Theos-Talk Archives (May 2006 Message tt00944)

5/31/2006 6:06 AM


Thanks John.

May I offer ?

In my opinion the Oriental (via SECRET DOCTRINE  and The KEY TO THEOSOPHY)
give us an ancient basis psychological system [as in PATANJALI's
YOGA-SUTRAS] is more valuable to us, as it includes and makes practical and
entirely reasonable, the moral principles (virtues) which, on comparison,
are found to be common, and are parallel in every one of the ancient and
current religions --  though individual discipline and self-restraint do not
seem to be given the importance they deserve.

Each of these ancient religions seems to describe the same grand scheme.
There must somewhere be an original and common base. The questions we could
ask are:

1	If the UNIVERSE is 7-fold, is Man's constitution likewise 7-fold ?

2	Is the purpose of life-experience the sharpening and making more
independent each Man's consciousness and intelligence ?

3	Does the Mind-principle in Man reflect the Mind PRINCIPLE
[consciousness, intelligence and their independent existence in
NATURE/UNIVERSE ] ?

4	Does the Mind-principle serve as an independent observer, recorder
and evaluator of the passing events, acts, thoughts of life ?

5	Their ancients posited an immortal Mind/Monad -- a triad of 

	1	MENTAL INDEPENDENCE,   		

	2	ACQUIRED WISDOM, and

	3	SPIRITUAL PURITY,

 includes intellectual control, a universal purview that includes several
zones of experience and perception.

An old Friend once wrote on archetypal virtues:


Follow the advice of the Sages. Meditate on the anomalies and miseries of
our civilization. Discover the root of its maladies. We find that the human
mind has triumphed be neglecting and defying the moral forces which are at
work in the universe. 

This is not generally perceived, and men and their leaders alike are
deluded. Each presumes that he and his nation or class is following moral
principles, while they are slaves of passions, prejudices and pelf. 

Man, the thinker, has not been able to follow the teachings of a long line
of Sages which state: allow not the force of vice to lead your mind, but so
educate that mind that it follows the lead of the force of virtue. 

Knowledge bereft of love, of compassion, of charity, of harmony flourishes
and mass thought-action stifles the voice of Spirit even in the good
individual. 

The Sages and Seers have warned against knowledge, reason and mind bereft of
moral principles. They have always taught the superiority of moral ideas
over mental thoughts. They have pointed to the truth of truths that Wisdom
is Compassion, that Justice is Mercy. 

Our Divinity is not knowledge-formed but virtue-formed and our vices make us
demoniac. Is there a better description of the modern man successful in our
social order than that found in the 16th Discourse of the Gita? 

Illuminated minds, like Gautama Buddha or the great Shankara, have pointed
to moral principles as starting points to a life of peace, goodwill and
wisdom. Jesus, the Jewish Prophets before Him, and those who followed his
advice and instruction have emphasized the moral life as necessary for
gaining true knowledge. St. Paul affirmed the superiority of Faith, Hope and
Charity over all knowledge and in showing "a more excellent way" he exhorted
us "to covet earnestly the best gifts." 

Christendom knows Faith, Hope and Charity as theological virtues and there
are four natural virtues - making in all seven Cardinal Virtues, to which
are opposed the Seven Deadly Sins. It was probably Augustine who attempted
to Christianize the four Cardinal Virtues in the teachings of Socrates and
Plato. They are Higher Wisdom, Courage, Temperance and Justice. The
Neo-Platonists describe them as "purifications from the lower contagion."
 
In the ancient Rig-Veda, virtue is given first place. In the famous hymn (X,
129) Kama-Love-Eros is said to be the first movement that arose in the One
after it had come into life through the power of fervour-abstraction. 

In the Atharva-Veda we find: "Kama-Deva was born the first. Him neither
Devas, Pitris, nor men have equaled. Thou art superior to these and for ever
great." The concept of Kama-Deva has become degraded in the course of
centuries, like the Eros of Hesiod. 

With the Seers of the Vedas, Kama-Deva personifies, says H.P. Blavatsky,
"the first conscious, all-embracing desire for universal good, love, and for
all that lives and feels, needs help and kindness, the first feeling of
infinite tender compassion and mercy that arose in the consciousness of the
creative One Force, as soon as it came into life and being as a ray from the
Absolute. There is no idea of sexual love in the conception. Kama is
pre-eminently the divine desire of creating happiness and love." 

Kama-Deva, Eros, in their original pristine pure sense, personify the
archetypal Virtue. The Sages do not reject the idea that the virtue-vices of
the animal-man are relative. But those Sages teach that the relativity of
conventional morality befogs the mind and keeps man tied to the kingdom of
animal-man. 

To become truly human it is necessary to get hold of the important
philosophical principle that Virtues and Virtue are as definite as
metaphysical categories of Spirit, Matter, Mind; Light, Darkness, Sight;
Space, Force, Motion, etc. The animal-man becomes human by discarding
vicious tendencies and vices; and progresses to divinity by cultivating
moods of virtue which become his vibhutis - excellencies - fixed and ever
flashing their radiance of Compassion.

This Compassion is the archetypal Virtue which manifests as a Trinity of the
Good, the True, and the Beautiful: out of the first come the moral factors,
out of the second the intellectual, and their joint action is regenerative
Beauty which is Joy and Bliss. 

Wisdom-Compassion is the Soul of all Virtues - be they the Christian and
Greek Cardinal ones, or virtues of the divine man of the Gita or the six and
ten Paramitas of the Buddhistic Philosophy. In the Mahayana Book of the
Golden Precepts this archetypal Virtue is thus described: -
 
Compassion is no attribute.
It is the Law of Laws -
Eternal Harmony,
Alaya's Self,
A shoreless universal essence,
The Light of everlasting right,
And Fitness of all things,
The Law of Love eternal. 

	[BPW --  From "Thus Have I Heard", A  P.,   pp. 283-85.] 

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

Best wishes

Dallas
 
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-----Original Message-----
From: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com [mailto:theos-talk@yahoogroups.com] On
Behalf Of samblo@cs.com
Sent: Monday, May 29, 2006 1:23 PM
To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: Theos-World Dallas, Socrates & Subba Row

Cass,

  The response given when we queried about the Nous level was that our
normal 
every day consciousness, (Patanjali's "conditioned mind" and Scientologies 
"reactive mind") correspond to Nous level 1. I can agree that
multidimensional 
realities seem also to present in entrainment with higher Nous Level as we 
experienced "time shifting" and other effects that did seem to entail
dimensional 
control and use. It is generated as a result of the physical reality of
birth 
as a human being and is virtually a new creation in each incarnation 
somatically and perceptually augmenting it's growth in the physical
development 
process. I don't particularly view the Higher Mind as beholden to the lower
but 
rather has partial interface with the lower. Just my personal opinion.

John