Theos-Talk Archives (January 2005 Message tt00162)

Jan 7 2005



Here is an interesting view on Karma that might be also considered in regard
to recent disasters.









DIREFUL PROPHECIES


THE whole mystic fraternity of Astrologers is now engaged in showing how the
heavens portend great changes on this our earth. They agree with H.P.B., who
said that her Eastern friends told her of coming cyclic changes now very
near at hand. Beyond doubt there is some truth in all these sayings,
although here and there the astrologers definitely prognosticating are not
supported by fact. Sepharial, for instance, staked his reputation on the
death of the Prince of Wales, which did not come off, and now where is the
reputation? Just as good as ever, for astrologers know that either the
judgment of the astrologer may be at fault from sundry causes, or that the
birth-hour may be wrong, or that some saving aspect of the stars has been
overlooked. 

Great earthquakes like that of Zante or the one in Kuchan come up, and the
astrologers, while they regularly in those years foresaw earthquakes, did
not seem able to locate them for any spot. They were afraid to say Persia
for fear it might be in London. But earthquakes were foretold. 

A steady prognostication of disturbance has been indulged in, and this
general outlook would seem right. The disturbances were expected in the
realm of mind, morals, and religion by those true astrologers who seldom
speak, and the increase of crime like that of bomb-throwing justifies each
month the general prediction. Seismic disturbance is the physical sign of
disturbance in the moral, psychic, and mental fields. This is an old axiom
in the East. In the record of the earthquake said to have taken place when
Jesus died we have the Christian reflection of the same idea.

That earthquakes, floods, and great social changes would go on increasing
has been known to Theosophists since the day Tom Paine saw psychically "a
new order of things for the human race opening in the affairs of America,"
before the revolution. And ever since the increment of disaster has been
great. The motto adopted by the makers of the Union - "A new order of ages"
- was an echo from the realm of soul to the ears of men on earth. It marked
a point in the cycle.

The record of the disasters during the years since then would be found
appalling. It takes in Asia and Europe, and would show millions of sudden
deaths by violent earth-convulsions. And now in 1894 even Herbert Spencer,
looking at the mental and social fields of human life, says in a magazine
article:

A nation of which the legislators vote as they were bid and of which the
workers surrender their rights of selling their labor where they please has
neither the ideas nor the sentiments needed for the maintenance of
liberty.... 

We are on the way back to the rule of the strong hand in the shape of the
bureaucratic despotism of a socialistic organization and then of the
military despotism which must follow it; if, indeed, some social crash does
not bring the latter upon us more quickly.

Evidently this deeply philosophical and statistical writer feels the
pressure in the atmosphere of social and material life. There is much
unconscious prophecy in what he says. 

Earthquakes and deaths from them are dreadful, but they can be avoided when
their probable place is known. But social earthquakes, moral pestilence,
mental change belong to man, go with him where he goes, and cannot be
averted by any alteration of place.

In the Illustrated American a writer on astrology gives definite prophecy of
disaster. He erects a figure of the heavens for noon of November 12, 1894,
showing a conjunction of Sun, Uranus, Venus, and Mercury in Scorpio, with
Saturn only fifteen degrees away. Astrologically this is very bad. With the
moon at the full in Taurus - the bull - it is ominous of floods and
earthquakes. 

But we may add that in the psychic Zodiac it shows floods and heaving in the
moral and social structure of the poor orphan man. Uranus and Saturn are bad
planets anyway; they are erratic and heavy, subtle, dark, and menacing. This
writer predicts ominously, but remains indefinite as to place. We will add
that dying nations like those of Persia and China will feel most whatever
effects shall be due; and in Europe, while there will be physical
disturbance, the greater trouble will be in the social and governmental
structures.

The astrologer then runs forward to December 30, 1901, when he says six
planets will be in one sign and in a line, with a seventh opposite on the
same line projected. This, it is said by such an ancient sage as Berosus,
will bring a flood when it takes place in the zodiacal sign Capricornus, as
is to be the case in 1901.

Many Theosophists believe these prognostications, others deride them. The
former ask what shall we do? Nothing. 

Stay where you are. If you remove, it is more than likely you will run into
the jaws of a blacker fate. Do your duty where you find yourself, and if
from your goodness you are a favorite of the gods you will escape, while if
you are not their favorite it is better for you to die and take another
chance at bettering your character. 

Death will come when it will, and why should we fear, since it is "a
necessary end." Theosophists too often occupy themselves with these woeful
lookings into the future, to the detriment of their present work. 

They should try to discover the fine line of duty and endeavor, leaving the
astrologers of today, who are more at sea than any other mystics, to con
over a zodiac that is out of place and calculate with tables which delude
with the subtle power that figures have to lie when the basis of calculation
is wrong. 

William Q. Judge

Path, March, 1894

_____ 





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2







THE MORAL LAW OF COMPENSATION 

BY AN EX-ASIATIC 



For thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field; and the beasts of
the field shall be at peace with thee. - Job, Chap. V, v. 23, Christian
Bible. 



As a western Theosophist, I would like to present to my Indian brethren a
few thoughts upon what I conceive to be the operation of the Law of
Compensation in part, or, to put it more clearly, upon the operation of one
branch of this law. 



It seems undeniable that this law is the most powerful, and the one having
the most numerous and complicated ramifications of all the laws with which
we have to deal. This it is that makes so difficult for a human spirit, the
upward progress after which we all are striving, and it is often forced upon
me that it is this law which perpetuates the world, with its delusions, its
sadness, its illusions, and that if we could but understand it so as to
avoid its operation, the nirvana for the whole human family would be an
accomplished fact. 



In a former number a respected brother from Ceylon, speaking with authority,
showed us how to answer the question so often asked: "Why do we see a good
man eating the bread of poverty, and the wicked dwelling in riches, and why
so often is a good man cast down from prosperity to despair, and a wicked
man after a period of sorrow and hardship made to experience for the balance
of his life nothing but success and prosperity?" 



He replied that our acts in any one period of existence were like the arrow
shot from the bow, acting upon us in the next life and producing our rewards
and punishments. So that to accept his explanation - as we must - it is, of
course, necessary to believe in reincarnation. As far as he went, he was
very satisfactory, but he did not go into the subject as thoroughly as his
great knowledge would permit. It is to be hoped that he will favor us with
further essays upon the same subject. 



I have not yet seen anywhere stated the rationale of the operation of this
law - how and why it acts in any particular case. 



To say that the reviling of a righteous man will condemn one to a life of a
beggar in the next existence is definite enough in statement, but it is put
forward without a reason, and unless we accept these teachings blindly we
cannot believe such consequences would follow. To appeal to our minds, there
should be a reason given, which shall be at once plain and reasonable. 



There must be some law for this particular case; otherwise, the statement
cannot be true. There must occur, from the force of the revilement, the
infraction of some natural regulation, the production of some discord in the
spiritual world which has for a consequence the punishment by beggary in the
succedent existence of the reviler. 



The only other reason possible of statement is, that it is so ordered. But
such a reason is not a reason at all because no Theosophist will believe
that any punishment, save that which man himself inflicts, is ordered. 



As this world is a world produced by law, moved by law, and governed by the
natural operation of laws which need no one to operate them, but which
invariably and unerringly operate themselves, it must follow that any
punishment suffered in this way is not suffered through any order, but is
suffered because the natural law operates itself. 



And further, we are compelled to accept this view, because to believe that
it was ordered, would infer the existence of some particular person, mind,
will, or intelligence to order it, which for one instant no one will
believe, who knows that this world was produced, and is governed, by the
operation of number, weight and measure, with harmony over and above all. 



So then we should know in what manner the law operates, which condemns the
reviler of a righteous man to beggary in his next existence. That knowledge
once gained, we may be able to find for ourselves the manner and power of
placating, as it were, this terrible monster of compensation by performing
some particular acts which shall in some way be a restoration of the harmony
which we have broken, if perchance we have unconsciously or inadvertently
committed the sin. 



Let us now imagine a boy born of wealthy parents, but not given proper
intelligence. He is, in fact, called an idiot. But instead of being a mild
idiot, he possesses great malice which manifests itself in his tormenting
insects and animals at every opportunity. 



He lives to be, say, nineteen and has spent his years in the malicious,
although idiotic, torment of unintelligent, defenseless animal life. He has
thus hindered many a spirit in its upward march and has beyond doubt
inflicted pain and caused a moral discord. This fact of his idiocy is not a
restoration of the discord. Every animal that he tortured had its own
particular elemental spirit, and so had every flower that he broke in
pieces. What did they know of his idiocy, and what did they feel after the
torture but revenge? And had they a knowledge of his idiocy, being
unreasoning beings, they could not see in it any excuse for his acts. 



He dies at nineteen, and after the lapse of years is reborn in another
nation - perchance another age - into a body possessing more than average
intelligence. He is no longer an idiot, but a sensible active man who now
has a chance to regenerate the spirit given to every man, without the chains
of idiocy about it. 



What is to be the result of the evil deeds of his previous existence? Are
they to go unpunished? I think not. But how are they to be punished; and if
the compensation comes, in what manner does the law operate upon him? To me
there seems to be but one way, that is through the discord produced in the
spirits of those unthinking beings which he had tortured during those
nineteen years. 



But how? In this way. In the agony of their torture these beings turned
their eyes upon their torturer, and dying, his spiritual picture through the
excess of their pain, together with that pain and the desire for revenge,
were photographed, so to speak, upon their spirits - for in no other way
could they have a memory of him - and when he became a disembodied spirit
they clung to him until he was reincarnated when they were still with him
like barnacles on a ship. They can now only see through his eyes, and their
revenge consists in precipitating themselves down his glance on any matter
he may engage in, thus attaching themselves to it for the purpose of
dragging it down to disaster. 



This leads to the query of what is meant by these elementals precipitating
themselves down his glance. The ancients taught that the astral light -
Akasa - is projected from the eyes, the thumbs and the palms of the hands.
Now as the elementals exist in the astral light, they will be able to see
only through those avenues of human organism which are used by the astral
light in traveling from the person. 



The eyes are the most convenient. So when this person directs his glance on
any thing or person, the astral light goes out in that glance and through it
those elementals see that which he looks upon. And so also, if he should
magnetize a person, the elementals will project themselves from his hands
and eyes upon the subject magnetized and do it injury. 



Well then, our reincarnated idiot engages in a business which requires his
constant surveillance. The elementals go with him and throwing themselves
upon everything he directs, cause him continued disaster. 



But one by one they are caught up again out of the orbit of necessity into
the orbit of probation in this world, and at last all are gone, whereupon he
finds success in all he does and has his chance again to reap eternal life. 



He finds the realization of the words of Job quoted at the head of this
article: he is in "league with the stones of the field, and the beasts of
the field are at peace with him." These words were penned ages ago by those
ancient Egyptians who knew all things. Having walked in the secret paths of
wisdom which no fowl knoweth and vulture's eye hath not seen, they
discovered those hidden laws, one within the other like the wheels of
Ezekiel, which govern the universe. 



There is no other reasonable explanation of the passage quoted than the
theory faintly outlined in the foregoing poor illustration. And I only offer
it as a possible solution or answer to the question as to what is the
rationale of the operation of the Moral Law of Compensation in that
particular case, of which I go so far as to say that I think I know a living
illustration. But it will not furnish an answer for the case of the
punishment for reviling a righteous man. 



I would earnestly ask the learned friends of the Editor of THE THEOSOPHIST
to give the explanation, and also hint to us how in this existence we may
act so as to mitigate the horrors of our punishment and come as near as may
be to a league with the stones and the beasts of the field. 


W. Q. Judge (an Ex-Asiatic)




Theosophist, October, 1881 



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



Best wishes,



Dallas



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-----Original Message-----
From: Heinz 
Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2005 9:07 PM
To: 
Subject: [bn-study] Re: disasters and distortions










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