Tag Archives: karma

Your Secret Karma

BECAUSE all organisms are related through similarities in DNA sequences, the whole of nature could be really one family.

New insights of epigenetics have lead to a revolutionary view of human biology. Theosophy concurs with many of these new findings.

“The failures of science and its arbitrary assumptions,” Blavatsky says in The Secret Doctrine (2:670), “are far greater on the whole than any ‘extravagant’ esoteric doctrine.”

The traditional geneticist’s view of evolution “is from the animal,” she reminds us, and “mind in its various phases” is viewed, erroneously, as completely separate from matter.

Theosophy holds that mind is the mystical glue insuring that the identical genes that were in our ancestor’s bodies, what Blavatsky calls The Life Atoms —”are transmitted through their descendants for generation after generation…

“…so that we are literally ‘flesh of the flesh’ of the primeval creature who has developed into man in the later period.”

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This human interdependence is a spiritual law, and as such was never on any geneticist’s radar. These scientists should be getting the message, but are still limited by the standard model of gene theory.

Epigenetics is the new biological game-changer. This revolutionary theory has relatively recently been revived, and promoted successfully by the likes of frontier biologist Bruce Lipton.  He is “an internationally recognized leader in bridging science and spirit.” Lipton discovered that environmental factors (which include mental and emotional states) –

…can alter the way the same genes are expressed, making even identical twins different.

This is only the beginning of an explosion in a new understanding of how biological systems really work. Transcending the standard mechanical gene theory, epigenetics proves the significance of thoughts and feelings, and how they imprint influences into physical life.

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Jnana Yoga

THE Sanskrit word “Dharana” is defined as “the intense and perfect concentration of the mind upon some one interior object.”

This intense focus is “accompanied by complete abstraction from everything pertaining to the external Universe, or the world of the senses.”

Further, The Voice of the Silence instructs its aspiring students: “from the stronghold of your Soul, chase all your foes away—ambition, anger, hatred, e’en to the shadow of desire—when even you have failed.”

The devotional books Light on the Path, (“Kill out ambition…”), and The Voice of the Silence,  (“let the Disciple slay the Slayer”), are metaphors for self-control as we pursue a spiritual path.

Similarly, the setting of the Bhagavad-Gita is on the plain of a great battlefield called “Kurukshetra.” This plain is considered sacred, and is symbolic, W. Q. Judge says in his essay, “of the body which is acquired by karma.”

This metaphorical “killing” or “slaying,” is not contrary to the Buddhist and Hindu doctrine of “Ahimsa” (harmlessness). It refers rather to inner control over our physical senses, ambition, intellect, etc.—and to resolving our personal karmic challenges, including non-violence and non-separateness.

Dharana, or focused meditation, is all about slowing the ‘mental noise,’ or what is called the ‘monkey mind,’ and regaining our lost rulership.

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Our spiritual soul is the silent center, according to this old teaching, and for this True Self to always be in charge, it must be the ever-present decision maker in our lives.

Thus the Voice of the Silence teaches a paradoxical doctrine in which the intellectual, striving and desire-ridden mind, becomes its own savior through its higher counterpart, the light of intuition—the soul-mind—accompanied by occult sound vibrations:

“The Mind is the great Slayer of the Real.
Let the Disciple slay the Slayer.”

for…

“…when to himself his form appears unreal, as do on waking all the forms he sees in dreams–when he has ceased to hear the many, he may discern the ONE  the inner sound which kills the outer.”

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The Hard Problem

EMBARRASSMENT can be, well, embarrassing—especially if you blush in public. We empathize, and also feel embarrassment for others.

A hint of a reproof, or an admiring stare likewise might cause us to blush— or it might occur getting caught snatching a candy from a store display.

But, just how does an invisible, seeming intangible bio-energy like a thought or feeling, projected  into a physical system, affect that system materially and visibly? How can this happen? How is it possible a thought or a feeling can generate a physical effect?

“Sow a thought, reap an act” is a familiar occult mantra and begs an answer to the mysterious mechanism of just how thought energy can speak to the nervous system, and then, almost instantly, cause a response in the physical body.

“It’s well known that the human body depends upon homeostasis,” writes Deepak Chopra, and asks: Memories and Emotions: All in The Mind or the Brain? And answers: “it is the ability to keep very complex systems in balance and to return to a state of balance when it is disturbed—

 ”Yet words [or images] cause us to deliberately go out of balance,” says Chopra, “and there’s no physical mechanism to explain it.”

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Heaven Waits

ALTHOUGH reincarnation is the law of nature, the complete trinity of Spirit, Soul and Mind, says Theosophy, does not yet fully incarnate in average humanity.

“They use and occupy the body by means of the entrance of Mind, the lowest of the three,” writes W. Q. Judge, “and the other two shine upon it from above, constituting the God in Heaven.”

“This was symbolized in the old Jewish teaching about the Heavenly Man” writes William Q. Judge, “who stands with his head in heaven and his feet in hell. That is, the head Spirit and Soul are yet in heaven, and the feet, Mind, walk in hell, which is the body and physical life.”

But even with such a limited degree of Mind (‘Manas’ in Sanskrit), even that is not fully acquired by the growing child “until seven years old,” Blavatsky maintains in The Key to Theosophy (Section 9)

“…and becomes a morally responsible being capable of generating Karma.”

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Human beings in general are not yet fully conscious, Judge says, “and reincarnations are needed to at last complete the incarnation of the whole trinity in the body. When that has been accomplished the race will have become as gods, and the godlike trinity being in full possession the entire mass of matter will be perfected and raised up for the next step.”

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The Secret of Astrology

ASTROLOGY is just unscientific superstition many skeptics insist. Real philosophy, Theosophy counters, seeks “rather to solve than to deny.”

“It is an axiom of the philosophic student,” Blavatsky affirms, “that truth generally lies between the extremes.”

This is what the ancients meant by Astrology she says.

“Mention the word ‘astrology’ and skeptics go into an epileptic fit,” natural health researcher Mike Adams says.

“The idea that someone’s personality could be imprinted at birth according to the position of the sun, moon and planets,” Adams comments, “has long been derided as ‘quackery’ by the so-called ‘scientific’ community

… which resists any notion based on holistic connections between individuals and the cosmos.”

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But wait a minute. Recently, scientific studies showing planetary imprinting called “seasonal biology” has confirmed the principle underlying astrology. The scientific study shows that planetary positions do, surprisingly, influence our biological clocks. Why not our psychological and mental states as well?

Occult Influences

“The ancients always considered the ‘ambient’ – or entire heaven – at birth,” Blavatsky colleague William Q. Judge wrote in Astrological Influences, “as being that which affected man.”

New Age Mother, Madame Blavatsky, referred often to astrology in her Theosophical writings, as in the following lines from “The Theosophist” in Blavatsky Collected Writings compiled by Boris de Zircoff.

Although a study of the science of astronomy may enable us “to determine what the course of events will be,” she insisted that:

“…the clock indicates,
it does not influence the time.”

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Thus, she says, “though the planets may have no hand in changing the destiny of man, still their position may indicate what that destiny is likely to be.”

“And a distant traveler has often to put right his clock, so that it may indicate correctly the time of the place he visits.”

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Legacy of Love

THE famous meditation of John Donne, “never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee,” highlights two Theosophical principles:

First, the affirmation that there is no isolation, that nature and all mankind are interconnected — and second, karmic responsibility.

“It’s one thing to fashion a particular work of art, sculpture, painting, a worthy accomplishment,” Thoreau once wrote, “but much greater is the creation of one’s life.”

“…to exemplify the highest potential imagined, it is the highest of loving artistic accomplishments,” he believed.

A compassionate activist, Julia Butterfly Hill is a living example of Theosophy pure and simple, took the decisive action taught in The Voice of the Silence — sacrificing  her comfort and well-being to “help Nature and work on with her.”

It must have been a profound inner sense of the sacred that roused Julia, as she climbed up those ropes, to begin a permanent encampment in the endangered redwood trees.

“She doesn’t follow any organized religion but says she believes very strongly in the spirituality of the universe.”

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The Organizing Self

BLIND chance could never on its own have produced a self-conscious thinking human being, nor would it have any reason for doing so.

Because, for the random neo-Darwinist evolution machinery, an underlying intelligence is not required.

But intelligence, whatever one calls the force, undeniably exists. The paradoxes of self-consciousness evident in human nature are challenging to materialism—especially the concept of personal responsibility.

But just like every caterpillar’s solo struggle to grow wings and fly, with the progressive development of awareness of truth, and individual spiritual growth, H. P. Blavatsky wrote:

“the true Adept must become,
she cannot be made.”

The growing recognition of the intelligence underlying all life, she writes, is one of ” growth through evolution, and this must necessarily involve a certain amount of pain” — (at least in our human perception.)

We may experience stress in the moment, a study suggests, “but experience greater happiness on a daily basis and longer term.”

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Spiritual Magic

THE word magic is largely misunderstood, because there are various kinds of so-called magic, much of which is deception and trickery.

But there is a magic which might be called the unseen and hidden power to bring to pass certain desired results, without revealing its methods. It is called intention.

Its successful use requires a knowledge far beyond any kind of trickery, and is based on an innate spiritual force in man and nature.

Those who practiced it in ancient times were the initiates, the wise, called Magi — the source of the word magic.

It is relatively easy to learn tricks and spells, Mme. Blavatsky writes, “and the methods of using the subtler, but still material, forces of physical nature.”

The force of selfish human desire awakens darker powers, Theosophy says. Unless the motive is pure, destructive passions are often aroused, and even unconsciously will do harm to others and to nature.

In the article Practical Occultism, H. P. Blavatsky warns of this: “it is the motive alone which makes any exercise of power become black, malignant, or white, beneficent Magic,” she writes, “and unless the intention is entirely unalloyed…

“the spiritual will transform itself into the psychic, act on the astral plane, and dire results may be produced by it.”

“It is impossible to employ spiritual forces, she maintains, “if there is the slightest tinge of selfishness [or separateness] remaining in the operator.”

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The Still Small Voice

FOLLOWING H. P. Blavatsky’s death in 1891, an editorial was published in the New York Daily Tribune (founded by Horace Greeley) noting:

“Madame Blavatsky held that the regeneration of mankind must be based upon the development of altruism.

“In this she was at one with the greatest thinkers, not alone of the present day, but of all time,” the Editorial acknowledged.

“And, it is becoming more and more apparent, at one with the strongest spiritual tendencies of the age.

“This alone would entitle her teachings to the candid and serious consideration of all who respect the influences that make for righteousness.

Some of  the clearest statements of Blavatsky’s ethical views, are in The Key to Theosophy with the keynote that “altruism is an integral part of self-development.”

Asked how a person could achieve such an elevated state, her reply focused on four overarching aspects: “By the use of our higher reason, spiritual intuition and moral sense, and by following the dictates of what we call ‘the still small voice’ of our conscience —

“…and which speaks louder in us than the earthquakes and the thunders of Jehovah.”

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Waking to God

HUMANITY is divided into thousands of  languages, hundreds of sects and cults, castes, creeds, religious sects and political ideologies.

Instead of being demonstrators of love and service, many encourage differences, foster criticism, opposition and attacking others.

How, then, can we ever hope to achieve harmony and oneness, and become a new humanity that selflessly eschews all differences and personal enmities?

A united world has been the hope of mankind for ages. Poets, artists, philosophers and statespersons have dreamed of it. Self-interested politicians claim they have the grand solution to the problems of disease, hunger, poverty, homelessness.

But they have not succeeded, because they are motivated by personal agendas, and a failure to accept and value the spiritual oneness of humanity.

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In our obsession with the bitter roots of sectarian differences and selfish, materialist agendas, we remain blind to the reality of life as One Being.

“Real Theosophy IS ALTRUISM,” Mme. Blavatsky once said — “and we cannot repeat it too often:

“It is brotherly love, mutual help, unswerving devotion to Truth.”

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The Deathless Self

EVOLUTION as defined in the occultism of Theosophy, is a triple-faceted scheme — a blend of spirit, mind, and matter — “inextricably interwoven and interblended at every point.”

True and lasting self-knowledge is acquired gradually and lovingly — and largely unawares at first — through a long, but finite series of reincarnations in human form.

A major factor in our self-development lies in recognizing the continuity of life, Theosophy says — and that for the soul, there is really no such thing as death.

Self-knowledge evolves gradually out of the recognition, as the philosopher-mystic Teilhard de Chardin famously claimed, that we are “spiritual beings having a human experience,” not the other way around.

We are first and foremost spiritual beings, and humanity is our field of experience. But what happens to our human self after death? Does our consciousness die with the body?

Our afterlife, once the dissolution of the body and Earthly desires is complete, is blissful. That state “consists in our complete conviction that we never left the earth,” Blavatsky writes in the Key to Theosophy, “and that there is no such thing as death at all.”

The “post-mortem spiritual consciousness of a mother,” she explains as an example, “will represent to her that she lives surrounded by her children, and all those whom she loved.”

“…no gap, no link, will be missing to make her disembodied state the most perfect and absolute happiness.”

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All One Being 3

ELECTRICAL and magnetic signatures are generated, occult teachers say, whenever there is physical touch, the sound of a voice, or even a meaningful look.

Every action we take in fact carries information about us, a kind of psychic body language.

The transfer of information from one person to another without the mediation of any known channel of sensory communication, called telepathy, is the most noticeable effect of this transfer.

Mme. Blavatsky and her Teachers authorized three plainly stated Objects for the Theosophical Society— the Third referred to psychic and spiritual powers.

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Despite this fact, revisionists in some major theosophical groups unilaterally removed both the words psychic and spiritual from that original Third Object. Many smaller groups have, unfortunately, timidly followed suit.

Yet, in H. P. Blavatsky’s The Key to Theosophy, Section 3, published in 1889, the original Third Object of the Theosophical Society is stated unambiguously:

“To investigate the hidden mysteries of Nature under every aspect possible, and the psychic and spiritual powers latent in man especially.”

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The watered-down version quoted below, adopted by some Theosophical groups, might just as well refer to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s forearms:

“To investigate unexplained laws of Nature and the powers latent in Man.”

Removing the word psychic may be politically expedient, but in this writer’s opinion disrespects the wisdom and foresight of the original Teachers. True, the word “psychic” has accumulated some pretty bad press over the years—but that may soon be ending.

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The Next Mozart?

EMILY BEAR (born August 30, 2001) is a pianist and composer from Rockford, Illinois. Wikipedia notes:

“When Emily was 2 years old, her grandmother recognized her talent at the piano. Bear began to study with Emilio del Rosario at the Music Institute of Chicago.

“Within 4 years she was enrolled for study of classical music at the Winnetka campus.

“Bear started to compose her own music at the age of three. At 8 years, she has already composed more than 350 pieces – and much of her work – both composition and improvisation – is of the more difficult, 20th Century genre, inclusive of Jazz elements.”

Below, a Six-year old Emily Bear has wowed audiences from the White House to her own house. Playing the piano since age 3, Emily also composes her own music. Has WGN-TV discovered the next Mozart?

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Flesh of My Flesh

BECAUSE all organisms are related through similarities in DNA sequences, the whole of nature could be really one family.

New insights of epigenetics have lead to a revolutionary view of human biology. Theosophy concurs with many of these new findings.

“The failures of science and its arbitrary assumptions,” Blavatsky says in The Secret Doctrine (2:670), “are far greater on the whole than any ‘extravagant’ esoteric doctrine.”

The traditional geneticist’s view of evolution “is from the animal,” she reminds us, and “mind in its various phases” is viewed, erroneously, as completely separate from matter.

It follows, then, that the identical genes that were in our ancestor’s bodies, that Blavatsky called “The Life Atoms” —”are transmitted through their descendants for generation after generation…

“…so that we are literally ‘flesh of the flesh’ of the primeval creature who has developed into man in the later period.”

§

Continue reading

Written in The Stars

ASTROLOGY is just unscientific superstition many skeptics insist. Real philosophy, Theosophy counters, seeks “rather to solve than to deny.”

“It is an axiom of the philosophic student,” Blavatsky affirms, “that truth generally lies between the extremes.” This is what the ancients meant by Astrology she says.

“Mention the word ‘astrology’ and skeptics go into an epileptic fit,” natural health researcher Mike Adams says.

“The idea that someone’s personality could be imprinted at birth according to the position of the sun, moon and planets,” Adams comments, “has long been derided as ‘quackery’ by the so-called ‘scientific’ community

… which resists any notion based on holistic connections between individuals and the cosmos.”

ξ

Continue reading

A Spirit Undefeated

KERRYN McCANN won the hearts of all Australians in 2006 when she got gold at the Commonwealth Games in a down to the wire marathon win.

Media footage showed Kerryn crossing the finish line, as if that was her life’s main triumph.

Two years later the much loved athlete succumbed to breast cancer, her husband and three children at her bedside.

Kerryn told friend and fellow athlete Raelene Boyle just a week before that she was still hopeful. Then she was so ill in her final days, she could no longer talk — yet through it all, her spirit never dimmed.

Happily, the body, brain and personality is understood in Theosophy as only a vehicle for the immortal soul each lifetime.

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But this necessary instrument presents us with special opportunities in each life to express our  potential. Yet, many are unable or unwilling to seize those gifts in the time allotted to them, as Karryn did.

The illness drew out her determined, deathless and compassionate spirit, an inspiration to those who might not have her inner strength. She knew the deadly disease had come back, but she competed anyway.

The soul’s capacity will be fully availed of, or not, according to individual karmic endurance, W. Q. Judge says. Their capacity and destiny is the result of their “desire and prior conduct.”

The person’s past choices and behavior, he says,”will have increased or diminished” their karmic resources.

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Our individual choices shape not only our own character and capacity, but inspires the emergence of character and capacity in others as well, because we are all connected at the core.

And, “the troubles of nations and families arise from want of capacity,” Judge says, “more than from any other cause.” So the choices we make will always carry a greater influence than just to us as separate individuals. Continue reading

The Resolute Spirit

Jennifer Stuczynski and Pole

HAVING the right tools for a job is essential, just ask any electrician, plumber or carpenter.

Equally important, is that the tools being used are dependable and in good working condition.

Just ask any parachutist, race car driver, mountain climber, or pole vaulter.

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Similarly, the tenor of our body and senses often determine, for better or worse, our spirit’s ability to express its unique genius.

The quality and adequacy of “the brain and body to transmit and give expression” to the immortal spirit, Blavatsky writes, is “the result of Karma.” She offers an analogy:

“… the physical is the musical instrument, and the Ego, the performing artist.”

No skill of the soul she wrote, “can awaken faultless harmony out of a broken or badly made instrument.”  The physical “may be a priceless Stradivarius or a cheap and cracked fiddle,” she notes.

Zoe Bloomfield with her cracked $7000 violin. Photo: Nick Moir

But sometimes physical limitations can be successfully overridden. The genius of Paganini, for instance, even burdened by a “cracked fiddle,” would still produce more perfect music from a damaged instrument, than could a lesser musician.

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Intentional Magic

THE word magic is largely misunderstood, because there are various kinds of so-called magic, much of which is deception and trickery.

But there is a magic which might be called the unseen and hidden power to bring to pass certain desired results, without revealing its methods. It is called intention.

Its successful use requires a knowledge far beyond any kind of trickery, and is based on an innate spiritual force in man and nature.

Those who practiced it in ancient times were the initiates, the wise, called Magi — the source of the word magic.

It is relatively easy to learn tricks and spells, Mme. Blavatsky says, “and the methods of using the subtler, but still material, forces of physical nature.”

Continue reading

Threads of Genius

UNDERSTANDING the how and why of human uniqueness, from the likes of Mozart to the fearless passion of Julia Butterfly Hill, will always be perplexing.

Lacking a seer’s knowingness, we’d be forced to trudge for clues into the far horizons of reincarnation, and sift the karmic sands of countless past lives.

Teilhard de Chardin’s idea that we are “spiritual beings immersed in a human experience,” hardly explains Mozart composing music at age three.

Or why Julia, at twenty-four years old, would opt to spend a dangerous two years alone atop a giant redwood, protecting it from angry, clear-cutting loggers.

We all sport a convincing sense of individual identity. This is the “I am I” consciousness, and is our immortal soul that hovers, hawk-like — silently and all-seeing — above the Salton Sea of each new personality.

Trauma patients with memory loss are convinced of their egoity, even if they don’t know exactly who they might be. Amnesiacs may forget their own name, family, email, and favorite movie — but their sense of ‘I’ persists.

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Emotions of Truth

STUDENTS of metaphysics and Theosophy are sometimes called to task for being too ‘intellectual.’

Some prefer the force of thought to hammer out truth, dismissing feelings and emotions as emanating from the ‘lower nature.’

But as W. Q. Judge wrote in the Ocean of Theosophy, “intellect alone is cold, heartless and selfish.” This is shown today by studies of neurological correlates in the brain.

Materialistic, intellectual data are stored in the brain, but do not stimulate areas such as the pineal gland — known by occultists to host spiritual impulses like feelings of compassion.

We are spiritual beings at our core, but our behaviors on this physical plane — just like the actions of rider and horse — are solely governed by how we have entrained our psychic and physical instrument.

“There are persons,” H. P. Blavatsky writes, “who never think with the higher faculties of their minds at all.”

“This is why it is so very difficult for a materialist — the metaphysical portion of whose brain is almost atrophied — to raise himself,”

“Or for one who is naturally spiritually-minded to descend to the level of the matter-of-fact vulgar thought,” she says. “Optimism and pessimism depend on it also in a great measure.” Continue reading