That First Feeling

Let thy Soul lend its ear to every cry of pain like as the lotus bares its heart to drink the morning sun.

Let not the fierce Sun dry one tear of pain before thyself hast wiped it from the sufferer’s eye. But let each burning human tear drop on thy heart and there remain, nor ever brush it off, until the pain that caused it is removed.

These tears, O thou of heart most merciful, these are the streams that irrigate the fields of charity immortal. ‘Tis on such soil that grows the midnight blossom of Buddha more difficult to find, more rare to view than is the flower of the Vogay tree. It is the seed of freedom from rebirth. -The Voice of the Silence

THE FIRST DEVOTION

“…during its early beginnings, psychic and physical intellect being dormant and consciousness still undeveloped, the spiritual conceptions of that race were quite unconnected with its physical surroundings.

That divine man dwelt in his animal-though externally human-form; and, if there was instinct in him, no self-consciousness came to enlighten the darkness of the latent fifth principle. When, moved by the law of Evolution, the Lords of Wisdom infused into him the spark of consciousness, the first feeling it awoke to life and activity was a sense of solidarity, of one-ness with his spiritual creators.”

“As the child’s first feeling is for its mother and nurse, so the first aspirations of the awakening consciousness in primitive man were for those whose element he felt within himself, and who yet were outside, and independent of him.

DEVOTION arose out of that feeling, and became the first and foremost motor in his nature; for it is the only one which is natural in our heart, which is innate in us, and which we find alike in human babe and the young of the animal. This feeling of irrepressible, instinctive aspiration in primitive man is beautifully, and one may say intuitionally, described by Carlyle:”

Thomas Carlyle

“‘The great antique heart,’ he exclaims, ‘how like a child’s in its simplicity, like a man’s in its earnest solemnity and depth! heaven lies over him wheresoever he goes or stands on the earth; making all the earth a mystic temple to him, the earth’s business all a kind of worship. Glimpses of bright creatures flash in the common sunlight; angels yet hover, doing God’s messages among men …Wonder, miracle, encompass the man; he lives in an element of miracle.'”

(“That which was natural in the sight of primitive man has become only now miracle to us; and that which was to him a miracle could never be expressed in our language.” – HPB)
H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine 1:181

THAT FIRST DESIRE

Kama (Sanskrit) Cosmic kama or desire, equivalent to the Greek eros, is the source of fohat, the driving intelligent energies of the universe. It is impersonal compassion and sympathy.
Kamadeva (Sanskrit) [from kama desire + deva god, divinity] The Hindu god of love, one of the Visve-devas in the Hindu pantheon.

As the Eros of Hesiod was connected in early Greek mythology with the world’s creation, and only afterwards became degraded into the passional Cupid, so was Kama in his original meaning as used in the Vedas, which gives the metaphysical and philosophical significance of his functions in the cosmos.

Kama is the first conscious, all-embracing desire for universal good, love, and the first feeling of infinite compassion and mercy for all that lives and feels, needs help and kindness, that arose in the consciousness of the creative One Force, as soon as it came into life and being as a ray from the Absolute. There is no idea of sexual love in the conception. Kama is pre-eminently the divine desire of creating happiness and love.

KAMA

Kama “is in the Rig-Veda (x. 129) the personification of that feeling which leads and propels to creation. He was the first movement that stirred the One, after its manifestation from the purely abstract principle, to create.

‘Desire first arose in It, which was the primal germ of mind; and which sages, searching with their intellect, have discovered to be the bond which connects Entity with Non-Entity’ ” — or manas with pure atma-buddhi. Only later did kama become the power that gratifies desire on the animal plane.” -H. P. BLAVATSKY

In the ancient Rig-Veda, virtue is given first place. In the famous hymn (X, 129) Kama-Love-Eros is said to be the first movement that arose in the One after it had come into life through the power of abstraction.

KAMA-DEVA

Compassion is the Soul of all Virtues – be they the Christian and Greek Cardinal ones, or virtues of the divine man of the Gita or the six and ten Paramitas of the Buddhistic Philosophy. In the Mahayana Book of the Golden Precepts this archetypal Virtue is described: –

Compassion is no attribute.
It is the Law of Laws –
Eternal Harmony,
Alaya’s Self,
A shoreless universal essence,
The Light of everlasting right,
And Fitness of all things,
The Law of Love eternal.

THE GOSPEL OF GOODWILL

by H. P. Blavatsky

The tendency of modern civilization is a reaction towards animalism, towards a development of those qualities which conduce to the success in life of man as an animal in the struggle for animal existence.

Theosophy seeks to develop the human nature in man in addition to the animal, and at the sacrifice of the superfluous animality which modern life and materialistic teachings have developed to a degree which is abnormal for the human being at this stage of his progress.

…the essence of Theosophy is the perfect harmonizing of the divine with the human in man, the adjustment of his god-like qualities and aspirations, and their sway over the terrestrial or animal passions in him. Kindness, absence of every ill feeling or selfishness, charity, goodwill to all beings, and perfect justice to others as to oneself, are its chief features.

He who teaches Theosophy preaches the gospel of goodwill; and the converse of this is true also — he who preaches the gospel of goodwill, teaches Theosophy.

The function of Theosophists is to open men’s hearts and understandings to charity, justice, and generosity, attributes which belong specifically to the human kingdom and are natural to man when he has developed the qualities of a human being.

Theosophy teaches the animal-man to be a human-man; and when people have learnt to think and feel as truly human beings should feel and think, they will act humanely, and works of charity, justice, and generosity will be done spontaneously by all.

H. P. Blavatsky to the American Conventions, Letter 1

Your Brain on Gratitude
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Dr. Amen’s groundbreaking research has shown that people can change and improve the structure and function of their brains and in doing so, improve overall health, happiness and success. The implications of this are enormous. Gratitude makes the brain light up.

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