Theos-Talk Archives (October 2005 Message tt00047)

10/9/2005 1:06 PM

Dear Christinalee and friends,

Thanks, look at this, seems interesting also:


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JUSTICE and LAW

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

"...history tells us that the masses adopted Buddhism with enthusiasm,
while, as said before, the practical effect upon them of this philosophy of
ethics is still shown by the smallness of the percentage of crime amongst
Buddhist populations as compared with every other religion. 

The chief point is, to uproot that most fertile source of all crime and
immorality -- the belief that it is possible for them to escape the
consequences of their own actions. Once teach them that greatest of all
laws, Karma and Re-incarnation, and besides feeling in themselves the true
dignity of human nature, they will turn from evil and eschew it as they
would a physical danger."
Key p. 248

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


"Every Western Theosophist should learn and remember, especially those of 
them who would be our followers - that in our Brotherhood all personalities 
sink into one idea -- abstract right and absolute practical justice for 
all. And that, though we may not say with the Christian, "return good for 
evil" - we repeat with Confucius, "return good for good; for evil - 
JUSTICE." ... A dutiful regard for these rules in life will always promote 
the best interests of all concerned."     
Mahatma Letters, p. 401, Let # 85 [ No 120 ], January 1884 


"Abolish the Courts themselves, for if you would follow the Commandments of 
Christ, you have to give away your coat to him who deprives you of your 
cloak, and turn your left cheek to the bully who smites you on the right."
Key on p. 55.


"Enq: But if by so doing, he risks to injure, or allow others to be injured?

What ought he to do then?

Theo: His duty; that which his conscience and higher nature suggests to 
him; but only after mature deliberation. Justice consists in doing no 
injury to any living being; but justice commands us also never to allow 
injury to be done to the many, or even to one innocent person, by allowing 
the guilty one to go unchecked."	Key, p. 251


"A man has no right to starve himself to death that another man may have 
food, unless the life of that man is obviously more useful to the many than 
is his own life."	Key, p. 239


[H P B In SECRET DOCTRINE, Vol. II]
"Shall we be answered to this, in Congreve's words: -- 
"But who shall dare to tax Eternal Justice?" 

Logic and simple common sense, we answer: if we are made to believe in the
"original Sin," in one life, on this Earth only, for every Soul, and in an
anthropomorphic Deity, who seems to have created some men only for the
pleasure of condemning them to eternal hell-fire (and this whether they are
good or bad, says the Predestinarian), why should not every man endowed with
reasoning powers condemn in his turn such a villainous Deity? Life would
become unbearable, if one had to believe in the God created by man's unclean
fancy. Luckily he exists only in human dogmas, and in the unhealthy
imagination of some poets, .

Truly a robust "faith" is required to believe that it is "presumption" to
question the justice of one, who creates helpless little man but to
"perplex" him, and to test a "faith" with which that "Power," moreover, may
have forgotten, if not neglected, to endow him, as happens sometimes. 
Compare this blind faith with the philosophical belief, based on every
reasonable evidence and life-experience, in Karma-Nemesis, or the Law of
Retribution. 

This Law -- whether Conscious or Unconscious -- predestines nothing and no
one. It exists from and in Eternity, truly, for it is ETERNITY itself; and
as such, since no act can be co-equal with eternity, it cannot be said to
act, for it is ACTION itself. It is not the Wave which drowns a man, but the
personal action of the wretch, who goes deliberately and places himself
under the impersonal action of the laws that govern the Ocean's motion. 

Karma creates nothing, nor does it design. It is man who plans and creates
causes, and Karmic law adjusts the effects; which adjustment is not an act,
but universal harmony, tending ever to resume its original position, like a
bough, which, bent down too forcibly, rebounds with corresponding vigour. If
it happen to dislocate the arm that tried to bend it out of its natural
position, shall we say that it is the bough which broke our arm, or that our
own folly has brought us to grief? 

Karma has never sought to destroy intellectual and individual liberty, like
the God invented by the Monotheists. It has not involved its decrees in
darkness purposely to perplex man; nor shall it punish him who dares to
scrutinize its mysteries. On the contrary, he who unveils through study and
meditation its intricate paths, and throws light on those dark ways, in the
windings of which so many men perish owing to their ignorance of the
labyrinth of life, is working for the good of his fellow-men. KARMA is an
Absolute and Eternal law in the World of manifestation; and as there can
only be one Absolute, as One eternal ever present Cause, believers in Karma
cannot be regarded as Atheists or materialists -- still less as fatalists:"
for Karma is one with the Unknowable, of which it is an aspect in its
effects in the phenomenal world. 

Intimately, or rather indissolubly, connected with Karma, then, is the law
of re-birth, or of the re-incarnation of the same spiritual individuality in
a long, almost interminable, series of personalities. The latter are like
the various costumes and characters played by the same actor, with each of
which that actor identifies himself and is identified by the public, for the
space of a few hours. 

The inner, or real man, who personates those characters, knows the whole
time that he is Hamlet for the brief space of a few acts, which represent,
however, on the plane of human illusion the whole life of Hamlet. And he
knows that he was, the night before, King Lear, the transformation in his
turn of the Othello of a still earlier preceding night; but the outer,
visible character is supposed to be ignorant of the fact. [ see Key, p. 34]

In actual life that ignorance is, unfortunately, but too real. Nevertheless,
the permanent individuality is fully aware of the fact, though, through the
atrophy of the "spiritual" eye in the physical body, that knowledge is
unable to impress itself on the consciousness of the false personality. "
S D II 304 - 6

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HOW SHOULD WE TREAT OTHERS


The subject relates to our conduct toward and treatment of our fellows,
including in that term all people with whom we have any dealings. No
particular mode of treatment is given by Theosophy. It simply lays down the
law that governs us in all our acts, and declares the consequences of those
acts. It is for us to follow the line of action which shall result first in
harmony now and forever, and second, in the reduction of the general sum of
hate and opposition in thought or act which now darkens the world.


The great law which Theosophy first speaks of is the law of karma, and this
is the one which must be held in view in considering the question. Karma is
called by some the "law of ethical causation," but it is also the law of
action and reaction; and in all departments of nature the reaction is equal
to the action, and sometimes the reaction from the unseen but permanent
world seems to be much greater than the physical act or word would appear to
warrant on the physical plane.

This is because the hidden force on the unseen plane was just as strong and
powerful as the reaction is seen by us to be. The ordinary view takes in but
half of the facts in any such case and judges wholly by superficial
observation.

If we look at the subject only from the point of view of the person who
knows not of Theosophy and of the nature of man, nor of the forces Theosophy
knows to be operating all the time, then the reply to the question will be
just the same as the everyday man makes. 

That is, that he has certain rights he must and will and ought to protect;
that he has property he will and may keep and use any way he pleases; and if
a man injure him he ought to and will resent it; that if he is insulted by
word or deed he will at once fly not only to administer punishment on the
offender, but also try to reform, to admonish, and very often to give that
offender up to the arm of the law; that if he knows of a criminal he will
denounce him to the police and see that he has meted out to him the
punishment provided by the law of man. Thus in everything he will proceed as
is the custom and as is thought to be the right way by those who live under
the Mosaic retaliatory law.
But if we are to inquire into the subject as Theosophists, and as
Theosophists who know certain laws and who insist on the absolute sway of
karma, and as people who know what the real constitution of man is, then the
whole matter takes on, or ought to take on, a wholly different aspect.

The untheosophical view is based on separation, the Theosophical upon unity
absolute and actual. Of course if Theosophists talk of unity but as a dream
or a mere metaphysical thing, then they will cease to be Theosophists, and
be mere professors, as the Christian world is today, of a code not followed.


If we are separate one from the other the world is right and resistance is a
duty, and the failure to condemn those who offend is a distinct breach of
propriety, of law, and of duty. But if we are all united as a physical and
psychical fact, then the act of condemning, the fact of resistance, the
insistence upon rights on all occasions - all of which means the entire lack
of charity and mercy - will bring consequences as certain as the rising of
the sun tomorrow.

What are those consequences, and why are they?

They are simply this, that the real man, the entity, the thinker, will react
back on you just exactly in proportion to the way you act to him, and this
reaction will be in another life, if not now, and even if now felt will
still return in the next life.

The fact that the person whom you condemn, or oppose, or judge seems now in
this life to deserve it for his acts in this life, does not alter the other
fact that his nature will react against you when the time comes. The
reaction is a law not subject to nor altered by any sentiment on your part.

He may have, truly, offended you and even hurt you, and done that which in
the eye of man is blameworthy, but all this does not have anything to do
with the dynamic fact that if you arouse his enmity by your condemnation or
judgment there will be a reaction on you, and consequently on the whole of
society in any century when the reaction takes place. 

This is the law and the fact as given by the Adepts, as told by all sages,
as reported by those who have seen the inner side of nature, as taught by
our philosophy and easily provable by anyone who will take the trouble to
examine carefully. 

Logic and small facts of one day or one life, or arguments on lines laid
down by men of the world who do not know the real power and place of thought
nor the real nature of man cannot sweep this away. After all argument and
logic it will remain. The logic used against it is always lacking in certain
premises based on facts, and while seeming to be good logic, because the
missing facts are unknown to the logician, it is false logic. Hence an
appeal to logic that ignores facts which we know are certain is of no use in
this inquiry. And the ordinary argument always uses a number of assumptions
which are destroyed by the actual inner facts about thought, about karma,
about the reaction by the inner man.

The Master "K.H.," once writing to Mr. Sinnett in the Occult World, and
speaking for his whole order and not for himself only, distinctly wrote that
the man who goes to denounce a criminal or an offender works not with nature
and harmony but against both, and that such act tends to destruction instead
of construction. 

Whether the act be large or small, whether it be the denunciation of a
criminal, or only your own insistence on rules or laws or rights, does not
alter the matter or take it out of the rule laid down by that Adept. For the
only difference between the acts mentioned is a difference of degree alone;
the act is the same in kind as the violent denunciation of a criminal. 

Either this Adept was right or wrong. If wrong, why do we follow the
philosophy laid down by him and his messenger, and concurred in by all the
sages and teachers of the past? If right, why this swimming in an adverse
current, as he said himself, why this attempt to show that we can set aside
karma and act as we please without consequences following us to the end of
time? I know not. I prefer to follow the Adept, and especially so when I see
that what he says is in line with facts in nature and is a certain
conclusion from the system of philosophy I have found in Theosophy.

I have never found an insistence on my so-called rights at all necessary.
They preserve themselves, and it must be true if the law of karma is the
truth that no man offends against me unless I in the past have offended
against him.

In respect to man, karma has no existence without two or more persons being
considered. You act, another person is affected, karma follows. It follows
on the thought of each and not on the act, for the other person is moved to
thought by your act. Here are two sorts of karma, yours and his, and both
are intermixed.

There is the karma or effect on you of your own thought and act, the result
on you of the other person's thought; and there is the karma on or with the
other person consisting of the direct result of your act and his thoughts
engendered by your act and thought. This is all permanent. 

As affecting you there may be various effects. If you have condemned, for
instance, we may mention some: 

(a) the increased tendency in yourself to indulge in condemnation, which
will remain and increase from life to life; 

(b) this will at last in you change into violence and all that anger and
condemnation may naturally lead to; 

(c) an opposition to you is set up in the other person, which will remain
forever until one day both suffer for it, and this may be in a tendency in
the other person in any subsequent life to do you harm and hurt you in the
million ways possible in life, and often also unconsciously. 

Thus it may all widen out and affect the whole body of society. Hence no
matter how justifiable it may seem to you to condemn or denounce or punish
another, you set up cause for sorrow in the whole race that must work out
some day. And you must feel it.

The opposite conduct, that is, entire charity, constant forgiveness, wipes
out the opposition from others, expends the old enmity and at the same time
makes no new similar causes. Any other sort of thought or conduct is sure to
increase the sum of hate in the world, to make cause for sorrow, to
continually keep up the crime and misery in the world. Each man can for
himself decide which of the two ways is the right one to adopt.

Self-love and what people call self-respect may shrink from following the
Adept's view I give above, but the Theosophist who wishes to follow the law
and reduce the general sum of hate will know how to act and to think, for he
will follow the words of the Master of H.P.B. who said: "Do not be ever
thinking of yourself and forgetting that there are others; for you have no
karma of your own, but the karma of each one is the karma of all." 

And these words were sent by H.P.B. to the American Section and called by
her words of wisdom, as they seem also to me to be, for they accord with
law. They hurt the personality of the nineteenth century, but the
personality is for a day, and soon it will be changed if Theosophists try to
follow the law of charity as enforced by the inexorable law of karma. 

We should all constantly remember that if we believe in the Masters we
should at least try to imitate them in the charity they show for our
weakness and faults. In no other way can we hope to reach their high estate,
for by beginning thus we set up a tendency which will one day perhaps bring
us near to their development; by not beginning we put off the day forever.

William Brehon, F.T.S.

PATH, February, 1896 [W Q J Articles, Vol. II, p. 357]
 

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


K A R M A 


K A R M A - W.Q.Judge	Judge Art. I, p. 112

===================================================================
PAGE	KEY WORD	COMMENTS	SUMMARY	REFERENCES
===================================================================


112	JUSTICE	- measure for measure
- as ye sow, so shall ye reap : of well or
ill

QUESTIONS	1.- How do past life's acts affect this one ?
2.- Does "Nemesis" ever relent ?
3.- Does the eternal law of cause and effect.
unmoved
by sorrow or regret, always deal out its
measures
based on the past?	- see ANUGITA Ch.
III
4.- Must yesterday's sin darken today ?
5.- Is Karma fate ?
6.- Does the child unfold the "Book of Life" already
fully written
without any escape possible ?
7.- How does Karma interact with our present lives ?
8.- Can man do better than use the already marked
threads of past 
lives in this one ?


112	GOOD RESOLVES & EVIL TENDENCIES	- can sweep over our natures

with resistless force: Is this true ?


KARMA OF VARIOUS KINDS:	1- good - bad - 
112-3	2- old Karma can be exhausted
113	3- new Karma can be accumulated
4- HIDDEN and MANIFEST


EACH ACTION	- is a cause from which evolve countless 
ramifications of effects in time and space.


KARMA	= CONTINUANCE OF THE NATURE OF THE ACTION  	
PAST and FUTURE - are contained in
every act
. TIME is illusory.


EFFECT	- IS THE NATURE OF THE ACT and cannot be distinct from 
its cause



113	THAT WHICH ALREADY EXISTS is brought out by the action of Karma
- the same action from another point of view in time
ML 29 193-4 SD I 224

- Karma relates solely to the individual who
generated it is not
that of another EGO. (Each Ego is
responsible for their own Karma.)

113	DEFECTS - which are realized from an act must be implicit in it
MIND	
- is the source of all acts ( Thought comes before
act )

113	DESIRE - is the basis of all acts	( Plane of desire or 
egotism is itself action and the basis of all acts.

114	- both act and consequences are effects.

CAUSAL PLANE - the plane of desire is causal.

[ MOTIVE	-Then "motive" is to be found in "desire ?" ]

DESIRE	- determines the continuation of the act in its karmic
relation to the individual

PLANES - of cause/effect and of non-manifestation

EFFECTS - effects are limited by the boundaries when there is no
longer a base or medium in which they can
inhere. (Ex.: ripples DO NOT affect side of pond.)

114	LIMITS - although Karma begins by a personal act it is not 
limited by that personality, nor dependent upon the 
present personality for the effect to manifest in
full. EXAMPLE: seed needs cooperation from water, 
soil and culture to germinate and fructify. If no
seed, no plant. The other three need the seed.

114	INCARNATION	- first product of "held-over" Karma

TENDENCIES - Ruling tendencies determine this ( desires, 	
tendencies, affinities, etc...) fresh birth of 
the entity Ego
			
FAMILY - surroundings most in harmony with KARMIC tendencies is
selected = PLACE OF BIRTH

LIMITATIONS	- governed are: station in life, sex, childhood's
years of personal 
of irresponsibility, constitution 	
with diseases inherent in it, 
"heredity," and "national characteristic."


115	LAW OF LEAST RESISTANCE	- operates in selecting family and
nation of birth - special characteristics


115	NATIONAL KARMA	- the resultant of masses of individuals with
similar Karmic characteristics and tendencies into life at
one time

115	FAMILY & CASTE KARMA	- similar on a reduced scale

115	END OF KARMIC TENDENCY	- may abruptly occur after any special
set of conditions mandated by past causes are satisfied

- the life then takes an entirely fresh bent

115	END OF KARMA - after observing personal life taking such a change:
- occasionally there are lingering effects that may be
observed, giving obstacles and obstructions to 
progress or success in the rest of the life.

115-6	INJUSTICE	- to be accounted for demands understanding that

Karma is unerring. The sequence to the original cause
is true, "streaks of fortune" are the result of such
changes (but the source remains unknown in this 	
life.)

116	AFFECTING ONE'S OWN KARMA	
- the Karma of action works through many planes:

PLANES OF KARMIC ACTION -

1.	PHYSICAL PLANE - body, senses and organs,

2.	INTELLECTUAL - memory which binds and unites 
impressions into one organized whole
- reason puts in order its storehouse
of thoughts.

3.	EMOTIONAL PLANE- preferences of one, over others
- 4th principle of man [KAMA-DESIRE ]
			
These 3 planes deal with objects of perception
- the great battle field of Karma (Kurukshetra)

4.	ETHICAL PLANE - "To do, or "Not to do."

5.	DISCRIMINATION- harmonizes the intellect & emotion with
the MIND as the basis for desire
116
6	MIND	- alone initiates actions on the various planes

- alone through Mind can effects of rest or action
be received.

ENTERING INCARNATION	Karmic energy from past existences also
enters intact - awaiting development as effect



117	KARMA ON EACH OF THE 3 PLANES	- is always in harmony with the
basis of the original nature of the act. Unbroken
continuity with the past.

117	KARMIC ENERGY AT BIRTH	- is a definite quantum - 

1. cause of rebirth environment  
2. It awaits period of life when new Karma can begin.
117

MOMENT OF RESPONSIBILITY	- THE FRESH PERSONALITY 
THEN BECOMES RULER 
[ around age 7-14 ]

KARMA CAN BE AFFECTED ACTIVELY	


UPPER and LOWER NATURE OF MAN


117	LOWER DESIRE/PLANE GRATIFICATION	
- debases the higher energy from the superior planes 
- a "fire" or center of attraction 

LOWER PLANE is established and superior energy is exhausted 
trying to


UPPER PLANE CENTER OF ATTRACTION	
= all the needed energy goes there,
resulting in an increase of spirituality


117	TRANSMUTATION
- if detached from plane of sense gratification by 
a constant effort to fix the mind on the attainment
of the highest ideal, karma will have no basis to
fix in 
the physical, and manifesting in harmony with 	
118	the desire plane it exhausts itself in a higher 
plane and thus becomes transmuted in its effects.

NO ATTACHMENT - for objects not thought of.


IDEALISM	- cleanses the mind and the desire principles

- when thought-interest ceases the link breaks and
karmic attachment between an "object" and the
individual ceases.

REPENTANCE AN ERROR. Thought returns to error or sin and 
maintains the links.

SIN	- originates in the mind as an idea-desire

	
KNOT OF THE HEART	= MANAS

MIND ATTITUDE - draws links of desire to the "soul" (Kama-Manas)
aspirations imprisoned by difficulties and 
obstructions

118
DESIRE	- causes reincarnation, building of personality

NON-ATTACHMENT	- allows the soul to burst through the walls 
of pain

CHANGE OF MIND	- enables Karmic burden to be lifted.

118
FREE WILL - WHEN ASSERTED MAKES MAN HIS OWN SAVIOR

KARMA - to the Worldly man	- a stern Nemesis


119	- to the Spiritual Man	- unfolds in harmony with his
highest aspirations
					
EQUAL MINDEDNESS	- is thus achieved

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

Some additional articles on Justice, Karma & Reincarnation


The first two are in "Setting the Stage" in the 12-part 
"Arguments on Reincarnation" series:

(41) Arguments on Reincarnation--VIII: Law and Justice
http://www.wisdomworld.org/setting/justice.html

(42) Arguments on Reincarnation--IX: Memory and Justice
http://www.wisdomworld.org/setting/memoryjustice.html
======================================================

The third article is found alphabetically listed
on the "Collated" articles index page:

REINCARNATION AND JUSTICE:
http://www.wisdomworld.org/additional/ListOfCollatedArticles/Reincarnation-J
ustice.html

http://www.wisdomworld.org/additional/ListOfCollatedArticles/index.html

http://www.wisdomworld.org/additional/index.html#12

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


Best wishes,

Dallas

==============================
 
-----Original Message-----

From: christinaleestemaker
Sent: Saturday, October 08, 2005 4:11 AM
To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: Regeneration in the aspect of astrology( 8 house)



Dear Dallis,

Thanks for this expound again.

To this part many European and American and maybe more 
manly Theosophist needed to read and make clear in their lives 
very well.

Also look very objectively to which kind ONE belongs.

Here are namely many man in theosophy the greatest example of the bad 
man.

Only have a mask of to look kindly, but behind that, they are wolves 
in sheep cloths.

Examples too much !!!

Also for woman will serve this.

WE ALL NEEDS TO JUDGE OURSELVES IN THE FIRST PLACE TO SHOW A GOOD 
THEOSOPHIST AND TO BE A PERFECT EXAMPLE AND NOT A THEOSOPHICAL 
HYPOCRITE OR A VEGETARIAN "WOMANS' AUNT ( NICE WORD USED FROM FRANK)".

Maybe then Theosophy gives to turning point in this world.

And close to the opinion of HPB Theosopgy not to be used for personal 
collecting workshops, without any service of Universal Love.
Cause UNIVERSAL LOVE is NOT for SALE !!!

Best Wishes Christina Leestemaker.

CUT