Theos-Talk Archives (June 2005 Message tt00255)

June 10 2005

Dear C and friends:

Let me say I find there is vagueness in regard to some aspects of
"meditation." Can this be resolved? I am of the opinion that THEOSOPHY
offers valid considerations and practical steps. Here area few I have looked
at: 

As in most things, concerning which there seems to be uncertain general
knowledge, it seems to me we ought to seek for the definitions that are
around us.  

Theosophy has a specific definition, as the meditation technique is one that
any student uses to learn about himself and nature. Some call it
introspection, some call it reflection, some call it "deep thought without
distraction," etc....

Theosophy considers every human being is a Soul (a Mind), and is an "Eternal
Pilgrim." The mind principle (called Manas in THEOSOPHY ) is that which
stores the thoughts of all our lives. The sense of being on an eternal
pilgrimage emerges from this -- we, the Eternal "Monad" are such pilgrims.

The total quantity of life's thoughts is said to make the stream of our
life's "meditation" -- or that element of desire upon which our heart is
set. We do not often have this in view as a precise concept, but it can be
discovered. It is not outside of us, but an interior attitude.  

Our Mind serves as a bridge or a link between our embodied consciousness (
the every-day, "lower" mind) and the inner, the ("higher" Mind) or, the
Spiritual Root of our Nature. In turn, this places us (when we assume such
a position) where we can choose to actively relate to the Spiritual
Principle that is one of the poles of the Universe. The Universe is
considered by THEOSOPHY to be in every part a combination of Spirit, Matter
and Mind. Or: purity, limitations, and dynamic thinking and desiring.

It may seem strange to hear that THEOSOPHY, as a philosophy, advocates
unselfishness, universality and impersonality as practical ideals that
anyone can learn, master and use.

It advances the concept that: indwelling in each human (as also in every
other being in the world and Universe) there is a portion of Divinity, of
purity, of idealism, which (as a "ray," or a "spark" of Universal Spirit) is
in us, and forms the root-base of our individual existence. It is this
sense of being enveloped in a divine SPACE that gives us a sense of our
permanence and of purpose in existence. It is this that establishes the
entitative existence of any being from the "atom" to the "Galaxy." The
Universal Brotherhood that is spoken of in THEOSOPHY is founded on this
pre-existing and invulnerable Unity.

With each one of us is associated a measure of our environment, together
with its advantages and disadvantages. This association we may look on as
consisting of other "immortal Monads," This, as a "burden" for good or bad,
has been called "Karma" -- the fruit of our choices and motives for
decisions made in earlier times during this life and in previous lives. This
manifests in our life as character and tendency, as interest and talent or
their lack.  

We also ought to include in this our interest in "meditation." Why do we
seek to understand and use it? We tend to place all these things together
and call it "our nature." But, we can also see that "our nature" reaches
out to other "natures" and we meet with such friends or enemies in this life
that we may have established in earlier ones. One cannot understand or
practice meditation without this as a consideration that interlinks us all.

Mme. Blavatsky says in THE KEY TO THEOSOPHY (p. 10):

Meditation ..."is silent and unuttered prayer, or, as Plato expressed it,
"the ardent turning of the soul towards the divine." This divine is the
Higher Self (Atma / Buddhi) or the divine Spirit-Wisdom within each of us.

"Occultism requires "physical, mental, moral and spiritual" development to
run on parallel lines...the prime factor in the guidance of thought is the
Will...The first requisite for it is thorough purity of heart...A
cultivation of the feeling of
unselfish philanthropy is the path that has to be traversed for that
purpose. For it is that alone which will lead to Universal Love, the
realization of which constitutes the progress towards deliverance from the
chains forged by Maya around the Ego...An Adept is intensely active and thus
able to control the elemental forces, " wrote Damodar K. Mavlankar in an
article titled: CONTEMPLATION ["THEOSOPHIST Magazine," Vol. 5, p. 112...,
Feb. 1884.]

There are two possible objectives to Meditation.

One, is directed at enhancing the Personality in its selfish acquisition of
"powers." it is selfish, and it isolates. It concentrates one's effort on
personal results -- if persisted in, it will produce some limited results
and, at death, it leaves nothing for Devachanic meditation. Anything that
"isolates," is selfish and harmful to the lower Self, and distances it / us
from that permanent Higher Self, which is the true immortal aspirant and
immortal devotee in each one of us.

The other is that which is aimed at understanding the Inner HIGHER SELF and
the spiritual, divine potential that it can make available for practical,
universal and righteous action. This kind of meditation leads to compassion
and a real effective care for others. It views us as a "brother," as one
among many.  

It also considers that we, as an embodied "immortal" Mind/Soul, have
innately to ourselves a mission that needs the joint cooperative assistance
of others to achieve. We can only reach "Perfection," or the "ultimate
Goal" envisaged, by joint work. The whole of humanity, and all Nature is
engaged in this.  

"A chela's meditation should constitute the reasoning from the known to the
unknown...Occultism does not depend upon one method, but employs both the
deductive and the inductive. The student must first learn the general
axioms...'To
believe without knowing is weakness; to believe because one knows, is
power.' " D. K. Mavlankar [idem.].


HOW CAN MEDITATION BE DEVELOPED ?

In considering the development of the meditative faculty we need first to
learn and then seek those applications which can be made compassionate
generously and practically. Our perception grows deeper and more universal
as we are able to widen our effectiveness in helping others to grow
themselves. "For others' sake ... " -- is a good phrase always to keep
in mind.  

We grow best when we give away. But we have to give away with
discrimination, and that takes sound preliminary learning. There is the
accumulation of facts, then their arrangement in logical relationships, and,
finally, the construction in our own minds of the structure of a universal
verity to which we will always be able to refer as a basis for understanding
what appears to be "new" concepts.  

Who does this? It is the Real Self, the Higher Mind when it works in and
through the Lower (embodied) Mind that does this with care and deliberation.


PRACTICE AND MEANING OF MEDITATION.

As to the meaning and practice of meditation: It should never be
conspicuous, or spoken about. And that is because it is the normal
extension of one's study of universal principles. Everyone knows about
study. Everyone has already devoted a long time to study and meditation in
school life. To study, we place "facts" (or data) in our minds -- as
"memory." To meditate one selects from among our memories a group or an
area of study. The memories are evoked and then compared with such basic
facts as we are already sure of. Therefore, every time that one studied a
subject, or wrote an article, or an important letter, or prepared for a
talk, the meditative aspect of study was automatically invoked.

Even when one is not studying, but only doing one's work, and happens to
think about some subject that is kept "in the back of the mind," it is
evidence of meditation being pursuing as an ongoing process. If one
reflects on this, then the process was: selection, gathering information,
adjusting data so that a cohesive picture grew, identifying areas that were
uncertain, and finally looking for analogous or similar conditions.
Anything new has to be adjusted so that it is seen to agree with basic
information already proved to ones' self. If, in the course of meditation
one is confronted with some fact that is not congruent with already proven
verities, this necessitates a most careful review of all our earlier built
conclusions. If we should arbitrarily accept anything without this checking
and verifying process we might be increasing an area of error in our
thinking.


THE UNIVERSE IS COHESIVE AND COOPERATIVE.

Theosophy shows how the whole Universe is integrated and has a profound
cohesive and logical meaning. Everything fits together, and invites our
scrutiny and testing. There are no secrets as such, nor any dogmas or
beliefs that we should adopt without understanding. Nothing will ever be
expected of us which we cannot understand and would do willingly once we are
sure of the intention, methods and results.

So our lives are part of the Universal Life, and as we seek to know it
better, we delve deeper into our own being, trying to find out what we are
and what are the powers of our mind and our own Spiritual Self, that we can
use in the "here and now.".


VIRTUES: BROTHERHOOD, COMPASSION, ALTRUISM.

We should discover that this leads to friendliness, brotherhood,
compassion and altruism. And, those should be practiced with
discrimination and care for others all the time. The interior
"WE" is really the HIGHER SELF. It is the Lower self, the Lower
mind and the Personality (which has to recognized the existence of
the HIGHER SELF), that is the way in which we can invoke it, so
the HIGHER SELF may "come through" with greater ease.

CONSCIOUSNESS is ONE. It is the one attribute of the Higher
Self. It, alone is able to pierce up and down the 7 planes of
being, and it retains a clear memory of experiences on each plane.
Our memories on this plane of our daily lives are fragmentary, until by
effort we
learn to unify them. The practice of "attention" does this, but,
it has to be attentive to grasping the operations of the One Law
and impersonal in our application of that to our personal selves.


MEDITATION and THE MONAD (Atma-Buddhi-Manas)

It is the process of digesting, assimilation and thinking about
the matter. By this method, one is inviting the discriminating
and Wise principle -- Buddhi -- to work actively as the
"intuition," and for insights to appear to help. They come from
within, they are the "points of light" that come from the Higher
Self working through the lower Self (which has to make itself
"porous" to them) and then our lives become illumined by the
TRUE, and become friendly to all others, become just and
universal.

MEDITATION is serious and concentrated thought. It is not a
ritual, or a discipline that involves anything of the physical or
the psychic. It should not be advertised or made obvious to
others, nor should it make personal life more difficult.  

It is in essence a search for TRUTH. It is a quiet, unobtrusive
mind exercise. It is something that requires that we be fully
awake and totally concentrated in the waking state -- no
"blanking of the mind", and it is to be entirely self-controlled
and self-generated. It is not an exercise that can be practised
with others, even when there are silent moments, for the reason
that it is not passivity, but a time of most active mental effort.

We ought to draw no attention to our practice and if we should be
interrupted, accept it as a kind of test of our equanimity, and
let there be no apparent reaction. We are immortal beings and
have all the time we need for our future advance -- so long as we
are able to include everyone else in our progress. That is the
real key to advance - the sharing of ourselves. We should always
make time to assist.

It does not involve trying to get at the meaning of special words
and especially without a truly correct understanding of what they
mean and are (potentially) able to do -- whether they be
pronounced correctly or not. That is all physical, external and
fruitless.  

The real power resides in the application of the
motive as a carefully controlled and always beneficent creative
power. Among those who aspire to assist Nature, this is never
personal, and is always used (only if necessary) in a harmless,
wise and compassionate way with a Mind that is determined to be a
servant, and an assistant to all Nature and to the least of beings
which approaches us under Karma. We should consider all
those as being, themselves, divine MONADS, and give each of 
them the respect and attention (as our brothers) that they claim 
or, that we come aware that they need.

Real meditation is a mental determination to live a totally moral
and ethical life, all the time; and to the extent that one is able to
do that. It is nothing extraordinary except for this one
orientation that has to come from WITHIN. We have to assure
ourselves first of all that our learning is not self-directed at
all, but that our motive is "to better help and teach others."


THE VOICE OF THE SILENCE -- INTUITION.

The VOICE OF THE SILENCE and its statements ought to be
considered as one of the primary practical sources of inspiration
for true Meditation. We ought, by reading a little every day, to
become familiar with it and the explanations contained in the
footnotes there.

As said before, it is most important to remember that we are the
HIGHER SELF in our inner-most core (and everyone else is so
also). Every being exists because of the essential and ETERNAL
MONAD that it is. That Monad is SPIRIT and MATTER conjoined, or
ATMA/BUDDHI -- and that is interior to all without any exception.
It is the ETERNAL PILGRIM and it is the "Real You."

Every human being (and every other type of being is also at root
a Monad). In the past, our MONAD once occupied a position
that is comparable to that which another Monad which is apparently 
in a lower position, now seems to occupy. We only appear to be 
separated at present, because we have, each of us, our own
individual path.  

In the end (at the end of the Manvantara) all
those 'Paths' converge. So, from that point of view, it is not
useful to seek "guidance," or any "leader" who will prescribe
some ritual or formula. Books will not be able to tell anyone
what to do, but they can offer advice. It is too easy to be
misled. The TRUE Teacher is the Higher Self within.

We must remember that the Monad is an immortal. It cannot be
"erased" as Individuality at the end of a Manvantara, for the
economy of Nature demands that all those INDIVIDUALITIES
(experienced MONADS) be employed again, in continuation of their
present "advance" at an appropriate place in a new Manvantara
which will be the Karmic child of the present one. (see HPB
ISIS UNVEILED AND THE VISHISTADWAITA, HPB Articles,
Vol. III, p. 265, ULT Edition, "Theosophist," Jan. 1886.)

Everyone has been at this business of self-improvement for
aeons -- and it does not begin for the first time in this life.
In this life we are all renewing that age-old study that was ours
in the past. If we could recover the "memory of past lives" the
whole process of advancing would be much easier. If we are now
considering the study of Theosophy, it is that which, if and when
applied, will make our embodied minds (the Lower Self) clearer
and porous, so that the Higher Memories may be accessed.


PATANJALI's YOGA-SUTRAS -- A BASIS FOR MEDITATION.

PATANJALI's YOGA SUTRAS translated by W. Q. Judge, is most
valuable in a study of the nature and procedures of meditation --
especially the first 3 books. It gives a clue as to what true
meditation is. It is the attempt of the embodied mind (the Lower
Manas) to reach up to and understand the work of the Higher Manas
within. And from there to participate in the work of the HIGHER
SELF. It deals with the concept that we live in a moral Universe 
where every feeling, thought or deed carries a Karmic consequence.

As a beginning, one might at first study, frame questions, then
begin to assemble all that one has learned or has available on a
selected subject. This assembling is a primary need, gives a needed 
review of those subjects and ideas -- then one ought to put them all
together and see if one can secure a glimpse of the inner reason
and meaning for their being there [ to do this, one ought to ask
the all-important question: WHY ? -- An answer takes the
practitioner to basic principles and enables a clear perception
of their inter-relation with others and thus to the CAUSES ] --
and that is MEDITATION.


Offered in the hope that this might help.

 
RULES IN OCCULTISM

Student. - Are there any rules, binding on all, in white magic or good
occultism? I mean rules similar to the ten commandments of the Christians,
or the rules for the protection of life, liberty, and property recognized by
human law.

Sage. - There are such rules of the most stringent character, the
breaking of which is never wiped out save by expiation. Those rules are not
made up by some brain or mind, but flow from the laws of nature, of mind,
and of soul. Hence they are impossible of nullification. One may break them
and seem to escape for a whole life or for more than a life; but the very
breaking of them sets in motion at once other causes which begin to make
effects, and most unerringly those effects at last react on the violator.
Karma here acts as it does elsewhere, and becomes a Nemesis who, though
sometimes slow, is fate itself in its certainty.


Student. - It is not, then, the case that when an occultist violates a rule
some other adept or agent starts out like a detective or policeman and
brings the culprit to justice at a bar or tribunal such as we sometimes read
of in the imaginative works of mystical writers or novelists?

Sage. - No, there is no such pursuit. On the contrary, all the
fellow-adepts or students are but too willing to aid the offender, not in
escaping punishment, but in sincerely trying to set counteracting causes in
motion for the good of all. For the sin of one reacts on the whole human
family. If, however, the culprit does not wish to do the amount of
counteracting good, he is merely left alone to the law of nature, which is
in fact that of his own inner life from which there can be no escape. In
Lytton's novel, Zanoni, you will notice the grave Master, Mejnour, trying to
aid Zanoni, even at the time when the latter was falling slowly but surely
into the meshes twisted by himself that ended in his destruction. Mejnour
knew the law and so did Zanoni. The latter was suffering from some former
error which he had to work out; the former, if himself too stern and unkind,
would later on come to the appropriate grief for such a mistake. But
meanwhile he was bound to help his friend, as are all those who really
believe in brotherhood.


Student. - What one of those rules in any way corresponds to "Thou shalt not
steal"?

Sage. - That one which was long ago expressed by the ancient sage in
the words, "Do not covet the wealth of any creature." This is better than
"Thou shalt not steal," for you cannot steal unless you covet. If you steal
for hunger you may be forgiven, but you coveted the food for a purpose, just
as another covets merely for the sake of possession. The wealth of others
includes all their possessions, and does not mean mere money alone. Their
ideas, their private thoughts, their mental forces, powers, and faculties,
their psychic powers - all, indeed, on all planes that they own or have.
While they in that realm are willing to give it all away, it must not be
coveted by another.

You have no right, therefore, to enter into the mind of another who has not
given the permission and take from him what is not yours. You become a
burglar on the mental and psychic plane when you break this rule. You are
forbidden taking anything for personal gain, profit, advantage, or use. But
you may take what is for general good, if you are far enough advanced and
good enough to be able to extricate the personal element from it. This rule
would, you can see, cut off all those who are well known to every observer,
who want psychic powers for themselves and their own uses. If such persons
had those powers of inner sight and hearing that they so much want, no power
could prevent them from committing theft on the unseen planes wherever they
met a nature that was not protected. And as most of us are very far from
perfect, so far, indeed, that we must work for many lives, yet the Masters
of Wisdom do not aid our defective natures in the getting of weapons that
would cut our own hands. For the law acts implacably, and the breaches made
would find their end and result in long after years. The Black Lodge,
however, is very willing to let any poor, weak, or sinful mortal get such
power, because that would swell the number of victims they so much require.


Student. - Is there any rule corresponding to "Thou shalt not bear false
witness"?

Sage. - Yes; the one which requires you never to inject into
the brain of another a false or untrue thought. As we can project our
thoughts to another's mind, we must not throw untrue ones to another. It
comes before him, and he, overcome by its strength perhaps, finds it echoing
in him, and it is a false witness speaking falsely within, confusing and
confounding the inner spectator who lives on thought.


Student. - How can one prevent the natural action of the mind when pictures
of the private lives of others rise before one?

Sage. - That is difficult for the run of men. Hence the mass have
not the power in general; it is kept back as much as possible. But when the
trained soul looks about in the realm of soul it is also able to direct its
sight, and when it finds rising up a picture of what it should not
voluntarily take, it turns its face away. A warning comes with all such
pictures which must be obeyed. This is not a rare rule or piece of
information, for there are many natural clairvoyants who know it very well,
though many of them do not think that others have the same knowledge.


Student. - What do you mean by a warning coming with the picture?

Sage. - In this realm the slightest thought becomes a voice or a
picture. All thoughts make pictures. Every person has his private thoughts
and desires. Around these he makes also a picture of his wish for privacy,
and that to the clairvoyant becomes a voice or picture of warning which
seems to say it must be let alone. With some it may assume the form of a
person who says not to approach, with others it will be a voice, with still
others a simple but certain knowledge that the matter is sacred. All these
varieties depend on the psychological idiosyncrasies of the seer.


Student. - What kind of thought or knowledge is excepted from these rules?

Sage. - General, and philosophical, religious, and moral. That is to
say, there is no law of copyright or patent which is purely human in
invention and belongs to the competitive system. When a man thinks out truly
a philosophical problem it is not his under the laws of nature; it belongs
to all; he is not in this realm entitled to any glory, to any profit, to any
private use in it. Hence the seer may take as much of it as he pleases, but
must on his part not claim it or use it for himself. Similarly with other
generally beneficial matters. They are for all. If a Spencer thinks out a
long series of wise things good for all men, the seer can take them all.
Indeed, but few thinkers do any original thinking. They pride themselves on
doing so, but in fact their seeking minds go out all over the world of mind
and take from those of slower movement what is good and true, and then make
them their own, sometimes gaining glory, sometimes money, and in this age
claiming all as theirs and profiting by it.
Path, January, 1895
 



Dallas
 
-----Original Message-----
From: christinaleestemaker
Sent: Friday, June 10, 2005 11:13 AM
To: 
Subject: Brain damage on meditation 

To the heretic who thinks, meditation does not give braindamamage:

I can say it does, if one is not spiritual strong.
My experiences: there is a very great difference in meditation in the 
WEST and in the EAST.

For here in the west there is no possibility for meditation in a 
total noisy surrounding, even not to be concentrated.
The cause is that there will not be any restful minute, or second for 
that in a residential town,only in midnight it will be restfull, if 
there are not older ones making noisy.

CUT