Theos-Talk Archives (December 2005 Message tt00308)

12/28/2005 2:52 AM

Dear Mauri:

COMPASSION, mercy, tolerance, moderation, selflessness seem to me to be
proximate virtues.

If they are freely given then there can be no residual self-interest. If
any self-interest is attached, it would vitiate them. Hypocrisy it seems t
me applies.

How can one devise a half-virtue? or a half-vice ?


The following words seem to epitomize our duty: HPB wrote:

1

"One who has reached a full comprehension of the name and nature of a
Theosophist will sit in judgment on no man or action."

"If you would be a Theosophist you must not do as those around you do, who
call on a God of Truth and Love and serve the dark powers of Might, Greed
and Luck.

".the realities of your daily lives are diametrically opposed to your ideal,
but you feel it not.it is you yourselves that do not care to apply its
ethics in your daily walk in life."

"It is the Esoteric Philosophy alone, the spiritual and psychic blending of
man with nature, that, by teaching fundamental truths, can promote a spirit
of unity and harmony - 
.expecting and demanding from the Fellows a great mutual toleration and
charity for each other's shortcomings; .mutual help in the research of
Truths in every domain - moral and physical - and even in daily life."

".to oppose selfishness of any kind .by insisting upon sincere fraternal
feelings among the members.working to bring about that much desired mediate
state between the two extremes of human egotism and divine altruism -- and
finally lead to the alleviation of human suffering."

"...oppose in the strongest manner possible . dogmatic faith and
fanaticism."	

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

2

IS THE DESIRE TO "LIVE" SELFISH?

H. P. Blavatsky


THE passage, "to Live, to Live, TO LIVE must be the unswerving resolve,"
occurring in the article on the ELIXIR OF LIFE, [ p. 1, FIVE YEARS OF
THEOSOPHY] published in the March and April Numbers of Vol. III of the
THEOSOPHIST, is often quoted, by superficial readers...as an argument that
the above teaching, of occultism is the most concentrated form of
selfishness. 

In order to determine whether the critics are right or wrong, the meaning of
the word "selfishness" must first be ascertained. 

According to an established authority, selfishness is that "exclusive regard
to one's own interest or happiness; that supreme self-love or
self-preference which leads a person to direct his purposes to the
advancement of his own interest, power, or happiness, without regarding
those of others." 

In short, an absolutely selfish individual is one who cares for himself and
none else, or, in other words, one who is so strongly imbued with a sense of
importance of his own personality that to him it is the acme of all his
thoughts, desires and aspirations and beyond that all is a perfect blank. 

Now, can an occultist be then said to be "selfish" when he desires to live
in the sense in which that word is used by the writer of the article on the
ELIXIR OF LIFE? [ p. 1, FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY] 

It has been said over and over again that the ultimate end of every aspirant
after occult knowledge is Nirvana or Mukti [liberation -- from what ?], when
the individual, freed from all Mayavic Upadhi [illusory form], becomes one
with Paramatma, or the Son identifies himself with the FATHER in Christian
phraseology. 

For that purpose, every veil of illusion which creates a sense of personal
isolation, a feeling of separateness from THE ALL, must be torn asunder, or,
in other words, the aspirant must gradually discard all sense of selfishness
with which we are all more or less affected. 

A study of the Law of Cosmic Evolution teaches us that the higher the
evolution, the more does it tend towards Unity. In fact, Unity is the
ultimate possibility of Nature, and those who through vanity and selfishness
go against her purposes, cannot but incur the punishment of total
annihilation. 

The Occultist thus recognises that unselfishness and a feeling of universal
philanthropy are the inherent law of our being, and all he does is to
attempt to destroy the chains of selfishness forged upon us by Maya. 

The struggle then between Good and Evil, God and Satan, Suras and Asuras,
Devas and Daityas, which is mentioned in the sacred books of all the nations
and races, symbolizes the battle between unselfishness and the selfish
impulses, which takes place in a man, who tries to follow the higher
purposes of Nature, until the lower animal tendencies, created by
selfishness, are completely conquered, and the enemy thoroughly routed and
annihilated. 


OCCULTISM AND ORDINARY LIVING


It has also been often put forth in various theosophical and other occult
writings that the only difference between an ordinary man who works along
with Nature during the course of cosmic evolution and an occultist, is that
the latter, by his superior knowledge, adopts such methods of training and
discipline as will hurry on that process of evolution, and he thus reaches
in a comparatively very short time that apex to ascend to which the ordinary
individual may take perhaps billions of years. 

In short, in a few thousand years he approaches that form of evolution which
ordinary humanity will attain to perhaps in the sixth or the seventh round
during the process of Manvantara, i.e., cyclic progression. It is evident
that the average man cannot become a MAHATMA in one life, or rather in one
incarnation. 

Now those, who have studied the occult teachings concerning Devachan and our
after-states, will remember that between two incarnations there is a
considerable period of subjective existence. The greater the number of such
Devachanic periods, the greater is the number of years over which this
evolution is extended. 

The chief aim of the occultist is therefore to so control himself as to be
able to control his future states, and thereby gradually shorten the
duration of his Devachanic states between his two incarnations. 

In his progress, there comes a time when, between one physical death and his
next re-birth, there is no Devachan but a kind of spiritual sleep, the shock
of death, having, so to say, stunned him into a state of unconsciousness
from which he gradually recovers to find himself reborn, to continue his
purpose. 

The period of this sleep may vary from twenty-five to two hundred years,
depending upon the degree of his advancement. But even this period may be
said to be a waste of time, and hence all his exertions are directed to
shorten its duration so as to gradually come to a point when the passage
from one state of existence into another is almost imperceptible. This is
his last incarnation, as it were, for the shock of death no more stuns him. 

This is the idea the writer of the article on the Elixir of Life means to
convey, when he says:-- 

"By or about the time when the Death-limit of his race is passed HE IS
ACTUALLY DEAD, in the ordinary sense, that is to say, that he has relieved
himself of all or nearly all such material particles as would have
necessitated in disruption the agony of dying. He has been dying gradually
the whole period of his Initiation. The catastrophe cannot happen twice
over. He has only spread over a number of years the mild process of
dissolution which others endure from a brief moment to a few hours. The
highest Adept is in fact dead to, and absolutely unconscious of, the
World--he is oblivious of its pleasures, careless of its miseries--in so far
as sentimentalism goes, for the stern sense of DUTY never leaves him blind
to its very existence. . . . "


CONSCIOUSLY REFINING THE ASTRAL BODY & SOUL


The process of the emission and attraction of atoms, which the occultist
controls, has been discussed at length in that article and in other
writings. It is by these means that he gets rid gradually of all the old
gross particles of his body, substituting for them finer and more ethereal
ones, till at last the former sthula sarira [astral body] is completely dead
and disintegrated and he lives in a body entirely of his own creation,
suited to his work. 

That body is essential for his purposes, for, as the Elixir of Life says:-- 

"But to do good, as in every thing else, a man must have time and materials
to work with, and this is a necessary means to the acquirement of powers by
which infinitely more good can be done than without them. When these are
once mastered, the opportunities to use them will arrive. . . . "

In another place, in giving the practical instructions for that purpose, the
same article says: 

"The physical man must be rendered more ethereal and sensitive; the mental
man more penetrating and profound; the moral man more self-denying and
philosophical."

The above important considerations are lost sight of by those who snatch
away from the context the following passage in the same article:-- 

"And from this account too, it will be perceptible how foolish it is for
people to ask the Theosophists "to procure for them communication with the
highest Adepts." It is with the utmost difficulty that one or two can be
induced, even by the throes of a world, to injure their own progress by
meddling with mundane affairs. 

The ordinary reader will say--"This is not God-like. This is the acme of
selfishness" . . . . 

But let him realise that a very high Adept, undertaking to reform the world,
would necessarily have to once more submit to Incarnation. And is the result
of all that has gone before in that line sufficiently encouraging to prompt
a renewal of the attempt? 

Now, in condemning the above passage as inculcating selfishness, superficial
readers and thinkers lose sight of various important considerations. 

In the first place, they forget the other extracts already quoted which
impose self-denial as a necessary condition of success, and which say that,
with progress, new senses and new powers are acquired with which infinitely
more good can be done than without them. 

The more spiritual the Adept becomes, the less can he meddle with mundane,
gross affairs and the more he has to confine himself to a spiritual work. It
has been repeated, time out of number, that the work on a spiritual plane is
as superior to the work on an intellectual plane as the one on the latter
plane is superior to that on a physical plane. 

The very high Adepts, therefore, do help humanity, but only spiritually:
they are constitutionally incapable of meddling with worldly affairs. But
this applies only to very high Adepts. 

There are various degrees of Adeptship, and those of each degree work for
humanity on the planes to which they may have risen. It is only the chelas
that can live in the world, until they rise to a certain degree. And it is
because the Adepts do care for the world that they make their chelas live in
and work for it, as many of those who study the subject are aware. 


CHELAS LIVE AND WORK IN THE WORLD


Each cycle produces its own occultists who will be able to work for the
humanity of those times on all the different planes; but when the Adepts
foresee that at a particular period the then humanity will be incapable of
producing occultists for work on particular planes, for such occasions they
do provide by either giving up voluntarily their further progress and
waiting in those particular degrees until humanity reaches that period, or
by refusing to enter into Nirvana and submitting to re-incarnation in time
to reach those degrees when humanity will require their assistance at that
stage. 

And although the world may not be aware of the fact, yet there are even now
certain Adepts who have preferred to remain statu quo and refuse to take the
higher degrees, for the benefit of the future generations of humanity [the
Nirmanakaya]. 

In short, as the Adepts work harmoniously, since unity is the fundamental
law of their being, they have as it were made a division of labour,
according to which each works on the plane at the time allotted to him, for
the spiritual elevation of us all--and the process of longevity mentioned in
the ELIXIR OF LIFE is only the means to the end which, far from being
selfish, is the most unselfish purpose for which a human being can labour. 

-- H P B 
Theosophist, July, 1884 


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

Best wishes,

Dallas

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

-----Original Message-----
From: Mauri
Sent: Tuesday, December 27, 2005 3:32 PM
To: 
Subject: Re: PERSONALITY and INDIVIDUALITY and IMMORTALITY


<Compassion implies a certain selflessness, and it is selflessness that is
important.

Jerry S.

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

M	Seems to me that references to "compassion" in the EW/T might tend
to be be
somewhat confusing for those who might have trouble separating various basic
self-interests, or s/Self interests (in terms of "higher" or "lower"...),
from all forms of compassion.

<<Obviously compassion for others assumes that a self exists.
But great compassion is simply a force, a universal force, and is not
related to any personal self at all. >>

M	So are you saying that such a "universal force" doesn't have a
cause/effect
relationship with collective/universal acts of compassion among humans? In
other words ... ^:-/ ... are you saying that individuals can jump on this
"universal force" and glide around on it, (make use of it in various ways,
"selfishly" or less-selfishly"...), regardless of the nature of their karmic
tendencies?

I don't know, but I'm tending to think that there might be some sort of
universal compassion/force, alright, but I suspect that it might not always
have enough force in it to save some people from themselves, or maybe not
save them from themselves the way they might prefer to be saved, or the way
they might "think" they might want to be saved. I wonder if "karma" might
have something to do with such a force.

I was going to say "May the force be with you if you're a nice guy," to sign
off with, but I had second thoughts.

What do I mean by "nice guy"? Isn't that what we have been haggling over on
this list for years, b/Basically (among other things ... ?)?  

snip

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