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Re: SPIRITUAL CULTIVATION

Apr 05, 2005 04:07 PM
by W.Dallas TenBroeck


 

APL 4 2005

 

Re: SPIRITUAL CULTIVATION

 

 

Dear Estela:

 

Here are some notes on 

 

 

SPIRITUAL CULTIVATION

 

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

 

 

 

As to the process of spiritual development, Theosophy teaches:

   

   

First. That the essence of the process lies in the securing of supremacy, to

the highest, the spiritual, element of man's nature.

   

   

Second. That this is attained along four lines, among others,

   

[a] The entire eradication of selfishness in all forms, and the cultivation

of broad, generous sympathy in, and effort for the good of others.

 

(b) The absolute cultivation of the inner, spiritual man by meditation, by

reaching to and communion with the Divine, and by exercise of the kind

described by Patanjali, i. e., incessant striving to an ideal end.

 

(c) The control of fleshly appetites and desires, all lower, material

interests being deliberately subordinated to the behests of the spirit.

 

(d) The careful performance of every duty belonging to one's station in

life, with-out desire for reward, leaving results for Divine law.

 

 

Third. That while the above is incumbent on and practicable by all

religiously disposed men, a yet higher plane of spiritual attainment is

conditioned upon a specific course of training, physical, intellectual and

spiritual, by which the internal faculties are first aroused and then

developed.

 

 

Fourth. That an extension of this process is reached in Adeptship,

Mahatmaship, or the states of Rishis, Sages and Dhyan Chohans, which are all

exalted stages, attained by laborious self-discipline and hardship,

protracted through possibly many incarnations, and with many degrees of

initiation and preferment, beyond which are yet other stages ever

approaching the Divine.

 

                       

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

 

 

THE RATIONALE OF SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT 

   

   

First. That the process takes place entirely within the individual

himself, the motive, the effort, and the result proceeding from his own

inner nature, along the lines of self-evolution.

   

   

Second. That, however personal and interior, this process is not unaided,

being possible, in fact, only through close communion with the supreme

source of all strength.

   

   

As to the degree of advancement in incarnations it holds:

   

   

First. That even a mere intellectual acquaintance with Theosophic truth

has great value in fit-ting the individual for a step upwards in his next

earth-life, as it gives an impulse in that direction. 

   

   

Second. That still more is gained by a career of duty, piety and

beneficence.

   

   

Third. That a still greater advance is attained by the attentive and

devoted use of the means to spiritual culture heretofore stated.

   

   

Fourth. That every race and individual of it reaches in evolution a period

known as "the moment of choice," when they decide for themselves their

future destiny by a deliberate and conscious choice between eternal life and

death, and that this right of choice is the peculiar appanage of the free

soul. 

   

   

It cannot be exercised until the man has realized the soul within him, and

until that soul has attained some measure of self-conscious-ness in the

body. The moment of choice is not a fixed period of time; it is made up of

all moments. It cannot come unless all the previous lives have led up to it.

 

   

For the race as a whole it has not yet come. Any individual can hasten the

advent of this period for himself under the previously stated law of the

ripening of Karma. Should he then fail to choose right he is not wholly

condemned, for the economy of nature provides that he shall again and again

have the opportunity of choice when the moment arrives for the whole race.

After this period the race, having blossomed, tends towards its dissolution.

 

   

A few individuals of it will have outstripped its progress and attained

Adeptship or Mahatmaship. The main body, who have chosen aright, but who

have not attained salvation, pass into the subjective condition, there to

await the influx of the human life wave into the next globe, which they are

the first souls to people. 

   

   

>From THE EPITOME OF THEOSOPHY by Wm. Q. Judge

   

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

   

   

ON RELIGION

   

   

One of the Masters wrote:

   

 

“I will point out the greatest, the chief cause of nearly two thirds of the

evils that pursue humanity ever since that cause became a power. 

 

 

It is religion under whatever form and in whatsoever nation. It is the

sacerdotal caste, the priesthood and the churches; it is in those illusions

that man looks upon as sacred, that he has to search out the source of that

multitude of evils which is the great curse of humanity and that almost

overwhelms mankind. Ignorance created Gods and cunning took advantage of the

opportunity. 

 

 

Look at India and look at Christendom and Islam, at Judaism and Fetichism.

It is priestly imposture that rendered these Gods so terrible to man; it is

religion that makes of him the selfish bigot, the fanatic that hates all

mankind out of his own sect without rendering him any better or more moral

for it. It is belief in God and Gods that makes two-thirds of humanity the

slaves of a handful of those who deceive them under the false pretence of

saving them. 

 

 

It is not man ever ready to commit any kind of evil if told that his God or

Gods demand the crime — voluntary victim of an illusionary God, the abject

slave of his crafty ministers? The Irish, Italian and Slavonian peasant will

starve himself and see his family starving and naked to feed and clothe his

padre and pope. 

 

 

For two thousand years India groaned under the weight of caste, Brahmins

alone feeding on the fat of the land, and to-day the followers of Christ and

those of Mahomet are cutting each other’s throats in the names of and for

the greater glory of their respective myths. 

 

 

Remember the sum of human misery will never be diminished unto that day when

the better portion of humanity destroys in the name of Truth, morality, and

universal charity, the altars of their false gods.”

 

M L (Barker Edn: p. 57-8 Letter X)

 

   

                    

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

   

   

 

KARMA 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. KARMA and the inevitable justice each attracts to themselves

by their free choices.

 

2. REINCARNATION OF THE IMMORTAL EGO. To admit this Eternal

HIGHER SELF, the priests would render their tenure impossible.

 

3. The FREEDOM INNATE IN EACH HUMAN BEING.

 

4. The fact that ALL "RELIGIONS" ARE ON THE SAME LEVEL and none

is "superior" to another.

 

5. 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).

 

6. The fact of the UNIVERSAL SPIRIT (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.

 

7. Prayer, contrition, penance, to a "Personal God" to avert

punishment for wrongs done to others and "confessed" is totally

useless as the only 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. ]

 

8. Hence the determined practice of UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD is the

ONLY method that will enable anyone to actually 'progress.'

 

There are probably more than this but some thought given to these

may prove helpful. But 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.

 

 

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

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

   

 

 

SOURCE OF RELIGIONS

 

 

“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.* 

 

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. 

 

 

 

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 

 

 

 

* 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. 

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

 

them, and even within 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. 

 

 

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. 

 

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 

 

 

* 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. . .

 

† 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. 

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

 

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. 

 

 

 

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 hurricanesby

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. 

 

The reader, therefore, will not be surprised if so considerable space is

devoted in each case to an attempt to elucidate this difficult and obscure

subject. A good deal must necessarily be said on its symbological aspect;

because, by so doing, hints are given to the thoughtful student for his own

investigations, and more light can thus be suggested than it is possible to

convey in the technical phrases of a more formal, philosophical exposition. 

 

 

FALLEN ANGELS are HUMANITY

 

 

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.

“ S D II 272-4

 

 

"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

 

 

                       

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

 

In the SECRET DOCTRINE, Vol. I pp 210-11 we find this on

devotion:

 

 

“When, moved by the law of Evolution, the Lords of Wisdom infused into him

[man] 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 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. 

 

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

 

 

I hope these ideas will prove useful

   

Best wishes,

 

Dallas

 

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

 

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

From: Estela Carson 

Sent: Sunday, April 03, 2005

To: 

Subject Chapter 2 pages 18 & 19

 

Hello Folks, 

 

Let us go onto the last two principles that Geoffrey Farthing identifies. 

 

13. Spiritual Development

 

If examined in the light of Esoteric Science, this term appears to be a

misnomer. Mankind is a stage in an immense journey, the pilgrimage of the

Many to the Everlasting One. The object of the journey is the realization of

the essential unity of life, the experience of the One consciousness which

pervades the whole. The development is in effect the increase in the

responsiveness of living instruments, so that the consciousness of the

individual becomes identified eventually with, or merged into, that of the

other units of humanity who have transcended the limitations of purely

personal existence. 

 

Human life, with its vicissitudes and suffering, has appropriately been

called a training ground, the school of life, in which the main lesson to be

learned is the elimination of selfishness in all its forms. Selfishness, the

"great dire heresy," is a denial of the fact of unity and will be seen as

the source of many of the problems of mankind. Similarly, all that

contributes to breaking down the walls of separateness -altruism,

compassion, love- must promote the spiritual evolution of the individual and

of the human race. 

 

14. Religion

 

Various terms have been used to refer to the esoteric tradition, Theosophy.

It is Esoteric Science, the Ancient Wisdom, the Secret Doctrine, and the

Wisdom-Religion. But in using this last term, care must be taken not to see

in it a religion comparable to Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, or any

other of the religions of man. The Wisdom-Religion is the source of all of

these, and the study of the similarities in their traditions, forms and

doctrines will show that in essentials they must stem from a common origin. 

 

One of the aims that Mme Blavatsky set before herself in The Secret Doctrine

is particularly relevant:

 

"to rescue from degradation the archaic truths which are the basis of all

religions; and to uncover, to some extent, the fundamental unity from which

they all spring...."[21]

 

The state of religion today, the perpetuation of forms in ignorance of the

truths they represent, shows the need for the wide dissemination of Esoteric

Science if that aim is to be achieved.

_________________________________________________________

 

[21] Secret Doctrine, vol I viii, xxi and pg 9

 

___________________________________________________________

 

Throughout the study of Esoteric Science, it should be recognized that what

is presented to us here is not speculation or hypothesis, but knowledge

-knowledge possessed by men who, by the developments within themselves of

the necessary faculties, made themselves able to investigate at first hand

the hidden side of Nature. 

"The Secret Doctrine is the accumulated Wisdom of the Ages, and its

cosmogony alone is the most stupendous and elaborate system: e.g., even in

the exotericism of the Puranas. But such is the mysterious power of Occult

symbolism, that the facts which have actually occupied countless generations

of initiated seers and prophets to marshal, to set down and explain, in the

bewildering series of evolutionary progress, are all recorded on a few pages

of geometrical signs and glyphs. The flashing gaze of those seers has

penetrated into the very kernel of matter, and recorded the soul of things

there, where an ordinary profane, however learned, would have perceived but

the external work of form. But modern science believes not in the "soul of

things," hence will reject the whole system of ancient cosmogony. It is

useless to say that the system in question is no fancy or one or several

isolated individuals. That it is the uninterrupted record covering thousand

of generations of Seers whose respective experiences were made to test and

to verify the traditions passed orally by one early race to another, of the

teachings of higher and exalted beings, who watched over the childhood of

Humanity. That for long ages, the "Wise Men" of the Fifth Race, of the stock

saved and rescued from the last cataclysm and shifting of continents, had

passed their lives in learning not teaching. How did they do so? It is

answered: by checking, testing, and verifying in every department of nature

the traditions of old by the independent visions of great adepts; i.e., men

who have developed and perfected their physical, mental, psychic, and

spiritual organizations to the utmost possible degree. No vision of one

adept was accepted till it was checked and confirmed by the visions-so

obtained as to stand as independent evidence-of other adepts, and by

centuries of experience.[22]

 

[22] Secret Doctrine, vol I 272, 293, 316

 

Next week we shall start on Chapter III - The Occult Constitution of Cosmos

and Man.

 

 

Best regards E C

 

 

 

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

 

Best wishes,

 

Dallas

 



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