Lucifer7, June 2008
Contents
New Online and on Katinka Hesselink Net
International Theosophical Conference
Short Quotes
Masters and Men, Ernest E.
Wood
"CATHOLIC GASOLINE"
New Online
My adventure at squidoo just seems to go on and on. Here are
my latest spiritual lenses:
International Theosophical Conference
There is an
international theosophical conference
coming up - the website is a bit of a mess. Details on where, when and
how are scattered throughout. It seems to be held in Philadelphia, USA,
August 7th through August 10th, 2008. I'm not sure about this, because
the website also mentions something about Athens, Greece (which is in
Europe, right?).
Subjects are: Integrating the Six Schools of
Indian Philosophy for the Purpose of Global Dialoge, The
Timeless
Message of the Upanishads, Islam and the Theosophical
Doctrine,
The Practical Philosophy of the Sufis, Does the Absolute Love You?,
Living the Higher Life and last but not least: Neuroplasticity: Modern
Truths for Making the Brain Porous to the Influences of the Soul and
Synesthesia:
Hearing Colors, Seeing Sounds: The Return of an Ancient Sense. The
names of the speakers on these subjects are not listed - which is
unfortunate as it would be nice to know what the qualifications are of
the people talking about such abstruse subjects.
These are some of the subjects I'm interested in myself, so
I'm very sorry I won't be attending.
Short
Quotes
Mental Slavery, Blavatsky, (BCW III, 225)
"Alive to the truism that every path may eventually lead to
the highway as every river to the ocean, we never reject a contribution
simply because we do not believe in the subject it treats upon, or
disagree with its conclusions. Contrast alone can enable us to
appreciate things at their right value; and unless a judge compares
notes and hears both sides he can hardly come to
a correct decision. Dun vitant stulti vitia, in contraria currunt
['while striving to shun one vice, fools run into its opposite.'] - is
our motto; and we seek to prudently walk between many ditches without
rushing into either. For one man to demand from another that he shall
believe like himself, whether in a question of religion or science is
supremely unjust and despotic. Besides, it is absurd. For it amounts to
exacting that the brains of the convert, his organs of perception, his
whole organization, in short, be reconstructed precisely on the model
of that of his teacher, and that he shall have the same temperament and
mental faculties as the other has. And why not his nose and eyes, in
such a case? Mental slavery is the worst of all slaveries. It is a
state which, as brutal force has no real power, always denotes either
an abject cowardice or a great intellectual weakness."
N.
Sri Ram, Thoughts For Aspirants, Second Series
The first
step in self-knowledge is to become aware of that hard shell in our
natures, which is compounded of our settled habits of thought and
action, a thing of shadows opaque to the rays of our own understanding.
The very awareness
of its existence makes way for the rays of one's intelligence and
starts
the process of its dissolution.
Paul Brunton, The Secret
Path, Chapter XI
Once you have placed yourself in the hands of the Overself
within, your
life
will begin to flow more serenely and more sweetly.
...
You may falter or even fail in applying this knowledge, but
the
Overself
is infinitely patient and will be ready to assist you in its own way
when
you are ready to invoke its presence.
...
You must refer inwards to the Overself until the habit becomes
first
thought,
second nature and sixth sense.
Masters
and Men
Ernest E. Wood, Canadian Theosophist, Volume 29, #2 (1948)
Reading over and over again the many statements that have been
made and
suggested about the relation of masters, or adepts, or nirvanees, or
liberated
men, to unliberated men or reincarnating men, I have often thought of
trying
to formulate some principles. We have a great deal of information
before
us in the Mahatma Letters to Mr. Sinnett, and various Mahatma Letters
to
other persons, and suggestions and reports from various
sources. Out
of these certain main principles clearly arise.
(1) Masters do not interfere with personal karma. They do not
act so as
to reduce the impacts of any particular karmas upon us. To take an
example,
they do not protect us from our enemies. The reason for this is
perfectly
clear. We need our karma. We need our enemies. If I am to attain the
highest
power of love I certainly need those enemies. Some love I can develop
in
relation to my friends and to those who are kind to me. That is an easy
matter,
but to rise to the full height of love is another matter. For the
completion
of my realization of unity in feeling I need the opportunity which only
my
enemies can give.
This is a thought that applies to the development of the mind
and of the
will as well as to the development of love. It will be asked why in
that
case we should extol the conduct of any unliberated man who protects us
from
our enemies. The answer is that we unliberated men are living together
in
one world. We are doing things together and gradually forming that kind
of
society which is integrated by love. Just as every act of creative mind
on
materials of various kinds brings them into a unity of form and
relationship,
so does the creative act that we call love bring varied human, beings
into
a unity that we call society, or social order. It is imperative in such
an
order that the elements or parts must be different. If I am not
different
from my neighbor I cannot perform a special part in that organism.
Briefly,
variety is necessary to unity. It is when a man has harmonized his love
to
all varieties of men that he attains liberation.
The Masters as liberated men are no longer engaged in the
karmic business
of forming parts of a social organism. That is a work which is not an
end
in itself, but for each of us fitting in to that organism is really an
act
of self-fulfillment. Just as a painter paints a picture under the
impulse
of a central urge in his own life and while making the picture really
makes
himself, so that when the picture is done he no longer needs it and
puts
it aside, yet retains in himself all the awakening or growth that he
has
attained by the effort, so also the production of social harmony
through
love is only an external work, not an end in itself, and it remains
forever
an eternal effort for all unliberated men. This is no work for masters,
since
it is no end in itself and has no intrinsic value. It belongs to the
karmic
world, outside their precincts.
(2) Masters, it is said, can influence the minds of men, but
they do not
do this. Inasmuch as every man's growth depends upon the exercise of
his
own thought, love and will, upon the objects of his own experience,
that
is, upon his own karma, there would be no point in inoculating him with
a
foreign strength for that purpose. Man is not in a school built for him
by
somebody else, and made to go through a series of tests devised by a
mind
other than his own, but he is at all times faced with his own
particular
karma exactly suited to his needs because it is the expression of his
own
imperfect work in the past. An artist painted a picture
yesterday,
putting all his best into it. Today he looks at it and says,
"Not good
enough." That is so because in putting all his power into the effort -
his
thought, feeling and will - he became a better artist than
before.
Now, looking at his picture, he will find it painful in some degree and
will
set about altering it or painting a new one. There is no disharmony
between
man and the world of his experience, it is the perfect method of self
education.
If some greater artist were to come in and do the artist's next picture
for
him, it would be no real help to him.
(3) If Masters do not save us from our karmas, and do not
strengthen our
minds, what do they do? I have been much impressed by the statement
that
their function in relation to unliberated mankind is to remind that
mankind
of its spiritual origin and power. Not more than that. That
is indeed
a karma that men deserve, but what use they will make of it depends
upon
themselves. All environment is only opportunity. This, too, is
opportunity,
and Masters are our environment to this extent.
No doubt in the past thousands upon thousands of men have
passed from
the unliberated to the liberated state. They have not done that without
the
aid of unliberated men. In their day they had their enemies, and with
the
aid of those enemies they developed the love which was part of their
attainment.
That is one example of what those liberated men owe to us who were
their
enemies away in the past. They are not separated from us.
The function of reminding mankind of their spiritual power and
destiny
does not interfere with either karmas or minds. Inasmuch,
therefore,
as any one of us opens himself up to the reception of that piece of
environment,
turns his attention fully upon it with thought and love and the
intuition
of the will, he is "in touch with the master".
(4) I think of nirvana, or the beyond, or the state of the
liberated men,
as a world in which the very sands of the seashore are living Buddhas.
I
think of that world as not far away but as close and intimate to us as
any
kingdom of nature that we know, as in its own manner enfolding us and
pressing
upon us as much as the earth's atmosphere presses in its own way upon
our
bodies all the time.
We can perhaps understand this better if we remember that we
are in contact
with life in every kingdom of nature. A very undeveloped man
does not
know much of the life in his fellowman. To him other people are merely
animated
objects in his environment. He has not paused to see the inside of
them,
to feel their feelings and to say to himself, "There is a man in
there".
But as we become more developed we find ourselves living among
fellowmen
who incidentally have bodies.
In course of time and as a result of our education our
experience or perception
of life increases, so that we are aware of it in animals and plants,
and
even in the minerals to some extent. I compare the following
pictures:
First, I am sitting on a nice green carpet; secondly, I am
sitting
on a lawn. Why am I so much happier sitting on the lawn than sitting on
the
green carpet? What is it that gives me this feeling? When I look at
this
matter closely I find that when sitting on the lawn I have some
fellow-feeling
with the grass and the bushes and trees that are around. It is because
I
am in some degree aware of life in these things that they mean so much
more
to me and can teach me such a better lesson. This is true of
the animals
also and even of the minerals. When I walk on the earth I ought to feel
that
as a companionship and I believe I do if at any time I go into the
garden
with my bare feet. I do not mean that in any of these things we should
people
the earth and the woodlands with all sorts of gnomes and fairies in our
imagination.
That is an extra thing. It is important to us that we are
living with
life. The animals, the plants and the mineral world are life;
their
forms are only incidental.
When you come to think of it the mineral and other forms that
we see are
only the karmic production of those lives, and as their karmic
productions
are the outposts of their consciousness just as our karmic productions
are
outposts of ours, really we are dealing with life only, and living
among
life. And as it is with feeling rising to the height of love that we
become
conscious of life in our fellowmen, so it is that the treatment of all
these
things with the feeling consciousness, not merely with the thinking
mind,
will give us our knowledge of reality.
(5) Apart from and in addition to the reminders that we get
from the Masters,
we have always an open channel to their world in what we call the will.
The
Masters have been called the Inner Government of the World. Let us
understand
that word "inner", and let us never confuse it with any conception of
the
outer government of the world. It is true that each one of us is the
complete
and utter slave of that inner government of the world. Each one of us
has
an inner urge which sends him through his cycle of experiences in a
certain
manner, in a certain order, particular for each, and that urge comes
into
us from our Archetypes, which are our real selves resident in the
beyond
in perfect harmony with all liberated men. There is our point of rest,
our
point of strength, our unchanging basis, the unity in all our varieties
of
experience, that stamps its character and mark on every true act of our
will.
I must resort to an illustration. My hand and arm act in
obedience to
their own nature and quality. They carry out the behests of the brain
without
any constraint of their own nature. Such action is indeed the
advancement
and fulfillment of their own character. Thus do my fingers act in a
service
which is perfect freedom for them because it is the fulfillment of
their
own nature, and indeed my fingers become better fingers, more supple
and
delicate and sensitive in the performance of this work well-directed
from
within. But if some strong man were to come along and take hold of my
arm
with his hand and pull it here and there, directing it from the outside
what
to do, there would indeed be bondage and the negation of arm-progress.
Similarly, when the will in me that directs my whole embodied
being responds
with intuition to the impulses of that archetype of which the beings of
the
liberated world are the custodians, in a sense, for me, so that I
follow
the correct cycles of effort in my embodied existence, there is no
bondage.
I am being myself. But if some other man from the outside,
acting and
speaking in the world of karmas and mind activities, tries to tell me
what
decisions I must make, what loves I must have, and what thoughts I must
think,
he is my enemy, my worst of enemies. To try to get between men and the
Master
or between me and the Master's world, and pull me about from the
outside,
is the worst thing that anybody can do. But if I have the intuition of
the
will, that man will be my beloved enemy.
"CATHOLIC GASOLINE"
Sister Mary Ann, who worked for a home
health agency, was out making her rounds visiting homebound patients
when she ran out of gas. As luck would have it, an Exxon Gasoline
station was just a block away.
She walked to the station to borrow a
gas can and buy some gas. The attendant told her that the only gas can
he owned had been loaned out, but she could wait until it was returned.
Since Sister Mary Ann was on the way to see a patient, she decided not
to wait and walked back to her car.
She looked for something in her car
that she could fill with gas and spotted the bedpan she was taking to
the patient. Always resourceful, Sister Mary Ann carried the
bedpan to the station, filled it with gasoline, and carried the full
bedpan back to her car.
As she was pouring the gas into her
tank, two Baptists watched from across the street. One of them turned
to the other and said, 'If it starts, I'm turning Catholic!"
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