Theos-Talk Archives (September 2006 Message tt00125)

Friends, 

And, of course, in the "Letters from the Masters of the Wisdom" you will find another Mahatma freely using the word 'God'  -- while also explaining that  it is used in the sense of 'Ain Soph' -- id est, the Western, Jewish equivalent to Parabrahm, Space Absolute... 

So the first trick necessary to understand esoteric philosophy is not to get entangled in one-meaning mechanical words.  

That is not the Sophistic moral relativism.  

Beneath the flexible outer surface (leaves of the tree) the philosopher sticks most firmly to Basic Eternal Principles (the trunk of the tree of knowledge). 

Regards,  Carlos. 








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Data:Fri, 08 Sep 2006 19:14:11 -0000

Assunto:[Spam] Theos-World Koot Hoomi on the Location of God

> God as "A Being" versus God as "No-being" 
> 
> Koot Hoomi wrote to A.P. Sinnett:
> 
> "A Being however gigantic, occupying space and having length breadth
> and thickness is most certainly the Mosaic deity; 'No-being' and a
> mere principle lands you directly in the Buddhistic atheism, or the
> Vedantic primitive Acosmism."
> 
> Here we have: DUALITY versus NON-DUALITY
> 
> or
> 
> "A Being" versus "No-being"
> 
> Compare the above by Master KH with what a metaphysician
> writes. In a chapter titled "Location of God" in his book
> THE COSMIC WOMB, Arthur W. Osborn comments:
> 
> ". . . when we ask such a question as, 'Does
> God exist?' we are virtually implying someone
> or something OBJECTIVE in the same sense
> that we as individuals are objective. To be
> existent is to objectively real; it is a particular
> manifestation of a primal 'isness.' We are
> therefore back again to the problem of immanence;
> and transcendence and immanence, if universal, would be
> pantheism."
> 
> "If God exists, therefore, He must represent some Reality having
> objectivity RELATIVE to man and, indeed, to the universe." 
> 
> "But this poses the problem of reconciling the postulated quality of
> universality with the objective implication of being in existence.
> As we have noted, universality leads logically to pantheism, whereas
> existence, with its aspect of objectivity, implies LIMITATION." p.
> 57 caps added.
> 
> Compare all of the above with the following excerpts from the
> Encyclopædia Britannica. CAPS have been added to certain words in 
> the text of each entry to emphasize those words and the concepts 
> behind the words.
> 
> -----------------------------------------
> VAISHNAVISM also called Vishnuism, or Visnuism . . . [is] worship of
> the god Vishnu and of his incarnations, principally as Rama and as
> Krishna. It is one of the major forms of modern Hinduism—with
> Saivism and Shaktism (Saktism).
> 
> A major characteristic of Vaishnavism is the strong part played by
> bhakti, or religious devotion. The ultimate goal of the devotee is to
> escape from the cycle of birth and death so as to enjoy the presence
> of Vishnu. This cannot be achieved without the grace of God. . . .
> 
> The philosophical schools of Vaishnavism differ in their
> interpretation of THE RELATIONSHIP between individual souls and God.
> The doctrines of the most important schools are:
> 
> (1) visist advaita ("qualified monism"), associated with the
> name of Ramanuja (11th century) and continued by the Srivais nava
> sect, prominent in South India;
> 
> (2) dvaita ("dualism"), the principal exponent of which was
> Madhva (13th century), who taught that although the soul is dependent
> on God it is NOT an extension of God, that the soul and God are
> SEPARATE entities;
> 
> (3) dvaitadvaita ("dualistic monism"), taught by Nimbarka. . .
> 
> (4) suddhadvaita ("pure monism") of Vallabha. . .
> 
> (5) acintya-bhedabheda ("inconceivable duality and
> nonduality"), the doctrine of Caitanya. . .
> ---------------------------------------------------
> 
> DVAITA . . . (Sanskrit: "Dualism"), [dualism, or belief in a
> BASIC DIFFERENCE in kind between God and individual souls] [is] an
> important school in the orthodox Hindu philosophical system of
> Vedanta. Its founder was Madhva. . . .
> 
> Already during his lifetime, Madhva was regarded by his followers as
> an incarnation of the wind god Vayu, who had been sent to earth by
> the lord Vishnu to save the good, after the powers of evil had sent
> the philosopher Sankara, an important proponent of the Advaita
> ("Nondualist") school.
> 
> In his expositions, Madhva shows the influence of the Nyaya
> philosophic school. He maintains that Vishnu is the supreme God, thus
> identifying the Brahman of the Upanisads with A PERSONAL God, as
> Ramanuja (c. 1050–1137) had done before him. There are in
> Madhva's system THREE ETERNAL, ontological orders: that of God, that
> of soul, and that of inanimate nature. The existence of God is
> demonstrable by logical proof, though only scripture teaches his
> nature. He is the epitome of all perfections and possesses a
> nonmaterial body, which consists of saccidananda (being, spirit, and
> bliss). God is the efficient cause of the universe, but Madhva denies
> that he is the material cause, for God cannot have created the world
> by splitting himself nor in any other way, since that militates
> against the doctrine that God is unalterable; in addition, it is
> blasphemous to accept that a perfect God changes himself into an
> imperfect world. . . .
> 
> Madhva set out to refute the nondualistic Advaita philosophy of
> Sankara (d. c. AD 750), who believed the INDIVIDUAL self to be a
> phenomenon and the absolute spirit (Brahman) the ONLY reality. Thus,
> Madhva rejected the venerable Hindu theory of maya
> ("illusion"), which taught that only spirituality is eternal
> and the material world is illusory and deceptive. Madhva maintained
> that the simple fact that things are transient and everchanging does
> not mean they are not real. . . .
> 
> Madhva . . . belonged to the tradition of Vaisnava religious faith
> and showed a great polemical spirit in refuting Sankara's philosophy
> and in converting people to his own fold. . . . He glorified
> DIFFFERENCE. Five types of differences are central to Madhva's
> system: DIFFERENCE between soul and God, between soul and soul,
> between soul and matter, between God and matter, and that between
> matter and matter. Brahman is the fullness of qualities, and by his
> own intrinsic nature, Brahman produces the world. The individual,
> otherwise free, is dependent only upon God. The Advaita concepts of
> falsity and indescribability of the world were severely criticized
> and rejected.
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> ADVAITA (Sanskrit: "Nondualism," or "Monism"), [is]
> most influential of the schools of Vedanta, an orthodox philosophy of
> India. While its followers find its main tenets already fully
> expressed in the Upanisads and systematized by the Vedanta-sutras, it
> has its historical beginning with the 7th-century thinker
> Gaudapada. . . Gaudapada builds further on the Mahayana Buddhist
> philosophy of Sunyava-da ("Emptiness"). He argues that there
> is NO DUALITY; the mind, awake or dreaming, moves through maya
> ("illusion"); and only nonduality (advaita) is the final
> truth. This truth is concealed by the ignorance of illusion. There is
> no becoming, either of a thing by itself or of a thing out of some
> other thing. THERE IS ULTIMATELY NO INDIVIDUAL SELF OR SOUL (jiva),
> ONLY THE ATMAN (all-soul), in which individuals may be temporarily
> delineated just as the space in a jar delineates a part of main
> space: when the jar is broken, the individual space becomes once more
> part of the main space.
> 
> The medieval Indian philosopher Sankara, or Sankaracarya (Master
> Sankara, c. 700–750), builds further on Gaudapada's foundation, .
> . . Sankara in his philosophy does not start from the empirical world
> with logical analysis but, rather, directly from the absolute
> (Brahman). If interpreted correctly, he argues, the Upanisads teach
> the nature of Brahman. In making this argument, he develops a
> complete epistemology to account for the human error in taking the
> phenomenal world for real. Fundamental for Sankara is the tenet that
> the Brahman is real and the world is unreal. Any change, duality, or
> plurality is an illusion. The self is NOTHING BUT Brahman. Insight
> into this identity results in spiritual release. Brahman is outside
> time, space, and causality, which are simply forms of empirical
> experience. NO DISTINCTIN in Brahman or from Brahman is possible.
> 
> Sankara points to scriptural texts, either stating identity
> ("Thou art that") or denying difference ("There is no duality
> here"), as declaring the true meaning of a Brahman without
> qualities (nirguna ). Other texts that ascribe qualities (saguna) to
> Brahman refer not to the true nature of Brahman but to its
> personality as God(Isvara). . . .
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------
> 
> PANTHEISM in Hinduism
> The gods of the Vedas, the ancient scriptures of India (c.1200 BC),
> represented for the most part natural forces. Exceptions were the
> gods Prajapati (Lord of Creatures) and Purusa (Supreme Being or Soul
> of the Universe), whose competition for influence provided, in its
> outcome, a possible explanation of how the Indian tradition came to
> be one of pantheism rather than of Classical Theism. By the 10th book
> of the Rigveda, Prajapati had become a lordly, monotheistic figure, a
> creator deity transcending the world; and in the later period of the
> sacred writings of the Brahmanas (c. 7th century BC), prose
> commentaries on the Vedas, he was moving into a central position. The
> rising influence of this Theism was later eclipsed by Purusa, who was
> also represented in Rigveda X. In a creation myth Purusa was
> sacrificed by the gods in order to supply (from his body) the pieces
> from which all the things of the world arise. From this standpoint
> the ground of all things lies in a Cosmic Self, and all of life
> participates in that of Purusa. The Vedic hymn to Purusa may be
> regarded as the starting point of Indian pantheism.
> 
> In the Upanisads (c. 1000–500 BC), the most important of the
> ancient scriptures of India, the later writings contain philosophic
> speculations concerning the relation between the individual and the
> divine. In the earlier Upanisads, the absolute, impersonal, eternal
> properties of the divine had been stressed; in the later Upanisads,
> on the other hand, and in the Bhagavadgita , the personal, loving,
> immanentistic properties became dominant. In both cases the divine
> was held to be IDENTICAL with the inner self of each man. At times
> these opposites were implicitly held to be in fact identical—the
> view earlier called identity of opposites pantheism. At other times
> the two sets of qualities were related, one to the unmanifest
> absolute Brahman, or supreme reality (sustaining the universe), and
> the other to the manifest Brahman bearing qualities (and containing
> the universe). Thus Brahman can be regarded as exclusive of the world
> and inclusive, unchanging and yet the origin of all change. Sometimes
> the manifest Brahman was regarded as an emanation from the unmanifest
> Brahman; and then emanationistic pantheism—the Neoplatonic
> pantheism of the foregoing typology—was the result.
> 
> Sankara, an outstanding nondualistic Vedantist and advocate of a
> spiritual view of life, began with the Neoplatonic alternative but
> added a qualification that turned his view into what was later called
> acosmic pantheism. Distinguishing first between Brahman as being the
> eternal Absolute and Brahman as a lower principle and declaring the
> lower Brahman to be a manifestation of the higher, he then made the
> judgment that all save the higher unqualitied Brahman is the product
> of ignorance or nescience and exists (apparently only in men's minds)
> as the phantoms of a dream. Since for Sankara, the world and
> individuality thus disappear upon enlightenment into the unmanifest
> Brahman, and in reality only the Absolute without distinctions
> exists, Sankara has provided an instance of acosmism.
> ---------------------------------------------------
> 
> ACOSMISM [is] in philosophy, the view that God is the sole and
> ultimate reality and that finite objects and events have no
> INDEPENDENT existence. Acosmism has been equated with pantheism, the
> belief that everything is God. G.W.F. Hegel coined the word to defend
> Benedict de Spinoza, who was accused of atheism for rejecting the
> traditional view of a created world EXISTING OUTSIDE GOD. Hegel
> argued that Spinoza could not be an atheist because pantheists hold
> that EVERYTHING is God, whereas atheists exclude God altogether and
> make a godless world the sole reality. Furthermore, because Spinoza's
> cosmos is part of God, it is not what it seems to be. He is
> acosmistic insofar as "noncosmic" seems to deny the
> cosmos—a position, however, very alien to Spinoza's thought.
> 
> Acosmism has also been used to describe the philosophies of Hindu
> Vedanta, Buddhism, and Arthur Schopenhauer; and Johann Gottlieb
> Fichte used the term to defend himself against accusations similar to
> those leveled against Spinoza.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yahoo! Groups Links
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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