Theos-Talk Archives (July 2009 Message tt00477)

Adelaise,
I also don't have any desire to argue with you. Blavatsky's blasphemy against Christianity, Hinduism and Islam is making Theosophical Society look ridiculous. 

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, adelasie <adelasie@...> wrote:
>
> Anand,
> 
> While I have no desire to argue with you about this or anything, and 
> while I know that you are impervious to any opinion but your own, I must 
> make a few statements, for the sake of others who may be new to 
> Theosophy and/or to this list, and who may wonder what you could be 
> talking about.
> 
> Theosophists know there is no bearded man sitting on a throne in the sky 
> separate from humanity passing judgement on our personal lives and 
> listening to our petty woes. Theosophists know that this concept 
> belittles the vast power of the Infinite from whence all emanates and 
> whence all eventually returns. Theosophists know that this unknowable, 
> inconceivable, eternally unmanifest Absolute expresses itself in form in 
> cyclic rounds throughout infinity and that every unit of that expression 
> contains a spark of the eternal Source. Theosophists know that in that 
> sense, God, meaning the absolute, is in everything in manifestation, is 
> as intimately connected with mankind as is every atom of his body, every 
> thought of his mind.
> 
> Madame Blavatsky had the job of trying to explain this to a humanity 
> which had lost its way and was in danger of losing everything due to 
> wrong headed and wrong hearted practices for a long age. Theosophists 
> are grateful to her for bringing these teachings to light so they might 
> begin to understand what has gone wrong and how it might be addressed.
> 
> It is extremely offensive to read post after post criticizing HPB and 
> promoting misunderstanding after misunderstanding. It also indicates 
> that the poster might actually have some interest in these teachings. 
> Why else post on a theosophical network?
> 
> To all students if theosophy I suggest that when someone protests too 
> much, they have some hidden agenda, and they are to be avoided at all 
> costs. There is way too much at stake to allow ourselves to be 
> distracted from our work by doubt and confusion.
> 
> Adelasie
> 
> Anand wrote:
> >
> > I can see incredible confusion caused by Blavatsky and Mahatma Letters 
> > which were probably materialized by herself and so could not stop from 
> > including her thoughts in Mahatma Letters.
> > There is certain sense in which Personal God of Christians does exist 
> > and Gita supports the same idea of personal God of Christians. I don't 
> > think Christians and Hindus were wrong and Blavatsky was right.
> >
> > Anand Gholap
> >
> > --- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com 
> > <mailto:theos-talk%40yahoogroups.com>, "robert_b_macd" 
> > <robert.b.macdonald@> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > Hi All,
> > >
> > > I wonder if Anand understands what a personal god is. What exactly 
> > is theosophy denying when it argues that there can exist no personal 
> > god. The idea of a personal god is at the heart of the Christian 
> > religions. The Maha Chohan writes the following on this idea of the 
> > personal god: "The world in general and Christendom especially, left 
> > for two thousand years to the regime of a personal God as well as its 
> > political and social systems based on that idea, has now proved a 
> > failure." (Maha Chohan, Masters of the Wisdom) This particular idea of 
> > a personal god working through the popes, priests, etc of the world is 
> > a bankrupt idea. The violence perpetrated by the Church has proven it 
> > beyond a doubt.
> > >
> > > A personal god takes notice of human affairs, gets angry when Man 
> > misbehaves, and generally shows the emotional scale of a less advanced 
> > member of the human race. This is what Christians and others who 
> > follow a personal god worship, an emotionally crippled entity not wise 
> > enough to deal with the growing pains of an adolescent humanity. The 
> > Mahatma Letters refer to a different origin for humanity. There we 
> > read: "The cycle of intelligent existences commences at the highest 
> > worlds or planets ? the term "highest" meaning here the most 
> > spiritually perfect. Evolving from cosmic matter ? which is akasa, the 
> > primeval not the secondary plastic medium, or Ether of Science 
> > instinctively suspected, unproven as the rest ? man first evolutes 
> > from this matter in its most sublimated state, appearing at the 
> > threshold of Eternity as a perfectly Etherial ? not Spiritual Entity, 
> > say ? a Planetary Spirit. He is but one remove from the universal and 
> > Spiritual World Essence ? the Anima Mundi of the Greeks, or that which 
> > humanity in its spiritual decadence has degraded into a mythical 
> > personal God. Hence, at that stage, the Spirit-man is at best an 
> > active Power, an immutable, therefore an unthinking Principle (the 
> > term "immutable" being again used here but to denote that state for 
> > the time being, the immutability applying here but to the inner 
> > principle which will vanish and disappear as soon as the spark of the 
> > material in him will start on its cyclic work of Evolution and 
> > transformation). In his subsequent descent, and in proportion to the 
> > increase of matter he will assert more and more his activity." (ML 18)
> > >
> > > The Anima Mundi is not a personal God. It is an impersonal spirit 
> > unable to receive the prayers of Mankind and hence personal in no 
> > sense. Blavatsky explains as early as Isis:
> > >
> > > The existence of spirit in the common mediator, the ether, is denied 
> > by materialism; while theology makes of it a personal god, the 
> > kabalist holds that both are wrong, saying that in ether, the elements 
> > represent but matter ? the blind cosmic forces of nature; and Spirit, 
> > the intelligence which directs them. The Hermetic, Orphic, and 
> > Pythagorean cosmogonical doctrines, as well as those of Sanchoniathon 
> > and Berosus, are all based upon one irrefutable formula, viz.: that 
> > the ether and chaos, or, in the Platonic language, mind and matter, 
> > were the two primeval and eternal principles of the universe, utterly 
> > independent of anything else. The former was the all-vivifying 
> > intellectual principle; the chaos, a shapeless, liquid principle, 
> > without "form or sense," from the union of which two, sprung into 
> > existence the universe, or rather, the universal world, the first 
> > androgynous deity ? the chaotic matter becoming its body, and ether 
> > the soul. According to the phraseology of a Fragment of Hermias, 
> > "chaos, from this union with spirit, obtaining sense, shone with 
> > pleasure, and thus was produced the Protogonos (the first-born) 
> > light."* This is the universal trinity, based on the metaphysical 
> > conceptions of the ancients, who, reasoning by analogy, made of man, 
> > who is a compound of intellect and matter, the microcosm of the 
> > macrocosm, or great universe. (IU I, 341)
> > >
> > > Very clearly we read above that Blavatsky does not accept that 
> > Spirit as described by the ancients is or could ever be a personal 
> > god. It is a principle, not an existing entity. Combined with Matter 
> > it produces the primordial light of the World.
> > >
> > > There is a sense of personal god that HPB sometimes uses. She writes:
> > >
> > > "May we be allowed a comparison, the best we can find, between the 
> > concrete and the abstract; between what our critic calls "the triple 
> > hypostasis" and we "the tetraktys"? Let us compare this philosophic 
> > quaternary, composed of the body, the périsprit, the soul and the 
> > spirit?to the ether?so well foreseen by science, but never defined?and 
> > its subsequent correlations. The ether will represent the spirit for 
> > us; the dead vapor that is formed therein?the soul; water?the 
> > périsprit; ice?the body. The ice melts and for ever loses its shape, 
> > water evaporates and is dispersed in space; the vapor is liberated 
> > from its grosser particles and finally reaches that condition in which 
> > science cannot follow it. Purified from its last defilements, it is 
> > entirely absorbed into its first cause, and becomes a cause in its 
> > turn. With the exception of the immortal nous?the soul, the périsprit 
> > and the body, all having been created and having had a beginning, must 
> > all have an end.
> > >
> > > "Does that mean that the individuality is lost in that absorption? 
> > Not at all. But between the human Ego and the wholly divine Ego, there 
> > is an abyss that our critics fill in without knowing it. As to the 
> > périsprit, it is no more the soul than the delicate skin that 
> > surrounds the almond is the kernel itself or even its temporary husk. 
> > The périsprit is but the simulacrum of the man.
> > >
> > > "It follows that Theosophists understand the hypostasis, according 
> > to the old philosophers, in a very different way from the 
> > Spiritualists. For us, the Spirit is the personal god of each mortal, 
> > and his only divine element. The dual soul, on the contrary, is only 
> > semidivine. Being a direct emanation from the nous, everything it has 
> > of immortal essence, once its earthly cycle is accomplished, must 
> > necessarily return to its mother-source, and as pure as when it was 
> > detached; it is that purely spiritual essence which the primitive 
> > church, as faithful as it was rebellious to the Neo-Platonic 
> > traditions, thought it recognized in the good daïmon and made into a 
> > guardian angel; at the same time justly blighting the "irrational" and 
> > fallible soul, the real human Ego (from which we get the word Egoism), 
> > she called it the angel of darkness, and afterwards made it into a 
> > personal devil. The only error was in anthropomorphizing it and in 
> > making it a monster with tail and horns. Otherwise, abstraction as it 
> > may be, this devil is truly personal because it is identical with our 
> > Ego. It is this, the elusive and inaccessible personality, that 
> > ascetics of every country think they chastise by mortifying the flesh. 
> > The Ego then, to which we concede only a conditional immortality, is 
> > the purely human individuality. Half vital energy, half an aggregation 
> > of personal qualities and attributes, necessary to the constitution of 
> > every human being as distinct from his neighbor, the Ego is only the 
> > "breath of life" that Jehovah, one of the Elohim or creative gods, 
> > breathed into the nostrils of Adam; and, as such, and apart from its 
> > higher intelligence, it is but the element of individuality possessed 
> > by man in common with every creature, from the gnat that dances in the 
> > rays of the sun to the elephant, the king of the forest. It is only by 
> > identifying itself with that divine intelligence that the Ego, soiled 
> > with earthly impurities, can win its immortality.
> > >
> > > "In order to express our thought more clearly, we will proceed by a 
> > question. Though matter may be quite indestructible in its primitive 
> > atoms?indestructible, because, as we say, it is the eternal shadow of 
> > the eternal Light and co-exists with it?can this matter remain 
> > unchangeable in its temporary forms or correlations? Do we not see it, 
> > during its ceaseless modifications, destroy today what it created 
> > yesterday? Every form, whether it belongs to the objective world or to 
> > that which our intelligence alone can perceive, having had a 
> > beginning, must have an end. There was a time when it did not exist; 
> > there will come a day when it will cease to be. Now, modern science 
> > tells us that even our thought is material. However fleeting an idea 
> > may be, its conception and its subsequent evolutions require a certain 
> > consumption of energy; let the least cerebral motion reverberate in 
> > the ether of space and it will produce a disturbance reaching to 
> > infinity. Hence, it is a material force, although invisible."
> > >
> > > Here HBP states very clearly what she call the personal god. It is 
> > our Atma or Nous, personal in the sense that it is our individual 
> > personal spark or connection with the impersonal Spiritual World Essence.
> > >
> > > Do not put words into HPBs mouth. Understand what she writes before 
> > you begin accusing her of anything. Chances are the confusion is not 
> > in what she writes, but rather in your understanding of it. God and 
> > Devil do not exist for theosophists except in this narrow sense of 
> > Nous and Ego.
> > >
> > > This is how I read it,
> > >
> > > Robert Bruce
> > >
> >
> >
>