Part 111 THE EGO IN MAN
Jul 18, 2006 05:13 PM
by W.Dallas TenBroeck
Part 111 THE EGO IN MAN
AVATARA AND SIDDHA PURUSHA
"A Siddha Purusha (perfect man) is like an archaeologist who removes the
dust and lays open an old well which has been covered up by ages of disuse.
The Avatara, on the other hand, is like an engineer who sinks a new well in
a place where there was no water before. Great Men give salvation to those
only who have the waters of piety hidden in themselves, but the Avatara
saves him too whose heart is devoid of love and dry as a desert." RC
-- FP p. 151-2
DIVINE INCARNATIONS ARE VOLUNTEERS --
RENOUNCERS OF BLISS
"...those who of their own free will enter bodies to help humanity pass
through them like any human being, but are not involved in them. They feel
like any human being, and go through much more than most, so that there may
be fresh in their bodily experience all feelings that afflict or ease
humanity. Their grief--if it may be called so--is over the inability of
humans to understand because of the purely personal elements which prevail
in mankind.
"Masters feel pain but are not disturbed by it." That feeling is
sympathy--a feeling with the condition. They know what any one feels under
the circumstances, but They also know that the so-called sufferings of
others are not due to the cir-cumstances, but to a false attitude toward
them...(195) The pain we feel most in mental pain..."
RC -- FP p. 194-5
DIVINE INCARNATIONS:-- JESUS & BUDDHA -- THEIR MISSIONS
"I produce myself among creatures" has reference to volun-tary and conscious
incarnation of high spiritual beings--avatars, saviours of the people
--in-cluding not only the incarnation itself but the influence of a
spiritual kind that attends the being...The Gita says that They come
"whenever there is an insur-rection of vice and injustice in the world."
There is an analogy between this and what was hinted about earthquakes by
WQJ, who wrote at the time of an earthquake that some soul of use had been
born...
There is reason to think that the mission of Jesus was a minor one, being in
a falling cycle, and that it was not so much to disclose as to cover up the
avenues to occult knowledge, so that the following times of the decadence of
spirituality should (202) not have dangerous weapons left for selfish,
unprincipled and ignorant people to use; hence he accentuated ethics.
This does not mean that the being known as Jesus was inferior to the one
known as Buddha. They might have been one and the same being, in reality.
The statement is that the "missions" or efforts were of a different nature
because of the different cycles and peoples...We cannot judge of the nature
of any of these great incarnations, to the extent of saying that one is
superior to the other...Allied to our period, if we consider that the
quality of the cycle varies in importance, and, consequently, in the degree
of the being needed at any time, we find the con-junction of the cycles
above spoken of points to a most important period, and consequently, to
important "beings"--which may give us a clue to what the Messengers HPB and
WQJ really were. Other periods of less importance bring incarnations of
probationary chelas who are on their trial." RC -- FP p.
201-2
MAN MAKES HIS OWN IMMORTALITY
"...It is owing to this rebellion of intellectual life against the morbid
inactivity of pure spirit, that we are what we are--self-conscious, thinking
men, with the capabilities and attributes of Gods in us, for good as much as
for evil. Hence the REBELS are our saviours. Let the philosopher ponder
well over this, and more than one mystery will become clear to him. It is
only by the attractive force of the contrasts that the two opposites--Spirit
and Matter--can be cemented on Earth, and, smelted in the fire of
self-conscious experience and suffering, find themselves wedded in
Eternity..." SD II 103
NIRMANAKAYAS WORK -- THEIR RELATIONS WITH US
"NIRMANAKAYAS. They are men who have become perfected--who could if they
chose reach up to and hold the very highest state of bliss, but who refuse
that bliss because it would mean forever to forsake all chance of helping
their fellow-men. They can, when the nature of the person is true and
aspiring strongly, communicate, if it is necessary to help him. But there
is no mistake in these communications. They are personal, meant for that
one as direct help. It is the within which induces any outside help that we
receive. It is a recognition of the spirit-ual nature of ourselves and all
beings which makes the true condition. It is from the spiritual that the
strength comes. And it is for the perfection of humanity that all the
Divine Incarnations have labored." RC -- FP p. 258
"PERFECTED SOULS" -- STAND AS EXAMPLES: -
WE HAVE TO
EMULATE
"No one can know anything for another. Each one has to know for himself.
Each one has to do his own learning. The object of Theosophy is to teach
man what he is, to show man what he is, and to present to him the necessity
of his knowing for himself. No vicarious atonement, no vicarious
transmission of knowledge, is possible. But the direction in which
knowledge lies can be pointed out; the steps which will lead us in that
direction may be shown, as can be done only by those who have passed that
way before...It is the doctrine of Krishna, of Buddha, of Jesus, no less
than the doctrine of H.P.B... The very fact of suffering is a blessing.
Karma and Reincarnation show us that suffering is brought about by wrong
thought and action; through our suffer-ings we may be brought to a
realization that a wrong course has been pursued. We learn through our
sufferings.
Life is one grand school of Being, and we have come to that stage where it
is right for us to learn to understand the purpose of existence; to grasp
our whole nature firmly; to use every means in our power in every
direction...to bring the whole of our nature into accord, so that our lower
instrument may be "in line" and thus more and more fully reflect our divine
natures." RC -- FP p. 263
HOW TO "PERFECT" OURSELVES
"There is no difference between the teachings of Jesus and the teachings of
the Buddha, although those teachings are record-ed in different languages
and an interval of six hundred years separated the two great Teachers. What
is true of these two is likewise true of all the other many Saviours of
different times and peoples--they all taught the same fundamental ideas.
This fact suggests that there is a body of Men, of perfected men, product of
past civilizations and evolution, our Elder Brothers, in fact, who have
acquired and are Custodians of the knowledge and experience gained through
aeons of time. Their knowledge is actually the Science of Life, for it
enters into every department of existence, of nature...We have each of us
the same power to know that is Theirs. But they have ex-tended (270) the
faculties of the instruments which they possess. They have improved what
they have. They have better brains. They have better bodies. How did they
acquire them? By fulfilling every duty which faced them, regardless of what
came to themselves. They thought nothing of acquiring power and knowledge
for them-selves; they thought only of gaining power that they might expend
it for the benefit of every living creature. in so doing they opened the
doors to the full play of the power of the Spirit within...
The great work of evolution proceeds from within outwards. The Soul is the
Perceiver; it looks directly on ideas. The action of the will is through
ideas. The ideas give the direc-tion. Small ideas, small force; large
ideas, large force; the Force itself is illimitable, for it is the force of
Spirit, infinite and exhaustless. What we lack are universal ideas..."
RC -- FP p. 269-270
WE HAVE TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR
SELF-REFORM AND SELF-TRAINING
"Saviour after Saviour has come to the earth for our bene-fit, but no one
can give us any more benefit than to point to the truths that have been
given all down the ages. We must take advantage of that knowledge and
advance out of the state in which we have placed ourselves. No Saviour can
save us. No God can protect us. No devil can torment us. For both God and
the devil are within. The devil is the misunderstanding of our nature...It
is the God in us which demands self-advancement, self-induced and
self-devised exertions, and the full acceptance of responsibili-ty."
RC--FP p. 300
"...to realize our own responsibility to all others and to act in accordance
is to have become unselfish, and to have done away with the prime cause of
sin, sorrow and suffering...We must take care of each other, not of
ourselves...truth, as we know, always explains."
RC--FP p. 308
WE ARE NEVER 'LEFT ALONE," OR "ABANDONED" BY THE ADEPTS
"Never have we been left alone. Always there are beings greater in
evolution than we, who return to this field of physi-cal existence to help
us, to wake us up to a perception of our natures. Such has been the mission
of all Divine Incarnations down the ages. Those beings have come and lived
among us, have become "in all things like unto us," as was said of Jesus, in
order that the human words They spoke should be words we would understand.
They meet us on the basis of our ideas and try to clarify them and set them
in a true course. They can do nothing to stop what (338) we have done and
what we want to do; They can not interfere; but They can help us to see
the right direction, if we are so willed...Always They try to help us, even
when we are proceeding along wrong lines and bringing upon ourselves the
suffering such wrong lines entail--even then They try to direct the results
into a better channel..." RC -- FP p. 337-8
INNATE - INHERENT IDEAS FROM "PLANETARY SPIRITS"
"Up to the period marked by the first earthly King called Ikshwaku, the
Ruler was a spiritual Being whom all men knew to be such, for his power,
glory, benevolence, and wisdom were evident. He lived an immense number of
years, and taught men not only Yoga but also arts and sciences. The ideas
implanted then, having been set in motion by one who knew all the laws,
remain as inher-ent ideas to this day...(105) They are preserved by the
uneducat-ed masses, who, having no scholastic theories to divert their
minds, keep up what is left of the succession of ideas." GITA NOTES p. 104-5
"Alone the adepts, i.e., the embodied spirits--are forbidden by our wise and
intransgressible laws to completely subject to themselves another and weaker
will,--that of free born man. The latter mode of proceeding is the favorite
one resorted to by the "Brothers of the Shadow," the Sorcerers, the
Elementary Spooks, and, as an isolated exception--by the highest Planetary
(41) Spirits, those, who can no longer err. But those appear on Earth but
at the origin of every new human kind; at the junction of, and close of the
two ends of the great cycle. And, they remain with man no longer than the
time required for the eternal truths they teach to impress themselves so
forcibly upon the plastic minds or the new race as to warrant them from
being lost or entirely forgotten in ages hereafter, by the forthcoming
genera-tions. The mission of the planetary Spirits is but to strike the
KEY-NOTE OF TRUTH. Once he has directed the vibration of the latter to run
its course uninterruptedly along the catenation of that race and to the end
of the cycle--the denizen of the highest inhabited sphere disappears from
the surface of our planet--till the following "resurrection of flesh." The
vibrations of the Primitive Truth are what your philosophers name "innate
ideas." M.L. 40-1
"...Truth is One, and cannot admit of diametrically opposite views; and
pure Spirits who see it as it is, with the veil of matter entirely withdrawn
from it cannot err. Now, if we allow of different aspects or portions of
the Whole Truth being visible to different agencies or intelligences, each
under various condi-tions, as for example various portions of the one
landscape de-velop themselves to various persons at various distances and
from various standpoints--if we admit the fact of...individual Broth-ers for
instance endeavoring to develop the Egos of different individuals, without
subjecting entirely their wills to their own (as it is forbidden) but by
availing themselves of their physi-cal, moral, and intellectual
idiosyncrasies; if we add the countless kosmical influences which distort
and deflect all ef-forts to achieve definite purposes; if we remember,
moreover, the direct hostility of the Brethren of the Shadow always on the
watch to perplex and haze the neophyte's brain, I think we shall have no
difficulty in understanding how even a definite spiritual advance may to a
certain extent lead different individuals to apparently different
conclusions and theories." M.L. 49
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Dallas
Dallas
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