Theos-Talk Archives (February 2007 Message tt00283)

Pedro Oliveira writes that C.W. Leadbeater:

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...always considered it his duty to observe the inner realities of 
existence and to report his observations as accurately as possible. 
He declared, more than once, that he did not expect people to believe 
his clairvoyant descriptions of the unseen world, although he said 
that for him they were a reality. If we take any teaching as final 
and absolute we stultify our inquiry and our capacity to learn more 
about life and about ourselves. Let us take, for example, the 
teaching about the after-death states, which a number of students of 
HPB's writings very often use as an example of why, in their opinion, 
CWL's writings are wrong. If there is, for the most part, only 
unconsciousness after death, as such students claim, why is it that 
the Tibetan Book of the Dead, to mention only one tradition, affirms 
the existence of several bardos (transitional states) which 
consciousness goes through from death to rebirth?

This is what Sogyal Rinpoche says in The Tibetan Book of Living and 
Dying (HarperCollins, 1994):

"During the first weeks of the bardo, we have the impression that we 
are a man or woman, just as in our previous life. We do not ealize 
that we are dead. We return home to meet our family and loved ones. 
We try to talk to them, to touch them on the shoulder. But they do 
not reply, or even show they are aware we are there. As hard as we 
try, nothing can make them notice us. We watch, powerless, as they 
weep or sit stunned and heartbroken over our death. Fruitlessly we 
try to make use of our              belongings. Our place is no 
longer laid at the table, and arrangements are being made to dispose 
of our possessions. We feel angry, hurt, and frustrated,"like a 
fish", says the Tibetan Book of the Dead, "writhing in hot sand." "

He also described a more dramatic experience:

"Some Western people who recently visited Tibet told me about the 
following incident they had witnessed. One day a Tibetan walking by 
the side of the road was knocked over and killed instantly by a 
Chinese truck. A monk, who happened to be passing, quickly went over 
and sat next to the dead man lying on the ground. They saw the monk 
lean over him and recite some practice or other close to his ear; 
suddenly, to their astonishment, the dead man revived. The monk then 
performed a practice they recognized as the transference of 
consciousness, and guided him back calmly into death. What had 
happened? Clearly the monk had recognized that the violent shock of 
the man's death had left him terribly disturbed, and so the monk 
acted swiftly: first to free the dead man's mind from its distress, 
and then, by means of the phowa, to transfer it to a buddha realm or 
toward a good rebirth. To the Westerners who were watching, this monk 
seemed to be just an ordinary person, but this remarkable story shows 
that he was in fact a practitioner of considerable power."
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Quoted from Pedro's article at:
http://www.cwlworld.info/html/influence.html

Now HOW DOES THE STUDENT OF THEOSOPHY ATTEMPT TO RECONCILE AND 
EXPLAIN what Pedro Oliveira writes above and quotes with what H.P. 
Blavatsky and the Mahatmas wrote about life after death.  See some 
relevant examples at:

"Life After Death in Kamaloka (the Astral World):  H.P. Blavatsky 
versus C.W. Leadbeater"
http://blavatskyarchives.com/morganafterdeath.htm

Daniel
http://hpb.cc