Theos-Talk Archives (March 2005 Message tt00553)

Mar 23, 2005

Spring thoughts -- Whence religions? Do they lack anything? 


Dear S and friends:


You encouraged me to look up some basic ideas and here they are:

What, I ask myself, is the source of religions? I go to the S D .

“What was the religion of the Third and Fourth Races? In the common
acceptation of the term, neither the Lemurians, nor yet their progeny, the
Lemuro-Atlanteans, had any, as they knew no dogma, nor had they to believe
on faith. 

No sooner had the mental eye of man been opened to understanding, than the
Third Race felt itself one with the ever-present as the ever to be unknown
and invisible ALL, the One Universal Deity. Endowed with divine powers, and
feeling in himself his inner God, each felt he was a Man-God in his nature,
though an animal in his physical Self. 

The struggle between the two began from the very day they tasted of the
fruit of the Tree of Wisdom; a struggle for life between the spiritual and
the psychic, the psychic and the physical. Those who conquered the lower
principles by obtaining mastery over the body, joined the "Sons of Light."
Those who fell victims to their lower natures, became the slaves of Matter. 

>From "Sons of Light and Wisdom" they ended by becoming the "Sons of
Darkness." They had fallen in the battle of mortal life with Life immortal,
and all those so fallen became the seed of the future generations of
Atlanteans.* [* The name is used here in the sense of, and as a synonym of
"sorcerers." The Atlantean races were many, and lasted in their evolution
for millions of years: all were not bad. They became so toward their end, as
we (the fifth) are fast becoming now.] 

At the dawn of his consciousness, the man of the Third Root Race had thus no
beliefs that could be called religion. That is to say, he was equally as
ignorant of "gay religions, full of pomp and gold" as of any system of faith
or outward worship. 

Is there a difference between: reverence and worship?

But if the term is to be defined as the binding together of the masses in
one form of reverence paid to those we feel higher than ourselves, of piety
— as a feeling expressed by a child toward a loved parent — then even the
earliest Lemurians had a religion — and a most beautiful one — from thevery
beginning of their intellectual life. Had they not their bright gods of the
elements around them, and even within themselves? * [* The "Gods of the
Elements" are by no means the Elementals. The latter are at best used by
them as vehicles and materials in which to clothe themselves. . .]

Was not their childhood passed with, nursed and tendered by those who had
given them life and called them forth to intelligent, conscious life? We are
assured it was so, and we believe it. For the evolution of Spirit into
matter could never have been achieved; nor would it have received its first
impulse, had not the bright Spirits sacrificed their own respective
super-ethereal essences to animate the man of clay, by endowing each of his
inner principles with a portion, or rather, a reflection of that essence. 

The Dhyanis of the Seven Heavens (the seven planes of Being) are the
NOUMENOI of the actual and the future Elements, just as the Angels of the
Seven Powers of nature - the grosser effects of which are perceived by us in
what Science is pleased to call the "modes of motion" — the imponderable
forces and what not — are the still higher noumenoi of still higher
Hierarchies. 

It was the "Golden Age" in those days of old, the age when the "gods walked
the earth, and mixed freely with the mortals." Since then, the gods departed
(i.e., became invisible), and later generations ended by worshipping their
kingdoms — the Elements. 

What happened? What caused the degenerated to worship of forms of matter?

It was the Atlanteans, the first progeny of semi-divine man after his
separation into sexes — hence the first-begotten and humanly-born mortals—
who became the first "Sacrificers" to the god of matter. 

They stand in the far-away dim past, in ages more than prehistoric, as the
prototype on which the great symbol of Cain was built, † as the first
anthropomorphists who worshipped form and matter. [† Cain was the
sacrificer, as shown at first in chap. iv. of Genesis, of "the fruit of the
ground," of which he was first tiller, while Abel "brought of the firstlings
of his flock" to the Lord. Cain is the symbol of the first male, Abel of the
first female humanity, Adam and Eve being the types of the third race. (See
"The Mystery of Cain and Abel.") The "murdering" is blood-shedding, but not
taking life. ]

That worship degenerated very soon into self-worship, thence led to
phallicism, or that which reigns supreme to this day in the symbolisms of
every exoteric religion of ritual, dogma, and form. Adam and Eve became
matter, or furnished the soil, Cain and Abel — the latter the life-bearing
soil, the former "the tiller of that ground or field." 

Thus the first Atlantean races, born on the Lemurian Continent, separated
from their earliest tribes into the righteous and the unrighteous; into
those who worshipped the one unseen Spirit of Nature, the ray of which man
feels within himself — or the Pantheists, and those who offered fanatical
worship to the Spirits of the Earth, the dark Cosmic, anthropomorphic
Powers, with whom they made alliance. 

These were the earliest Gibborim, "the mighty men of renown in those days"
(Gen. vi.); who become with the Fifth Race the Kabirim: Kabiri with the
Egyptians and the Phoenicians, Titans with the Greeks, and Rakshasas and
Daityas with the Indian races. 

Such was the secret and mysterious origin of all the subsequent and modern
religions, especially of the worship of the later Hebrews for their tribal
god. 


So then, what about: a tribal god and sexual religions?

At the same time this sexual religion was closely allied to, based upon and
blended, so to say, with astronomical phenomena. 

The Lemurians gravitated toward the North Pole, or the Heaven of their
Progenitors (the Hyperborean Continent); the Atlanteans, toward the Southern
Pole, the pit, cosmically and terrestrially — whence breathe the hot
passions blown into hurricanes by the cosmic Elementals, whose abode it is. 

The two poles were denominated, by the ancients, Dragons and Serpents —
hence good and bad Dragons and Serpents, and also the names given to the
"Sons of God" (Sons of Spirit and Matter): the good and bad Magicians. 

This is the origin of this dual and triple nature in man. The legend of the
"Fallen Angels" in its esoteric signification, contains the key to the
manifold contradictions of human character; it points to the secret of man's
self-consciousness; it is the angle-iron on which hinges his entire
life-cycle; — the history of his evolution and growth. 

On a firm grasp of this doctrine depends the correct understanding of
esoteric anthropogenesis. It gives a clue to the vexed question of the
Origin of Evil; and shows how man himself is the separator of the ONE into
various contrasted aspects...

Who are the "fallen angels" are they humanity? 

Answer says the SECRET DOCTRINE: The "Fallen Angels," so-called, are
Humanity itself. 

The Demon of Pride, Lust, Rebellion, and Hatred, has never had any being
before the appearance of physical conscious man. 

It is man who has begotten, nurtured, and allowed the fiend to develop in
his heart; he, again, who has contaminated the indwelling god in himself, by
linking the pure spirit with the impure demon of matter. 

And, if the Kabalistic saying, "Demon est Deus inversus" finds its
metaphysical and theoretical corroboration in dual manifested nature, its
practical application is found in Mankind alone. “	[extracts from: S D
II 272-4]


"... during its early beginnings, psychic and physical intellect being
dormant and consciousness still undeveloped, the spiritual conceptions of
that race were quite unconnected with its physical surroundings. 

That divine man dwelt in his animal—though externally human—form; and, if
there was instinct in him, no self-consciousness came to enlighten the
darkness of the latent fifth principle. 

When, moved by the law of Evolution, the Lords of Wisdom infused into him
the spark of consciousness, the first feeling it awoke to life and activity
was a sense of solidarity, of one-ness with his spiritual creators. 

As the child's first feeling is for its mother and nurse, so the first
aspirations of the awakening consciousness in primitive man were for those
whose element he felt within himself, and who yet were outside, and
independent of him. DEVOTION arose out of that feeling, and became the first
and foremost motor in his nature; for it is the only one which is natural in
our heart, which is innate in us, and which we find alike in human babe and
the young of the animal. 

This feeling of irrepressible, instinctive aspiration in primitive man is
beautifully, and one may say intuitionally, described by Carlyle. 

"The great antique heart," he exclaims, "how like a child's in its
simplicity, like a man's in its earnest solemnity and depth! heaven lies
over him wheresoever he goes or stands on the earth; making all the earth a
mystic temple to him, the earth's business all a kind of worship. Glimpses
of bright creatures flash in the common sunlight; angels yet hover, doing
God's messages among men . . . . . Wonder, miracle, encompass the man; he
lives in an element of miracle * . . . . A great law of duty, high as these
two infinitudes (heaven and hell), dwarfing all else, annihilating all
else—it was a reality, and it is one: the garment 

---------------------------------------------F Note ----------------------
* That which was natural in the sight of primitive man has become only now
miracle to us; and that which was to him a miracle could never be expressed
in our language. 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

only of it is dead; the essence of it lives through all times and all
eternity!" 

It lives undeniably, and has settled in all its ineradicable strength and
power in the Asiatic Aryan heart from the Third Race direct through its
first "mind-born" sons,—the fruits of Kriyasakti. As time rolled on the holy
caste of Initiates produced but rarely, and from age to age, such perfect
creatures: beings apart, inwardly, though the same as those who produced
them, outwardly. 

While in the infancy of the third primitive race:—

"A creature of a more exalted kind
Was wanting yet, and therefore was designed;
Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast
For empire formed and fit to rule the rest. . . . ." 

It was called into being, a ready and perfect vehicle for the incarnating
denizens of higher spheres, who took forthwith their abodes in these forms
born of Spiritual WILL and the natural divine power in man. 

It was a child of pure Spirit, mentally unalloyed with any tincture of
earthly element. Its physical frame alone was of time and of life, as it
drew its intelligence direct from above. It was the living tree of divine
wisdom; and may therefore be likened to the Mundane Tree of the Norse
Legend, which cannot wither and die until the last battle of life shall be
fought, while its roots are gnawed all the time by the dragon Nidhogg; for
even so, the first and holy Son of Kriyasakti had his body gnawed by the
tooth of time, but the roots of his inner being remained for ever undecaying
and strong, because they grew and expanded in heaven not on earth. 

He was the first of the FIRST, and he was the seed of all the others. There
were other "Sons of Kriyasakti" produced by a second Spiritual effort, but
the first one has remained to this day the Seed of divine Knowledge, the One
and the Supreme among the terrestrial "Sons of Wisdom." Of this subject we
can say no more, except to add that in every age—aye, even in our own—there
have been great intellects who have understood the problem correctly.
 
How comes our physical body to the state of perfection it is found in now?
Through millions of years of evolution, of course, yet never through, or
from, animals, as taught by materialism. For, as Carlyle says:—

". . . The essence of our being, the mystery in us that calls itself
'I,'—what words have we for such things?—it is a breath of Heaven, the
highest Being reveals himself in man. This body, these faculties, this life
of ours, is it not all as a vesture for the UNNAMED?" 

The breath of heaven, or rather the breath of life, called in the Bible
Nephesh, is in every animal, in every animate speck as in every mineral
atom. But none of these has, like man, the consciousness of the nature of
that highest Being,* 
[* There is no nation in the world in which the feeling of devotion or of
religious mysticism is more developed and prominent than in the Hindu
people. See what Max Müller says of this idiosyncracy and national feature
in his works. This is direct inheritance from the primitive conscious men of
the Third Race. "] as none has that divine harmony in its form which man
possesses. 

It is, as Novalis said, and no one since has said it better, as repeated by
Carlyle:—

"There is but one temple in the universe, and that is the body of man.
Nothing is holier than that high form . . . . We touch heaven when we lay
our hand on a human body!" "This sounds like a mere flourish of rhetoric,"
adds Carlyle, "but it is not so. If well meditated it will turn out to be a
scientific fact; the expression . . . of the actual truth of the thing. We
are the miracle of miracles,—the great inscrutable Mystery." S D I
210-11

				
"Angiras" was one of the names of the Dhyanis, or Devas instructors
("guru-deva"), of the late Third, the Fourth, and even of the Fifth Race
Initiates.”	S D II 605 fn



It occurred to me that an important factor had been removed from all
religions:


KARMA ID IN ALL RELIGIONS

Reviewing most of the old religious texts basic to those great "faiths" one
may not be able to easily trace Karma in operation,

It is universal, impersonal, and ever-active. It is indispensable and basic
to all EXISTENCE. Life is an aspect of it, as also the continuity of life
as action is succeeded by circumstances that it creates, and so on the cycle
will roll,
propelled by the free-will of men and their many choices.

The Moral tales found in some myths appear to have been written to
demonstrate their existence. But when a priesthood took over the ancient
books and then erected a "faith" and a "religion" on them they usually
carefully edited those texts so as to remove inconvenient facts.

Some of these are:

1	Every human (as well as all "beings") are essentially
indestructible, UNDYING MONADS (or "life-atoms"). They as immortals pursue
an interminable "pilgrimage." This progress is continuous, even if it is
interrupted by interludes we call "death, and after-death states."  

2.	KARMA and the inevitable justice that each attracts to themselves
by their free choices. The Universe is just. This removes all fear of the
unknown.

3.	REINCARNATION OF THE IMMORTAL EGO. To admit this Eternal
HIGHER SELF, the priests would render their tenure impossible. This removes
the fear of death. Death is a long "sleep."

4.	There is an INNATE FREEDOM IN EACH HUMAN BEING. 

5.	The fact that all "religions" are on the SAME LEVEL and none is
"superior" to another.

6.	The fact that life and living are EVENLY DISTRIBUTED TO ALL FORMS OF
LIFE. In other words the supreme GOAL of all evolution
is within the eventual reach of all those "Monads" that reside at the core
of every "form" -- from the inconceivably "small" to the inconceivably large
(our UNIVERSE).

7.	The fact of the UNIVERSAL SPIRIT (DEITY or GOD) which entirely
pervades the manifested Universe. Hence no GOD is "outside" or the "shaper
and modifier" of the universe, or is capable of changing the "fate" of
anything or anyone. 

8.	Prayer, contrition, penance, to a "Personal God" to avert punishment
for wrongs done to others and "confessed," is totally useless. This is
because any reversal (or rather mitigation) is achieved by redress performed
directly to the victim or to his family by the one who has done wrong. [The
actual practice of the morality enjoined in the SERMON ON THE MOUNT would
achieve this.]

9.	Hence the determined practice of UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD is the
ONLY method that will enable anyone to actually 'progress' spiritually.

There are probably more than these, but some thought given to these may
prove helpful. One can see at a glance that KARMA prevails universally, or
we could not be here now. We would have no reason to persist in
progressing. We would not be able to understand how Nature supports our
life, or what our small
contribution to Nature may convey.

Every statement made in the BHAGAVAD GITA (Krishna) or the 
DHAMMAPADA (Buddha), or in the SERMON ON THE MOUNT (Jesus) will
be found based on KARMA as an actual living and active fact. No VIRTUE can
exist without its cooperative presence.

Best wishes,

Dallas
 
===========================================

-----Original Message-----
From: Steven 
Sent: Monday, March 21, 2005 6:46 AM
To: 
Subject: Welcome Spring



Hello everyone, 

I wanted to advance an ideal for study and 
questions to bring in this Spring Season of thought.

Simple as it sounds, let us consider exactly what the ideal 
of "religion" means to us. 

If one lives, as I do, on the East coast, then the coming of spring is such
an obvious departure from the previous seasons, and it brings with it a
depth of feeling, which seems to well up from within. 

My thought today, on this first day of Spring, is that this feeling might be
described as religion, if we see the meaning of that term as having
something to do with a resurgence of knowing and feeling about an
undefinable revitalizing 
source of our being. This idea has been so over intellectualized or
generally over emotionalized, idolized and ritualized, that its simple
definitions seem to have been blanketed. 

So, please contribute whatever comes to mind.

Steve