Theos-Talk Archives (May 2010 Message tt00019)

 Dear friends

PART 2

A few words about Prayer, Mantras and their use might be helpful to any Seeker after harmlessness and love, truth and wisdom...

I will in the following throw some quotes given by Alice A. Bailey on mantras etc. They can with advantage be compared with the quotes by H. P. Blavatsky, which follows later.

In PART 1 we saw, that the Great Invocation given by Alice A. Bailey was forwarded so to be given to the masses for their use.

Yet, one must find it peculiar, that Alice A. Bailey (or her D.K.) wrote, that Invocations aught not to be used without caution and not before one were ready, and a teacher aught to be found before using mantras / invocations in ritual work.

3.
Alice A. Bailey (or her D.K.) wrote in  1920:
"The occult effects of the spoken word and of the written word are diverse and interesting. Until such time as you have among you a wise Teacher in physical person, and until it is possible for Him to gather around Him His students, thus affording them the protection of His aura and its stimulating vibration, and until such time as world conditions permit of a certain period of relaxation from the present strain and suspense, it will not be possible to impart forms, invocations and mantrams of a specific character; it will not be possible to arouse the centers ahead of the necessary evolutionary rate, except in a few individual cases where certain pupils (perhaps unconsciously to themselves) are being subjected to definite processes, which result in a greatly increased rate of vibration. This is only being done to a few in each country, and is directly under the eye of a Master, focusing through H.P.B."
...
"A condition of ignorance or foolhardiness that, in attempting to use certain forms and mantrams without the permission of the Teacher, involves the student with certain groups of devas, bringing him into contact with the devas of the emotional or mental planes and making him therefore (through his ignorance) the butt of their attack and the plaything of their destructive instincts."
...
"You will remember how it has been said earlier in these letters that contact with the devas can be brought about through specific forms and mantrams and that in this contact lies peril for the unwary."
...
"Some of them are very old and when enunciated in the original Sanskrit have unbelievably powerful effects. So powerful are they that they are not permitted to be [163] known by the ordinary student and are only orally imparted during preparation for initiation."
...
"The mantrams calling elementals are more easily found and used than those calling the devas. History is full of instances of where this has been done, and all over the world (even at this time) are people who hold the secret that will put them in touch with elementals of one kind or another. Everyone in Atlantean days knew how to do this, and among savage peoples and by some individuals in civilized countries the art is still known and practiced. Secondly, the average man, even if he knows the mantram, will probably fail in calling a deva, for it involves something more than just chanting the words and sounds. This something is one of the secrets of initiation. When a man is an initiate or an adept he needs not the protective rites, for it is a law in the occult world that only those of pure life and unselfish motive can successfully reach the deva evolution, whereas in connection with the elementary lives it works the other way."
...
"Mantrams calling them, controlling and dismissing them, were in common use among the Atlanteans. The dangers aroused, and the menace stalking the land through the indiscriminate use of elementals, so disturbed the accurate working of the logoic plans, and so displeased the Guides of the race that the knowledge was withdrawn. The Atlantean root race passed away through disasters by water, by floods, by submerging; when you remember that water is the natural enemy of fire, and that the two groups of elementals have no point of at-one-ment at this stage, you may be able to understand an interesting point about the Atlantean cataclysms."
("Letters on Occult Meditation", 1920, p. 89, 121, 129, 165, 178, 188)

Alice A. Bailey (or her D. K.) wrote:
"Next, by a steady experimentation with invocations, and through their use the method of calling the devas will be discovered. This development must be approached with caution, for to the unprotected it leads to disaster. Hence the necessity to inculcate pure living, the learning of protective invocations and formulas, and the power of the church and of Masonry to protect. Forget not that evil entities exist on other planes than the physical, that they can respond to analogous vibrations, and that the invocations that call a deva may, if sounded inaccurately, call a being that will work havoc. In ritual lies protection. Hence the emphasis laid upon church forms and on the Masonic rituals, - an emphasis which will increase and not grow less as the years slip by. The force of invocations will be known later." 
(Esoteric Psychology vol. I, p. 126)




THE GREAT INVOCATION by Alice A. Bailey (Lucis Trust)
>Great Invocation Day - May 27th 2010<
http://www.lucistrust.org/en/meetings_and_events/world_invocation_day

1.
Alice A. Bailey (or her D.K.) wrote:
"1. May Christ return to Earth. This return must not be understood in its usual connotation and its well-known mystical Christian sense. Christ has never left the Earth. What is referred to is the externalization of the Hierarchy and its exoteric appearance on Earth. The Hierarchy will eventually, under its Head, the Christ, function openly and visibly on Earth. This will happen when the purpose of the divine Will, and the plan which will implement it, are better [150] understood and the period of adjustment, of world enlightenment and of reconstruction has made real headway. This period begins at the San Francisco Conference (hence its major importance), and will move very slowly at first. It will take time, but the Hierarchy thinks not in terms of years and of brief cycles (though long to humanity), but in terms of events and the expansion of consciousness."
(DNA vol. II, p. 150, april 1945)



Alice A. Bailey wrote:
 "The Christian revelation is universal, and everything analogous to it in other religions is 
simply a part of that revelation. Christianity is not a religion of the same order as the others; 
it is, as Schleiermacher said, the religion of religions. What does it matter if within [11] 
Christianity, supposedly so different from other faiths, there is nothing original at all apart 
from the coming of Christ and His Personality; is it not precisely in this particular that the hope 
of all religions is fulfiled?
    - Freedom and the Spirit, by Nicholas Berdyaev, pp. 88-89."
 (From Bethlehem to Calvary, p. 11)
http://www.light-weaver.com/links/kingsgarden.books.htm


 Alice A. Bailey wrote in the book A Treatise on Cosmic Fire:
"In the case of H. P. B. this is apparent. On the tide of the present endeavor, the Secret Doctrine will be vindicated and her work justified."
("A Treatise on Cosmic Fire", page 707-8, written 1925, by Alice A. Bailey, english edition.) 




H. P. Blavatsky wrote: 
THE FUNDAMENTAL TEACHINGS OF THEOSOPHY - 
GOD AND PRAYER
ENQUIRER. Do you believe in God?
THEOSOPHIST. That depends what you mean by the term.
ENQUIRER. I mean the God of the Christians, the Father of Jesus, and the Creator: the Biblical God of Moses, in short.
THEOSOPHIST. In such a God we do not believe. We reject the idea of a personal, or an extra-cosmic and anthropomorphic God, who is but the gigantic shadow of man, and not of man at his best, either. The God of theology, we say - and prove it - is a bundle of contradictions and a logical impossibility. Therefore, we will have nothing to do with him." (The Key to Theosophy, 2ed. 1890, p. 61)
http://www.phx-ult-lodge.org/aKEY.htm#p61

 
H. P. Blavatsky wrote: 
"Parabraham is not this or that, it is not even consciousness, as it cannot be related to matter or anything conditioned. It is not Ego nor is it Non-ego, not even Atma, but verily the one source of all manifestations and modes of existence." (The Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, p. 130 - note)

H. P. Blavatsky wrote: 
THE FUNDAMENTAL TEACHINGS OF THEOSOPHY - 
IS IT NECESSARY TO PRAY?
"ENQUIRER. Do you believe in prayer, and do you ever pray?
 THEOSOPHIST. We do not. We act, instead of talking.
ENQUIRER. You do not offer prayers even to the Absolute Principle?
THEOSOPHIST. Why should we? Being well-occupied people, we can hardly afford to lose time in addressing verbal prayers to a pure abstraction. The Unknowable is capable of relations only in its parts to each other, but is non-existent as regards any finite relations. The visible universe depends for its existence and phenomena on its mutually acting forms and their laws, not on prayer or prayers.
ENQUIRER. Do you not believe at all in the efficacy of prayer?
THEOSOPHIST. Not in prayer taught in so many words and repeated externally, if by prayer you mean the outward petition to an unknown God as the addressee, which was inaugurated by the Jews and popularised by the Pharisees.
ENQUIRER. Is there any other kind of prayer?
THEOSOPHIST. Most decidedly; we call it WILL-PRAYER, and it is rather an internal command than a petition.
ENQUIRER. To whom, then, do you pray when you do so?
THEOSOPHIST. To "our Father in heaven" - in its esoteric meaning.
ENQUIRER. Is that different from the one given to it in theology?

THEOSOPHIST. Entirely so. An Occultist or a Theosophist addresses his prayer to his Father which is in secret (read, and try to understand, ch. vi. v. 6, Matthew), not to an extra-cosmic and therefore finite God; and that "Father" is in man himself.
ENQUIRER. Then you make of man a God?
THEOSOPHIST. Please say "God" and not a God. In our sense, the inner man is the only God we can have cognizance of. And how can this be otherwise? Grant us our postulate that God is a universally diffused, infinite principle, and how can man alone escape from being soaked through by, and in, the Deity? We call our "Father in heaven" that deific essence of which we are cognizant within us, in our heart and spiritual consciousness, and which has nothing to do with the anthropomorphic conception we may form of it in our physical brain or its fancy"....
"ENQUIRER. Do you mean to say that prayer is an occult process bringing about physical results?
THEOSOPHIST. I do. Will-Power becomes a living power. But woe unto those Occultists and Theosophists, who, instead of crushing out the desires of the lower personal ego or physical man, and saying, addressing their Higher Spiritual EGO immersed in Atma-Buddhic light, "Thy will be done, not mine," etc., send up waves of will-power for selfish or unholy purposes! For this is black magic, abomination, and spiritual sorcery."

"Unfortunately, all this is the favourite occupation of our Christian statesmen and generals, especially when the latter are sending two armies to murder each other. Both indulge before action in a bit of such sorcery, by offering respectively prayers to the same God of Hosts, each entreating his help to cut its enemies' throats. "
(The Key to Theosophy, 2ed. 1890, p. 66-68)


Master K.H. wrote in letter no. 10:
"Neither our philosophy nor ourselves believe in a God, least of all in one whose pronoun necessitates a capital H.". . ."Our doctrine knows no compromises. It either affirms or denies, for it never teaches but that which it knows to be the truth. Therefore, we deny God both as philosophers and as Buddhists. We know there are planetary and other spiritual lives, and we know there is in our system no such thing as God, either personal or impersonal. Parabrahm is not a God, but absolute immutable law, and Iswar is the effect of Avidya and Maya, ignorance based upon the great delusion. The word "God" was invented to designate the unknown cause of those effects which man has either admired or dreaded without understanding them, and since we claim and that we are able to prove what we claim -- i.e. the knowledge of that cause and causes we are in a position to maintain there is no God or Gods behind them. " 
(The Mahatma Letters by A. T. Barker, 1925)


H. P. Blavatsky wrote on MANTRAS and ATMA-VIDYA:
"There are four (out of the many other) names of the various kinds of Esoteric Knowledge or Sciences given, even in the esoteric Purânas. There is (1) Yajna-Vidya,1 knowledge of the occult powers awakened in Nature by the performance of certain religious ceremonies and rites. (2) Maha-vidya, the "great knowledge," the magic of the Kabalists and of the Tantrika worship, often Sorcery of the worst description. (3) Guhya-Vidya, knowledge of the mystic powers residing in Sound (Ether), hence in the Mantras (chanted prayers or incantations) and depending on the rhythm and melody used; in other words a magical performance based on Knowledge of the Forces of Nature and their correlation; and (4) ATMA-VIDYA, a term which is translated simply "knowledge of the Soul," true Wisdom by the Orientalists, but which means far more.

This last is the only kind of Occultism that any theosophist who admires Light on the Path, and who would be wise and unselfish, ought to strive after."..."All the others may be mastered and results obtained, whether good, bad or indifferent; but Atma-Vidya sets small value on them. It includes them all and may even use them occasionally, but it does so after purifying them of their dross, for beneficent purposes, and taking care to deprive them of every element of selfish motive. Let us explain: Any man or woman can set himself or herself to study one or all of the above specified "Occult Arts" without any great previous preparation, and even without adopting any too restraining mode of life. One could even dispense with any lofty standard of morality. In the last case, of course, ten to one the student would blossom into a very decent kind of sorcerer, and tumble down headlong into black magic."..." Let then those who will dabble in magic, whether they understand its nature or not, but who find the rules imposed upon students too hard, and who, therefore lay Atma-Vidya or Occultism aside--go without it. Let them become magicians by all means, even though they do become Voodoos and Dugpas for the next ten incarnations. "
http://www.blavatsky.net/blavatsky/arts/OccultismVersusTheOccultArts.htm



M. Sufilight says:
I am not saying that many Alice A. Bailey Seekers and Teacher are not wellmeaning.
But I find it problematic, when they seek to use the Great Invocation in the manner they intend or do, and when the Alice A. Bailey teachers promote it to be used by all human regardless of the above words or the words I mentioned in the previous e-mail - named PART 1.

I find it to be helpful to any Alice A. Bailey Seeker and other Seekers to compared the quotes I have given in PART 1 and 2, and draw their own conclusions.

I will have to oppose those Alice A. Bailey groups who do not take H. P. Blavatsky's teachings on ATMA-VIDYA into account, and those of them who do not take careful note about H. P. Blavatsky's views on prayer versus action.

There are a certain danger in the Alice A. Bailey teachings in the quotes given by Alice A. Bailey, that the Alice A. Bailey followers who only read the Alice A. Bailey corpus, will be lead astray into something which has certain similarities with the Jesuits over-emphasis on the Jesus principle or an anthropomorpic version of Alice A. Bailey's "Return of Christ" in the name of an Islamic Hybrid-offshot.


These are however just my views. And I am niot fanatical about them and recognize that I might be in error, because I do not claim to know all and everything.



M. Sufilight

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