THE SECRET SITS
“We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.”
- Robert Frost
One of my recurring childhood memories is attending Sunday morning Theosophy School in New York City.
We began our morning in the basement woodworking shop, practicing our “readings” for the Assembly program. What I remember vividly was a framed verse above an electric wall clock. Below it was a long oak bench, strewn with aromatic curlicue wood shavings. It became, for us, a kind of sacred altar. The verse read:
“Now Is The Only Time We Have”
Cliche perhaps, but a never-to-be-forgotten soul print of an aha childhood moment. Ancient truths never perish. One finds occult correlates in Helena Blavatsky’s teaching of the “zero-point.”
“Deity is in every point of the Universe,” she writes — the “laya centre.”
“Remember that every man has a god within,” she says in Transactions, “a direct ray from the Absolute, the celestial ray from the One — he has his ‘god’ within, not outside, of himself.” And further,
“Man is the microcosm of the macrocosm; the god on earth is built on the pattern of the god in nature. But the universal consciousness of the real Ego transcends a millionfold the self-consciousness of the personal or false Ego.”
“Remember that the only God man comes in contact with is his own God, called Spirit, Soul and Mind, or Consciousness, and these three are one.”
The idea of an eternal, spiritual core within man, not bound by space and time, was popularized early in the 20th century by Swiss psychiatrist, influential thinker, and founder of analytical psychology, Carl Jung:
Carl Jung – Death and the Human Psyche
Modern Soul Psychology
Later motivational psychologists arrived on the scene, notably Abraham Maslow who wrote:
“The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.”
The potency of this ancient teaching is popularized worldwide by teachers such as Eckhart Tolle inThe Power of Now and A New Earth, two of the most influential spiritual books of our time.
Eckhart Tolle:
The Silent Space of Stillness
“Our Center Produces a Field of Thought”
…the primordial form of everything manifested, from atom to globe, from man to angel, is spheroidal—the sphere having been with every nation the emblem of eternity and infinity— the serpent swallowing its own tail. To realize the meaning, however, the sphere must be thought of as seen from its center.
The field of vision or of thought, is like a sphere whose radii proceed from one’s self in every direction and extend out into space, opening up boundless vistas all around.
It is the symbolical circle of Pascal and the Kabalists “whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.” – H. P. Blavatsky
“Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.” -Blaise Pascal
What Physicists Are Thinking:
The Dynamism of the Nucleus
Quantum Physicist – Dr. John Hagelin
“The nature of God is a circle of which the center is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere.” – Empedocles
Meditation, Concentration, Will
THESE three, meditation, concentration, will, have engaged the attention of Theosophists perhaps more than any other three subjects.
The majority would rather hear these subjects discussed and read definite directions about them than any others in the entire field. [...]
Will and Desire lie at the doors of Meditation and Concentration. If we desire truth with the same intensity that we had formerly wished for success, money, or gratification, we will speedily acquire meditation and possess concentration.
If we do all our acts, small and great, every moment, for the sake of the whole human race, as representing the Supreme Self, then every cell and fibre of the body and inner man will be turned in one direction, resulting in perfect concentration.
Let us meditate on that which is in us as the Highest Self, concentrate upon it, and will to work for it as dwelling in every human heart. – William Q. Judge
Deepak Chopra: Introduction to Meditation
Mediumship vs Adeptship
Mediumship is the opposite of adeptship; the medium is the passive instrument of foreign influences, the adept actively controls himself and all inferior potencies. -Isis Unveiled, II, 588
The practical bearing of one-pointedness on our daily life, on “finding one’s center,” was taught centuries ago in the Upanishads, and by sages and masters, among them Patanjali, who wrote “At the time of concentration the soul abides in the state of a spectator without a spectacle.”
It is central to the teachings of Masters such as Buddha, Confucious, Lao Tze and Krishna. Specific directions are given, and meditation is Krishna’s core teaching of the Bhagavad-Gita for example:
“The man of meditation as thus described is superior to the man of penance and to the man of learning and also to the man of action—wherefore, O Arjuna, resolve thou to become a man of meditation.”
“He who has attained to meditation should constantly strive to stay at rest in the Supreme, remaining in solitude and seclusion, having his body and his thoughts under control, without possessions and free from hope. He should in an undefiled spot place his seat, firm, neither too high nor too low…”
“For even unwittingly, by reason of that past practice, he is led and works on. Even if only a mere enquirer, he reaches beyond the word of the Vedas. But the devotee who, striving with all his might, obtaineth perfection because of efforts continued through many births, goeth to the supreme goal.”
Of all devotees he is considered by me as the most devoted who, with heart fixed on me, full of faith, worships me [the Higher Self].
Krishna
Children and Seniors in Meditation
March 10, 2009
More Americans say they have no religion
“More Americans are saying they have no religion — according to a wide ranging study done by Trinity College.”
The Dhyana Centre
The Dhyana Centre was founded in London in 1991 for the sole purpose of teaching meditation and encouraging its practice as a spiritual discipline.
The Centre, an independent department of the Theosophical Society in England, adopts a non-sectarian and non-religious approach that combines both Eastern and Western contemplative techniques.
The emphasis is on introductory courses, open to all-comers without restriction or charge, but the Centre aims to cater for all levels of meditative experience by offering intermediate and advanced groups as well.
