Theos-Talk Archives (April 2007 Message tt00119)

How does one attempt to reconcile what Pedro Oliveira writes....??    

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