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Re: Theos-World Re: On Personal Gods

Jul 27, 2009 10:01 AM
by adelasie


Anand,

You are certainly entitled to your opinion but I can't help but wonder what you hope to accomplish by posting the same offensive statement over and over on a theosophical site? Do you know? In the meantime you only exhibit your ignorance of the values taught by Christianity, which are not so different at all from those taught by Theosophy, since at the source the two are as similar as can be. Compassion, kindness, non-judgementalism, altruism, service, humility, etc. Surely you must realize that when we apply the Golden Rule, foundation of both Christianity and Theosophy, we ask ourselves, "How would I feel if someone did that to me?" How would you feel if someone continually and relentlessly maligned Jesus? Why malign an entity that others hold dear to their hearts? What is the point? I don't really get it, unless you simply seek to destroy any hope left in the world. You would not be the only one, but I will tell you honestly, you cannot succeed.

Adelasie

Anand wrote:

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 <mailto:theos-talk%40yahoogroups.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>
> > <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
> > >
> >
> >
>




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