Re: SPIRITUAL CULTIVATION
Apr 06, 2005 03:41 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.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
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)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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
----------------------------------------------------------------------
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
Dallas
[Back to Top]
Theosophy World:
Dedicated to the Theosophical Philosophy and its Practical Application
