Tag Archives: love

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

VARIOUS kinds ‘eyes’ or gazes are featured in Theosophical teachings, from healing eyes of soul, the spiritual or “third eye,” to the “evil eye” of sorcerers.

The power of the evil eye is described in detail by H. P. Blavatsky in her articles on occultism. The evil eye has “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 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.”

Siva, she writes, “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

World of Love

John Paul Strain, Thought of the Great Spirit

NATIVE Americans showed their gratitude to Mother Nature whenever they hunted food, or took from Her material for clothing or shelter. At those times a simple, symbolic ritual of thanks was performed on the spot.

Animals, rocks, trees, and the Earth itself were all divine spirits.

It was an ethic driven by a spiritual recognition of Oneness, and something of that original spirit  survives in our own culture each year on Thanksgiving week — mixed, of course, with the inevitable commercialism.

(Listen to: Mother’s Song)

For our new cyclic shift, however, we urgently need a global spiritual worldview, based on the heart and soul wisdom of our elders.

And there are many signs that such a new shift— embodied in the work of a growing number of compassionate groups and individuals around the world — is taking shape along the original lines of Theosophical inspiration. Continue reading

Everyday One

redwood-forestONENESS is most likely both an experience and a state, probably something that you cannot reach if you are afraid of it. It has to be embraced and welcomed in order to be attained.

Embracing compassion and practicing altruism are, no doubt, ways of attaining individual and global oneness. This was discussed in a previous post The Caring Spirit.

The ancients recognized the reality of spiritual being, knowing that an ever-expanding consciousness and an ever-growing understanding of existence is all that truly matters in our eternal evolutionary journey through the fields of infinitude. All the achievements of civilization depend upon it.

A Lived Reality

The underlying spiritual energies pervading any system cannot be known with physical instruments, but only by delving into the depths of our own minds and consciousness, and this requires many lives of self-purification and self-conquest. Awareness of this one Reality is critical to our future survival and of the Earth, our Mother Home.

Sufi teacher Lynn Barron wants to know: What does oneness really look like? Not as a theory, but as a lived reality in everyday life?

Be-ness

Higher states of being have their origin in a corresponding universal mind or consciousness. This is the “one absolute Reality” spoken of in The Secret Doctrine, “which antecedes all manifested, conditioned, being.”

Scientists using only materialistic methods are in no position to deny out of hand the possibility of such higher states of consciousness.

This Reality is described by H. P. Blavatsky as an “Infinite and Eternal Cause—the rootless root of ‘all that was, is, or ever shall be.’” It is not a personal god, she says, “it is ‘Be-ness’ rather than Being.”

nature3

Duty is that which is due to Humanity, to our fellow-men, neighbours, family, and especially that which we owe to all those who are poorer and more helpless than we are ourselves, she wrote:-

“This is a debt which, if left unpaid during life, leaves us spiritually insolvent and moral bankrupts in our next incarnation. Theosophy is the quintessence of duty.”

What Would it Look Like?

What if the world embodied our highest potential? What would it look like? As the structures of modern society crumble, is it enough to respond with the same tired solutions? Or are we being called to question a set of unexamined assumptions that form the very basis of our civilization?

This 25-minute retrospective asks us to reflect on the state of the world and ourselves, and to listen more closely to what is being asked of us at this time of unprecedented global transformation.

Compassion Speaks

Now bend thy head and listen well, O Bodhisattva — Compassion speaks and saith: “Can there be bliss when all that lives must suffer? Shalt thou be saved and hear the whole world cry?”           -The Voice of the Silence

compassion4

Mary Evelyn Tucker is a Senior Lecturer and Senior Scholar at Yale University where she has appointments in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies as well as the Divinity School and the Department of Religious Studies.

“We are participants in a process that will always be larger than our imagination or our best sciences can fully explain.”

Power Over Nature

Is It Too Late?

Dean Radin, Ph.D., is a researcher and author in the field of parapsychology. His professional career has focused on experimentally exploring far reaches of human consciousness, primarily phenomena like intuition, gut feelings and psi phenomena.

He is Senior Scientist at The Institute of Noetic Sciences, in Petaluma, California, and on the Adjunct Faculty at Sonoma State University.

ions

IONS

Dean’s research has been featured in numerous magazines and he has appeared on several radio and television programs. He is the author of Entangled Minds and The Conscious Universe.

Dean believes that humankind will be able to change its behavior rapidly enough to avoid its total destruction, because necessity will drive us to do it. And he suggests that something like a global mind could be pulling us or forcing us to make the changes needed.

Love Is Indiscriminate

Adyashanti began teaching in 1996 at the request of his Zen teacher, with whom he had been studying for fourteen years.

The author of Emptiness Dancing,The Impact of Awakening, and My Secret is Silence, Adyashanti offers spontaneous and direct nondual teachings that have been compared to those of the early Zen masters and Advaita Vedanta sages.

Adyashanti describes the inclusiveness of love and how actions motivated by love have the power to unite and to change consciousness.

Human Solidarity

by H. P. Blavatsky

The Key to Theosophy

In the present state of society, especially in so-called civilized countries, we are continually brought face to face with the fact that large numbers of people are suffering from misery, poverty and disease. Their physical condition is wretched, and their mental and spiritual faculties are often almost dormant.

brothersister1

“On the other hand, many persons at the opposite end of the social scale are leading lives of careless indifference, material luxury, and selfish indulgence. Neither of these forms of existence is mere chance.”

Both are the effects of the conditions which surround those who are subject to them, and the neglect of social duty on the one side is most closely connected with the stunted and arrested development on the other.

brothersister

In sociology, as in all branches of true science, the law of universal causation holds good. But this causation necessarily implies, as its logical outcome, that human solidarity on which Theosophy so strongly insists.

“If the action of one reacts on the lives of all, and this is the true scientific idea, then it is only by all men becoming brothers and all women sisters, and by all practising in their daily lives true brotherhood and true sisterhood, that the real human solidarity, which lies at the root of the elevation of the race, can ever be attained.”   – H. P. B.

Ubuntu

Ubuntu, a traditional African philosophy, recognizes how we are inextricably bound in each other’s humanity. Translated as, “I am because you are,” Ubuntu describes a sense of unity between people through which we each discover our own strengths and virtues. Featuring healer Credo Mutwa, GreenHouse Project director Dorah Lebelo, and former Deputy Minister of Health Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, this glimpse of South Africa shows compassion as a way of life.

It is this action and interaction, this true brotherhood and sisterhood, in which each shall live for all and all for each, which is one of the fundamental Theosophical principles that every Theosophist should be bound, not only to teach, but to carry out in his or her individual life.

The Deific Essence

“Our DEITY is neither in a paradise, nor in a particular tree, building, or mountain,” H. P. Blavatsky wrote — “it is everywhere, in every atom of the visible as of the invisible Cosmos, in, over, and around every invisible atom and divisible molecule.”

“IT is the mysterious power of evolution and involution, the omnipresent, omnipotent, and even omniscient creative potentiality.”

universe

“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.”

“Universal Unity and Causation; Human Solidarity; the Law of Karma; Re-incarnation. These are the four links of the golden chain which should bind humanity into one family, one universal Brotherhood.”

Necessity is a Mother

Laboratory scientist Dean Radin believes that humankind will be able to change its behavior rapidly enough to avoid its total destruction, because necessity will drive us to do it. And he suggests that something like a global mind could be pulling us or forcing us to make the changes needed.

The Caring Spirit

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.” Continue reading

New Swirled Order

8--Clatford-4

Wiltshire, UK - May 4, 2009 Photo: Steve Alexander

“I produce myself among creatures whenever there is a decline of virtue and an insurrection of vice and injustice in the world; and thus I incarnate from age to age for the preservation of the just, the destruction of the wicked, and the establishment of righteousness.”

-Krishna, Bhagavad-Gita IV:31

The power of consciousness itself, is working through each of us, Eckhart Tolle says of the current cycle. Something in the collective consciousness wants that change, and we must try to be open to it.

We have chosen the mysterious crop circle phenomena, this week, as a stimulating reminder of ways that lead towards that change—becoming more consciously aware of the divine within us, and around us.

A Shift in Consciousness

“Mankind–the majority at any ratehates to think for itself, Blavatsky comments. “It resents as an insult the humblest invitation to step for a moment outside the old well-beaten tracks, and, judging for itself, to enter into a new path in some fresh direction.”

Roundway Hill - April 29, 2009

Roundway Hill - April 29, 2009

But, as we establish more secure bonds to our spiritual mind, Theosophy teaches, self-knowledge arises, and old sense-driven habits of thought fade away naturally. These higher links are forged, most securely, through service and love, say the wisdom traditions.

Self-Knowledge

“Self-knowledge of this kind is unattainable by what men usually call ‘self-analysis,’ Blavatsky once said. “It is not reached by reasoning or any brain process—for it is the awakening to consciousness of the Divine nature of man.”

“To obtain this knowledge is a greater achievement than to command the elements or to know the future.”

But without parents, teachers, mentors and friends, “such knowledge—such intuitive and certain knowledge,” would be much more difficult. The odds of losing our way, are often overwhelming.

“That Which Ye Sow, Ye Reap”

Peaks Down - May 9, 2009

Peaks Down - May 9, 2009

All true Masters teach that “self-knowledge is of loving deeds the child.” And we prove this to ourselves every time we help another in need, with no thought of return. Every small effort we make, adds to our inner strength, and to theirs.

Sow kindly acts and thou shalt reap their fruition,” say the Golden Precepts. “Help Nature and work on with her; and Nature will regard thee as one of her creators and make obeisance.”

“It is the Spiritual evolution of the inner, immortal man that forms the fundamental tenet in the Occult Sciences.”

This shows that the immortal part of us, our True Self, is the Prototype  masquerading as the Humantype in this earthstate of consciousness. As Teilhard de Chardin wrote, “we are spiritual beings having a human experience,” not the reverse. We are ambassadors from spirit whose duty is to help Nature—not injure and abuse her—but to serve and learn from her.

The “circle-makers,” the spiritual Prototypes, are our spiritmates, guides and protectors. They watch and stimulate us from inner planes, but they are invisible to average humanity. In reality, the higher state of consciousness, where they live, is also humanity’s forgotten residence.

We are prodigal sons, and wanderlusting “Self-gods”—Arjunas struggling to win the tests of our existence here—and ultimately to regain full self-consciousness of our heritage and purpose. But, like Arjuna, we are never without the help of Krishna, the Higher Self.  The Secret Doctrine explains:

Spiritual Mathematics

“The closer the approach to one’s Prototype, ‘in Heaven,’ the better for the mortal whose personality was chosen, by his own personal deity (the seventh principle), as its terrestrial abode.

Rutlands Farm, April 23, 2009

Rutlands Farm, April 23, 2009

“For, with every effort of will toward purification and unity with that ‘Self-god,’ one of the lower rays breaks and the spiritual entity of man is drawn higher and ever higher to the ray that supersedes the first, until, from ray to ray, the inner man is drawn into the one and highest beam of the Parent-Sun.

We Are All One

“Thus, ‘the events of humanity do run coordinately with the number forms,’ since the single units of that humanity proceed one and all from the same source — the central and its shadow, the visible Sun.

“For the equinoxes and solstices, the periods and various phases of the Solar course, astronomically and numerically expressed, are only the concrete symbols of the eternally living verity, though they do seem abstract ideas to uninitiated mortals.

“And this explains the extraordinary numerical coincidences with geometrical relations …” SD 1:639

Dreaming and Waking Symbols

Ridgeway, June 15, 2008

Ridgeway, June 15, 2008

We are, in our ultimate essence, beings of light. This existence, like the dreamless state we enter every night, can only be faintly symbolized on our brain-plane of perception, remembered as symbolic dream ideas on waking.

In our developmental condition, the knowledge of the dreamless state is not accessed through direct recollection or remembrance, but is a “reminiscence.”

“A Sleep and a Forgetting”

As explained in Isis Unveiled 1:xiv, the purpose of deep meditational and sleep states, is to “arouse in us the reminiscence of that higher world that we once inhabited.”

All Cannings Bridge, May 22, 2009

All Cannings Bridge, May 22, 2009

The “us,” referred to, is ourselves as reincarnating Self-gods. The teaching of the differing memory systems we use, is further explained in The Key to Theosophy 123-133:

“Memory is a faculty depending entirely on the more or less healthy and normal functioning of our physical brain; and remembrance and recollection are the attributes and handmaidens of that memory. But reminiscence is an entirely different thing.

“- we call reminiscence the memory of the soul. And it is this memory which gives the assurance to almost every human being, whether he understands it or not, of his having lived before and having to live again. Indeed, as Wordsworth has it:”

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,
The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,
hath elsewhere had its setting,
And cometh from afar.”

The “Seven Sons”

Morgan's Hill, May 2009

Morgan's Hill, May 2009

Theosophy teaches we are sevenfold beings. In the English and Sanskrit terms: Spirit (Atma-Buddhi) is having a human, (Manas-Kama) experience, aided by the life force (Prana) and pattern body (Astral,) in a molecular body (Silutha Sarira.)

Each of our inner “sheaths,” or states of consciousness, is a “ray” from one of those “seven sons,” symbolized spiritual prototypes, or hierarchies. Actual beings, living within the interwoven consciousness of the Earth.

The Secret Doctrine 1:430, translates this into a uniquely mystical, symbolic language:

It is then only in this “light” (of consciousness) of mental and physical perception, that practical Occultism can throw this into visibility by geometrical figures.

When closely studied, [the light of the Logos] will yield…a scientific explanation of the real, objective, existence of the “Seven sons of the divine Sophia.”

By means of other, yet undiscovered keys, with regard to Humanity, these “Seven Sons” and their numberless emanations, centres of energy personified, are an absolute necessity.

“Make away with them, and the mystery of Being and Mankind will never be unriddled, not even closely approached.”

Roundway Hill, April 29, 2009

Roundway Hill, April 29, 2009

An Undiscovered Key

Science will never understand mysteries of the spiritual and terrestrial aspects of human beings, on this plane of life, Blavatsky says, “if it rejects the evidence of the oldest records in the world, and refuses from the hand of the legitimate Guardians of the mysteries of Nature the key to Universal Symbology.

“The prototypes or ideas of things exist first on the plane of Divine eternal Consciousness,” H. P. Blavatsky wrote, and from there, these are reflected on our Earth plane of life.”

“As Above, So Below”

(Hermes Trismegistus)

Barely visible from the ground, and often appearing in remote fields around the world, the breathtaking geometry, and artistry of the crop circles is fully revealed—symbolically and literally—only from above.

crop_mayan-crop-2004

The power and presence of these unusual symbolic events can not be underestimated—because occult wisdom has always been closely associated with geometrical symbols.

“Without the help of symbology (with its seven departments, of which the moderns know nothing) no ancient Scripture can ever be correctly understood.” (SD 1:305)

There will always be hoaxers, of course, so long as there are the cynical among us. Yet it is a proven fact, that the majority of the crop formations are not man-made. (BLT Research Team, Inc.)

Who knows the possibilities of the future?. . .

“An era of disenchantment and rebuilding will soon begin–nay, has already begun. The cycle has almost run its course—a new one is about to begin, and the future pages of history may contain full proof that–

If ancestry can be in aught believed,
Descending spirits have conversed with man
And told him secrets of the world unknown.”

(Isis Unveiled 1:38)

avebury

The Sacred Tribe of Heroes

The Secret Doctrine offers proof of the wide dissemination of symbolic teachings, from the Neolithic, Egyptian and Greek secret societies, the Middle Ages, the Age of Enlightenment, to Freemasonry. We see it even in modern physics—represented in Fritjof Kapra’s “The Tao of Physics.”

“The Secret Doctrine was the universally diffused religion of the ancient and prehistoric world. Proofs of its diffusion, authentic records of its history, a complete chain of documents, showing its character and presence in every land, together with the teaching of all its great adepts, exist to this day in the secret crypts of libraries belonging to the Occult Fraternity.” (SD 1:xxxiv)

Synesius, Wisdom of the Egyptians

“Yet you must not think that the gods are without employment, or that their descent to this earth is perpetual. For they descend according to orderly periods of time, for the purpose of imparting a beneficent impulse in the republics of mankind.

For there is indeed in the terrestrial abode the sacred tribe of heroes who pay attention to mankind, and who are able to give them assistance even in the smallest concerns. . .This heroic tribe is, as it were, a colony from the gods established here in order that this terrene abode may not be left destitute of a better nature.”

2009 – April Flowers

Ridgeway, April 14, 2009 - Steve Alexander

Ridgeway, April 14, 2009 - Steve Alexander

The first crop circle formation of 2009 occurred April 14th, in Wiltshire, UK, not far from the Ancient Standing Stones of Avebury.

Avebury

Avebury

It is situated on the high downs outside the complex above the Avenue, not far from the Ridgeway track. Its appearance has a vibratory resonance to it, as if it is oscillating within the crop of yellow canola flowers! Located next to an ancient mound, we see the ongoing connection to important ancient sites.

Progressive Awakenings

“Whatever plane our consciousness may be acting in, both we and the things belonging to that plane are, for the time being, our only realities. As we rise in the scale of development we perceive that during the stages through which we have passed we mistook shadows for realities, and the upward progress of the Ego is a series of progressive awakenings, each advance bringing with it the idea that now, at last, we have reached ‘reality;’ but only when we shall have reached the absolute Consciousness, and blended our own with it, shall we be free from the delusions produced by Maya [illusion].” (SD 1:40)

Woodcut 1678

Woodcut 1678

A Verified Interaction Between
Human Consciousness and the Circle Makers

by Janet Ossebaard (Circular Site)

“On 27 July 1999, an interesting experiment took place. Japanese crop circle researcher Maki Massau took a group of 11 Japanese people to the formation opposite Silbury Hill at Avebury (Wiltshire, UK) to carry out a meditation experiment.

“Sitting in the beautiful formation at sunset, the group sent out a prayer, asking the Circle Makers to create a new formation with four clear features. The formation had to appear that night, close to Silbury Hill, slightly to the West, and containing a Japanese element. If such a crop circle was to appear the next morning, they would know for sure their prayer was heard…

crop4“After finishing this meditation, they decided to extend the request. They drove to a formation at Cherhill and sent out their prayer into the cosmos once again. As they did this, they saw a large ball of light suddenly descend from the skies to just above Cherhill. Then the light ascended once again and disappeared…

“After this phase they went on to Oliver’s Castle, from where the prayer was sent out once again. Then the experiment was finished and they went back to their hotel.

“The next morning they drove off to the local airfield, in order to find out if any new formations had been reported yet. Their excitement rose when one of the pilots confirmed that indeed a new formation had been discovered that morning. He too had seen it at Beckhampton, slightly West of Silbury Hill.

“When Maki Massau asked the pilot if he could describe the formation, the pilot explained something about a piece of paper folded over another piece of paper. He was looking for the right word, when a colleague helped him: ‘Just like Japanese origami’ …

“Maki and his group were delighted when – only minutes later – they flew over the formation. This magnificent pattern was their formation all right, beyond a shadow of a doubt. It had all four features: it was located close to Silbury Hill, a bit to the West, it had appeared that night, and it clearly contained Japanese elements: origami, and it also represented a common Japanese family crest.”

Beckhampton, UK, 1999

Beckhampton, UK, 1999

Crop Circle Documentary 2009

5--Liddington Castle Fort-April23

Eckhart Tolle – Transformation of Consciousness

We should be opening more to what wants to happen on this planet, Eckhart Tolle says, but it can only be realized through each individual person. Each new realization helps others to shift in consciousness, which is necessary at this time. The question for humanity is to either shift and evolve together, or perish together.

Crop Circle Geometry

“Geometry, in the hands of the crop circles, becomes a resonant language of intelligent intent, which both contains the message and teaches the syntax of its meaning.

“The geometry is thus both the message and the meaning, and I feel this geometry to be consistently of a higher order than that which you or I would arrive at. Its simplicity and its ingenuity draws us upwards and subtly encourages an opening up of the mind.” -Allan Brown

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TEMPORARY TEMPLES – CROP CIRCLE ARCHIVES

Thoughts That Count

redwood51ONE of Helena Blavatsky’s adept teachers famously remarked in Mahatma Letters, “thoughts are things.”

This was also Buddha’s first principle: the individual, and the world as a whole, rises or falls on the power of thought and intention.

Why should this be?

A line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet is suggestive: “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Thoughts are the seeds of Karma,” is a familiar Theosophical mantra.

The First Duty

The sayings of the Buddha were extracted out of the stories of Buddha’s life forming The Dhammapada, which means “the path of dharma.” Not meant to be a dogmatic religion, static and unchanging, it is rather a path anyone can follow. Buddha’s first saying is:

“ALL that we are is the result of what we have thought: all that we are is founded on our thoughts and formed of our thoughts.”

Is it any wonder that the first object of the Theosophical Movement is Universal Brotherhood and Sisterhood? This is humanity’s first duty, our communal “Dharma.”

“Real Human Solidarity”

rowing“If the action of one reacts on the lives of all, and this is the true scientific idea, then it is only by all men becoming brothers and all women sisters, and by all practising in their daily lives truebrotherhood and true sisterhood , that the real human solidarity, which lies at the root of the elevation of the human race, can ever be attained.

“It is this action and interaction, this true brotherhood and sisterhood, in which each shall live for all and all for each, which is one of the fundamental Theosophical principles that every Theosophist should be bound, not only to teach, but to carry out in his or her individual life.”
- H. P. Blavatsky

energy7

“The man who does not go through his appointed work in life
– has lived in vain.”
(Voice of The Silence)

Right Understanding

The kinds of thoughts that count, then, ought to have their basis in one fundamental idea: Universal unity and causation.

Without a recognition of this, nothing else can be understood. As biologist Rupert Sheldrake explained, this is why “dogs know when their owners are coming home.”

Occult science explains why universal unity is a fact in Nature. The principle is rooted in this primary Theosophical teaching:

“The fundamental Law in that system is the One homogeneous divine substance-principle, the one radical cause.” (SD 1:273)

The Egg Knows

Sacred Egg of Heliopolis and Typhon’s Egg.

Sacred Egg of Heliopolis and Typhon’s Egg.

The Mundane Egg was an important symbol with the ancients, and for good reason. It represented the “One Life,” or matrix, in which all things and beings on this earth are inextricably entangled. As Blavatsky states:

“The Egg was incorporated as a sacred sign in the cosmogony of every people on the Earth, and was revered both on account of its form and its inner mystery.”

Making use of a different kind of egg, there is now evidence, from Princeton scientists, that a universal substratum does indeed exist.

In their experiments, “EGG” refers to “Electrogaiagram,” a play on Electroencephalogram, and reflects similarities to the EEG technology used to record brain waves. This NBC News video clip explains:

Crystallizing Thought

Our thoughts impact everything: our health, relationships, moods, careers — and we now realize, even the world at large is similarly affected by our thoughts—and shows it.

This important discovery about the power of thought, was confirmed in experiments conducted by IONS senior scientist Dean Radin, on Japanese researcher Dr. Masaru Emoto’s work with water crystals. Dr. Radin concludes:

Dean Radin, PhD

Dean Radin, PhD

“The hypothesis that water ‘treated’ with intention can affect ice crystals formed from that water was pilot tested under double-blind conditions. A group of approximately 2,000 people in Tokyo focused positive intentions towards water samples located inside an electromagnetically shielded room in California.” …

“Results indicated that crystals from the treated water were given higher scores for aesthetic appeal than those from the control water, lending support to the hypothesis.”

watercrystal

Confirming, Blavatsky writes in Isis Unveiled 1:207:

“Everything lives and perishes through magnetism one thing affects another one, even at great distances … may be influenced to health and disease by the power of this sympathy, at any time, and notwithstanding the intervening space.”

Positive & Negative Energy Effects
of Thoughts on Water Crystal
s

The Roots of Thought

redwood

Redwood Roots

Faith, imagination, desire, intention, will, motive and feeling — lead to every state of consciousness we experience — yet all have their origin, and all are rooted in thought. Just as flowers and trees are rooted.

The towering redwoods all began life as a tiny seed. When planted in fertile soil, the growth process begins, leading to irrevocable effects — and, like our thought-effects, difficult to undo.

Blavatsky gives more detail in Studies in Occultism (excerpts):

“Imagination is a potent help in every event of our lives. Imagination acts on Faith, and both are the draughtsmen who prepare the sketches for Will to engrave, more or less deeply, on the rocks of obstacles and opposition with which the path of life is strewn.”

Paracelsus

Paracelsus

“Says Paracelsus: ‘Faith must confirm the imagination, for faith establishes the will . . . Determined will is the beginning of all magical operations. . . . It is because men do not perfectly imagine and believe the result, that the arts (of magic) are uncertain, while they might be perfectly certain.’

“This is all the secret. Half, if not two-thirds of our ailings and diseases are the fruit of our imagination and fears. Destroy the latter and give another bent to the former, and nature will do the rest.”

“All Will Be Well”
The Gabe Dixon Band

Fearless
Susan Boyle

LONDON — “A middle-aged volunteer church worker with the voice of an angel is Britain’s latest unlikely showbiz star. Susan Boyle, 47, wowed judges and audience alike when she performed on television contest “Britain’s Got Talent.” By Tuesday, a video clip of Boyle’s performance on Internet site YouTube has been watched more than 2.7 million times.” - AP/Huffington Post – JILL LAWLESS, April 17, 2009

“Watching an older person—especially an older person who doesn’t seem very hip—prove she still has time to emerge from her cocoon is exciting because it reminds us that we can still sort through our own problems. No matter how old we are, we’re dealing with something, and it’s refreshing to be told that that’s okay.”  Mark Blankenship, Pop Culture Critic

Britain’s Singing Sensation

One World,
One Humanity

(Excerpts: The Theosophical Movement – Vol. 71, No. 3))

“Today humanity is divided into sects and cults, castes, creeds and classes, religious denominations and political ideologies, so that instead of bearing love and friendship for one another, nations and races are engaged in opposing and attacking one another.

“One world and one humanity has been the cry for ages. Poets and philosophers have dreamed of it. Statesmen and politicians all over the world are trying to find a solution to the great problem of disunity. They have not succeeded yet because they do not have the right approach to this important problem.

"Harmony" - stevehiggs.com

"Harmony" - stevehiggs.com

“It is not through legislatures that harmony and peace can be established between different nations. What is needed is a change of mind and of heart on the basis of a correct understanding of the fundamental ideas and facts as given out by great Teachers down the ages.

“These ideas were resuscitated for the benefit of our civilization by Madame Blavatsky. The ideal of a united world appeals to the common man as to the scholar; but, unless a thorough understanding of the source of that unity is acquired, it is not possible to put into practice this ideal or to bring about the required result.”

“Stand By Me”

“Mark Johnson, the producer of a remarkable documentary about the simple but transformative power of music: PLAYING FOR CHANGE: PEACE THROUGH MUSIC. The film brings together musicians from around the world — blues singers in a waterlogged New Orleans, chamber groups in Moscow, a South African choir — to collaborate on songs familiar and new, in the effort to foster a new, greater understanding of our commonality.”

PLAYING FOR CHANGE

Mark Johnson

Mark Johnson

PLAYING FOR CHANGE is a movement uniting people all over the world through music and inspiration. It all began about seven years ago as my producing partner, Whitney Kroenke Burditt, and I assembled a group of like-minded people with cameras and a mobile recording studio. We embarked on a journey across the globe in search of music and human connections.” -Mark Johnson

————–

Sow a Thought, Reap an Act;
Sow an Act, Reap a Habit;
Sow a Habit, Reap a Character;
Sow a Character, Reap a Destiny.

-Upanishads

redwood21

Related post: That Which Ye Sow

Spirit Matters

COMING to its senses from seeming insanity, a new humanity is “raising its voice.”

This view represented H. P. Blavatsky’s welcoming the New Age, publicized by her over a hundred years ago.

Humanity today speaks, as she hoped, “in those authoritative tones to which the men of old listened in reverential silence through incalculable ages.”

Emerging into this ‘new age’ the spirit in man “has returned like King Lear,” Blavatsky wrote in her article ‘The Tidal Wave.’

She was not the first to acknowledge and dramatize the arrival of a newly awakened humanity.

Humanity had in the long past listened to a higher voice, she says, but they were so “deafened by the din and roar of civilization and culture, they could hear it no longer.”

But “look around you and behold,” exulting as if writing today, and “think of what you see and hear, and draw therefrom your conclusions.”

Please note, this post was updated and republished at:

A New Humanity

Bella and Tarra

elephant_tarra2

“Whatever that be which thinks, which understands, which wills, which acts, it is something celestial and divine, and upon that account must necessarily be eternal.” -CICERO

The writer of The Secret Doctrine, the influential Theosophist and recognized Mother of the New Age, H. P. Blavatsky, was an impassioned campaigner for the abolition of vivisection and animal cruelty. For her, these were not political or sentimental causes, or her only causes. She founded a school for abused working girls in England, and was a pioneer Suffragette.

Her actions were rooted in a conviction of the spiritual unity and equality of human kind; the truth of the consciousness and intelligence of all beings— even infinitesimal atoms and cells — the soul of things “ever present and ubiquitous” was, and is, the foundation principle of Theosophy.

The Shift

Uncounted numbers in all walks of life have dedicated themselves to this shift in consciousness — the reality of the sacred—just as did our early American ancestors. Native American cultures practiced gratitude rituals to the Great Spirit, whenever necessity required to take food, clothing or shelter from living nature.

The still widespread influence of materialism in our attitudes about life on this planet, beg for an ethical evangelism. What proofs do we have that “it is not spirit that dwells in matter, but matter which clings temporarily to spirit,” as Blavatsky taught, “and that [spirit] alone is an eternal, imperishable abode for all things visible and invisible?” (Isis Unveiled 1:428)

Steve Hartman of CBS News recently visited “an animal sanctuary where”, he writes, “a dog and an elephant have formed a very lasting, and unusual, friendship. … They harbor no fears, no secrets, no prejudices. Just two living creatures who somehow managed to look past their immense differences. Take a good look at this couple, America. Take a good look world. If they can do it – what’s our excuse?” Jan. 2, 2009 Animal Odd Couple.

Bella and Tarra

“As a true sanctuary, it is not intended to provide entertainment,” The Elephant Sanctuary website states. “[T]he Sanctuary is closed to the general public. Education, however, represents a key component of the Sanctuary’s ongoing mission. Since its inception, the Sanctuary’s outreach program has taught thousands of school children around the globe a respect for wildlife while learning about the endangered Asian elephant.”

elephantsanctuary1

Travels With Tarra, by Carol Buckley

“Based on the same foundation-stone — the ancient Mysteries — the primitive religions,” Blavatsky wrote, “all without one exception, reflect the most important of the once universal beliefs…an impersonal and universal divine Principle, absolute in its nature, and unknowable to the ‘brain’ intellect, or the conditioned and limited cognition of man. … Universal Mind, the Soul of the universe…” -(The Mind in Nature)

Delhi and Misty

“After more than a year in quarantine undergoing successful treatment for TB, Misty’s big day finally arrived: she was released to go meet her new herd. What a surprise when Misty realized one of the elephants was an old friend she had not seen since they had performed together in the circus many years ago. Delhi and Misty shared a tender reunion and have been inseparable ever since.” The Elephant Sanctuary

“Physical science has already reached its limits of exploration; dogmatic theology sees the springs of its inspiration dry. The day is approaching when the world will receive the proofs that only ancient religions were in harmony with nature, and ancient science embraced all that can be known.”
(The Mind in Nature)

“Man is endowed with reason, the infant with instinct; and the young animal shows more of both than the child.”H. P. Blavatsky

Healing and Social Bonds

“The ‘soul in animals’ is, in the opinion of Bossuet, ‘the most difficult as the most important of all philosophical questions.’ … physical, exact research offers no grounds for the presumption that man is endowed with an immortal, divine soul, any more than his dog. … either both are endowed by nature with what is so loosely called by us ‘soul,’ or neither the one nor the other is so endowed.”

Elephant’s Mourning

“Descartes held the living animal as being simply an automaton, a ‘well wound up clock-work.’ [S]ince that automaton is capable of feelings, such as love, gratitude, and is endowed as undeniably with memory… if the animal is an “automaton,” why not Man? Exact science– anatomy, physiology, etc., finds not the smallest difference between the bodies of the two.”

Grace: A Mother’s Anguish

“Serving” man, surely cannot mean being tortured, killed, uselessly shot and otherwise misused; while it is almost needless to explain the word “renovation.” Christians understand by it the renovation of bodies after the second coming of Christ; and limit it to man, to the exclusion of animals. The students of the Secret Doctrine explain it by the successive renovation and perfection of forms on the scale of objective and subjective being, and in a long series of evolutionary transformations from animal to man, and upward. . . .”

Family is Home


“Studies, Behavior Prove There Is More Going On In Animals’ Minds Than We Thought Possible”

“(CBS): It seems like every month or so, there’s another study coming out saying animals are smarter than we think. So what do animals think … and what do they think of us? Some revelations about animal intelligence from Tracy Smith.”

dolphin1“What are they thinking?”

“If you’ve always suspected that animals are smarter than they get credit for, that there’s more going on behind those eyes than a desire for food or attention … you’re not alone.”

“In some species, especially elephants, great apes and marine mammals, the old phrase ‘dumb animal’ borders on heresy.”

“In fact, the line between human and animal intelligence is fading fast.”

“I think it is fair to say that literally, monthly, there are fairly major discoveries about things that we long thought were unique to humans, now look like some of the building blocks are in place in other animals,” said Harvard professor Marc Hauser. [...]“

“Are animals attached to us? Absolutely,” Hauser said. “When you leave your pet behind, you see signs of depression. Is it like our depression? Well, I don’t know if it’s like our depression. I don’t even know what your depression would be like, relative to my depression. But do animals feel strong bonds? Undoubtedly, yes.”

“Can we call that love?” Smith asked.”

“Why not?” Hauser said.”

“Of course, the question of whether the capacity for love makes animals more intelligent is probably best left to the individual … of whatever species.”

LAST WORD

hpb17

Helena Blavatsky

“For verily when the world feels convinced and it cannot avoid coming one day to such a conviction that animals are creatures as eternal as we ourselves, vivisection and other permanent tortures, daily inflicted on the poor brutes, will, after calling forth an outburst of maledictions and threats from society generally, force all Governments to put an end to those barbarous and shameful practices.”
- H.P. BLAVATSKY

Mona Stratos, Woodstock, CT - "Sunlight on Cedars" (2009) www.monastratos.com

Mona Stratos, Woodstock, CT "Sunlight on Cedars" (2009) www.monastratos.com

Evil in Mumbai

NPR Weekend Edition Host Scott Simon’s commentary week on Mumbai was a bit of a surprise. “[A]fter covering too many killings, as a reporter or host, in Bosnia, Kosovo, Oklahoma City or Somalia, I’ve come to the conclusion that the perpetrators of such crimes might just be … evil,” he said.

Scott Simon

Scott Simon

 

“Evil is a word that many people of my generation shrink from using. It seems so imprecise and uneducated — biblical, rather than cerebral and informed. But there are times and crimes that remind me how often the Bible gets it right.”


INHERENT EVIL

Shrinking away from the idea that a person could inherently be evil is nothing new. The fifth century Chinese Buddhist translator Dao Sheng had a really hard time with the concept of icchantikas—those who do not have the Buddha-nature, which the Buddha mentioned in his final teaching, The Nirvana Sutra. So Dao Sheng rewrote and retranslated the text to say that icchantikas could be saved too, adding rose-colored lenses to the Buddhist worldview.

It is not unlike C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, where the best way for evil to conquer is to convince people that it does not exist.


EMBODIED EVIL

When asked about the nature of “entities,” William Q. Judge explained:

W. Q. Judge

W. Q. Judge

First, there are the humdrum masses of elementals that move like nerve-currents with every motion of man, beast, or natural elements. Next are classes of those which have a peculiar power and consciousness of their own and not easily reached by any man.

Then come the shades of the dead, whether mere floating shells, or animated elementals, or infused with galvanic and extraordinary action by the Brothers of the Shadow.

Last, the Brothers of the Shadow, devoid of physical bodies save in rare cases, bad souls living long in that realm and working according to their nature for no other end than evil until they are finally annihilated—they are the lost souls of Kama Loka as distinguished from the “animated corpses” devoid of souls which live and move among men (The Path February 1895).

NO CONSCIENCE

In explaining how evil people “function,” Scott Simon mentions Romeo Dallaire:

Roméo Dallaire

Roméo Dallaire

“[T]he courageous Canadian general who tried to stop massacres in Rwanda, once told us that evil men and women see no innocents in the world. They will slaughter mothers without conscience and their children, too, because mothers give birth to children who can grow up to be their opponents. Evil people are not dumb, he said. They simply use the power of their mind to cut off their conscience.”


CHIEF CAUSE OF WORLD EVIL

But it is Master K.H. (Mahatma Kuthumi or Koot Hoomi) in the Mahatma Letters who brings this topic full circle in understanding “evil”  in Mumbai and other terrorism in 41m2s2rtgvl_sl160_our world:

I will point out the greatest, the chief cause of nearly two thirds of the evils that pursue humanity ever since that cause became a power.

For two thousand years India groaned under the weight of caste, Brahmins alone feeding on the fat of the land, and to-day the followers of Christ and those of Mahomet are cutting each other’s throats in the names of and for the greater glory of their respective myths.

It is religion under whatever form and in whatsoever nation. It is the sacerdotal caste, the priesthood and the churches; it is in those illusions that man looks upon as sacred, that he has to search out the source of that multitude of evils which is the great curse of humanity and that almost overwhelms mankind. Ignorance created Gods and cunning took advantage of the opportunity.

Look at India and look at Christendom and Islam, at Judaism and Fetichism. It is priestly imposture that rendered these Gods so terrible to man; it is religion that makes of him the selfish bigot, the fanatic that hates all mankind out of his own sect without rendering him any better or more moral for it. It is belief in God and Gods that makes two-thirds of humanity the slaves of a handful of those who deceive them under the false pretence of saving them….

A SOLUTION

Remember the sum of human misery will never be diminished unto that day when the better portion of humanity destroys in the name of Truth, morality, and universal charity, the altars of their false gods.”

The Reality of Illusion

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.”

ζ

Continue reading

That First Feeling

lotus11

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-1867-posters1

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.

kamadeva11

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

humanbrain2Your Brain on Gratitude
BRAIN IMAGES

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.

Dr. Amen’s site:
http://www.amenclinics.com/media2/

Gratitude Does More Good to The One Who Feels It

Kwan-Yin

Kwan-Yin

Never will I seek nor receive private, individual salvation; never will I enter into final peace alone; but forever and everywhere will I live and strive for the redemption of every creature throughout the world.

Kwan-Yin


Offering the Mandala
Here is the great Earth,
Filled with the smell of incense,
Covered with a blanket of flowers,
The Great Mountain,
The Four Continents,
Wearing a jewel
Of the Sun, and Moon.
In my mind I make them
The Paradise of a Buddha,
And offer it all to You.
By this deed
May every living being
Experience
The Pure World.

Idam guru ratna mandalakam niryatayami.

Lynne McTaggart

Lynne McTaggart

Lynne McTaggart, author of The Field, explains what she learned from her recent intention experiments. These involved hundreds of participants focusing healing intentions towards otherwise complete strangers — and how the healings reportedly healed the healers themselves. How Healing Healed the Healers:

After participating, an overwhelming majority of our participants not only felt better about themselves and the world; they also tended to get along better with the people with whom they came into contact, most especially perfect strangers.

Many made profound changes in their lives and directions, and even sought to radically change direction or careers .

Others found it easier to cope with setbacks and downturns in their lives, including their  current financial difficulties. Most of all, they found it easier to accept people or ideas that clash with their own.

These preliminary results suggests that using this kind of altruistic intention not only may help to grow your own sense of compassion and tolerance, but also may help you to heal your own life.

It accords with much of the research I have studied on intention. Altruistic intention heals the healer as much as the healee.

Next are excepts from instructions inspired by the greatest of all spiritual teachers and healers, The Buddha.

books-gbwol-frontFrom The Bodhisattva’s Life:
Course VII: The Vows of the Bodhisattva

Even just wishing you could stop
A headache another person has
Can bring you merit without measure
Because of the helpful intent you feel.
What need then to mention the wish
That you could stop the immeasurable pain
Of every being, and put every one
In a state of measureless happiness?

There are many methods for achieving the “Great Compassion.” Each person strives in his/her own way, but there are useful contemplative truths. In The Voice of the Silence, one finds an important teaching about compassion. It is not an individual “virtue,” but rather a universal law of life. We have quoted the text before:

“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.”

gautama-buddha-kThe Vows of the Bodhisattva:

To actually gain the wish for enlightenment he must first contemplate it. To contemplate it, he must first learn about it from another. “Loving-kindness” is an almost obsessive desire that each and every living being find happiness. “Compassion” is an almost obsessive desire that they be free of any pain.

Think of how a mother feels when her one and only and most beloved son is in the throes of a serious illness. Wherever she goes, whatever she does, she is always thinking how wonderful it would be if she could find some way of freeing him quickly from his sickness.

These thoughts come to her mind in a steady stream, without a break, and all of their own, automatically. They become an obsession with her. When we feel this way towards every living being, and only then, we can say we have gained what they call “great compassion.”

Once you develop great compassion, then you can develop the extraordinary form of personal responsibility, where you take upon yourself the load of working for others’ benefit. And the wish to achieve enlightenment for every living being comes from this.

We close with H. P. Blavatsky’s inspired reminder to all aspiring student-disciples from her The Key to Theosophy:

HPB

HPB

The Theosophical ideas of charity mean personal exertion for others; personal mercy and kindness; personal interest in the welfare of those who suffer; personal sympathy, forethought and assistance in their troubles or needs.

We Theosophists do not believe in giving money (N. B., if we had it) through other people’s hands or organizations. We believe in giving to the money a thousandfold greater power and effectiveness by our personal contact and sympathy with those who need it.

We believe in relieving the starvation of the soul, as much if not more than the emptiness of the stomach; for gratitude does more good to the man who feels it, than to him for whom it is felt.

- H. P. Blavatsky, The Key toTheosophy

Self-Knowledge Is Of Loving Deeds The Child

hpb16

One must reach Self-Knowledge, and Self-Knowledge is of loving deeds the child.

Have patience, Candidate, as one who fears no failure, courts no success. Fix thy Soul’s gaze upon the star whose ray thou art, the flaming star that shines within the lightless depths of ever-being, the boundless fields of the Unknown.

Have perseverance as one who doth for evermore endure. Thy shadows live and vanish; that which in thee shall live for ever, that which in thee knows, for it is knowledge, is not of fleeing life: it is the man that was, that is, and will be, for whom the hour shall never strike.

Compassion is no attribute. It is the LAW of LAWS — eternal Harmony, Alaya’s SELF; a shoreless universal essence, the light of everlasting Right, an fitness of all things, the law of love eternal.

The Voice of the Silence

My point in presenting this perspective is that my experience shows that the gray area between non-functioning/oddly connected brain-mind situations with challenged individuals, and possible mystic realization (although I think unconscious), as revealed in their abstract behavior, is vast. Remember, I felt similarly about my late daughter Cherise, who had multiple disabilities, as revealed (I thought) through her behaviors. Surely, this is the best way for a parent to relate to these situations rather than resignation to a non-connection with persons like this.  But without a Theosophical education (there, without the grace of Theosophy, go I), I surely would have remained in the “dark.”

In fact, without some genuine study in true mystical studies, such as HPB’s The Voice of the Silence or perhaps something like Patanjali’s Yoga Aphorisms, there really cannot be enough actual information to go on, to decide whether the actions of one so afflicted with such karma, is displaying something based in mystical abstraction or simply disjointed mentation.

More to the point; I know that during my daughter’s seizure activity, if I were to look into her eyes as if I were looking to relate with that which resides “within” the troubled body/mind relationship, for the Real “Cherise,” and literally calling her to take charge or bring order, on occasion just that occurred. Over the years of my Theosophical study, I became more and more convinced that such behaviors as hers were based in a disorderly relationship between that which cannot know disorder, her Higher Self, and the personal man, where such disorders can reside. It was this kind of awareness (albeit initially without real knowledge or understanding) that provoked my original search for whatever wisdom existed that might further my intuitions and make them practical.

It is practical wisdom we need. Or the alternative is simply insisting that such afflicted individuals are always displaying some kind of disjointed mystically based behavior, is just a kind of “enlightenment” wishful thinking. This is where someone has sort of latched onto this kind of thinking through an introduction to Eastern or some kind of mystical thought, as a parent perhaps might. But without any real “substantial” awareness of anything mystical, or any real knowledge of what that even means, they might decide this behavior is mystical, given that alternative culturally acceptable ideals or models are just too negative. (which, of course, most are).

However, Theosophical teachings are clear on the relationship between the lower and Higher Self.  For all behaviors are essentially spoken to, to be altered by trillions of psychological and karmic variations to be sure, but not in cause, only in expression. So, all of our so-called “normal” behaviors are included as well. And that, I think, is the real test of such a philosophy regarding its practicality or lack thereof: Is it applicable to all conditions of human expression?

Steven Levey

It is easy to become a Theosophist. Any person of average intellectual capacities, and a leaning toward the meta-physical; of pure, unselfish life, who finds more joy in helping his neighbour than in receiving help himself; one who is ever ready to sacrifice his own pleasures for the sake of other people; and who loves Truth, Goodness and Wisdom for their own sake, not for the benefit they may confer–is a Theosophist.

But it is quite another matter to put oneself upon the path which leads to the knowledge of what is good to do, as to the right discrimination of good from evil; a path which also leads a man to that power through which he can do the good he desires, often without even apparently lifting a finger.

H. P. Blavatsky


“The behaviors our children show are a reflection of our incompetence, not theirs.”

Dr. Marc Gold

marc-gold2Marc Gold began his career as a special education teacher in Los Angeles. It was there that he formulated a values based systematic training approach, “Try Another Way.” This approach was based on a few fundamental beliefs: Everyone can learn but we have to figure out how to teach; students with developmental disabilities have much more potential than anyone realizes; and all people with disabilities should have the opportunity to decide how to live their lives. These video segments demonstrate his philosophy, and the respect and value he placed on the abilities of each of his students.

Minnesota Governor’s Council on Developmental Disabilities -http://www.mnddc.org

Dr. Marc Gold: “Try Another Way”

View the video… (26 Min.)

Or copy and paste this link into a new window:

http://www.mnddc.org/parallels2/four/video/video44-tryanotherway.html