Lucifer7, April 2008
Contents
New on Katinka Hesselink Net
New theosophical weblog
Found online
Short Quotes
Karma Now and Karma Then, J.J.
Karma as a Cure for Trouble
Heat and Cold
New on Katinka Hesselink Net
A
weblog by a few young theosophists (well, in our thirties and forties
so far). I've contributed a few posts and so have Chris Richardson and
Pablo Sender. So
far I've shared some of my ideas on religion, spirituality and
theosophy that are not yet christalized enough for full blown articles
on my own website. I will try to keep up links to my posts on this blog
on my page with all my
spiritual articles.
See also these two weblogs on myspace: Blavatsky
blog, Theosophical
Society weblog
Found online
"No man is conscious of more than that portion of his
knowledge that
happens to have been recalled to his mind at any particular time, yet
such is the poverty of language that we have no term to distinguish the
knowledge not actively thought of, from knowledge we are unable to
recall to memory. To forget is synonymous with not to
remember."
Shvetashvatara Upanishad
From The Upanishads, translated by Eknath Easwaran, 1987.
Reprinted from Nilgiri
Press.
He is the eternal Reality, sing the
scriptures,
And the ground of existence.
Those who perceive him in every creature
Merge in him and are released from the wheel
Of birth and death.
Buddha, Dhammapada, Translation Juan Mascaro
327: "Find joy in watchfulness; guard well your
mind. Uplift
yourself from your lower self, even as an elephant draws himself out of
a muddy swamp."
Mary Beljan
Life is unpredictable. Karma is just one of the ways chaos is
organized.
Karma
Now and Karma Then
J.J. Protogonos, number 24, March 1996
In the big view of things it is impossible to wrong anyone.
The
negative act and later positive "reward" or justice for the victim is
really all
one action. The later justice is inherent in being victimized. Cause
and
effect is "one thing" or one event in space-time, so to speak. While
three
dimensions has time being passed through in an infinite concantination
of
cause in effect. If one were to see things in four dimensions, or in
which
all time is in a stasis, or eternity, or in which time is an already
complete
dimension of space - then a cause and effect "unit" might be seen as an
existence
or thing in itself.
Mr. X banging Mr. Y over the head in 1996 C.E. exists as a
single
unit with both reincarnating in 3150 C.E., getting into an aero-car
accident, with Mr. X going, to the hospital and Mr. Y from insurance
getting a new
aero-car to replace his junker.
So in the big picture it is impossible to wrong anyone, which
isn't
an excuse to do bad things because of course the wrong-doer still pays
the
karma. In the short term, using machiavellian methods often pays off
because
karma is usually a slow mover. This makes it hard to maintain the high
ground
because in the short run ethical behavior is more often than not a
loser
to the unethical. The individual or personality who is wronged may
never
in this incarnation and personality see justice, because karma is so
slow
moving. So the individual who strives to maintain the ethical high
ground
is almost sure to be a martyr just based on the karma from one
lifetime.
So when someone finds himself wronged - from one side of the question,
it
is a cause for joy, because something good also just happened to him in
the eventuality of time. You can't fool Mother Nature.
Karma
as a Cure for Trouble (quote from this article)
By the Late Rev. Alex. Fullerton, Wilkesbarre, Pa.
Canadian Theosophist, Volume 26, #11 (1946)
"Yet how can this be?" it is honestly asked. "Do
poverty or
riches, feebleness or power, obscurity or rank, indicate the merit or
demerit I have gained?" "Not at all," answers Theosophy; but
your degree of happiness
does. Happiness does not depend on wealth or
station; sorrow
does not heedfully follow small means or small influence. Joy and
sadness
are conditions of the mind, influenced, no doubt, by bodily
surroundings, but not determined by them. The rich are not always
happy, hence not the standards
of past good; the poor are not always wretched, hence not the
standards
of past wrong-doing. It is the state of the mind, not the state of the
purse,
which shows what Karma implies in any case."
If any man once clearly sees that his present condition is but
the
result of his conduct in prior lives; that it means and expresses, not
merely what he has done, but what he is; that it is not an accident or
a freak or a miscarriage, but a necessary effect through invariable
law, he has taken the greatest step
towards contentment, harmony, and a better future. For note what clouds
this
conception clears away, and what impulses towards improvement it at
once
begets. The sense of injustice disappears. He may not, cannot, know the
past
careers of which he feels the now effects, but he knows what their
quality
must have been from the quality of those effects. He reaps as he has
sown.
It may be sad or pitiable or distracting, but at least it is just. Envy
disappears
also. Why should he envy the greater happiness of those who, after all,
have
a right to it, and which might have been his too if he had earned it?
Bitterness
is assuaged. There is no room for such when it is seen that the causes
for
it do not exist, and that the only person meriting condemnation is
oneself.
Best of all, there dies out resentment at Divine favoritism, that
peculiarly
galling belief that the Supreme Being is willful or capricious, dealing
out
joys and sorrows for mere whim, petting one child and chastising
another
without regard to moral worth or life's deserts. In such a
being
confidence
is impossible, and the only theory which can restore it is the theory
of
Karmic Law, a law which is no respecter of persons, regards each man
precisely
as any other man, notes the very smallest acts in its complete account
book,
enters their value in the precisest terms, and when the time of
settlement
arrives - be it in the same incarnation or in one far off on the great
chain
- pays it with scrupulous fidelity. Centering thus responsibility for
each
man's lot in himself alone, Karma acquits Providence, calms resentment,
abates
discontent, and vindicates justice.
But it does even more than this; it stimulates
endeavor. If we
are now what we have made ourselves, we shall be what we make
ourselves. The mold
of the future is in our hands today. The quality of later incarnations
does
not arise from chance, or from a Superior Will, but is simply such as
we
impart to them through our present. Responsibility, power, are ours
alone. It is just as certain that rebirth will be upon the lines we
trace in this life, as that the later part of this life will be upon
the lines traced in the former part. Rebirth is, in fact, an
expression of character, and character expresses what we are and
do. He, then, who desires a better reincarnation must better
his
present incarnation. Let him perceive the faults which mar
his
life - the sloth, the repining, the rashness, the thoughtlessness, the
covetous spirit, the evil of hatred or uncharity - and let him master
them. Above other faults, and embracing all, is that of
selfishness, the sad love of personal desire as against the rights, the
privileges,
the happiness of brother men, a love which inflames every lower element
in
the human constitution, and kills all higher and richer
sentiment. He
who would prepare for himself a happier rebirth, may begin by making
happier the lives of others. He may respect their rights,
consult
their feelings, extend their pleasures, generously sacrificing himself
that they may profit. As he so does, his own higher nature is
manifested, and finer satisfaction greet him with an unalloyed
delight. By a blessed law of being, he who
thus loses his life shall save it; for he not only tastes
richer
pleasure
than any possible through selfish effort, but he molds his character in
the
grace and beauty of true manliness, and he molds, too, that new
incarnation which is to fit the nature formed in this.
Certainly a principle which quickens the highest motives in
human
nature may well be the regenerator of human life. He who sees his
present as the product of his past self, who foresees that his future
will be the product of his present, who finds in Karma the unfailing
treasury for every effort and every toil, who desires that rebirth
shall have less of pain and more of gladness than he knows of here,
will seek in generous service to fellowmen the highest happiness of his
highest faculties, and trust for brighter incarnation to that law which
cannot break, that force which cannot fail.
Heat and Cold
-- Tom Brown Jr, from Tom Brown's Field Guide to Nature
Observation and Tracking (online
source)
I once asked Stalking Wolf, "Grandfather, how come you're not
cold in the winter or hot in the summer?"
He said, "I am, but heat and cold do not bother me."
I
asked why not, and after a long pause in which he seemed to be weighing
whether or not I was ready for his answer, he said,
"Because they're real."
Previous
issues of Lucifer7 can be found at the online index of
Lucifer7
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