried
on the work of that high station, whatever it was. 



There were many events in her daily life known to those who were
intimate with her that this hint may reveal, or at least shed much
light upon. And in one of her letters the sentence appears--in
substance--"The difference between you and me is that you are not
conscious except at day, while I am conscious day and night, and have
much to do and to endure in both of these exist-ences from which you,
being thus half-conscious, are happily saved."



In the Hindu books and teachings there is a reference to this when the
speak of high gnanees--that is, persons full of knowledge and
spiritual power--being attracted to this earth by certain acts and at
certain times in the history of nation, race or city."
"Hidden Hints in the S. D." WQJ Art I 615-6







"If it is true that "the whole universe is an aggregate of states of
consciousness," it would seem to follow that the real difference
between one who is an initiate and one who is not lies in the fact
that the former looks at all things from a totally different stand
point to the majority of men...that he is on a higher plane of
consciousness altogether. If such a higher plane has been attained,
it will follow that his whole range of ideas will differ from that of
others and he will be sensible of the operation of causes of a more
far-reaching character than those cognized by others. He will be as
it were in the possession of higher and superior information and so
will be able to form juster conclusions and this fact alone will give
him enormous power." Theos.. Art. & Notes, p. 60







"The action of the entire universe is but a detailed mani-festation
and example of the action of mind on matter, governed at the highest
point by the action of the universal mind. Bet-ween the finite human
mind of the ordinary uninitiated individual and this universal mind
lie an infinite number of gradually ascending degrees, and the higher
the plane of consciousness the nearer is the approach to the universal
mind which is, as it were, the mainspring of the whole." --"Alpha"
THEOS ART & NOTES, p. 60-1







MAN'S EGO -- ATMA-BUDDHI -- A RAY OF UNIVERSAL MIND





"This is precisely what occult philosophy claims: our Ego is a ray of
the Universal Mind, individualized for the space of a cosmic
life-cycle, during which space of time it gets experience in almost
numberless reincarnations or rebirths, after which it returns to its
Parent-Source.



"The Occultist would call the "Higher Ego" the immortal Entity, whose
shadow and reflection is the human Manas, the mind, limited by its
physical senses. The two may be well compared to the Master-artist
and the pupil-musician. 



"In the course of natural evolution our "brain-mind" will be replaced
by a finer organism, and helped by the 6th and the 7th senses.



"The "sensing principle" in us is an entity capable of acting outside
as inside its material body; and it is certainly independent of any
organ in particular, in its actions, although during its incarnation
it manifests itself through its physical organs. T A &
N 208-9







MEMORY is impressed in IMPERISHABLE WAVES OF ASTRAL LIGHT





"Our "memory" is but a general agent, and its "tablets," with their
indelible impressions, but a figure of speech; the "brain-tablets"
serve only as a upadhi or a vahan (basis or vehicle) for reflecting at
a given moment the memory of one or another thing. The records of
past events, of even minutest action, and of passing thoughts, in
fact, are really impressed on the imperishable waves of the ASTRAL
LIGHT, around us and every-where, not in the brain alone; and these
mental pictures, im-ages, and sounds, pass from these waves via the
consciousness of the personal Ego or Mind (the lower Manas) whose
grosser essence is astral, into the "cerebral reflectors," so to say,
or our brain, whence they are delivered by the psychic to the sensuous
consciousness. This at every moment of the day, and even during
sleep." HPB FOOTNOTE IN LUCIFER THEOS ART & NOTES, p. 208-9







PURE MIND GUIDE OF THE HIGHEST FACULTIES





"..."Mind" is manas, or rather its lower reflection, which whenever it
disconnects itself, for the time being, with kama, becomes the guide
of the highest mental faculties, and is the organ of the free-will in
physical man...." HPB
ARTICLES, Vol. II, p. 13





"Mankind usually receives a thousand impressions through the senses to
one through the spiritual nature. Adeptship means reversing the
proportion." -- H.S.Olcott PATH 3, 109







ABOUT H.P.B. An ADEPT





W.Q.Judge: "In 1875, in the City of New York, I first met H.P.B.
in this life...It was her eye that attracted me, the eye of one whom I
must have known in lives long passed away. She looked at me in
recognition at that first hour, and never since has that look
changed...Not as a questioner of philosophies did I come before
her...but as one, wandering many periods through the corridors of
life, was seeking the friends who could show where the designs for the
work had been hidden. And true to the call she responded, revealing
the plans once again, and speaking no words to explain, simply pointed
then out and went on with the task. It was as if but the evening
before we had parted, leaving yet to be done some detail of a task
taken up with one common end; it was teacher and pupil, elder brother
and younger, both bent on the one single end, but she with the power
and the knowl-edge that belong but to lions and sages.



Others I know have looked with suspicion on an appearance they could
not fathom, and though it is true they adduce many proofs which hugged
to the breast, would damn sages and gods, yet it is only through
blindness they failed to see the lion's glance, the diamond heart of
H.P.B...she was laying down the lines of force all over the land...



The explanation has been offered by some too anxious friends that the
earlier phenomena were mistakes in judgment, attempted to be rectified
in later years by confining their area and limit-ing their number,
but...I shall hold to her own explanation made in advance and never
changed. That I have given above. For it is easier to take refuge
behind a charge of bad judgment than to understand the strange and
powerful laws which control in matters such as these.



Amid all the turmoil of her life, above all the din produced by those
who charged her with deceit and fraud and others who defended, while
month after month, and year after year, witnessed men and women
entering the theosophical movement only to leave it soon with
malignant phrases for H.P.B., there stands a fact we all might
consider--devotion absolute to her Master. "It was He," she writes,
"who told me to devote myself to this, and I will never disobey and
never turn back."...



.she ever was devoted to Theosophy and the Society organ-ized to carry
out a programme embracing the world in its scope. Willing in the
service of the cause to offer up hope, money, reputation, life itself,
provided the Society might be saved from every hurt, whether small or
great. And thus bound body and soul to this entity called the T. S.,
bound to protect it at all hazards, and in the face of every loss, she
often incurred the resentment of many who became her friends but would
not always care for the infant organization as she had sworn to do.
And when they acted as it opposed to the Society, her instant
opposi-tion seemed to them to nullify professions of friendship. Thus
she had but few friends, for it required a keen insight, untinged with
personal feeling, to see even a small part of the real
H.P.Blavatsky...



She worked under directors who, operating from behind the scene, knew
that the T. S. was, and was to be, the nucleus from which help might
be spread to all the people of the day, without thanks and without
acknowledgment...I asked her what was the chance of drawing people
into the Society...she said:--



"When you consider those days in 1875 and after, in which you could
not find any people interested in your thoughts, and now look at the
wide-spreading influence of theosophical ideas--however labeled--it is
not so bad. We are not working that people may call them-selves
Theosophists, but that the doctrines we cherish may affect and leaven
the whole mind of this century. This alone can be accomplished by a
small earnest band of workers, who work for no human reward, no
earthly recognition, but who, supported and sustained by a belief in
that Universal Brotherhood of which our Masters are a part, work
steadily, faithfully, in understanding and putting forth for
consideration the doctrines of life and duty that have come down to us
from immemorial time. Falter not so long as a few devoted ones will
work to keep the nucleus existing. You were not directed to found and
realise a Universal Brotherhood, but to form the nucleus for one; for
it is only when the nucleus it formed that the accumulations can begin
that will end in future years, however far, in the formation of that
body which we have in view."



H.P.B. had a lion heart, and on the work traced out for her she had a
lion's grasp, let us...sustain ourselves in carrying out the designs
laid down on the trestle-board, by the memory of her devotion and the
consciousness that behind her task stood, and still remain, those
Elder Brothers who, above the clatter and the din of our battle, ever
see the end and direct the forces distributed in array for the
salvation of "that great orphan--Humanity." 

W. Q. Judge "Yours till Death and After, H.P.B..."
Judge Articles, II p. 1







"...in 1875 she told me that she was then embarking on a work that
would draw upon her unmerited slander, implacable malice,
uninterrupted misunderstanding, constant work, and no worldly reward.
Yet in the face of this her lion heart carried her on...Much has been
said of her "phenomena," some denying them, others alleging trick and
device. Knowing her for so many years so well, and having seen at her
hands in private the pro-duction of more and more varied phenomena
that it has been the good fortune of all others of her friends put
together to seem I know for myself that she had control of hidden
powerful laws of nature not known to our science, and I also know that
she never boasted of her powers, never advertised their possession,
never publicly advised anyone to attempt their acquirement, but always
turned the eyes of those who could understand her to a life of
altruism based on a knowledge of true philosophy.



If the world thinks that her days were spent in deluding her followers
by pretended phenomena, it is solely because her injudicious friends,
against her expressed wish, gave out wonder-ful stories of her
"miracles" which can not be proved to a skep-tical public and which
are not the aim of the Society nor were ever more than mere incidents
in the life of H.P.Blavatsky.



Her aim was to elevate the race. Her method was to deal with the mind
of the century as she found it, by trying to lead it on step by step;
to seek out and educate a few who, appreci-ating the majesty of the
Secret Science and devoted to "the great orphan Humanity," could carry
on her work with zeal and wisdom; to found a Society whose
efforts--however small itself might be--would inject into the thought
of the day the ideas, the doctrines, the nomenclature of the Wisdom
Religion, so that when the next century shall have seen its 75th years
the new messenger coming again into the world would find the Society
still at work, the ideas sown broadcast, the nomenclature ready to
give expres-sion and body to the immutable truth, and thus to make
easy the task which for her since 1875 was so difficult and so
encompassed with obstacles in the very paucity of the
language--obstacles harder than all else to work against."
W. Q. Judge

"H.P.B.--A Lion-hearted Colleague Passes" WQJ Articles
II p. 5







"This article is meant for members of the T.S...Those mem-bers who
believe that such beings as the Masters may exist must come to one of
two conclusions in regard to H.P.B.: either that she invented her
Masters, who therefore have no real existence, or that she did not
invent them but spoke in the names and by the orders of such beings.



If we say she invented the Mahatmas, then, of course, as so often was
said by her, all that she has taught and written is the product of her
own brain, from which we would be bound to con-clude that her position
on the roll of great and powerful persons must be higher than people
have been willing to place her.



But I take it most of us believe in the truth of her state-ment that
she had those teachers whom she called Masters and that they are more
powerful beings than ordinary men.



The case I wish to deal with...is this: H.P.B. and her relations to
the Masters and to us; her books and teachings; the general question
of disciples and chelas...Chelas and disci-ples are of many grades,
and some of the Adepts are themselves the chelas of higher
Adepts...[they are those who have] devoted himself or herself to the
service of mankind and the pursuit of knowledge of the Self...[Some]
have gained through knowledge and discipline those powers over mind,
matter, space, and time which to us are the glittering prizes of the
future...So much being laid down, we may next ask how we are to look
at H.P.B.



.every one has the right to place her if he pleases for himself on the
highest plane...But taking her own sayings, she was a chela or
disciple of the Masters, and therefore stood in relation to them as
one who might be chided or corrected or reproved. She called them her
Masters, and asseverated a devo-tion to their behests and a respect
and confidence in and for their utterances which the chelas has always
for one who is high enough to be his Master.



But looking at her powers exhibited to the world, and as to which one
of her Masters wrote that they had puzzled and aston-ished the
brightest minds of the age, we see that compared with ourselves she
was an Adept...



.Subba Row [said to the writer] in 1884: "The Mahatmas are in fact
some of the great Rishis and Sages of the past, and people have been
too much in the habit of lowering them to the petty standard of this
age." But with this reverence for her teachers she had for them at
the same time a love and friendship not often found on earth. All
this indicates her chelaship to Them, but in no way lowers her to us
or warrants us in deciding that we are right in a hurried or modern
judgment of her.



Now some Theosophist ask if there are other letters extant from her
Masters in which she is called to account, is called their chela, and
is chided now and then, besides those published. Perhaps yes. And
what of it ? Let them be published by all means, and let us have the
full and complete record of all let-ters sent during her life; those
put forward as dated after her death will count for naught...since the
Masters do not indulge in any criticisms on the disciples who have
gone from earth. As she has herself published letters and parts of
letters from the Masters to her in which she is called a chela and is
chided, it certainly matte if we know of others of the same sort.



For over against all such we have common sense, and also the
declarations of her Masters that she was the sole instrument possible
for the work to be done, that They sent her to do it, and that They
approved in general all she did. And she was the first direct channel
to and from the Lodge, and the only one to date through which came the
objective presence of the Adepts. We cannot ignore the messenger,
take the message, and laugh at or give scorn to the one who brought it
to us. There is nothing new in the idea that letters are still
unpublished wherein the Mas-ters put her below them, and there is no
cause for any apprehen-sion. But it certainly is true that not a
single such letter has anything in it putting her below us; she must
ever remain the greatest of the chelas...



There only remains...the position taken by some and without a
knowledge of the rules governing these matters, that chelas sometimes
write messages claimed to be from the Masters when they are not. this
is an artificial position not supportable by law or rule. It is due
to ignorance of what is and is not chelaship, and also to confusion
between grades in discipleship. It has been used as to H.P.B. The
false conclusion has first been made that an accepted chela of high
grade may become accustomed to dictation by the Master and then may
fall into the false pre-tense of giving something from himself and
pretending it is from the Master. It is impossible. The bond in her
case was not of such a character to be dealt with thus. One instance
of it would destroy the possibility of any more communication from the
teach-er. It may be quite true that probationers now and then have
imagined themselves as ordered to say so and so, but that is not the
case of an accepted and high chela who is irrevocably pledged...This
idea, then, ought to be abandoned; it is absurd, contrary to law, to
rule, and to what must be the case when such relations are established
as existed between H.P.B. and her Masters." W. Q. Judge

"Masters, Adepts, Teachers and Disciples" WQJ Art.
II p. 9



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Extracts offered by DTB 





Ten Avatars of Vishnu ISIS UNVEILED II 274, 300,535; Glos 44







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