RE: Motives
Jul 29, 2006 05:23 AM
by W.Dallas TenBroeck
7/29/2006 5:12 AM
Dear Rob:
RE: Motives
Good comments --- please use BLACK -- Color delays – time is short.
We need a cluster of comments on MOTIVE, Do you have more ?
Can you find the actual quote by Judge: “our real motives are as hidden to
us as the centre of the earth is to all earthbound pedestrians.” Let me
know, please
To make valid and logical point and to offer THEOSOPHY we have to accurately
OFFER THE SOURCES -- otherwise it is only an “opinion.”
Thanks
Dal
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MOTIVE.DOC
MOTIVE
Re: Living Master -- and Self-knowledge.
Eye and Heart doctrines -- Idealism and Selfishness.
In my understanding:
Motive relates to the reason why we do anything on a voluntary basis. Can we
impersonally determine what our motives are?
What tools have we got? How much do we know of our "lower" and our "higher"
natures?
If there is the possibility of self-knowledge and self-control, then is not
the "controller" wiser, and "superior" to that which is controlled? Is not
the Universal Self (of which we have a "ray" ) superior and the natural
controller of the "lower self?"
All our motives ought to be overlooked and controlled by the Mind -- the
"Real Actor" who is always "behind the screen" of the physical matter of our
"personality."
When Mind and the "Real Actor /EGO" work together, we have the functioning
of intuition, and the "Voice of Conscience" prevails.
Gratitude is a feeling of mutual (not exclusive) satisfaction as well as a
recognition of the brotherhood of all spiritual/souls, which considering
themselves as "brothers in eternity," work with and for each other as a
family. (see S D I 209-10 as an example of what is written in S D I
207-8). It is the instinctive feeling of reverence for those who are wiser
than we are. We then desire to help and serve Them in their work of
educating others. Promulgation. .
Are there two Egos in Man?
One (EGO) being universal, impartial, impersonally just and fair to all? and
the (ego, or 'lower self' the other), being intensely selfish, isolated and
demanding of possessions and attention? For how long till death forces to
part with all those things?
If we consider reincarnation of the spirit /soul as a fact, then the
capacity to understand and to do things is more important that possessions
of any kind. This capacity is what is transferred forward into a new
personality.
We might under this scheme of consideration say that the "Living Master" is
internal to us all the time and represents the IDEAL action. The
application and knowledge of the 7 principles in man gives us the mental and
philosophical tools for this type of understanding.
When we find an individual who has the bold energy and fearlessness to
exhibit outwardly, at all times, the nature and power of the "Living
interior Master," we find that we respond to it --- and at the same time,
the "lower self" feeling its self threatened reacts to argue against this
and often urges to reject ideal actions. Again, why is this so?
There seems to be a constant conflict of personal / ideal going on in the
daily and hourly decision making faculty of each of us. If so, then why does
this happen?
Looking at some more posts made and questions asked. Can we not sense that
this living of ours on the whole, is a kind of School -- a "testing-ground?"
Are we not seeking instinctively and then with greater assurance to alter
our "selfishness" into a generous regard for all as our brothers? -- to
whom a fair share and a just opportunity are due?
Lets take an example: If we carefully study what are the records and ideas
attributed in the New Testament to Jesus in THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT, we may
be able to detect these ideals being expressed. Every great Teacher has
expressed the same ideals no matter how far back we trace. The Brotherhood
of all Religions is, for those who study the beginnings and proceedings,
historically of several religions, a provable, recorded series of facts.
Dogmas, rituals and priestly assertions have provided since those times, in
each case, the separations between sects, and creeds -- and, also have
provided psychology with the present confusion of idealism and selfishness.
We admire the fearlessness of those who dare to act in an ideal way.
But we are still too fearful to completely emulate them. Budha, Krishna,
Pythagoras, Plato, Lao Tse, Patanjali, Confucius, and others have all
pointed to the same ideals as a "path" whereby we can each regulate our
personal desires and passions.
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CAUSE
(b) The Father-Mother are the male and female principles in root-nature, the
opposite poles that manifest in all things on every plane of Kosmos, or
Spirit and Substance, in a less allegorical aspect, the resultant of which
is the Universe, or the Son. They are "once more One" when in "The Night of
Brahmâ," during Pralaya, all in the objective Universe has returned to its
one primal and eternal cause, to reappear at the following Dawn — as it does
periodically. "Karana" — eternal cause — was alone. To put it more plainly:
Karana is alone during the "Nights of Brahmâ." The previous objective
Universe has dissolved into its one primal and eternal cause, and is, so to
say, held in solution in space, to differentiate again and crystallize out
anew at the following Manvantaric dawn, which is the commencement of a new
"Day" or new activity of Brahmâ — the symbol of the Universe. In esoteric
parlance, Brahma is Father-Mother-Son, or Spirit, Soul and Body at once;
each personage being symbolical of an attribute, and each attribute or
quality being a graduated efflux of Divine Breath in its cyclic
differentiation, involutionary and evolutionary. In the cosmicophysical
sense, it is the Universe, the planetary chain and the earth; in the purely
spiritual, the Unknown Deity, Planetary Spirit, and Man — the Son of the
two, the creature of Spirit and Matter, and a manifestation of them in his
periodical appearances on Earth during the "wheels," or the Manvantaras. —
(See Part II. §: "Days and Nights of Brahmâ.") S D I 41
(a) "The Causes of Existence" mean not only the physical causes known to
science, but the metaphysical causes, the chief of which is the desire to
exist, an outcome of Nidana and Maya.
This desire for a sentient life shows itself in everything, from an atom to
a sun, and is a reflection of the Divine Thought propelled into objective
existence, into a law that the Universe should exist. According to esoteric
teaching, the real cause of that supposed desire, and of all existence,
remains for ever hidden, and its first emanations are the most complete
abstractions mind can conceive.
These abstractions must of necessity be postulated as the cause of the
material Universe which presents itself to the senses and intellect; and
they underlie the secondary and subordinate powers of Nature, which,
anthropomorphized, have been worshipped as God and gods by the common herd
of every age. It is impossible to conceive anything without a cause; the
attempt to do so makes the mind a blank.
* In clearer words: "One has to acquire true Self-Consciousness in order to
understand Samvriti, or the 'origin of delusion.'" Paramârtha is the synonym
of the Sanskrit term Svasam-vedana, or "the reflection which analyses
itself." There is a difference in the interpretation of the meaning of
"Paramârtha" between the Yogâchâryas and the Madhyamikas, neither of whom,
however, explain the real and true esoteric sense of the expression. See
further, sloka No. 9.
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This is virtually the condition to which the mind must come at last when we
try to trace back the chain of causes and effects, but both science and
religion jump to this condition of blankness much more quickly than is
necessary; for they ignore the metaphysical abstractions which are the only
conceivable cause of physical concretions.
These abstractions become more and more concrete as they approach our plane
of existence, until finally they phenomenalise in the form of the material
Universe, by a process of conversion of metaphysics into physics, analogous
to that by which steam can be condensed into water, and the water frozen
into ice.
(b) The idea of Eternal Non-Being, which is the One Being, will appear a
paradox to anyone who does not remember that we limit our ideas of being to
our present consciousness of existence; making it a specific, instead of a
generic term. An unborn infant, could it think in our acceptation of that
term, would necessarily limit its conception of being, in a similar manner,
to the intrauterine life which alone it knows; and were it to endeavour to
express to its consciousness the idea of life after birth (death to it), it
would, in the absence of data to go upon, and of faculties to comprehend
such data, probably express that life as "Non-Being which is Real Being."
In our case the One Being is the noumenon of all the noumena which we know
must underlie phenomena, and give them whatever shadow of reality they
possess, but which we have not the senses or the intellect to cognize at
present. The impalpable atoms of gold scattered through the substance of a
ton of auriferous quartz may be imperceptible to the naked eye of the miner,
yet he knows that they are not only present there but that they alone give
his quartz any appreciable value; and this relation of the gold to the
quartz may faintly shadow forth that of the noumenon to the phenomenon. But
the miner knows what the gold will look like when extracted from the quartz,
whereas the common mortal can form no conception of the reality of things
separated from the Maya which veils them, and in which they are hidden.
Alone the Initiate, rich with the lore acquired by numberless generations of
his predecessors, directs the "Eye of Dangma" toward the essence of things
in which no Maya can have any influence. It is here that the teachings of
esoteric philosophy in relation to the Nidanas and the Four Truths become of
the greatest importance; but they are secret. “ S D I 44-5
“…the "First Cause," * which the Occultist more logically derives from the
"Causeless Cause," the "Eternal," and the "Unknowable," may be essentially
the same as that of the Consciousness which wells up within us: in short,
that the impersonal reality pervading the Kosmos is the pure noumenon of
thought. This advance on his part brings him very near to the esoteric and
Vedantin tenet. *
*The "first" presupposes necessarily something which is the "first brought
forth, the first in time, space, and rank" — and therefore finite and
conditioned. The "first" cannot be the absolute, for it is a manifestation.
Therefore, Eastern Occultism calls the Abstract All the "Causeless One
Cause," the "Rootless Root," and limits the "First Cause" to the Logos, in
the sense that Plato gives to this term. S D I 14-15
“(b) The "Breath" of the One Existence is used in its application only to
the spiritual aspect of Cosmogony by Archaic esotericism; otherwise, it is
replaced by its equivalent in the material plane — Motion. The One Eternal
Element, or element-containing Vehicle, is Space, dimensionless in every
sense; co-existent with which are — endless duration, primordial (hence
indestructible) matter, and motion — absolute "perpetual motion" which is
the "breath" of the "One" Element. This breath, as seen, can never cease,
not even during the Pralayic eternities. (See "Chaos, Theos, Kosmos," in
Part II.)
But the "Breath of the One Existence" does not, all the same, apply to the
One Causeless Cause or the "All Be-ness" (in contradistinction to All-Being,
which is Brahma, or the Universe). Brahmâ (or Hari) the four-faced god who,
after lifting the Earth out of the waters, "accomplished the Creation," is
held to be only the instrumental, and not, as clearly implied, the ideal
Cause. No Orientalist, so far, seems to have thoroughly comprehended the
real sense of the verses in the Purâna, that treat of "creation."
Therein Brahmâ is the cause of the potencies that are to be generated
subsequently for the work of "creation." When a translator says, "And from
him proceed the potencies to be created, after they had become the real
cause": "and from IT proceed the potencies that will create as they become
the real cause" (on the material plane) would perhaps be more correct? Save
that one (causeless) ideal cause there is no other to which the universe can
be referred. "Worthiest of ascetics! through its potency — i.e., through the
potency of that cause — every created thing comes by its inherent or proper
nature." If, in the Vedanta and Nyaya, nimitta is the efficient cause, as
contrasted with upadána, the material cause, (and in the Sankhya, pradhána
implies the functions of both); in the Esoteric philosophy, which reconciles
all these systems, and the nearest exponent of which is the Vedanta as
expounded by the Advaita Vedantists, none but the upadána can be speculated
upon; that which is in the minds of the Vaishnavas (the Vasishta-dvaita) as
the ideal in contradistinction to the real — or Parabrahm and Isvara — can
find no room in published speculations, since [ 56 ] that ideal even is a
misnomer, when applied to that of which no human reason, even that of an
adept, can conceive.
To know itself or oneself, necessitates consciousness and perception (both
limited faculties in relation to any subject except Parabrahm), to be
cognized. Hence the "Eternal Breath which knows itself not." Infinity cannot
comprehend Finiteness. The Boundless can have no relation to the bounded and
the conditioned. In the occult teachings, the Unknown and the Unknowable
MOVER, or the Self-Existing, is the absolute divine Essence. And thus being
Absolute Consciousness, and Absolute Motion — to the limited senses of those
who describe this indescribable — it is unconsciousness and immoveableness.
Concrete consciousness cannot be predicated of abstract Consciousness, any
more than the quality wet can be predicated of water — wetness being its own
attribute and the cause of the wet quality in other things. Consciousness
implies limitations and qualifications; something to be conscious of, and
someone to be conscious of it. But Absolute Consciousness contains the
cognizer, the thing cognized and the cognition, all three in itself and all
three one. No man is conscious of more than that portion of his knowledge
that happens to have been recalled to his mind at any particular time, yet
such is the poverty of language that we have no term to distinguish the
knowledge not actively thought of, from knowledge we are unable to recall to
memory. To forget is synonymous with not to remember. How much greater must
be the difficulty of finding terms to describe, and to distinguish between,
abstract metaphysical facts or differences. It must not be forgotten, also,
that we give names to things according to the appearances they assume for
ourselves. We call absolute consciousness "unconsciousness," because it
seems to us that it must necessarily be so, just as we call the Absolute,
"Darkness," because to our finite understanding it appears quite
impenetrable, yet we recognize fully that our perception of such things does
not do them justice. We involuntarily distinguish in our minds, for
instance, between unconscious absolute consciousness, and unconsciousness,
by secretly endowing the former with some indefinite quality that
corresponds, on a higher plane than our thoughts can reach, with what we
know as consciousness in ourselves. But this is not any kind of
consciousness that we can manage to distinguish from what appears to us as
unconsciousness. “ S D I 54 - 56
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-----Original Message-----
From: Theosophists Co. [mailto:ult@ultlon.freeserve.co.uk]
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2006 9:30 AM
To: study@blavatsky.net
Subject: [bn-study] RE: Motives
I believe Judge wrote something to the effect that our real motives are as
hidden to us as the centre of the earth is to all earthbound pedestrians.
To know really ones real motives is in fact to have acquired self-knowledge.
HPB wrote Self-knowledge is of loving deeds the child. (Voice of the
Silence) Easy? I believe this will take a little way in the right direction.
A very short article by HPB:
The first necessity for self knowledge is to become profoundly conscious of
ignorance; to feel with every fibre of the heart that one is ceaselessly
self-deceived.
The second requisite is the still deeper conviction that such knowledge –
such intuitive and certain knowledge – can be obtained by effort.
The third and most important is an indomitable determination to obtain and
face that knowledge.
Self knowledge of this kind is unattainable by what men usually call
“self-analysis”. It is not reached by reasoning or any brain process; for
it is the awakening to consciousness of the Divine nature of man.
To obtain this knowledge is a greater achievement than to command the
elements or to know the future.
This has also some relevance to discrimination or choices. There is
something odd, or shall we say at least 2 levels. At the lowest we deceive
ourselves,. We are acting as we think we should. See Arjuna is the first
chapters of the Bhagavad Gita. All the arguments he elaborates upon are
fabrications of the reasoning mind. Yet there is that other level, almost
infallible. He has Krishna besides him and that is the upper level. And
quite often in our hearts of hearts we really know what is black and what is
white.
Innocent listener.
==================================
.
From: Odin
Sent: 25 July 2006 11:00
To:
Subject: [bn-study] Motives
From: On Behalf Of teos9@aol.com
Sent: Sunday, July 23, 2006
Subject: Re: Motive
In a message dated 7/23/2006 1:55:17 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
classiccontours@sympatico.ca writes:
So how does one become aware of their motive? Sometimes we think it is of
the highest but with what gauge do we check it?
Laura
----------------------------------------
"...motives are vapours, as attenuated as the atmospheric moisture: and, as
the latter develops its dynamic energy for man's use only when concentrated
and applied as steam or hydraulic power, so the practical value of good
motives is best seen when they take the form of deeds. . . ."
[Mahatma K.H. -- WHAT BOOK AND PAGE ? DTB ]
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