Tag Archives: love

Out There

MAINSTREAM scientists looking for the source of consciousness, insist its origin must be located in the physical brain.

They are certain that all cognition arises from the activity of neurons attached to specific structures, which have fixed locations.

Yet many credible scientific researchers today are unconvinced, and dispute these assumptions.

Such open minded investigators are willing to pursue truth wherever it leads, even to evidence that consciousness is a independent entity from the physical structures through which it manifests. But because their investigations are considered hocus pocus, their results are not considered credible.

“We live in an age of prejudice, dissimulation and paradox,” Blavatsky wrote in A Paradoxical World, “wherein, like dry leaves caught in a whirlpool, we are tossed helpless, hither and thither, ever struggling between our honest convictions and fear of that cruelest of tyrants—PUBLIC OPINION.”

Investigators risk being minimalized and shunned by their peers—and their careers stalled as funding sources dry up.

Ω

Yet, poised fearlessly at the frontiers of psi research are scientific organizations such as the respected Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) in Petaluma, California, and the Institute of HeartMath in Boulder Creek. These researchers, and others, like NES energy medicine, are willing to take a leap in pursuit of the fast-moving “soul of things.”

Such investigations were formerly the exclusive precinct of uncanny ancient intuitives and seers. Today there are numerous qualified, sincere scientific investigators on the hunt for answers to the puzzling questions of consciousness that stymie mainstream science.

“The flashing gaze of those seers has penetrated into the very kernel of matter, and recorded the soul of things there.”

Still material science “believes not in the ‘soul of things,’” Blavatsky complained. Now, all that may be changing.

Continue reading

Genius of Emotion

HUNDREDS of facts and thousands details in a book can be understood by any average analytical and reasoning mind.

But intellectual understanding does not usually come with directions for living our life, or correctly understanding the fine print.

Because, “the intellect alone,” as William Q. Judge wrote in the Ocean of Theosophy, “is cold, heartless and selfish.”

Backing this up, Blavatsky says in an article, that “Great intellectual powers are often no proof of, but are impediments to spiritual and right conceptions.”

Altruism, a power that is surely a blend of feelings and mind, exemplifies, Blavatsky wrote,  “real Theosophy.”

The core heart power of Devotion, which underlies the whole universe, according to The Secret Doctrine (1:210), “is innate in us, and which we find alike in human babe and the young of the animal.”

“All of the skills and abilities you need to create a wonderful life and smoothly functioning relationships lie waiting somewhere else inside you,” empath and researcher Karla McLaren claims in her article “Welcoming Your Emotional Genius.”

And in her book, “The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You,” explains:

“I share these empathic skills to help you access the gifts your emotions bring you.”

That ‘somewhere else’ is your emotions, she says, and “if you learn their language, you’ll have all the energy, intelligence, intuition, empathy, integrity, and strength of character you need to create a healthy life for yourself, your loved ones, your colleagues, and the world.”

This may seem like a tall claim. Yet our emotional genius benefits our health through altruism, intention and intuition.

Spiritual activity apparently drives a higher aspect of our minds, capable of connecting whatever dots the game of life can throw at us. Continue reading

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.”

Continue reading

Illusion of Reality

VIEWED as the dependable Gaia, our Mother Earth is a beautiful and bountiful haven for life in the cosmos.

But day to day living here represents a wide variety of experiences, not all of them necessarily compatible.

For example, artists, writers, poets, mathematicians, shamans, homeless persons, business people, storm chasers.

Each of them experiences our shared planet through their own unique lens.

Each hears, sees, tastes and feels based upon their particular worldview, and these unique affectations manifest in an infinitude of variations.

“Why is it that one person sees poetry in a cabbage or a pig with her little ones,” H. P. Blavatsky asks,

“while another will perceive in the loftiest things only their lowest and most material aspect.”

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Some, she says, “will laugh at the ‘music of the spheres,’ and ridicule the most sublime conceptions and philosophies.”

Mme. Blavatsky’s contemporary, Margaret Wolfe Hungerford (née Hamilton), under the pseudonym ‘The Duchess,’ wrote many books. In Molly Bawn, 1878, she gave us the familiar phrase:

“Beauty is in the eye
of the beholder.”

í

Mme. Blavatsky explained the inner significance of this phrase. Differences of perception, she says, “depend on the innate power of the mind to think on the higher or on the lower plane — with the astral or with the physical brain.

“Great intellectual powers are often no proof of, but are impediments to spiritual and right conceptions,” Blavatsky adds:

“…witness most of the great men of science. We must rather pity than blame them.”

Continue reading

The Psychic and Noetic

The Pythia Oracle

MAINSTREAM scientists looking for the source of consciousness, expect it’s origin to be located in the physical brain.

They are certain that all cognition arises from the activity of neurons, attached to specific structures, which have fixed locations.

Yet many credible scientific researchers dispute these assumptions. They are not convinced, and are willing to investigate the anciently held belief that consciousness is a independent entity from the physical structures through which it may manifest.

Because their investigations are not considered credible, investigators risk being minimalized and shunned by their peers — and what is worse, by their funding sources.

Ω

Continue reading

The Best Medicine

FACED with a life-threatening illness, journalist-editor Norman Cousins famously laughed his is way out of the hospital, and healed himself.

His book Anatomy of an Illness, about the the healing effects of laughter and positive emotions, jump-started the era of mind-body medicine.

That was more than 30 years ago. But Gautama Buddha had taught the power of happiness 2,500 years earlier.

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, Buddha said, and the flame will not be diminished.

“Happiness never decreases by being shared,” he taught.

Western cognitive sciences are only now beginning to understand the subtle psycho-physiological flames of thought, intention and feeling that ancient sages understood the importance of, ages ago.

Respect life as those do who desire it,” declares the ancient spiritual psychology of Light on the Path, challenging the student to remain unselfish, and yet to

“…be happy as those are
who live for happiness.”

Continue reading

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.”

Ψ

Continue reading

Love or Logic

COMPASSION is no mere attribute of thinking or emotion, says the revered ancient spiritual guide, the Book of the Golden Precepts.

Calling it “the Law of Laws,” one of its precepts on universal compassion declares that true harmony lies in recognizing the “fitness of all things.”

Additionally, this power is described as a “shoreless universal essence,” and “the light of everlasting Right,” in the book known to students as The Voice of the Silence, a translation of the precepts by H. P. Blavatsky.

Simply put, the master guidebook maintains this power is nothing less than “the law of love eternal.”

But, writes Blavatsky in Psychic and Noetic Action, “no physiologist, not even the cleverest, will ever be able to solve the mystery of the human mind, in its highest spiritual manifestation.”

Nor will they be able to understand the duality “of the psychic and the noetic,” says Blavatsky, “or even comprehend the intricacies of the psychic on the purely material plane…

…unless they know something of, and are prepared to admit, the presence of this dual element.”

Ω

This means, she asserts, that psychologists will have to accept “a lower (animal), and a higher (or divine) mind in man, or what is known in Occultism as the ‘personal’ and the ‘impersonal’ Egos.” Harvard-trained brain scientist, Jill Bolte Taylor, following her life-altering stroke, had a direct knowing of this duality.

Continue reading

All One Being

WHEN our Mothers welcomed us back in the house after a long day outside at play, we knew there would be a loving meal waiting for us.

There would also be a soothing bath and a bedtime story. Clean pajamas and sheets were as much Mother’s rule as her unconditional love.

Nature also knows how to care for her human children, but perhaps in these modern, distracting times we have stayed away, and played outside too long.

Enduring our self-created darkness of separation and materialism, Great Nature has always waited patiently for our return home.

__________________________


Is it because we forget that nature and humanity are really One Being, that we lose our way?

__________________________

In these often dark times of spirit, we may have overlooked the Golden Rule, or resisted helping others, instead of living unselfishly and harmlessly.

Disease, poverty, hunger and the rise of environmental blights are, it seems, the inevitable result of separation from humanity’s natural, unified state.

The opening proposition of The Secret Doctrine reminds us of the most important Theosophical idea, that:

“Existence is ONE THING, not any collection of things linked together. Fundamentally there is ONE BEING.”

And “this fundamental ONE EXISTENCE, or Absolute Being, must be the REALITY in every form there is.”

One Voice

(Vintage Barry Manilow & Team)

“Before the soul can comprehend and may remember, she must unto the Silent Speaker be united just as the form to which the clay is modelled, is first united with the potter’s mind. For then the soul will hear, and will remember. And then to the inner ear will speak – The Voice of the Silence.”  -H. P. Blavatsky

With a change of heart and direction, becoming “one with Nature’s Soul-Thought,” we modern humans might receive a lot more TLC from the Great Mother than we do now.

But humanity, perhaps starting with its children, must once more embrace the values and science of wholeness.

Only the spiritual knowledge possessed by the Sages of the past, can help lead us to the healing we need in the present.

Continue reading

The Flashing Gaze

The Pythia Oracle

MAINSTREAM scientists looking for the source of consciousness, expect it’s origin to be located in the physical brain.

They are certain that all cognition arises from the activity of neurons, attached to specific structures, which have fixed locations.

Yet many credible scientific researchers dispute these assumptions. They are not convinced, and are willing to investigate the anciently held belief that consciousness is a independent entity from the physical structures through which it may manifest.

Because their investigations are not considered credible, investigators risk being minimalized and shunned by their peers — and what is worse, by their funding sources.

Ω

Yet, always fearlessly at the frontiers of psi research, is the respected Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) in Petaluma, California.  Similarly, the Institute of HeartMath — each are in hot pursuit of the fast-moving “souls of things.”

Continue reading

New Spiritual Patterns 1

Kids in the first Dutch cropcircle of 2010

ACTIONS that call upon our nobler mind and innate spirituality, will surely spark the growth of true self-knowledge within us.

Old intellect-driven habits of thinking and acting do not work, and naturally fade away of their own accord.

Spiritual motifs become more deeply ingrained in us as we serve others, Theosophy says, and practice genuine compassion for  humanity, and the planet.

“Help Nature and work on with her,” is one important way, says the Voice of the Silence, “and Nature will regard thee as one of her creators and make obeisance — she will open wide before thee the portals of her secret chambers, and

... lay bare before thy gaze the treasures hidden in the very depths of her pure virgin bosom.”

“Unsullied by the hand of matter she shows her treasures only to the eye of Spirit,” says the Voice — “the eye which never closes, the eye for which there is no veil in all her kingdoms.”

Fosbury nr Vernham Dean, Wiltshire, UK, July 17, 2010

“Self-knowledge of this kind is unattainable by what men usually call ‘self-analysis,’ Helena Blavatsky affirms, “it is not reached by reasoning or any brain process:

…it is the awakening to consciousness of the Divine nature of man.”

And “to obtain this knowledge is a greater achievement than to command the elements or to know the future,” she adds … Continue reading

Ode to Past Lives 1

PARENTS know that most children are obsessive at play, and probably the most focused meditators on the planet.

Despite frozen fingers and icy noses, after a fresh snowfall the young snow angels must  be repeatedly called to supper, often after dark.

Sleds, snowballs, igloo making, coal-eyed snowmen, they are just too engrossing — kids can’t stop.

The poet Wordsworth applied memories of his early childhood to his adult philosophy of life, and his “Intimations of Immortality,” reports Wikipedia,

“was inspired in part
by Platonic philosophy.”

Teaching preexistence, Plato meant that the soul dwelt in an ideal alternate state prior to its present occupation of the body, and the soul will return to that ideal previous state after the body’s death.

Immortality for Wordsworth refers to the immortality of the soul, which he maintained “is felt or intimated during early childhood.”

Wordsworth’s lines inspired Gerald Finzi’s delightful Intimations of Immortality, Grande Fantasia & Toccata: Continue reading

Emotions of Truth 2

HUNDREDS of facts and thousands details in a book can be understood by any average analytical and reasoning mind.

But intellectual understanding does not usually come with directions for living our life, or correctly reading the fine print.

Because, “the intellect alone,” as William Q. Judge wrote in the Ocean of Theosophy, “is cold, heartless and selfish.”

Backing this up, Blavatsky says in an article, that “Great intellectual powers are often no proof of, but are impediments to spiritual and right conceptions.”

Altruism, a power that is surely a blend of feelings and mind, exemplifies, Blavatsky wrote,  “real Theosophy.”

The core heart power of Devotion, which underlies the universe, according to The Secret Doctrine (1:210), “is innate in us, and which we find alike in human babe and the young of the animal.”

Continue reading

Legacy of Luna

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.”

Continue reading

Soul and Shadow

NEARLY all of us humans, occult teachers say, are inexorably reincarnated into new lives of earth, yet invisibly clothed in myriads of memories from the past.

These include snippets of our innate ideas, haunting images of unrealized aspirations and desires, and our unresolved fears.

These torn pages of personal history are the underlying drivers that steer our reincarnations. This is Karma, reincarnation’s unerring “twin doctrine.”

This post has been edited and updated, and republished at:

Karma

A New Order of Ages

ACCORDING to a “prophecy of the Secret Books,” America is even more important to the spiritual advancement of future humanity, than its legacy of individual freedoms.

The ancient continent on which the United States was born, is the sacred ground of a bold “new order of ages” — an ideal depicted on the reverse of The Great Seal of the United States.

Charles Thomson, who coined the motto on the Great Seal, “Novus Ordo Seclorum,” was a former Latin teacher.

Inspired by a line in Virgil’s Eclogue IV, he placed the motto beneath his vision of an unfinished pyramid.

Thomson explained its significance as “the beginning of the new American Æra,” which commences from the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

But an esoteric, spiritual prophecy speaks of a still higher purpose, that of forming a union of free future souls — an amalgamation of human beings of many races — who will be self-elevated morally, physically and spiritually.

“Occult philosophy teaches that even now, under our very eyes,” Blavatsky writes in The Secret Doctrine:

“… the new Race and Races are preparing to be formed, and that it is in America that the transformation will take place, and has already silently commenced.”

The Founding Fathers, many of whom were Freemasons, were strongly influenced by a Lodge of advanced Adepts —worked behind the scenes during the formation of the new nation from the beginning.

Such perfected Adepts, once human like ourselves, were described by Synesius of Cyrene in the Fourth century as the “sacred tribe of heroes.”

One of those adepts wrote: “and we will go on in that periodical work of ours…until that day when the foundations of a new continent of thought are so firmly built, that no amount of opposition and ignorant malice … will be found to prevail.” Continue reading

Eye of Kapila

THEOSOPHICAL teachings describe various types of eyes or gazes – the healing eyes of soul, the Siva eye or “third eye,” and the “evil eye.”

The power of the “evil eye” Blavatsky describes in detail in her articles on occultism. The evil eye carries “a great plastic power of thought,” she says, that impregnates a current of energy “with every kind of misfortune and accident.”

The Shiva eye, in the Mahabharata, is depicted as “the standard of invincibility, might, and terror”, as well as a figure of honor, delight, and brilliance.

Shiva is also an auspicious god.  As the third person of the Hindu Trinity (the Trimûrti), Blavatsky explains, “He is a god of the first order —

“… and in his character of Destroyer higher than Vishnu, the Preserver, as he destroys only to regenerate on a higher plane.”

“He is born as Rudra, the Kumâra, and is the patron of all the Yogis, being called, as such, Mahâdeva the great ascetic.”

There is also an example of a living Yogi, the selfless healer “Braco” (see The Look that Heals) — his simple gaze can affect an entire audience for good. Many people in Braco’s audience report seeing and feeling a powerful white light from his gaze, and they feel a “special kind of warmth and deep love.” Continue reading

The Happy Few

FACED with a life-threatening illness, journalist-editor Norman Cousins famously laughed his is way out of the hospital, and healed himself.

His book Anatomy of an Illness, about the the healing effects of laughter and positive emotions, jump-started the era of mind-body medicine.

That was more than 30 years ago. But Gautama Buddha had taught the power of happiness 2,500 years earlier.

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, Buddha said, and the flame will not be diminished.

“Happiness never decreases by being shared,” he taught.

Western cognitive sciences are only now beginning to understand the subtle psycho-physiological flames of thought, intention and feeling that ancient sages understood the importance of, ages ago.

Continue reading

One Small Voice

GREEN is a multipurpose color, and lately it is the universal icon for a healthy Earth.

The concern we raise in this post is whether we have the collective will and conscience to change our destructive consumerist habits.  Maybe we are not really capable of rising to the challenge of healing our planet.

Save the Earth strategies don’t really address the driver, our economic materialism — when the economy is bad, we must buy more stuff! Just be sure to recycle.

Professions of concern that skirt issues like planned obsolescence, are disingenuous as plastic grass. But no worries. Today we’re all about red ribbons and promises of rose gardens — yep, it’s Valentine’s Day!

Foolishly idealistic it might be, but we ask: shouldn’t the world’s human lovers be paying equal homage to Mother Nature — she who designed and grew those Valentine roses? And not only on these special occasions, but every day?

Many diverse cultures makeup Earth’s great family, and many are suffering. Should not the upscale élite, those few well fed and living comfortable lives — the consumers of flowers and chocolates — assist their less fortunate brothers and sisters? Or, in such difficult times as these, should the prudent watchword be: “every person for himself?” Continue reading

What We Believe 2

Lourdes Lopez, Firebird

Eastern New Age beliefs encourage tolerance, open our hearts to Nature, and build universal brotherhood and sisterhood.

They are widespread today, reports a new Pew Research Center Forum poll, (see part one of this Post.)

Many Americans, the Poll reveals,”blend Christianity with Eastern or New Age beliefs such as reincarnation, astrology and the presence of spiritual energy in physical objects.

In the world as a whole, more people believe in reincarnation and karma than do not. But the question of why these ideas have become so widespread in the West, remains unanswered. Continue reading