Theos-Talk Archives (May 2004 Message tt00260)

May 31 2004

Dear Gopi:

I am puzzled by your recent statements, can you help me further? They
are :  

"BUDHI IS THE IMMORTAL EGO. Budhi cannot be described. It is
feeling, the accumulated experiences--all our experience is in
feeling. 

This implies that at the beginning of the Manvantara, the
Budhi is
empty. Then it starts accumulating. Unless we mean that
totally empty is
also totally full, this starts accumulating. At least it seems
to mean
that there is a starting and end point. Is this the meaning?"

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

How can there be for BUDDHI any "beginning or ending?" 

I reviewed the series of definitions offered from Theosophical
literature I had recently posted under 

ATMA -- BUDDHI -- MASTERS OF WISDOM -- ADEPTS

I do not see any which defines the "beginning" of Buddhi as limited to
this Manvantara. And like you I have also wondered why should it be
so? So I went in search of statements and ideas.

I do see some that maintain that Buddhi is an immortal part of the
ABSOLUTE, and that the MONAD (ATMA-BUDDHI) is imperishable.  

It also states that BUDDHI serves for us, (I mean our embodied mind)
as a link to the "ever-present and all-present" ABSOLUTE, itself. I
think we may safely say, so to speak, we are enveloped Kosmically and
individually by the ONE WHOLE ABSOLUTE DEIFIC ESSENCE -- unknowable to
us, and therefore represented in thought-definitions as: THE
ABSOLUTE.  

In another way, can we not say: "GOD, and its representative:
ATMA-BUDDHI (the MONAD) exists within each of us." It is the
ever-undefinable and ever-unlocatable FORCE- POWER that makes us a
"conscious and intelligent UNIT."

It, as a unit of consciousness, along with its SOURCE (ATMA),
apparently transcends the gulf of Pralaya as an entity, and as an
"immortal Pilgrim" it has in fact NO BEGINNING nor will it ever have
an end in "time." There is an endless succession of manvantaras and
pralayas and the limits of experience in terms of infinity cannot be
counted. [see what HPB says below]

What is there for us as a determinant? It is all in our MIND, We are
there the OBSERVER of all that happens in and around us, and from
those events we draw conclusions based on either: past experience
(memory), or our power of thinking (a creative potency). How can we
be fully sure of the accuracy of our "memory?" 

Only the PRESENT -- as we experience it, and , because the instant it
has "gone," we are plunged as mind beings, in the "next experience."


If we look on ourselves (and as in review) as an "ever-living center
of progressing CONSCIOUSNESS," we will see why it is that we have to
use such a successive series of physical bodies. They have a limited
life and wear out. THEOSOPHY teaches that between lives, the
accumulated true value of all our experiences is reviewed (Devachan),
and it becomes part of our true MORAL CHARACTER FOR THE NEXT LIFE OF
EXPERIENCES).

Why, even in this present life, we are continually changing and
altering the substance of our physical (and astral) bodies.

It (BUDDHI) as a principle, is an imperishable part of the ABSOLUTE
(as well as a link between the individualized "ray" of that ABSOLUTE
in us, and the MANASIC principle of mind in us. It is our "mind"
which links us with the Divine HIGHER SELF within us, {this Sri
Krishna as the Kshetrajna within), and the more objective collection
of our correlated "principles" (this would be as the disciple, the
"Arjuna" that we are, as objective persons) -- and finally, "The Inner
God" in each of us, is forced to manifests objectively, as it does in
the Intelligence that uses our present physical body. [Hence the kind
of dialog such as we read in the BHAGAVAD GITA -- between the HIGHER
SELF (Sri Krishna) and the 'embodied Self' (Arjuna). This is also
explained in TRANSACTIONS OF THE BLAVATSKY LODGE, pp. 65-6 as a
nightly event for all of us.]

It is for this reason, I believe, that THEOSOPHY says its (Buddhi)
existence is indefinite (from our point of view), and might be
described as "A PRESENCE" that endures through incalculable and
indefinable "duration, or, timeless-ness." Is this a "void?" Or is
it a "conditioned fulness?" I believe it is both. It is universal
KARMA working through us as one of its many "agents." We are all
parts of a greater WHOLE, and, for lesser beings we may appear to them
an image of "perfection." May we worthy of such trust and regard. [
In the SECRET DOCTRINE we are told ( Vol. I, pp. 613-634) that
individualized Monads emerge from the unconditioned Monadic Essence."
To these "Monads of lesser experience" -- which make up most of Nature
as we know and think of it -- may we appear as such "Gods."
But this is only my speculation.

HPB writes:

"I maintain as an occultist,.on the authority of the Secret Doctrine,
that though merged entirely into Parabrahm, man's spirit while not
individual per se, yet preserves its distinct individuality in
Paranirvana, owing to the accumulation in it of the aggregates, or
skandhas that have survived after each death, from the highest
faculties of the Manas.

The most spiritual--i.e., the highest and divinest aspirations of
every personality follow Buddhi and the Seventh Principle [the ATMIC
"ray"] into Devachan (Swarga) after the death of each personality
along the line of rebirths, and become part and parcel of the Monad. 

The personality fades out, disappearing before the occurrence of the
evolution of the new personality (rebirth) out of Devachan: but .the
individuality of the spirit-soul. is preserved to the end of the great
cycle (Maha-Manwantara) when each Ego enters Paranirvana, or is merged
in Parabrahm. 

To our talpatic, or mole-like, comprehension the human spirit is then
lost in the One Spirit, as the drop of water thrown into the sea can
no longer be traced out and recovered. BUT DE FACTO IT IS NOT SO IN
THE WORLD OF IMMATERIAL THOUGHT. . 

That such Parabrahmic and Paranirvanic "spirits," or units, have and
must preserve their divine (not human) individualities, is shown in
the fact that, however long the "night of Brahma" or even the
Universal Pralaya (not the local Pralaya affecting some one group of
worlds) yet, when it ends, the same individual Divine Monad resumes
its majestic path of evolution, though on a higher, hundredfold
perfected and more pure chain of earths than before, and brings with
it all the essence of compound spiritualities from its previous
countless rebirths. 

Spiral evolution, it must be remembered, is dual, and the path of
spirituality turns, corkscrew-like, within and around physical,
semi-physical, and supra-physical evolution. But I am being tempted
into details which had best be left for the full consideration which
their importance merits to my forthcoming work, the Secret Doctrine."
-- H P B HPB Articles, Vol. III, pp 265-6  
[ISIS UNVEILED AND THE VISHISTADVAITA]

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

Best wishes,


Dallas


PS

Please also consider this:


"Voidness and fulness" may relate to the gross physical matter we know
of. 

But are we also aware of the astral, akashic, mental, moral, karmic,
and spiritual substances? It issaid that those do not depend on our
sense of time or our understanding. 

So to us, in our present state of conditioned limitations, they appear
"void." While in actual fact, if we were able to contact (as an
instance) the mental world of Divine Ideas , with freedom and
discrimination, we would find it limitlessly full of records, not only
of our thoughts and actions (and their moral consequences,) but also
of the thoughts of countless milliards of beings, and the record of
their lives and work.. 

As an image, one may say: Can we hae any idea of the extent and the
complexity of the records of KARMA--I mean not only indiivdualy, but
of the WHLOLE KOSMOS ? No wonder that NATURE (as a whole) conveys
the idea of 'GOD.'

Further: Can you conceive of the enormous complexity, physically, of
the average human body? The enormous count of atoms, mlecules, cells,
and their distribution among the harmoniously and cooperative
functioning organs of our physical bodies? [And this does not take
into accoun the rest of the "principles." ]

How is that done without our paying much focussed attention to those
processes?

I reently worote:

We seem to have the Universal Mind as an inherent aspect of the
ABSOLUTE - as a basis for evolution, it would it not contain a
Universal (a Kosmic) PLAN ? . 

The "Manasa-putras"[Sons of Mind] in their collectivity are called
"the Universal Mind."

May we say that Humanity {a collectivity of "Sons of Mind"] is now at
a stage in which Manas is on a knife edge of decision? A continued
"moment of choice?" This is a moral situation and relates to Karma as
a continuing factor.

This leads me to ask if the immortality of the Buddhi-Manasic Linked
principles (that which from one point of view, is the "Mahatma" the
"Great Soul." To achieve this level of Intelligence and
responsibility, as aliving responsible UNIT, the Higher Manas
(BUDDHIP-MANAS) has to be totally purified of any Kamic or selfish,
personal klimitations and dross.  

It is a "moral" purification that is natural, expected and demanded of
every independent Manasic being and, collectively, of Humanity, is it
not ? .

If we look on each Monad as an example of the individualizing and
focusing of the "One Free-force," we can understand that it is enabled
to see both "Spirit" (as Universal Mind and as Universal Law), and
"matter" (as an attempt to seize a personal isolation and establish
stability in some degree of apparent selfishness.)."  


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


-----Original Message-----

From: Gopi C
Sent: Sunday, May 30, 2004 5:29 AM
To: study@blavatsky.net
Subject: Re: ATMA -- BUDHI -- MASTERS OF WISDOM -- ADEPTS


"BUDHI IS THE IMMORTAL EGO. Budhi cannot be described. It is
feeling, the accumulated experiences--all our experience is in
feeling. 


Dear Dallas,

This implies that at the beginning of the Manvanthara, the Budhi is
empty. Then it starts accumulating. Unless we mean that totally empty
is
also totally full, this starts accumulating. At least it seems to mean
that there is a starting and end point. Is this the meaning?

Gopi

---