Theos-Talk Archives (August 2006 Message tt00249)

Sunday, August 06, 2006

Friend G W:

You wrote:  "Your August 2 posting on brain, memory, dreams et al was timely and on the mark for this student… I was pondering for this stuff?  I’m still trying to digest some of it but may I share some related questions and personal sensations?


Where is memory located? 	

DTB	[In the astral “brain”  --  there is a change of principle  -- see the tables in The KEY TO THEOSOPHY --   91-2; 135-6; 195-6 ]


	Is there such a thing as the sub-conscious mind or does the single mind know about all possible manifestations of things? 

[MANAS the “Mind” links the material life we know and live in with the SPIRITUAL SELF – ATMA, and BUDDHI --  Wisdom.  --  DTB]


	What the difference between heart felt feelings and emotions? 

DTB	[ BUDDHI-MANAS is the wise and moral mind.  KAMA-MANAS is the “enemy” wrapped in our SELFISH emotions – this is the source of IGNORANCE and FOLLY. ]

	What’s the difference between intent and motive? 

DTB	"In the Key p. 200 top paragraph" --  [motive is the reason or desired outcome of a PURE and UNSELFISH action, and SELFISH produces shameful and ultimately painful effects. ]


	Is something nothing and nothing something? 

DTB	[All thoughts produce actions.  If unselfish they merge with the peaceful, progressive, and educative aspect of  NATURE -- the UNIVERSE.]


G – The student  [ DTB   we are all students, and pass on what we learn to others ]

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

To also consider:

1	PERFECTION THROUGH VIRTUE

	
		BUDDHIST TEACHINGS :  

     “Notwithstanding widespread misconceptions and errors … Orientalists agree that the Buddha’s foremost aim was to lead human beings to salvation by teaching them to practice the greatest purity and virtue, and by detaching them from the service of this illusionary world, and the love of one’s still more illusionary — because so evanescent and unreal — body and physical self.

     And what is the good of a virtuous life, full of privations and suffering, if the only result of it is to be annihilation at the end?  If even the attainment of that supreme perfection which leads the Initiate to remember the whole series of his past lives, and to foresee that of the future ones, by the full development of that inner, divine eye in him, and to acquire the knowledge that unfolds the causes of the ever-recurring cycles of existence, brings him finally to non-being, and nothing more —  then the whole system is idiotic, and Epicureanism is far more philosophical than such Buddhism.

     He who is unable to comprehend the subtle, and yet so potent, difference between existence in a material or physical state and a purely spiritual existence — Spirit or “Soul-life” — will never appreciate at their full value the grand teachings of the Buddha, even in their exoteric form.  Individual or personal existence is the cause of pains and sorrows; collective and impersonal life-eternal is full of divine bliss and joy for ever, with neither causes nor effects to darken its light.  And the hope for such a life-eternal is the keynote of the whole of Buddhism.  

     If we are told that impersonal existence is no existence at all, but amounts to annihilation, as was maintained by some French reincarnationists, then we would ask:  What difference can it make in the spiritual perceptions of an Ego whether he enter Nirvāna loaded with the recollections only of his own personal lives — tens of thousands according to the modern reincarnationists — or whether merged entirely in the Parabrahmic state, it becomes one with the All, with the absolute knowledge and the absolute feeling of representing collective humanities?  

     Once that an Ego lives only ten distinct individual lives he must necessarily lose his one self, and become mixed up — merged, so to say — with these ten selves.  It really seems that so long as this great mystery remains a dead letter to the world of Western thinkers, and especially to the Orientalists, the less the latter undertake to explain it, the better for Truth.

     Of all the existing religious Philosophies, Buddhism is the least understood.  The Lassens, Webers, Wassilyev, the Burnoufs and Juliens, and even such “eye-witnesses” of Tibetan Buddhism as Csoma de Körös and the Schlagintweits, have hitherto only added perplexity to confusion.  None of these has ever received his information from a genuine Gelugpa source: all have judged Buddhism from the bits of knowledge picked up at Tibetan frontier lamaseries, in countries thickly populated by Bhutanese and Lepchas, Böns, and red-capped Dugpas, along the line of the Himālayas.  Hundreds of volumes purchased from Buriats, Shamans, and Chinese Buddhists, have been read and translated, glossed and misinterpreted according to invariable custom.  

     Esoteric Schools would cease to be worthy of their name were their literature and doctrines to become the property of even their profane co-religionists — still less of the Western public.  ….

     It is quite true that the primitive Srāvakas (listeners or hearers) and the Sramanas (the “thought-restrainers” and the “pure”) have degenerated, and that many Buddhist sects have fallen into mere dogmatism and ritualism.  

     Like every other Esoteric, half-suppressed teaching, the words of the Buddha convey a double meaning, and every sect has gradually come to claim to be the only one knowing the correct meaning, and thus to assume supremacy over the rest.  Schism has crept in, and has fastened, like a hideous cancer, on the fair body of early Buddhism.  

     Nāgārjuna’s Mahāyāna (“Great Vehicle”) School was opposed by the Hīnayāna (or “Little Vehicle”) System, and even the Yogacharyā of Aryāsanga became disfigured by the yearly pilgrimage from India to the shores of Mansarovara, of hosts of vagabonds with matted locks who play at being Yogins and Fakirs, preferring this to work.  An affected detestation of the world, and the tedious and useless practice of the counting of inhalations and exhalations as a means to produce absolute tranquillity of mind or meditation, have brought this school within the region of Hatha-Yoga, and have made it heir to the Brāhmanical Tīrthikas.  And though its Srotāpatti, its Sakridāgāmin, Anāgāmin, and Arhats,2 bear the same names in almost every school, yet the doctrines of each differ greatly, and none of these is likely to gain real Abhijñas (the supernatural abnormal five powers).

     One of the chief mistakes of the Orientalists when judging on “internal(?) evidence,” as they express it, was that they assumed that the Pratyeka-Buddhas, the Bodhisattvas, and the “Perfect” Buddhas were a later development of Buddhism.

     For on these three chief degrees are based the seven and twelve degrees of the Hierarchy of Adeptship.  The first are those who have attained the Bodhi (wisdom) of the Buddhas, but do not become Teachers.  

     The human Bodhisattvas are candidates, so to say, for perfect Buddhaship (in Kalpas to come), and with the option of using their powers now if need be.  

     “Perfect” Buddhas are simply “perfect” Initiates.  All these are men, and not disembodied Beings, as is given out in the Hīnayāna exoteric books.  Their correct character may be found only in the secret volumes of Lugrub or Nāgārjuna, the founder of the Mahāyāna system, who is said to have been initiated by the Nāgas (fabulous “Serpents,” the veiled name for an Initiate or Mahatma).  

     The fabled report found in Chinese records that Nāgārjuna considered his doctrine to be in opposition to that of Gautama Buddha, until he discovered from the Nāgas that it was precisely the doctrine that had been secretly taught by Sākyamuni Himself, is an allegory, and is based upon the reconciliation between the old Brāhmanical secret Schools in the Himālayas and Gautama’s Esoteric teachings, both parties having at first objected to the rival schools of the other.  

     The former, the parent of all others, had been established beyond the Himālayas for ages before the appearance of Sākyamuni.  Gautama was a pupil of this; and it was with them, those Indian Sages, that He had learned the truths of the Sunyata, the emptiness and impermanence of every terrestrial, evanescent thing, and the mysteries of Prajña-Pāramitā, or “knowledge across the River,” which finally lands the “Perfect One” in the regions of the One Reality.  

     But His Arhats were not Himself.  Some of them were ambitious, and they modified certain teachings after the great councils, and it is on account of these “heretics” that the Mother-School at first refused to allow them to blend their schools, when persecution began driving away the Esoteric Brotherhood from India.  

     But when finally most of them submitted to the guidance and control of the chief Āshramas, then the Yogacharyā of Āryāsanga was merged into the oldest Lodge.  For it is there from time immemorial that has lain concealed the final hope and light of the world, the salvation of mankind.  Many are the names of that School and land, the name of the latter being now regarded by the Orientalists as the mythic name of a fabulous country.  It is from this mysterious land nevertheless, that the Hindu expects his Kalki-Avatāra, the Buddhist his Maitreya, the Pārsī his Saoshyant and the Jew his Messiah, and so would the Christian expect thence his Christ —  if he only knew of it.

     There, and there alone, reigns Parinishpanna (Yong-Grüb), the absolutely perfect comprehension of Being and Non-Being, the changeless true Existence in Spirit, even while the latter is seemingly still in the body, every inhabitant thereof being a Non-Ego because he has become the Perfect Ego.  Their voidness is “self-existent and perfect” — if there were profane eyes to sense and perceive it — because it has become absolute; the unreal being transformed into conditionless Reality, and the realities of this, our world, having vanished in their own nature into thin (non-existing) air.  

     The “Absolute Truth” (Don-dampa’i-den pa; Sanskrit: Paramārthasatya), having conquered “relative truth” (Kun zab chi-den pa; Sanskrit: Samvritisatya), the inhabitants of the mysterious region are thus supposed to have reached the state called in mystic phraseology Svasamvedanā (the “self-analyzing reflection”) and Paramārtha, or that absolute consciousness of the personal merged into the impersonal Ego, which is above all, hence above illusion in every sense.  

     Its “Perfect” Buddhas and Bodhisattvas may be on every nimble Buddhist tongue as celestial — therefore unreachable Beings, while these names may suggest and say nothing to the dull perceptions of the European profane.  What matters it to Those who, being in this world, yet live outside and far beyond our illusive earth! Above Them there is but one class of Nirvānīs, namely, the Cho-ku (Dharmakāya), or the Nirvānīs “without remains” — the pure Arupa, the formless Breaths.3

     Thence emerge occasionally the Bodhisattvas in their Tulpa’i-Ku (or Nirmānakāya) body and, assuming an ordinary appearance, they teach men.  There are conscious, as well as unconscious, incarnations. “    HPB

     [Extracted from Blavatsky:  Collected Works,  XIV,  p. 432-37]

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2

MIND – MANAS --  INTELLECT --  THOUGHT.DOC
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	Thought, ideas and questions:


IS THE MIND FREE  or  BOUND   --  to LEARN  --   to PRACTISE  --   to  TEACH ?


ARE THERE LIMITS TO THE RANGE OR DEPTH OF THOUGHT ?


WHAT IS THE NATURE OF PARADOX ?  [Ex:  Moebus strip,  Klein jar. ]


NATURE   &  QUALITIES OF  MIND-BEING ?


IS “SOUL” A SYNONYM FOR MIND ?


“Soul” “Theosophists have got into the habit of using the words "Self" and "Ego" as synonymous, of associating the term "Self" with only man's higher individual or even personal "Self" or Ego, whereas this term ought never to be applied except to the One universal Self.”    	Key  174-5


WHAT IS “SPIRIT ?”   	[ Universal perfection  --  omnipresent  ]
				[ in every man and every life-atom ]


	WHAT ARE :    LIFE ?      PURPOSE ?  
				[ Spiritualizing Matter through practical virtue ] 



	WHAT IS THE RELATION OF SOUL TO SPIRIT ?  [ “Son” to “Father.” ]


“Patanjali in his YOGA SUTRAS, indicates that "the Universe exists
for the Soul's experience and emancipation."  (Pat, pp. 25, 26.)
He also indicates that the Soul, when in a body, is conjoined
with "the organ of thought" (the brain-mind).	Pat, pp. 25, 26.

   
                          		Atma the inseparable ray of the Universal
  THE HIGHER                	and ONE SELF. It is the God above, more
       SELF is                    	than within, us. Happy the man who 
       				succeeds in saturating his inner Ego with it!	 
							Key p. 175


“Parabrahm (the One Reality, the Absolute) is the field of Absolute Consciousness, i.e., that Essence which is out of all relation to conditioned existence, and of which conscious existence is a conditioned symbol. But once that we pass in thought from this (to us) Absolute Negation, duality supervenes in the contrast of Spirit (or consciousness) and Mater, Subject and Object.”
	Secret Doctrine Vol I,  Proem page 15..


“Spirit (or Consciousness) and Matter are, however, to be regarded, not as independent realities, but as the two facets or aspects of the Absolute (Parabrahm), which constitute the basis of conditioned Being whether subjective or objective.... just as pre-Cosmic Ideation is the root of all individual consciousness, so pre-Cosmic Substance is the substratum of matter in the various grades of its differentiation.”	 -- -Secret Doctrine Vol I, Proem page 15.

"There is not one finger's breadth (ANGULA) of void Space in the whole Boundless (Universe)..."
	  S D  I 289

"Consciousness is ONE throughout the Universe - in man and matter, element and forces."	Theosophy, Vol. 17, p. 287

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	ITEMS TO MEDITATE ON


WHY IS HUMANITY VARIED INDIVIDUALLY, YET UNIFORM AS TO FACULTIES ?
		[ Union of Mind and Desire / personal natures ]


CAN  EMOTIONS  BE  SEPARATED  FROM  MIND and THOUGHT PROCESSES ? 
		[  Yes  --  they are irrational and ultimately self-destructive] 


DOES THE FACULTY OF ATTENTION  BEAR ON LEARNING ?


DOES “WILL’  BEAR ON LEARNING?   WHAT IS “WILL ?”


ARE OUR MEMORIES ALTERED OR MODIFIED BY OUR “INTERESTS ?” 


ARE INTERESTS EMOTIONS,  DESIRES,  PASSIONS  ?  


WHAT ARE “PASSIONS AND DESIRES” TO BE CLASSIFIED AS ?


DO THEY OBEY THE SAME RULES AS EITHER “SPIRIT” OR “MIND” ?


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


		FACT   --   or   DELUSION   --   VEIL ?


VERIFICATION OF INFORMATION ?   ACCURACY  --   HONESTY  

TRANSFER OF  MEANING  --  what is  “MEANING ?”

MEANING [like DATA] has VALUE if TRUE and ACCURATE in reporting.

WORDS CAN BE INACCURATE --  but, CAN LEAD TO TRUTH THROUGH UNDERSTANDING.


	What adjustments have to be made?  By whom ?


KNOWLEDGE OF LAW can give an approximate verification leading to TRUTH if applied. 

ALL TRANSFER OF KNOWLEDGE IS SYMBOLICAL.  Direct mind to mind transfer is rare. 

SYMBOLS TO BE USEFUL MUST HAVE UNIVERSAL ACCEPTANCE  --  LAW  ?


HOW TO VERIFY LAW ?   UNIVERSAL  --  IMPERSONAL  --  TIMELESS  --  


IS UNIVERSE LIMITED ? 


	Has UNIVERSE  A  PURPOSE ?


"At the commencement of a great Manvantara [ great cycle of evolution ], Parabrahm [ the ABSOLUTE ] manifests as Mulaprakriti [ root-matter ] and then as the Logos ["Word"—thought--plan ]. This Logos is equivalent to the "Unconscious Universal Mind," etc., of Western Pantheists.  It constitutes the Basis of the Subject-side of manifested Being, and is the source of all manifestations of individual consciousness.

Mulaprakriti or Primordial Cosmic Substance, is the foundation of the OBJECT-side of things--the basis of all objective evolution and Cosmogenesis.

Force, then, does not emerge with Primordial Substance from Parabrahmic Latency.  It is the transformation into energy of the supra-conscious thought of the Logos, infused, so to speak, into the objectivization of the latter out of potential latency in the One Reality.  

Hence spring the wondrous laws of matter...Force succeeds Mulaprakriti;  but, minus Force, Mulaprakriti is for all practical intents and purposes non-existent."	SD II 24-5	



	Do Man’s COGNITIVE FACULTIES INDICATE PURPOSE for himself and Universe ? 


“KNOWLEDGE IS POWER.     IGNORANCE IS FEAR.”

“I THINK, THEREFORE  I AM.”  ---  Descartes

"Self-consciousness belongs alone to man and proceeds from the Self, the higher Manas."   
    	HPB ART, Vol. II, p. 9


NO MAN THINKS EXACTLY AS ANOTHER.  

FACULTY OF COGNITION AND RATIOCINATION HAS DEGREES BUT IS PRESENT IN ALL. 


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


	ENTITY:		WITNESS --  OBSERVER  --  PERCEIVER --  


"MANAS...THE INNER OR HIGHER "EGO" ... The "Fifth Principle, so-called, independently of Buddhi.  The Mind-Principle is only the Spiritual Ego when merged into and one with Buddhi,--no materialist being supposed to have in him such an Ego, however great his intellectual capacities.  It is the permanent Individuality or the "Reincarnating Ego." ("The human Ego is neither Atman nor Buddhi, but the higher Manas...Karana Sarira (the "causal body") on the plane of the Sutratma (thread soul), which is the golden thread on which, like beads, the various personalities of the Ego are strung."
	 (SD II 79)


"HIGHER EGO"...it is the higher Manas illuminated by Buddhi, [Taijasi] the principle of self-consciousness, the "I-am-I"...the Karana Sarira, the immortal man which passes from one incarnation to another." ( see Trans. p. 63)	Key p. 176


“The Soul (Higher Manas) "is the PERCEIVER;  is vision itself pure and simple;  and looks directly upon ideas."    Pat. p. 26,


	DISCRIMINATOR  [ faculties ]


	CHOOSER	[ memory  --  analogy  --  comparison  --  correspondence  --
			[  forgetting  --  recollection  --  reminiscence


The "Perceiver" within, takes notice of.  It then
makes choices.  In ancient Hindu philosophy the ten "senses" are
called "Indriyas."  There are five senses whereby knowledge is
attained (Jnana-Indriyas), and a second five, through which
action is performed (Karma-Indriyas).  These are the "five roots
producing Life Eternal."  In Buddhism they are looked on as
positive agents producing the "qualities."   [T. Glossary, p. 155.]


	WILL	A power we self-apply to memory, logic, attention, meaning. ACTION,

	IMAGINATION	[ MENTAL & PSYCHIC IMAGES  &  ADJUSTMENTS ]

	ACTION		[ PHYSICAL]


"...the direction to perform actions and yet renounce their performance...the real actor is the mind, that acts...are the thoughts themselves...Duty, and the final imperative--the "what ought I to do"--comes in here and becomes a part of the process. (discrimination to be applied)...true meditation is (thus) begun and will soon become permanent...[will acquire] a concentration in time which will increase the real power of meditation.  It is not meditation to stare at a spot on the wall for a fixed period, or to remain for another space of time in a perfectly vacuous mental state which soon runs into sleep...many students have run after these follies, ignoring the true way.  

The truth is, that the right method is not easy;  it requires thought and mental effort, with persistence and faith...It will all depend on self-mastery.  The self below will continually drag down the man who is not self-conquered...on the other side, the self is near to divinity, and when conquered it becomes the friend and helper of the conqueror...Every effort we make in (intentness upon the Supreme Spirit)...will be preserved in the inner nature and cannot be lost at death.  It is a spiritual gain..."
	Gita Notes, pp 127-130


"A perfect man is not made to order but is a product of evolution.  Wisdom is not a matter of book-learning but of growth.  General rules for conduct can be given, but to apply them properly, the power of discrimination is necessary...A virtue, practiced without moderation, becomes a crime.  To know how to find the point of equilibrium is the great secret of the Adept, that cannot be told but must be learned by experience, when sagacity and goodness will be united in wisdom."	HPB –
	  THEOSOPHY 47-441-2   --  THEOSOPHIST 1885

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	MANAS	[  ENTITY  OR  FACULTY ?  ]   [ internal workings ]


"The action of the entire universe is but a detailed manifestation and example of the action of mind on matter, governed at the highest point by the action of the universal Mind.  Between the finite human mind of the ordinary uninitiated individual and this universal mind lie an infinite number of gradually ascending degrees, and the higher the plane of consciousness the nearer is the approach to the universal mind which is, as it were, the main-spring of the whole.  Although there are no hard and fast lines in nature yet these various grades may be marked off into great main divisions;  and it is the successive attainment of these, one after the other that is represented by the degrees of initiation.  When one plane of existence has been exhausted, there is needed, as it were, a fresh impulse to enable us to go on higher and this it is that is supplied at the time of initiation."
	"Alpha"	Theosophist,  June 1886  -  [ ULT- T A & N p. 61 ]


 Here, then, we have Manas (or the Soul in general) in its two aspects:  when attaching itself to Anoia (our Kama rupa, or the "Animal Soul" in "Esoteric Buddhism"), it runs towards entire annihilation, as far as the personal Ego is concerned;  when allying itself to the Nous (Atma-Buddhi) it merges into the immortal, imperishable Ego, and then its spiritual consciousness of the personal that was, becomes immortal."		Key  93


"...the Manasa Devas who endowed man with the consciousness of his immortal soul:  that consciousness which hinders man "from foreseeing death," and makes him know he is immortal.
 ( Fn.: --  The monad of the animal is as immortal as that of man, yet the brute knows nothing of this;  it lives an animal life of sensation just as the first human would have lived, when attaining physical development in the Third Race, had it not been for the Agnishwatta, and the Manasa Pitris.")  [Myth of Prometheus, further explained.]		SD II 525



	THINKING	/    FORGETTING    /   RECOLLECTING

	LOGIC		MATHEMATICS	RULES & LAWS

	THOUGHTS		DETAILED   /    VAGUE 

	IMAGINATION	CREATOR   or    CREATED  ? 

	FANCY		WILL		

	EXPRESSION		[ externalizing ]   [ communication  ]


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


PERCEPTION		[ in-coming impressions ] 

	AWARENESS

	COGNITION

		ANALYSIS

		SYNTHESIS

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


LOWER MANAS  [KAMA MANAS]   [Desire-mind.  Usually false and untruthful.]
		[ Exists only for this life.  Limited by personal desires. ]
		[ Link between HIGHER MANAS and the Personality and Physical Body ]


"The whole individuality is centred in the three middle Principles or third (MANAS), and fifth (ASTRAL BODY) principles.  During earthly life it is all in the fourth (KAMA-MANAS), the center of energy, volition--will...the individuality survives...to run its seven-fold and upward course [ it ] has to assimilate to itself the eternal-life power residing but in the seventh (ATMA), and then blend the three (4th, 5th & 7th) into one--the 6th (BUDDHI).  Those who succeed in doing so become Buddhas, Dhyan Chohans, etc...  The chief object of our struggle and initiations is to achieve this union while yet on this earth."	M L (Barker)  pp. 77-8


"One has to die in chrestos, i.e., kill one's personality and its passions, to blot out every idea of separateness from one's "Father," the Divine Spirit in man' to become one with the eternal and absolute Life and Light (SAT) before one can reach the glorious state of Christos, the regenerated man, the man in spiritual freedom."	HPB ARTICLES III 190 fn


"...Christ--the true esoteric Saviour--is no man, but the Divine Principle in every human being.  He who (169) strives to resurrect the Spirit crucified in him by his own terrestrial passions, and buried deep in the "sepulcher" of his sinful flesh;  he who has the strength to roll back the stone of matter from the door of his own inner sanctuary, he has the risen Christ in him.  The "Son of Man" is no child of the bond-woman--flesh, but verily of the free-woman--Spirit, the child of man's own deeds, and the fruit of his own spiritual labour."  	   HPB ARTICLES  III  168-9


"Most of us believe in the survival of the Spiritual Ego, in Planetary Spirits and Nirmanakayas, those great Adepts of the past ages, who, renouncing their right to Nirvana, remain in our spheres of being, not as "spirits" but as complete spiritual human Beings.  Save their corporeal, visible envelope, which they leave behind, they remain as they were, in order to help poor humanity, as far as can be done without sinning against Karmic law.  

This is the "Great Renunciation," indeed;  an incessant, conscious self-sacrifice throughout aeons and ages till that day when the eyes of blind mankind will open and, instead of the few, all will see the universal truth.  

These Beings may well be regarded as God and Gods--if they would but allow the fire in our hearts, at the thought of that purest of all sacrifices, to be fanned into the flame of adoration, or the smallest altar in their honor.  But they will not.  Verily, "the secret heart is fair Devotion's (only) temple," and any other in this case, would be no better than profane ostentation."	HPB ARTICLES III 204


"...unless the higher Self or Ego gravitates towards its Sun--the Monad--the lower Ego, or personal Self, will have the upper hand in every case.  For it is this Ego, with its fierce selfishness and animal desire to live a Senseless life (Tanha), which is the "maker of the tabernacle," as Buddha calls it in Dhammapada..." 	SD II 110


	INTERPRETATION

	PREJUDICE

	DEFENSIVE [of personal desires, likes & dislikes]

	FANCY

	HALLUCINATION

	TRANCE (?)


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


HIGHER MANAS  [BUDDHI MANAS]  [ Virtuous truthful MIND ]
	[ reincarnating entity – immortal ]
	[ Link between Personality and INDIVIDUAL SPIRIT ]


"...[the Agnishwatta Pitris] were destined to incarnate as the Egos of the forthcoming crop of Mankind.  The human Ego is neither Atman nor Buddhi, but the higher Manas:  the intellectual fruition and the efflorescence of the intellectual self-conscious Egotism--in the higher spiritual sense.  The ancient works refer to it as Karana Sarira on the plane of the Sutratma, which is the golden thread on which, like beads, the various personalities of this higher Ego are strung...these beings were returning Nirvanees, from preceding Maha-Manvantaras--ages of incalculable duration..."		S D II 79


"...the "Ego" in man is a monad that has gathered to itself innumerable experiences through aeons of time, slowly unfolding its latent potencies through plane after plane of matter.  It is hence called the "eternal pilgrim."

The Manasic, or mind principle, is cosmic and universal.  It is the creator of all forms, and the basis of all law in nature.  Not so with consciousness.  Consciousness is a condition of the monad as a result of embodiment in matter and the dwelling in a physical form.  Self-consciousness, which from the animal plane looking upward is the beginning of perfection, from the divine plane looking downwards is the perfection of selfishness and the curse of separateness.  it is the "world of illusion" that man has created for himself.  "Maya is the perceptive faculty of every Ego which considers itself a Unit, separate from and independent of the One Infinite and Eternal Sat or 'be-ness'," (SD I 329)  The "eternal pilgrim" must therefore mount higher, and flee from the plane of self-consciousness it has struggled so hard to reach."		WQJ  Art I   p. 29


“… man's spirit while not individual per se, yet preserves its distinct individuality in Paranirvana, owing to the accumulation in it of the aggregates, or skandhas that have survived after each death, from the highest faculties of the Manas.  The most spiritual--i.e., the highest and divinest aspirations of every personality follow Buddhi and the Seventh Principle into Devachan (Swarga) after the death of the Monad...the individuality of the spirit-soul...is preserved to the end of the great cycle (Maha-Manwantara) when each Ego enters Paranirvana, or is merged in Parabrahm...however long the "night of Brahma" or even the Universal Pralaya...yet, when it ends, the same individual Divine Monad resumes its majestic path of evolution, though on a higher, hundredfold perfected and more pure chain of earths (266) than before, and brings with it all the essence of compound spiritualities from its previous countless rebirths."	HPB ARTICLES  III  265-6




	INTUITION	[sense of virtue, law and truth ]

	DISCRIMINATION	[ true / false,  personal vs. equality of brotherhood ] 

	COGNITION AND APPLICATION OF LAW  --  IMPERSONAL   --   UNIVERSAL


"... SPIRITUAL SOUL OR BUDDHI, in close union with Manas, the mind-principle, without which it is no Ego at all, but only the Atmic Vehicle. (passive agent)..."Buddhi becomes conscious by the accretions it gets from Manas after every new incarnation an death of man."	 (SD I 244)  [see HPB Art. III, 265 ]	Key p. 176


"BUDDHI...The faculty of cognizing the channel through which divine knowledge reaches the Ego, the discernment of good and evil, "divine consciousness,"  "Spiritual Soul,"  the vehicle of Atma."  SD I xix	   [see also SD I 17 119, 244, 570, 453;  Key 175-6] 	


"AVALOKITESVARA..."When Buddhi absorbs our Egotism (destroys it) with all its Vikharas [qualities, or attractions-TM 11-p. 23], Avalokitesvara [SD I-108,  II-178, Glos. 44, ML 90] becomes manifested to us, and Nirvana, or Mukti is reached...freedom from the trammels of Maya or illusion."	SD I xix	[see SD I xxi, 7, 132  II 615  Glos 211, 218, 232; ]


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	IGNORANCE

		[PATANJALI'S YOGA SUTRAS  II     open text please.


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	INSANITY	{Usual condition of the desire nature and  passionate faculty}

	PSYCHOSIS	[ Mind-desire self-deception ]


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		SOME QUOTES – THEOSOPHY TEACHES:


"The whole individuality is centred in the three middle Principles or third (MANAS), and fifth (ASTRAL BODY) principles.  During earthly life it is all in the fourth (KAMA-MANAS), the center of energy, volition--will...the individuality survives...to run its seven-fold and upward course [ it ] has to assimilate to itself the eternal-life power residing but in the seventh (ATMA), and then blend the three (4th, 5th & 7th) into one--the 6th (BUDDHI).  Those who succeed in doing so become Buddhas, Dhyan Chohans, etc...  The chief object of our struggle and initiations is to achieve this union while yet on this earth."		M L 77-8



"Every form on earth and every speck (atom) in Space strives in its efforts towards self-formation to follow the model placed for it in the "Heavenly Man"...Its [atom's] involution and evolution, its external and internal growth and development, have all one and the same object--man;  man is the highest physical and ultimate form on this earth;  the MONAD in the absolute totality and awakened condition--as the culmination of the divine incarnations on Earth."
	S D I 183

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  More to come

	Dallas

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