Theos-Talk Archives (April 2005 Message tt01567)

Apl 24 2005

Thanks Cindy:  

I think you are quite right.

Let me add that the emotional (psychic) nature we all have is not an
encumbrance when pure of selfishness.  

It is the selfish element that makes it so troublesome.

As you see, it is composed mainly of the personal interests (separativeness)
which we have encumbered ourselves (as psychic beings) . In effect we have
imprinted the "monads of lesser experience" we all use, with our selfish
motives and now these come back to us and delude us and trouble our
discrimination.

Those have to be made impersonal and generous. The application of Buddhi
(wisdom and discrimination between virtue and vice) that is impersonal and
generous -- brotherly -- makes th difference.

In the BHAGAVAD GITA we have the story of the "fight" that takes place in
all of us.  

Krishna is ATMA -- the HIGHER SELF within. 

Arjuna is the Mind-being the "human element." 

Krishna teaches BUDDHI -- wisdom to Arjuna (the Mind that lives in the
"Palace of Maya" -- of the 5 senses) .

Arjuna is told to discover what necessary duties are -- to apply them in
every incident of his life and not to try to anticipate results. 

Best wishes,

Dallas

P S This may be of help:



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

NOTES ON

THE BHAGAVAD GITA

By Wm. Brehon PATH MAGAZINE

	

==================================================
1
Chapter I 



THE HOLY SONG OF GOD HIMSELF 

THE "SONG CELESTIAL."


If the title of this sacred Hindu poem were paraphrased, it would read: 

The Holy Song of God Himself, who, at the beginning of Kali yuga or the dark
age, descended upon earth to aid and instruct Man. [3,102 B C]

GITA means song, and BHAGAVAD is one of the names of Krishna. Krishna was an
Avatar. According to the views of the Brahmins, we are now in Kali-yuga,
which began about the time of Krishna's appearance. [K. Yuga lasts for
432,000 years, we are at present about 5,000 years into its realm of
influence.]


MORAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS 


He (Krishna, the HIGHER SELF) is said to have descended in order to start
among men those moral and philosophical ideas which were necessary to be
known during the revolution of the Age, at the end of which —after a brief
period of darkness —a better Age will begin. 

The composition of this poem is attributed to Vyasa and, as he is also said
to have given the Vedas to men, a discussion about dates would not be
profitable and can well stand over until some other occasion. [Vedas are
said to be at least 1 million years old. Upanishads are commentaries on the
practical use of the Vedas.]

2

The Bhagavad-Gita is a portion of the Maha-bharata, the great epic of India.
The Mahabharata is so called because it contains the general history of the
house of Bharat, and the prefix Maha signifies great. 

Its more definite object, however, is to give an account of the wars of the
Kurus and Pandus, two great branches of the family. And that portion
included in our poem is the sublime philosophical and metaphysical dialogue
held by Krishna with Arjuna, on the eve of a battle between the two
aspirants for dominion. 

The scene of the battle is laid on the plain called "Kurukshetra," a strip
of land near Delhi, between the Indus, the Ganges, and the Himalayan
mountains. Many European translators and commentators, being ignorant of the
psychological system of the Hindus —which really underlies every word of
this poem — have regarded this plain and the battle as just those two things
and no more; some have gone so far as to give the commercial products of the
country at the supposed period, so that readers might be able, forsooth, in
that way to know the motives that prompted the two princes to enter into a
bloody internecine conflict. No doubt such a conflict did take place, for
man is continually imitating the higher

3

spiritual planes; and a great sage could easily adopt a human event in order
to erect a noble philosophical system upon such an allegorical foundation. 

In one aspect history gives us merely the small or great occurrences of
man's progress; but in another, any one great historical epoch will give us
a picture of the evolution in man, in the mass, of any corresponding faculty
of the Individual Soul. 

So we see, here and there, Western minds wondering why such a highly tuned
metaphysical discussion should be "disfigured by a warfare of savages." Such
is the materializing influence of Western culture that it is hardly able to
admit any higher meaning in a portion of the poem which confessedly it has
not yet come to fully understand. 



THE INDIAN PSYCHOLOGICAL SYSTEM 


Before the Upanishads can be properly rendered, the Indian psychological
system must be understood; and even when its existence is admitted, the
English speaking person will meet the great difficulty arising from an
absence of words in that language which correspond to the ideas so
frequently found in the Sanskrit. Thus we have to wait until a new set of
words has been born to express the new ideas not yet existing in the
civilization of the West. 

The location of the plain on which this battle

4

was fought is important, as well as are also the very rivers and mountains
by which it is bounded. And as equally needful to be understood, or at least
guessed at, are the names of the respective princes. 

The very place in the Mahabharata in which this episode is inserted has deep
significance, and we cannot afford to ignore anything whatever that is
connected with the events. 

If we merely imagine that Vyasa or Krishna took the sacred plain of
Kurukshetra and the great battle as simply accessories to his discourse,
which we can easily discard, the whole force of the dialogue will be lost. 

Although the Bhagavad-Gita is a small work, there have been written upon it,
among the Hindus, more commentaries than those upon the Revelation of St.
John among the Christians. 

I do not intend to go into those commentaries, because on the one hand I am
not a Sanskrit scholar, and on the other it would not tend to great profit.
Many of them are fanciful, some unwarrantable; and those that are of value
can be consulted by anyone anxious to pursue that line of inquiry. What I
propose here to myself and to all who may read these papers is to study the
Bhagavad-

5

Gita by the light of that spiritual lamp -- be it small or great -- which
the Supreme Soul will feed and increase within us if we attend to its
behests and diligently inquire after it. Such at least is the promise by
Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita — the "Song Celestial."

——————— 

In the few introductory lines with which I took up this subject, it was
stated that not being a Sanskrit scholar I did not intend to go into the
commentaries upon the poem in that language. The great mass of those
commentaries have looked at the dialogue from various standpoints. 

Many later Hindu students have not gone beyond the explanations made by
Sankaracharya, and nearly all refuse to do more than transliterate the names
of the different personages referred to in the first chapter. 


READING THIS POEM BETWEEN THE LINES


But there is the highest authority for reading this poem between the lines.
The Vedas themselves say that what we see of them is only "the disclosed
Veda," and that one should strive to get above this disclosed word. It is
here clearly implied that the undisclosed Vedas must be hidden or contained
in that which is apparent to the outer senses. Did we not have this
privilege, then surely would we be reduced

6

to obtaining true knowledge solely from the facts of experience as suffered
by the mortal frame, and fall into the gross error of the materialists who
claim that mind is only an effect produced by the physical brain-molecules
coming into motion. We would also have to follow the canonical rule, that
conscience is a safe guide only when it is regulated by an external law such
as the law of the church, or of the Brahmanical caste. 

But we very well know that within the material, apparent— or disclosed —
man, exists the real one who is undisclosed. 


LOOKING FOR THE INNER SENSE


This valuable privilege of looking for the inner sense, while not straining
after impossible meanings in the text, is permitted to all sincere students
of any holy scriptures, Christian or Pagan. 


DISCOVERING TRUTH -- AN OCCULT SCHOOL

And in the poem itself, Krishna declares that he will feed the lamp of
spiritual wisdom so that the real meaning of his words may be known; so too
the Upanishads uphold the existence of a faculty together with the right to
use it, whereby one can plainly discern the real, or undisclosed, meaning of
holy books. 

Indeed, there is a school of occultists who hold, as we think with reason,
that this power may be so developed by devoted persons, that even upon
hearing the words of a holy book read in a totally un-

7

familiar language, the true meaning and drift of the strange sentences
become instantly known. (1) 

The Christian commentators all allow that in studying their Bible the spirit
must be attended to and not the letter. 

This spirit is that undisclosed Veda which must be looked for between the
lines. 

Nor should the Western student of the poem be deterred from any attempt to
get at the real meaning by the attitude of the Brahmins, who hold that only
Brahmins can be told this real meaning, and, because Krishna did not make it
plain, it may not be made plain now to Sudras, or low caste people. 

Were this view to prevail, then the whole Western body of students would be
excluded from using this important book, inasmuch as all persons not Hindus
are necessarily of Sudra caste. 

Krishna did not make such an exclusion, which is only priestcraft. 

He was himself of shepherd caste and not a Brahmin; and he says that anyone
who listens to his words will receive great benefit. 

The sole limitation made by him is that one in which he declares that these
things must not be taught to those who do not want

-------------------------Footnote----------------------------
(1) We have in mind an incident where a person of some slight development
in this direction, heard read several verses from the Vedas in Sanskrit
—with which he had no acquaintance —and instantly told what the verses were
about. 
---------------------------------------------------------------

8

to listen, which is just the same direction as that given by Jesus of
Nazareth when he said, "cast not your pearls before swine." 


THE ARYAN PSYCHOLOGICAL SYSTEM


But as our minds work very much upon suggestion or clues and might, in the
absence of any hints as to where those clues are placed, be liable to
altogether overlook the point, we must bear in mind the existence among the
Aryans of a psychological system that gives substance and impulse to
utterances declared by many Orientalists to be folly unworthy of attention
from a man of the nineteenth century civilization. 

Nor need we be repulsed from our task because of a small acquaintance with
that Aryan psychology. The moment we are aware of its existence in the poem,
our inner self is ready to help the outer man to grasp after it; and in the
noble pursuit of these great philosophical and moral truths, which is only
our eternal endeavor to realize them as a part of our being, we can
patiently wait for a perfect knowledge of the anatomy and functions of the
inner man. 

Western Sanskritists have translated many important words into the very
lowest of their real meanings, being drawn away from the true by the
incomplete Western psychological and spiritual knowledge, or have mixed them

9

up hopelessly. Such words as karma and dharma are not understood. 


DHARMA and KARMA


Dharma means law, and is generally turned into duty, or said to refer merely
to some rule depending upon human convention, whereas it means an inherent
property of the faculties or of the whole man, or even of anything in the
cosmos.

Thus it is said that it is the duty, or dharma, of fire to burn. It always
will burn and thus do its whole duty, having no consciousness, while man
alone has the power to retard his "journey to the heart of the Sun," by
refusing to perform his properly appointed and plainly evident dharma. 

So again, when we read in the Bhagavad-Gita that those who depart this life
"in the bright half of the moon, in the six months of the sun's northern
course," will go to eternal salvation, while others, "who depart in the
gloomy night of the moon's dark season while the sun is in the southern half
of his path," ascend for a time to the moon's region, to be reborn on this
earth, our Orientalists tell us this is sheer folly, and we are unable to
contradict them. 

But if we know that the Aryans, with a comprehensive knowledge of the vast
and never inharmonious correspondence reigning throughout the macrocosm, in
speaking thus meant to admit that the human

10

being may be or not in a state of development in strict conformity to the
bright or dark moon, the verse becomes clear. 

The materialistic critic will take the verse in the fourth chapter, which
says that "he who eats of the ambrosia left from a sacrifice passes into the
supreme spirit," and ask us how the eating of the remnants of a burnt
offering can confer salvation. 

When, however, we know that Man is the altar and the sacrifice, and that
this ambrosia is the perfection of spiritual cultivation which he eats or
incorporates into his being, the Aryan is vindicated and we are saved from
despair. 

A strange similarity on one point may be noticed between our poem and the
old Hebrew record. The Jews were prepared by certain experiences to enter
into the promised land, but were unable to do so until they had engaged in
mighty conflicts with Hivites, Jebusites, Perizzites, and Amalekites. Here
we find that the very opening verse signalizes a war. 

The old, blind king Dhritarashtra asks his prime minister to tell him what
these opposing forces of Pandus and Kurus have been doing assembled as they
are resolved upon war. So too the Jews assembled upon the borders of the
promised land, resolved on conflict, and sustained in their resolve by the
declarations

11

of their God who had brought them out of the darkness of Egypt, carried on
the fight. 

Egypt was the place where they had, in mystic language, obtained
corporification, and stands for antenatal states, for unformed chaotic
periods in the beginning of evolution, for the gestation in the womb. 

We are on the eve of a gigantic combat, we are to rush into the midst of "a
conflict of savages." If this opening verse is understood as it was meant,
we are given the key to a magnificent system, and shall not fall into the
error of asserting that the unity of the poem is destroyed. 


DHRITARASHTRA IS BLIND, because the body, as such, is blind in every
way. 

Someone has said— Goethe I think —that the old pagan religions taught man to
look up, to aspire continually toward the greatness which was really his to
achieve, and thus led him to regard himself as but little less, potentially,
than a god; while the attitude of man under the Christian system is one of
humility, of bowed head and lowered eyes, in the presence of his God.
 
In approaching the "jealous God" of the Mosaic dispensation, it is not
permissible to assume an erect position. This change of attitude becomes
necessary as soon as we postulate a Deity who is outside and be-

12

yond us. And yet it is not due to the Christian scriptures in themselves,
but solely to the wrong interpretation given them by priests and churches,
and easily believed by a weak humanity that needs a support beyond itself on
which to lean. 



MAN IN HIS ESSENCE IS GOD


The Aryans, holding that man in his essence is God, naturally looked up to
him and referred everything to him. They therefore attributed to the
material of the body no power of sight or feeling. And so Dhritarashtra, who
is material existence, in which thirst for its renewal inheres, is blind. 



POWERS RESIDE IN INNER ORGANS OF THE SOUL


The eye cannot see nor the ear hear, of themselves. In the Upanishads the
pupil is asked: "What is the sight of the eye, and the hearing of the ear?"
replying that these powers reside solely with inner organs of the soul,
using the material body as the means for experiencing the phenomena of
material life. Without the presence of this indwelling, informing, hearing
and seeing power —or being— this collection of particles now deified asbody
is dead or blind. 

These philosophers were not behind our nineteenth century. Boscovich, the
Italian, Faraday, Fiske and other moderns, have concluded that we cannot
even see or know the matter of which these bodies and the different

13

substances about us are made up, and that the ultimate resolution is not
into atoms finely divided, but into "points of dynamic force"; 


THE REAL PERCEIVER OF PHENOMENA IS THE SELF. 


and therefore, we cannot know a piece of iron, we only know the phenomena it
produces. This position is an ancient Aryan one, with another added— that
the real perceiver of those phenomena is the Self. 

It is only by an acceptance of this philosophy that we will ever comprehend
the facts of nature which our science is so laboriously noting and
classifying. But that science ignores a large mass of phenomena well known
to spiritualists here and to ascetics in Asia, because the actual existence
of the Self as the final support of every phase of consciousness is denied.
"The disappearance of the ascetic is a possibility." 

But the West denies it, while it is doubtful if even spiritists will admit
that any living man can cause that phenomenon known as "form" to disappear.
They are, however, willing to grant that a "materialized spirit form" may
disappear, or that some mediums are living who have disappeared while
sitting in a chair, either as an actual dissipation of molecules or by being
covered as with a veil. (1) 

----------------------Footnote ------------------------
(1) For an instance see Olcott's "People from the Other World," respecting a
female medium. —W. B.
-----------------------------------------------

14

In those instances the thing happened without knowledge or effort on the
part of the medium, who was a passive agent. 

But the Eastern ascetic, possessing the power of disappearing, is a person
who has meditated upon the real basis of what we know as "form," with the
doctrine ever in view, as stated by Boscovich and Faraday, that these
phenomena are not realities per se, and adding that all must be referred to
the Self. 

And so we find Patanjali in his compilation of yoga aphorisms stating the
matter. In his twenty-first aphorism Book III, [p. 45] he says that the
ascetic being aware that form, as such, is nothing, can cause himself to
disappear (1) It is not difficult to explain this as a species of hypnotism
or psychologizing performed by the ascetic. But such sort of explaining is
only the modern method of getting out of a difficulty by stating it over
again in new terms.
 
Not until it is admitted that the Self eternally persists, and is always
unmodified, will any real knowledge be acquired by us respecting these
matters. In this Patanjali is very clear in his seventeenth aphor-

---------------------------------------- Footnote ---------------------
(1) The aphorism reads: "By performing Sanyama —restraint (or meditation)—
about form, its power of being apprehended (by the seer's eye) being
checked, and luminousness, the property of the organ of sight, having no
connection with its object (that is the form), the result is the
disappearance of the ascetic." — W. B.
---------------------------------------------------------------

15

ism, Book IV, where he says: "The modifications of the mental state are
always known, because the presiding spirit is not modified."

We must admit the blindness of Dhritarashtra, as body, and that our
consciousness and ability to know anything whatever of the modifications
going on in the organism, are due to the "presiding spirit."



KURUKSHETRA our BODY


So this old, blind rajah is that part of man which, containing the principle
of thirst for existence, holds material life. The Ganges bounding his plain
on one side typifies the sacred stream of spiritual life incarnated here. 

At first it flows down unperceived by us, through the spiritual spheres,
coming at last into what we call matter, where it manifests itself but yet
remains unseen, until at last it flows into the sea— or death —to be drawn
up again by the sun —or the karma of reincarnation. 

The plain is sacred because it is the "temple of the Holy Ghost."
Kurukshetra should then read: "The body which is acquired by karma." 

So the king does not ask what this body itself has been doing, but what have
the followers of material existence, that is the entire host of lower
elements in man by which he is attached to physical life, and the followers
of Pandu, that is the en-

16

tire set of spiritual faculties, been doing on this sacred plain. 

It follows then that the enumeration of generals and commanders gone into by
the prime minister in reply to the king must be a catalogue of all the lower
and higher faculties in man, containing also, in the names adopted, clues to
powers of our being only at present dimly guessed at in the West or included
in such vague terms as brain and mind. We find these generals given their
appropriate places upon either side, and see also that they have assigned to
them various distinctive weapons, which in many cases are flourished or
exhibited in the preliminary movements, so that our attention may be drawn
to them. 

———————

Part II to follow (if desired)

 	

============================
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Cindy 
Subject: [bn-study] 
RE: Theos-World How to find a teacher

Dear Neil, What Dallas quoted to you about the long and weary way is not
about not remembering the past or a teacher. It reminds the disciple that
in his/her past there are emotions entangled with memories. A disciple will
literally relive the memory and while doing so remove any residual emotion
that he/she has left behind. It is the emotions that we leave in the past
that will reach out to entangle us in the future. We will literally relive
all these incidents in our lives after death, including the emotions that we
felt. It is those emotions that we felt that will cause us to become
trapped once again in the life death rebirth cycle.

This is but one reason, but a very good one in my opinion.

Cindy

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

From: "Neil Davis" <	

How to find a teacher


> --- "W.Dallas TenBroeck" <dalval14@earthlink.net>
> wrote:
> "Long and weary is the way before thee, O Disciple.
> One single thought about the past that thou hast left
> behind, will drag thee down and thou wilt have to
> start the climb anew.
>
> Kill in thyself all memory of past experiences. Look
> not behind or thou art lost."
>
> These words remind me of the story in Genesis where
> Lot's wife became a pillar of salt when she looked
> back behind her to remember the cities of Sodom and
> Gomorrah as they were being destroyed.
>
> Neil
>
>
>
>
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