Howdy Folks,

I couldn't resist the change in the tagline. In the States, "This Old
House" is a PBS TV show hosted by Bob Villa (can anyone use such
names in fiction? of course not) in which an old (usually 100+ yrs)
house is remodeled over a season to code and working order. ;-) This
seems amusing in reference to Hans's post about the old body being
likened to an "old house" that embodies the new soul.

--- In harrypotterforseekers@yahoogroups.com, Hans Rieuwers
<hansrieuwers@y...> wrote (snipped and edited for brevity):>
> "[T]he old house" in liberating symbology: Alchemy is a process in
> which the mortal, imperfect human being is systematically replaced
> by an immortal, perfect human being

TigerPatronus:
It is interesting, is it not, that this seems to be exactly what
Voldemort is trying to do but has gone about it the wrong way. It
seems like LV has coveted the *ends* of the alchemical process and
has not realized that it is the *means* which are important. As
another example, it's like someone who wants to be an author, hang
around with celebrities like Truman Capote hung around the Marilyn
Monroe, live in a tasteful NY penthouse, but who doesn't actually
like to write. I've heard this described as people who want "to have
written," rather than people who "want to write."

To whit: (Am pb GoF, graveyard scene, and LV speaking)
"I was ripped from my body, I was less than spirit, less than the
meanest ghost . . . but still, I was alive. What I was, even I do not
know, . . . I, who have gone further than anybody along the path that
leads to immortality. You know my goal -- to conquer death. And now,
I was tested, and it appeared that one or more of my experiments had
worked . . . for I had not been killed, though the curse should have
done it. Nevertheless, I was as powerless as the weakest creature
alive, without the means to help myself . . . for I had no body, and
every spell that might have helped me required the use of a wand."
(p655)

This sounds uncomfortably to be the exact opposite of what Hans is
describing when he says:

Hans wrote:
>"who conforms to God's original plan. When this process has advanced
> to a certain degree, the new human being, who is referred to as the
> Inner Christ, has come back to life completely. The New Soul
> (Harry) has become conscious, the etheric body (Dobby) is a golden
> aura of breath-taking beauty, ensuring absolute health, the astral
> body is the most powerful magical instrument imaginable, and the
> mental body endows the new human being with Divine Wisdom. However
> this new human being lives in the old physical body, with
> part of the old microcosm still functioning. This is what the
> teachings of liberation call, the old house. The new human being
> has a new, heavenly, indestructible physical body with which he can
> enter "The Kingdom of Heaven", i.e. the Sixth Cosmic Plane. But he
> also has the "old cloak", or "old house". He could easily abandon
> this old physical body, of course, and leave this vale of tears for
> ever. But this is what a liberated human being, a Bodhisattva, does
> not do. Like Hagrid, he stays on earth in the old physical body,
> because people can see him in that body. He can tell people about
> liberation and teach alchemy. This is only a temporary affair,
> because the old body is usually frail by this time.

TigerPatronus:
Evidently, LV doesn't understand that it's an *astral* body which is
indestrucible and immortal. He tried to make his *etheric* physical
body immortal, which leads to the opposite effect. Instead of, as
Hans said, having beautiful, heavenly, immortal body, LV gets the
opposite: a terrible, frightening, hellish immortal body, as such:

"Whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes and a nose that
was as flat as a snake's with slits for nostrils . . . His hands were
like large, pale spiders; his long which fingers caressed his own
chest, his arms, his face; the red eyes, whose pupils were like
slits, like a cat's, gleamed more brightly through all the darkness.
(GoF, p643-4)"

So here we have snakes, spiders again, and cat's eyes. Not a good-
looking guy, is he? All these creatures have been associated with
evil or at least antagonistic things in HP and in general.

As an additional note about confusing the ends and the means: in the
*Bhagavad Gita,* the central book of Hinduism that distills the
wisdom of the Vedas down to less than 100 pages, the exact opposite
advice is given by the avatar of Krishna (a god) to Arjuna, the hero.

Essentially, in Chapter 6, *The True Yoga*, (Yoga means "disciplined
activity,") Krishna says, "He who does the work which he ought to do
without seeking its fruit is the samnyasa ("renunciation,"
or "enlightened one"), he is the yogin, . . . What [the enlightened]
call renunciation, that know to be disciplined activity, for no one
becomes a yogin who has not renounced his selfish purpose. Work is
said to be the means of the sage who wishes to attain to yoga; when
he has attained to yoga, serenity is said to be the means. When one
does not get attached to the objects of sense or to works, and has
renounced all purposes, then, he is said to have attained to yoga
(sarvasamkalpasamnyasi)."

Interp: The sarvasamkalpasamnyasi: one who has renounced all
purposes. We must give up our likes and dislikes, forget ourselves.
By the abandonment of all purposes, by the mortification of the ego,
by the total surrender of will of the Supreme, the aspirant develops
a condition of mind approximating to the Eternal. He partakes in some
measure the undifferentiated timeless consciousness of that which he
desires to comprehend. THe freed soul works without desire and
attachment, without the egoistic will of which desires are born.

BG: "Let a man lift himself by himself; let him not degrade himself;
for the Self alone is the lord of the self and the Self alone is the
enemy of the self."

Interp: The Supreme is within us, as is the antagonist. The Universal
Self is not antagonistic to the personal self. The Universal Self can
be friend or foe to the personal self. If we subdue our petty
cravings and desires, we become a channel of the Universal Self.

TigerPatronus:
Seems like Voldy is his own worst enemy because he is trying to
become immortal as an end, when the Way and the Path are to
enlightenment, and then there's an immortal astral body thrown into
the bargain.

TK -- TigerPatronus!