Theos-Talk Archives (November 2004 Message tt00249)

Nov 19 2004

Dear friend

As I see it, the attitude THEOSOPHY advocates is of several kinds:

1	Do not abandon common-sense, or your freedom and independence.
Always rely on the fact that at base and in essence you are an immortal
Spiritual Being. [ Religions usually fail to teach this. ]

2	Search and study to obtain an understanding of TRUTH relentlessly.
If you have an intuition on something, then with your mind set to
universality and impersonality, and insisting on your own freedom, seek to
discover if the intuition is true for all persons, at all times and in all
places; i.e., it is impersonal and universal in scope. In other words what
is "true" for you will be true for anyone, any place and at any time, past
or future. 

3	Practice brotherhood and a most strict morality all the time.
THEOSOPHY teaches the World / Universe runs under strict and impersonal LAW
( Karma). It is universally sensitive to the rights and living of even the
least "atom of life." They are also "immortals," and in then distant future
they also will become "men of mind." 

It is invariable and cannot be cajoled into any special mitigation of evil
we may have done to others. We have to receive and meet the consequences of
all we do: good or evil. Personally I would rather meet with the "good."
This idea of a strict moral and ethical life is a key concept. Our intuition
always directs us to that. 

4	Secure a very deep and real understanding of what THEOSOPHY
teaches. Start with a careful reading of The OCEAN OF THEOSOPHY and The KEY
TO THEOSOPHY. The basic ideas have to be studied.  

5.	Since the Deity / GOD is universal (omnipresent) we "live in God."
It is at the foundation basis of ourselves -- some call it the HIGHER SELF,
or ATMA -- the UNIVERSAL SPIRIT. We as the "mind" can always consult with
it. And it answers through the "intuition." Remember that the other two
attributes of GOD are :--

(2) "omniscience" -- nothing can be concealed for IT; and 

(3) "omnipotence" or, the power to conserve and balance the fate and
destiny of all beings involved in any decisions we make or which we might be
subject to.

If THEOSOPHY is synonymous with "everlasting truth," then we have to prove
it is so to ourselves, otherwise, discard it. No one can live with a
philosophy that claims to embrace the whole of Nature and then discover that
it is partly true and partly false. 

We start with a disadvantage, all of us: 

(1) Education for most of us has been a memorizing of " chosen facts." 

(2) Religious instruction has not been aimed at a development of reason and
logic. We are told "stories," but are we encouraged to seek and to find the
moral of those stories? And, to make personal applications? 

Anyone who does all this makes of himself a "disciple." Let us say that
since the beginning of our individuality we have been engaged on a regular
course of a series of initiations: from living under "natural impulse," we
passed to "instinct;" from instinct we have now graduated into the region
and stage of independence of "thought." With this independence has come
responsibility.

The moral and ethical laws of Nature are the same for all. We are now
learning to be honest, true and virtuous under the one LAW that plays no
favorites. If we are going to be trusted by NATURE ( GOD ) we have to prove
(like Jesus, Budha, Krishna, etc... have ) that we are virtuous under all
and every circumstance. It is not easy. This is what fits us for the next
stage: universal self-consciousness -- or, as some have called it:
"All-knowingness." 

May I say : use The VOICE OF THE SILENCE as a guide to the "higher life," is
what I would recommend. 

Confront false allegations with truth. No one is expected to remain silent
or accept through silence false accusations. If, however, we have been at
fault, it is better to accept and bear whatever consequences are due through
the law. To act any other way is to compound the offence by lies and
concealment. 

I hope this is of help,

Best wishes, 

Dallas

PS Consider the following:


HOW SHALL WE TREAT OTHERS ?


The subject relates to our conduct toward and treatment of our fellows,
including in that term all people with whom we have any dealings. No
particular mode of treatment is given by Theosophy. It simply lays down the
law that governs us in all our acts, and declares the consequences of those
acts. It is for us to follow the line of action which shall result first in
harmony now and forever, and second, in the reduction of the general sum of
hate and opposition in thought or act which now darkens the world.

The great law which Theosophy first speaks of is the law of karma, and this
is the one which must be held in view in considering the question. Karma is
called by some the "law of ethical causation," but it is also the law of
action and reaction; and in all departments of nature the reaction is equal
to the action, and sometimes the reaction from the unseen but permanent
world seems to be much greater than the physical act or word would appear to
warrant on the physical plane.

This is because the hidden force on the unseen plane was just as strong and
powerful as the reaction is seen by us to be. The ordinary view takes in but
half of the facts in any such case and judges wholly by superficial
observation.

If we look at the subject only from the point of view of the person who
knows not of Theosophy and of the nature of man, nor of the forces Theosophy
knows to be operating all the time, then the reply to the question will be
just the same as the everyday man makes. 

That is, that he has certain rights he must and will and ought to protect;
that he has property he will and may keep and use any way he pleases; and if
a man injure him he ought to and will resent it; that if he is insulted by
word or deed he will at once fly not only to administer punishment on the
offender, but also try to reform, to admonish, and very often to give that
offender up to the arm of the law; that if he knows of a criminal he will
denounce him to the police and see that he has meted out to him the
punishment provided by the law of man. Thus in everything he will proceed as
is the custom and as is thought to be the right way by those who live under
the Mosaic retaliatory law.

But if we are to inquire into the subject as Theosophists, and as
Theosophists who know certain laws and who insist on the absolute sway of
karma, and as people who know what the real constitution of man is, then the
whole matter takes on, or ought to take on, a wholly different aspect.

The untheosophical view is based on separation, the Theosophical upon unity
absolute and actual. Of course if Theosophists talk of unity but as a dream
or a mere metaphysical thing, then they will cease to be Theosophists, and
be mere professors, as the Christian world is today, of a code not followed.


If we are separate one from the other the world is right and resistance is a
duty, and the failure to condemn those who offend is a distinct breach of
propriety, of law, and of duty. But if we are all united as a physical and
psychical fact, then the act of condemning, the fact of resistance, the
insistance upon rights on all occasions - all of which means the entire lack
of charity and mercy - will bring consequences as certain as the rising of
the sun tomorrow.

What are those consequences, and why are they?

They are simply this, that the real man, the entity, the thinker, will react
back on you just exactly in proportion to the way you act to him, and this
reaction will be in another life, if not now, and even if now felt will
still return in the next life.

The fact that the person whom you condemn, or oppose, or judge seems now in
this life to deserve it for his acts in this life, does not alter the other
fact that his nature will react against you when the time comes. The
reaction is a law not subject to nor altered by any sentiment on your part.
He may have, truly, offended you and even hurt you, and done that which in
the eye of man is blameworthy, but all this does not have anything to do
with the dynamic fact that if you arouse his enmity by your condemnation or
judgment there will be a reaction on you, and consequently on the whole of
society in any century when the reaction takes place. 

This is the law and the fact as given by the Adepts, as told by all sages,
as reported by those who have seen the inner side of nature, as taught by
our philosophy and easily provable by anyone who will take the trouble to
examine carefully. 

Logic and small facts of one day or one life, or arguments on lines laid
down by men of the world who do not know the real power and place of thought
nor the real nature of man cannot sweep this away. After all argument and
logic it will remain. The logic used against it is always lacking in certain
premises based on facts, and while seeming to be good logic, because the
missing facts are unknown to the logician, it is false logic. Hence an
appeal to logic that ignores facts which we know are certain is of no use in
this inquiry. And the ordinary argument always uses a number of assumptions
which are destroyed by the actual inner facts about thought, about karma,
about the reaction by the inner man.

The Master "K.H.," once writing to Mr. Sinnett in the "Occult World," and
speaking for his whole order and not for himself only, distinctly wrote that
the man who goes to denounce a criminal or an offender works not with nature
and harmony but against both, and that such act tends to destruction instead
of construction. 

Whether the act be large or small, whether it be the denunciation of a
criminal, or only your own insistence on rules or laws or rights, does not
alter the matter or take it out of the rule laid down by that Adept. For the
only difference between the acts mentioned is a difference of degree alone;
the act is the same in kind as the violent denunciation of a criminal. 

Either this Adept was right or wrong. If wrong, why do we follow the
philosophy laid down by him and his messenger, and concurred in by all the
sages and teachers of the past? 

If right, why this swimming in an adverse current, as he said himself, why
this attempt to show that we can set aside karma and act as we please
without consequences following us to the end of time? I know not. I prefer
to follow the Adept, and especially so when I see that what he says is in
line with facts in nature and is a certain conclusion from the system of
philosophy I have found in Theosophy.

I have never found an insistence on my so-called rights at all necessary.
They preserve themselves, and it must be true if the law of karma is the
truth that no man offends against me unless I in the past have offended
against him.

In respect to man, karma has no existence without two or more persons being
considered. You act, another person is affected, karma follows. It follows
on the thought of each and not on the act, for the other person is moved to
thought by your act. Here are two sorts of karma, yours and his, and both
are intermixed.

There is the karma or effect on you of your own thought and act, the result
on you of the other person's thought; and there is the karma on or with the
other person consisting of the direct result of your act and his thoughts
engendered by your act and thought. This is all permanent. 

As affecting you there may be various effects. If you have condemned, for
instance, we may mention some: 

(a) the increased tendency in yourself to indulge in condemnation, which
will remain and increase from life to life; 

(b) this will at last in you change into violence and all that anger and
condemnation may naturally lead to; 

(c) an opposition to you is set up in the other person, which will remain
forever until one day both suffer for it, and this may be in a tendency in
the other person in any subsequent life to do you harm and hurt you in the
million ways possible in life, and often also unconsciously. 

Thus it may all widen out and affect the whole body of society. Hence no
matter how justifiable it may seem to you to condemn or denounce or punish
another, you set up cause for sorrow in the whole race that must work out
some day. And you must feel it.

The opposite conduct, that is, entire charity, constant forgiveness, wipes
out the opposition from others, expends the old enmity and at the same time
makes no new similar causes. Any other sort of thought or conduct is sure to
increase the sum of hate in the world, to make cause for sorrow, to
continually keep up the crime and misery in the world. Each man can for
himself decide which of the two ways is the right one to adopt.

Self-love and what people call self-respect may shrink from following the
Adept's view I give above, but the Theosophist who wishes to follow the law
and reduce the general sum of hate will know how to act and to think, for he
will follow the words of the Master of H.P.B. who said: "Do not be ever
thinking of yourself and forgetting that there are others; for you have no
karma of your own, but the karma of each one is the karma of all." 

And these words were sent by H.P.B. to the American Section and called by
her words of wisdom, as they seem also to me to be, for they accord with
law. They hurt the personality of the nineteenth century, but the
personality is for a day, and soon it will be changed if Theosophists try to
follow the law of charity as enforced by the inexorable law of karma. 

We should all constantly remember that if we believe in the Masters we
should at least try to imitate them in the charity they show for our
weakness and faults. In no other way can we hope to reach their high estate,
for by beginning thus we set up a tendency which will one day perhaps bring
us near to their development; by not beginning we put off the day forever.

William Brehon, F.T.S. Path, February, 1896
 
============================
 
-----Original Message-----
From: cas
Sent: 
Subject: [bn-study] Re: MEDITATION AND INITIATION

Dear Dallas

So, does this mean that before a Disciple knocks on the door, that "The
attitude to be assumed, then, is that of doing every act, small and
great, trifling or important, because it is before us to do, and as a mere
carrying out by us as instruments of the will of that Deity who is
ourself."
e.g. Say, for argument sake, being sued over a false allegation, that the
attitude should be, acceptance - it is before me to do?

Cass