Theos-Talk Archives (July 2006 Message tt00692)

7/31/2006 8:00 PM

		RE: Tantra & Theosophy Virtual Lodge

Dear Friend:

As with everything we like or dislike there are for consideration a pair, a
duality.  This is the area of passions and desires.  It is of importance
when we are incarnated in our physical bodies.

Consider that the "life-atoms" of that body are themselves a diverse host
that has affinities with us (a Monad with more experience). We are to them a
wise and advanced Intelligence.  What example shall we place before them?

Superior to that (the plane of dual desires) is the impersonal “:MANAS.”
(which employs the WILL).  

It may be called the “ON-LOOKING LORD” of our consciousness (as it is
considered by some).  It is regarded as the active agent for the ATMA when
we are incarnated.  

We may find that THEOSOPHY asks us:  What is the nature of ATMA ( Spirit) ?
What is practical idealism?  What may be its condition, rules, and
regulations?  Does universal KARMA have anything to do with this?

The plane of the duality and dialog is usually found to be a combination of
both our “selfish selves” (KAMA-MANAS)  and the universal SELF – ATMA
(represented in us by BUDDHI-MANAS).

I wrote, having thought about this for a long time, drawing attention to the
selfish perversions of the sex-act – provided by Nature to each of us for
the purpose of assuming the responsibility of family life, and the care of
children  -- who are “old souls” returning into incarnation in bodies that
our agency provides.  

What are the ideal rules of "family life?  
Where may they be described? I believe "MANU" an ancient Rishi -- Law-giver
-- formulated a code.  [Manu-smriti.] 

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

    The mystic Decad 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10 is a way of expressing this idea.
The One is God, the Two, matter; the Three, combining Monad and Duad, and
partaking of the nature of both, is the phenomenal world; the Tetrad, or
form of perfection, expresses the emptiness of all; and the Decad, or sum of
all, involves the entire cosmos. The universe is the combination of a
thousand elements, and yet the expression of a single spirit — a chaos to
the sense, a cosmos to the reason. 
    
    The whole of this combination of the progression of numbers in the idea
of creation is Hindu. The Being existing through himself, Swayambhu or
Swayambhuva, as he is called by some, is one. He emanates from himself the
creative faculty, Brahma or Purusha (the divine male), and the one becomes
Two; out of this Duad, union of the purely intellectual 
————————————————————————————————————

* Cousin: "History of Philosophy," I., ix.

xvii                                        BEFORE THE VEIL.

principle with the principle of matter, evolves a third, which is Viradj,
the phenomenal world. It is out of this invisible and incomprehensible
trinity, the Brahmanic Trimurty, that evolves the second triad which
represents the three faculties — the creative, the conservative, and the
transforming. These are typified by Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, but are again
and ever blended into one. Unity, Brahma, or as the Vedas called him,
Tridandi, [trident] is the god triply manifested, which gave rise to the
symbolical Aum or the abbreviated Trimurty. It is but under this trinity,
ever active and tangible to all our senses, that the invisible and unknown
Monas can manifest itself to the world of mortals. When he becomes Sarira
[bodily form], or he who puts on a visible form, he typifies all the
principles of matter, all the germs of life, he is Purusha, the god of the
three visages, or triple power, the essence of the Vedic triad. "Let the
Brahmas know the sacred Syllable (Aum), the three words of the Savitri, and
read the Vedas daily" (Manu, book iv., sloka 125). 
         
    "After having produced the universe, He whose power is incomprehensible
vanished again, absorbed in the Supreme Soul. . . . .  Having retired into
the primitive darkness, the great Soul remains within the unknown, and is
void of all form. . . . . 
  
    "When having again reunited the subtile elementary principles, it
introduces itself into either a vegetable or animal seed, it assumes at each
a new form." 
    
    "It is thus that, by an alternative waking and rest, the Immutable Being
causes to revive and die eternally all the existing creatures, active and
inert" (Manu, book i., sloka 50, and others). 

Once this is made clear there ought to be understanding."  I SIS U  I  xvii



"  [Jacolliot] ...His translations from Manu are admirable; his
controversial ability marked; his views of priestly morals unfair, and in
the case of the Buddhists, positively slanderous. But in all the series of
volumes there is not a line of dull reading; he has the eye of the artist,
the pen of the poet of nature. "	 ISIS U  I  584



"Creative powers in man were the gift of divine wisdom, not the result of
sin. This is clearly instanced in the paradoxical behaviour of Jehovah, who
first curses Adam and Eve (or Humanity) for the supposed committed crime,
and then blesses his "chosen people" by saying "Be fruitful and multiply,
and replenish the earth" (Gen. ix. 1). The curse was not brought on mankind
by the Fourth Race, for the comparatively sinless Third Race, the still more
gigantic Antediluvians, had perished in the same way; hence the Deluge was
no punishment, but simply a result of a periodical and geological law. 

Nor was the curse of KARMA called down upon them for seeking natural union,
as all the mindless animal-world does in its proper seasons; but, for
abusing the creative power, for desecrating the divine gift, and wasting the
life-essence for no purpose except bestial personal gratification. When
understood, the third chapter of Genesis will be found to refer to the Adam
and Eve of the closing Third and the commencing Fourth Races. In the
beginning, conception was as easy for woman as it was for all animal
creation. Nature had never intended that woman should bring forth her young
ones "in sorrow." Since that period, however, during the 
[411]  evolution of the Fourth Race, there came enmity between its seed, and
the "Serpent's" seed, the seed or product of Karma and divine wisdom. 

For the seed of woman or lust, bruised the head of the seed of the fruit of
wisdom and knowledge, by turning the holy mystery of procreation into animal
gratification; hence the law of Karma "bruised the heel" of the Atlantean
race, by gradually changing physiologically, morally, physically, and
mentally, the whole nature of the Fourth Race of mankind, * until, from the
healthy King of animal creation of the Third Race, man became in the Fifth,
our race, a helpless, scrofulous being, and has now become the wealthiest
heir on the globe to constitutional and hereditary diseases, the most
consciously and intelligently bestial of all animals! † 

This is the real CURSE from the physiological standpoint, almost the only
one touched upon in the Kabalistic esotericism. Viewed from this aspect, the
curse is undeniable, for it is evident. The intellectual evolution, in its
progress hand-in-hand with the physical, has certainly been a curse instead
of a blessing — a gift quickened by the "Lords of Wisdom," who have poured
on the human manas the fresh dew of their own spirit and essence. The divine
Titan has then suffered in vain; and one feels inclined to regret his
benefaction to mankind, and sigh for those days so graphically depicted by
Æschylus, in his "Prometheus Bound," when, at the close of the first Titanic
age (the age that followed that of ethereal man, of the pious Kandu and
Pramlocha), nascent, physical mankind, still mindless and (physiologically)
senseless, is described as — 

"Seeing, they saw in vain;
Hearing, they heard not; but like shapes in dreams,
Through the long time all things at random mixed." 

Our Saviours, the Agnishwatta and other divine "Sons of the Flame of Wisdom"
(personified by the Greeks in Prometheus ‡ ), may well, in 
 
* How wise and grand, how far-seeing and morally beneficent are the laws of
Manu on connubial life, when compared with the licence tacitly allowed to
man in civilized countries. That those laws have been neglected for the last
two millenniums does not prevent us from admiring their forethought. The
Brahmin was a grihasta, a family man, till a certain period of his life,
when, after begetting a son, he broke with married life and became a chaste
Yogi. His very connubial life was regulated by his Brahmin astrologer in
accordance with his nature. Therefore, in such countries as the Punjab, for
instance, where the lethal influence of Mussulman, and later on of European,
licentiousness, has hardly touched the orthodox Aryan castes, one still
finds the finest men — so far as stature and physical strength go — on the
whole globe; whereas the mighty men of old have found themselves replaced in
the Deccan, and especially in Bengal, by men whose generation becomes with
every century (and almost with every year) dwarfed and weakened. 

† Diseases and over-population are facts that can never be denied. ....

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[412] the injustice of the human heart, be left unrecognized and unthanked.
They may, in our ignorance of the truth, be indirectly cursed for Pandora's
gift: but to find themselves proclaimed and declared by the mouth of the
clergy, the EVIL ONES, is too heavy a Karma for "Him" "who dared alone "—
when Zeus "ardently desired" to quench the entire human race — to save "that
mortal race" from perdition, or, as the suffering Titan is made to say: — 

"From sinking blasted down to Hades' gloom.
For this by the dire tortures I am bent,
Grievous to suffer, piteous to behold,
I who did mortals pity! . . . . " 
The chorus remarking very pertinently: — 
"Vast boon was this thou gavest unto mortals . . . ." 

Prometheus answers: — 

"Yea, and besides 'twas I that gave them fire.
CHORUS: Have now these short-lived creatures flame-eyed fire? 
PROM.: Ay, and by it full many arts will learn. . . . . " 

But, with the arts, the fire received has turned into the greatest curse:
the animal element, and consciousness of its possession, has changed
periodical instinct into chronic animalism and sensuality.* It is this which
hangs over humanity like a heavy funereal pall. Thus arises the
responsibility of free-will; the Titanic passions which represent humanity
in its darkest aspect; "the restless insatiability of the lower passions and
desires, when, with self-asserting insolence, they bid defiance to the
restraints of law." † 

Prometheus having endowed man, according to Plato's "Protagoras," with that
"wisdom which ministers to physical well-being," but the lower aspect of
manas of the animal (Kama) having remained unchanged, 
 
—Footnote continued from previous page— 

the champion and benefactor of mankind, whose [lives] ... Zeus, it is said,
proposed to annihilate these puny ephemerals, and to plant upon the earth a
new race in their stead." We see the Lords of Being doing likewise, and
exterminating the first product of nature and the sea, in the Stanzas (V, et
seq.). . . . Prometheus represents himself as having frustrated this design,
and as being consequently subjected, for the sake of mortals, to the most
agonising pain, inflicted by the remorseless cruelty of Zeus. We have, thus,
the Titan, the symbol of finite reason and free will (of intellectual
humanity, or the higher aspect of Manas), depicted as the sublime
philanthropist, while Zeus, the supreme deity of Hellas, is portrayed as the
cruel and obdurate despot, a character peculiarly revolting to Athenian
sentiment." The reason for it is explained further on. The "Supreme Deity"
bears, in every ancient Pantheon — including that of the Jews — a dual
character, composed of light and shadow. 

* The animal world, having simple instinct to guide it, has its seasons of
procreation, and the sexes become neutralized during the rest of the year.
Therefore, the free animal knows sickness but once in its life — before it
dies. ...
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[413] instead of "an untainted mind, heaven's first gift" (Æschylus), there
was created the eternal vulture of the ever unsatisfied desire, of regret
and despair coupled with "the dreamlike feebleness that fetters the blind
race of mortals" (p. 556), unto the day when Prometheus is released by his
heaven-appointed deliverer, Herakles. "  S D  II  411-13

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

See this set of propositions:


Q.:	[Does the Ego incarnate alternately in different sexes, or in the
opposite sex?]


"...If my next birth shall be in the body-female, it is a matter of
indifference. It is of record that an ego did very well in the body called
Helena P. Blavatsky; and, contrarywise, another did well in a body-male
called [Sankaracharya]. It is said that one Maji— a woman— in India is a
great Yogi also. So, as I am perfectly indifferent, my remarks may be
concluded to be uncolored by the partisanship of sex, so clear to [44] some
and so often productive of clouds over vision.

Well, then, I do not adhere to the alternating theory. It is too
cut-and-dried at the very first impression. 

Further it appears to violate, with the appearance of a personal director
behind it, the natural conclusion to be drawn from human life and character—
our only guide in such matters. If we assume an anthropomorphic God, who
made it a law that every ego should now have male and next female form for
living in, no matter how the laws of tendency of attraction and repulsion
work in other directions, there might be some probability of sustaining the
position that regular alternation of sex is the rule. But the universe is
governed by law, not by caprice. Let us, then, look for a moment at one or
two points.

Karma— from other lives— determines where, how, and when we shall be born.
But in the matter under debate, one of the ramifications of the law of Karma
which must have most to do with this is tendency. In other words, the
tendency set up in a prior life will determine the tendency toward a
particular family next birth. And we must look also at the question of male
and female character essentially, and not as a mere question of appearance
or function. If we discover what is the essential distinguishing
characteristic of the female character as opposed for comparison to the
male, then we can perhaps arrive at a probable conclusion— though, as I
above remarked, a very uninteresting and useless one in any event.

Now to my limited vision the female character is per se concrete; that is,
its tendency in thought, speech, and act is toward the concrete; while the
male character seems to me to be per se the opposite. The Kabalists and the
ancients of all lands may not stand as authority for my readers, but they
support this view. And the existence of exceptions in both sexes does not
contradict the opinion, but rather goes to sustain it, forasmuch as we so
easily recognize a woman who has a man’s character or a man who has a
woman’s. 

The difference was not invented by tyrannical men, but seems actually to
exist in the race. For no matter where you go, or how civilized or
barbarous, modern or ancient, your examples are, they ever show the same
differences and characteristics.

And whether you admit or deny the particular description by concreteness and
abstractness, it still remains true that the essential female character—
whatever be the distinguishing mark— is totally different from the
essentially male one. [ 45 ] 

Now, then, if Ego (A) has evolved with infinite pain and many lives the
female character, is it likely that that tendency will exhaust itself at
once? Or if it has been set up by one life, is it likely to exhaust at death
so as to permit the next incarnation to be in the opposite sex? I think not.


It might be that the Ego could, as man in prior life, incarnate next as
woman, but that would mean that he had set up a tendency to whatever is the
essential character of the female— in my opinion, concreteness of thought in
the depths of his nature— or for other of many reasons. 

It is not wise to set down such fixed and iron rules. Nature does not thus
work. She is always about to break some rule we have foolishly thought to be
of eternal duration. 

So I conclude on this that the Ego will go on as woman or man just so long
as its deeper nature is of the same cut, fashion, and tendency as the
particular sex in general in which it incarnates. For my poor judgment, the
regular alternation theory is wholly without foundation. But, after all, it
is a question none of us can decide. ..."	W Q J 		FORUM
ANSWERS,  pp.43-5

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


Dallas

-----Original Message-----
From: Cass Silva
Sent: Monday, July 31, 2006 
Subject: Re: Tantra & Theosophy Virtual Lodge

 Dallas

I take a slightly different angle. Sex in itself is not a good or a bad
thing, it is an energy and it is part of the human make-up. Sex is motivated
by impulse and in this day and age images are confronting us daily stirring
those impulses. Those people operating from the personality level are unable
to control those impulses and surround themselves with like thoughts
therefore reinforcing the natural impulse to procreate.If we view sex not as
an act but as an impulse, we can see that at a mental level it is the
impulse that needs to be controlled. The thought behind the act. I imagine
when one has reached the point of indifference regarding the sexual act, one
is probably free of it, however the energy remains and needs to be channeled
into different avenues.

Sting (the singer) who promotes Tantric Sex has also got it wrong. Tantric
Sex is the Union of Atma-Buddhi with Manas which is a spiritual union and
therefore does not require ejaculation. 

The further along on the spiritual path, the more sexual energy we create.
The temptations are far greater! This sexual energy can be used for healing
and transmutation. We must strive to control the sex impulse so that it
doesn't control us, but to pretend it doesn't exist is suppressing an
energy, and eventually this suppression will need an outlet, as I believe
was the case with Leadbeater. He twisted the use of sexual energy to justify
his lust. The sexual organs are no different to any other organ in our body
yet its use is seen by some as a perversion, I personally do not hold this
belief.
Cass

		SNIP