Theosophy

[Bo Atkinson]

Mankind has always received the ineffable, both in smaller and bigger settings as well. Overlording demands by one dominant culture is not really intended, and so Theosophy had its striking presentation tailored for the colonial period of the 1800s.

Western authoritarianism, was so intense that only the many incarnating scientist, (over recent centuries), and in sufficient numbers, could stave off the incredulous, satanist lies:

... sin as a crime against an infinite being who “because of his righteousness cannot forgive” but demands eternal punishment in everlasting hell...
.... the promise of forgiveness for crimes of all kinds that has had a stifling effect. Why make any efforts? You will go to heaven anyhow. Besides, you should “not try to be saved by your own work”... passivity, believe that god does everything ... only pray, and then god does all the rest.

Periodically incarnated teachers in the draconian west were forced underground into secret orders, and so little evidence of this was found, because their existence and teachings were bound up in vows of absolute silence, (for physical saftey reasons). However HPB's work marked the beginning of sharing esoterics, (not to be confused with the occult). Yet fascinating terms do get borrowed and localized here and there, (which could be expected in this world of much confusion).

Our age is relieved of the barbaric repression of those who would utter common sense about all existence, which might differ a little from the powers that be. We are free to pick and choose what we want to work with, but we are stuck on this difficult plane of existence, repeatedly, reincarnating according to our sowing and reaping, until we get over various kinds of degrading illusions, or illusoriness.

Higher worlds are untainted by lower worlds, but do bear certain responsibilities, not to interfere with natural, (human made), evolution while providing some sorts of allowable duties, before, and in turn, evolving to yet higher worlds above them, in a succession of higher evolution...

I'm lightly paraphrasing hylozoics here, initiated by Pythagoras, whose teachings were kept mostly hidden away, and finally explained more in depth by an unknown teacher of the 1900s, who was posthumously published online at no cost for full PDF downloads, mostly after the year 2000. This is esoterics, in the sense that few will read it deeply, with a mind to practice what was understood, e.g.

...the law of development, the law of self-realization, and the law of activation are different aspects of the same law. It is up to the individual to acquire all the qualities and abilities, activate consciousness in his envelopes by himself, ascend the whole series of ever higher levels of development himself. Nothing is given to us. Everything is self- acquisition. Nothing can change that arrangement.

[shaberon]

Posted by Journeyman (here)
I wanted to register my thanks for everyone contributing to this thread. This is one of the best discussions I've seen on this topic and I'm grateful to all concerned.

I say most of what I am saying from what may be a fairly common trend of being interested in every kind of magic and spirituality one can think of. Tried most of it. If you can name it, I have probably been there. And I came to two unsatisfying conclusions. One is that original Theosophy was purloined and, most notably, Alice Bailey material became deeply entrenched with the U. N., and I thought this was equally valid around the time of Maurice Strong, who has a very revealing thread on Avalon posted by someone else. I lived through it and melted it, and that post happened to be pretty accurate.

One of the things he did was get some land in Colorado and make a type of New Age colony, with a resident Native Shaman, a Buddhist Lama, and so on. It is very deep, nevertheless, it was all for purposes of manipulation.


Tibetans don't know what to do when the CIA shows up with a suitcase full of cash, or they are offered a gigantic ranch. They have no clue about pesky American money influence or how international politics really works. So they have been a little exploited for someone's PR or political posturing.

So I had to repeal a lot of dirty tricks that were in my mind by invitation. And then it sort of set on me that although the Navajo or Egyptians or Mayans or Assyrians may well have some advanced spiritual people, wisdom, practices, and so forth, but it is difficult to really transfer them to myself. It is difficult to actually be a Gnostic, since that would mostly be just an ad hoc representation from G. R. S. Mead putting together fragments. My distant ancestors were probably in a Cernunnos cult of druidry, but, I didn't get anything from it.

No matter what I may have done individually, it turns out that Buddhism is the only thing resembling a public vow that I have accepted, and in turn, it actually does have continuity to its root.

I have come close to becoming both a heretical Christian and Muslim, but, stopped a step shy of entering into it. I guess I have a transmission of Shiva Tandava without any kind of vow.

It is a bit like the study of Theosophy made me realize I was already Buddhist. In fact, compared to all the magic and religious studies in the world, HPB was the last thing I read.

Well from having a sketchy feeling on events through history and so forth, she really actually does straighten it out. I will not say she is infallible or a prophet, rather, most of what she says is valid and explanatory. It is just that it is not only in The Secret Doctrine, which was probably the most influential book in the world for fifty years, it is in other books and strewn through collections. Moreover, all she did was work for her boss, perpetually, she was completely clairvoyant in terms of what Buddhism would call Dream Yoga.

After those fifty years, her boss's letters were actually published out of an estate. If it were not for some controversial moves, they simply would have disappeared. I thought that was Theosophy because it was the first major piece I read. And so I took the dominance of Buddhism in it for granted.

As I went along in life and came across what neo theosophy is doing to Maitreya, I was just...I don't know...flattered? Not exactly. It was kind of creepy. And so when I became more sincere and took a serious look, then, no, these are different sides.

I am supposed to warn others that you are not supposed to use Maitreya "in vain", you will wind up in hell for eons and no one will help you.


The ULT really is a unique point of view. And it is just now in today's paper that the most extreme force in terms of fighting to the last Ukranian is British. But this is exactly what the original Theosophical Society was intended to address. It is almost morbid how same the situation is.

[shaberon]

Posted by wavydome (here)
I'm lightly paraphrasing hylozoics here, initiated by Pythagoras, whose teachings were kept mostly hidden away

Yes. Plato is significant not for being intelligent but for being the disciple of Pythagoras.

Vegetarians were still called Pythagoreans until the 1800s.


Viewed correctly, Pythagoras gives a basic version of the esoteric doctrine.


It is doubly similar to Buddhism because it focuses on Hygeia:


She was often depicted as a young woman feeding a large snake that was wrapped around her body or drinking from a jar that she carried.

Hygieia and her five sisters each performed a facet of Apollo's art: Hygieia ("Hygiene" the goddess/personification of health, cleanliness, and sanitation), Panacea (the goddess of Universal remedy), Iaso (the goddess of recuperation from illness), Aceso (the goddess of the healing process), and Aglæa/Ægle (the goddess of beauty, splendor, glory, magnificence, and adornment).







She is also found on the pentagram related to the Elements:










This type of symbolism is, I suppose, shared far and wide under various names. It is not very new. Comparatively, however, in terms of tantric yoga, the corresponding doctrine becomes evident in Vinasikha Tantra of ca. 7th century. It was considered so powerful that southeast Asian kingdoms in Thailand and Indonesia dedicated new temples to it and kept it all under strict initiatic access.


Pythagoras is also known for using the shape of what has come to be called a Christian Pentagram:





In Masonry, this shape is actually viewed as being the interior pentagon, being the shape of a house with a roof. Deriving from Old French "Mas", a house, therefor, "Masonry".

I would say that Pythagoras was doing a kind of yoga that was cutting edge for its time. Because this important deity is about health and well-being, that is compatible to Buddhist yoga. But yes, practices of Pythagoreanism were pushed underground, which is roughly the "push" that leads to a full-blown Dark Age with Hypatia. Not until the Crusades did it even begin to trickle back in.

Almost all of the Greek myth material is cognates from Sanskrit. It was kind of working together a long time ago. So you can heavily compare Pythagoras to Ayurveda. The life and healing properties of this devotion are essential.

[onawah]

I can relate...after all my comparative studies it's Buddhism that makes the most sense to me and feels most right, though I don't refute the truths in other practices (...belief systems, religions, --whatever we choose to call them...).
And I think it's remained the purest.

Posted by shaberon (here)

It is a bit like the study of Theosophy made me realize I was already Buddhist. In fact, compared to all the magic and religious studies in the world, HPB was the last thing I read.

[shaberon]

Posted by onawah (here)
I can relate...after all my comparative studies it's Buddhism that makes the most sense to me and feels most right, though I don't refute the truths in other practices (...belief systems, religions, --whatever we choose to call them...).
And I think it's remained the purest.

My questions lie along the lines of how some things are "practices"?

For example, I enjoy the Orthodox service, although it is all what I would call "outer practice". The reason I understood Buddhism the second time--not from martial arts or Sutras--was due to following Yoga and so i. e. actually discovering energetic and conscious states that are not "outer". The Yoga genre as a whole refers to various ways of performing inner practices, and Buddhism is a kind of Yoga.


By having converted into it, I just mean Refuge Vow. HPB was called Upasika which means a lay follower.

The five vows to be held by upāsakas are referred to as the "Five Precepts" (Pāli: pañcasīla):

I will not take the life of a sentient being;
I will not take what has not been given to me;
I will refrain from sexual misconduct;
I will refrain from false speech;
I will refrain from becoming intoxicated.


Does not sound all that hard, just means you would publicly say it in the presence of other Buddhists.

What has been translated as "religion" out of our texts is:


adhyatmika


which means the reading and contemplation of scriptures.

I am not sure if that is what it means to others.

The significance in taking Refuge is to say this is the safest and most reliable guide. It is significant enough to be the subject of more than a month retreat of H. E. Garchen Rinpoche, because it is actually all parts of the Ngondro or Preliminaries of Guru Yoga each having a long retreat. He is Drikung Kagyu which is really Bhutanese and believes that transmission by streaming or recording is fine.


So that is a formal approach. Considering that we are talking about a school of Transcendentalism, it turns out that just a few "denominations" teach something like this without the use of a human Guru. Adi Shankara says you can use Daksinamurti Shiva, and in Kagyu generally we use Vajradhara. So that is what I was doing before I saw how HPB explained it. She must have understood this principle.

Everything is basically an evolution of Sanskrit mantras.

Apparently what is called "religion" in Buddhism is a "student". It specifically means you have to internally process the teachings. In this context it means the reasoned formulations of Mahayana. One of the basic intents is to quieten disturbing emotions and distracting thought. Further down the road, you observe the mind reciting Mahayana instead of those obstacles. This is, of course, fairly gradual, however it is actually infinite. This has helped me.

Purity is the motif of the Bodhisattva Path.

[shaberon]

It was a really long time ago that HPB read Guru Yoga back to me. It seemed more obvious to me she must have actually been connected to something substantial within actual Buddhist traditions, and, was having a hard time expressing it due to the limitations of comparing everything to the Kabala and so forth.


Well, in many ways she was a spectacular breakthrough for being an uneducated woman who became majorly published in a peerlike rivalry against men of major institutions.


She is good with some Puranic subjects, such as Samjna (Perception) and Soma, moreover, I would say this directly leads to the explanatory Nepalese Samvarodaya Tantra. This is a very unusual Buddhist article in that it relies on these very Puranic goddesses. However it is very advanced. HPB does then have examples of Gradualist approach.

In the Glossary, she more or less condemns asceticism and physical practices, saying:


The higher branches of Yoga, however, such as the Raja-Yoga and Jnana-Yoga, implying strict spiritual and intellectual discipline combined with a fervid love for all beings, are perfectly safe.


And she is, in fact, trying to get you to do this in some way:


The various forms of yoga from the standpoint of theosophy when properly understood are not distinct, separable means of attaining union with the god within; and it is a divergence of the attention into one or several of these forms to the exclusion of others that has brought about so much mental confusion and lack of success even in those who are more or less skilled. Every one of these forms of yoga, with the probable exception of the lower forms of hatha yoga, should be practiced concurrently by the one who has set his heart and mind upon spiritual success. Thus one should carefully watch and control his acts, acting and working unselfishly; he should live so that his daily customs distract attention as little as possible away from the spiritual purpose; his heart coincidentally should be filled with devotion and love for all things; and he should cultivate, all at the same time, his will, his capacity for self-sacrifice and self-devotion to a noble cause, and his ability to stand firm and undaunted in the face of difficulties whatever they may be; and, finally, in addition and perhaps most importantly, he should do everything in his power to cultivate his intuition and intellectual faculties, exercising not merely his ratiocinative mind, but the higher intuitive and nobly intellectual parts. Combining all these he is following the chela path and is using all the forms of yoga in the proper way.



So far, it would seem to be a reasonable description of Mahayana. Even a chela has combined multiple sub-systems.


She is, however, phenomenally confusing in her idea of "two Asangas":


The earlier Aryasangha was an arhat and founded the original Yogacharya school, a thoroughly esoteric institution; the latter’s school is a branch of the Mahayana, and is of a truly spiritual type, its teachings being identical in essence with those of theosophy. This Yogacharya school must not be confused with the Mahatantra school which was founded by Samantabhadra, whose teachings were later collected and glossed around the 6th century by the pseudo-Aryasangha in connection with litanies, formularies, spells, etc. This school is wholly exoteric, popular, and its works are largely composite of Tantric worship and ritualism that can lead the student only to black magic and sorcery.


She may have minced words, Sangha as the Buddhist community, and Asanga, the teacher. Somewhere it may say "Arya Sangha" for the ancient community, but, "Arya Asanga" is not usual, I have not seen him referred to like this.


In another area, she has said that Asanga's Bodhisattva Bhumi, without the guidance of a guru, will lead to sorcery. Here, by "Mahatantra", she probably means "Mahayoga". It sounds like she is saying that Asanga teaches spiritual Mahayana, but, mixed with dangerous tantric spellcraft. We thought that Samantabhadra and/or Mahayoga was slightly later. It would be the "system of Sitabani", which we do not see as "wholly exoteric". It may be "non-monastic". But if we were somehow to suggest that Samantabhadra can only lead to black magic, we would have some difficulty here.


She is historically accurate in that the Dalai Lama was doing a purge of snake oil salesmen and fortune-telling swindlers and so forth, who of course copied things from Buddhist Sutras to make amulets and so on. That does not mean that there are not legitimate branches of the superstitious forms of these arts.



Nevertheless, if you practice "yoga" generally:


Yogin, Yoginī A devotee who practices a full yoga system; the yogi state is that which, “when reached, makes the practitioner thereof absolute master of his six ‘principles,’ he now being merged in the seventh. It gives him full control, owing to his knowledge of Self and Self, over his bodily, intellectual and mental states, which, unable any longer to interfere with, or act upon, his Higher Ego, leave it free to exist in its original, pure, and divine state” (TG 381).

More commonly, a practitioner of one or more various subordinate branches of yoga. There are many grades and kinds of yogis, and the term has become in India a generic name for every kind of ascetic. “In some cases, yogins are men who strive in various ways to conquer the body and physical temptations, for instance by torture of the body. They also study more or less some of the magnificent philosophical teachings of India coming down from far-distant ages of the past; but mere mental study will not make a man a Mahatma, nor will any torture of the body bring about the spiritual vision — the Vision Sublime” (OG 183).


"Mental study" is not enough, and, most of the Yogacara arguments contra Prasangika fault it as being a logical and rational reductionism. However, HPB is pro-Prasangika in the Gelug system of Tson kha pa. Most of her concrete information is from the near end of her career in:


BCW vol. XIV or "The Secret Doctrine Volume Three"


and even as favoring Gelug and the highly inappropriate term Red Hats for sorcerors, she admits of sorceries:


None of these have anything to do with the real philosophical Buddhism of the Gelugpa, or even of the most educated among the Sakyapa and Kadampa sects.


so there is at least a hint of Rime' or that maybe you do not have to follow the Gelug ecclesiastical system. The Sakyas use Red Hats.

There is an attempt to understand everything she said about Initiation. But in vol. XIV she describes "veiled and obscured" systems of Buddhism:


And though its Srotâpatti, its Sakridâgâmin, Anâgâmin, and Arhats, bear the same names in almost every school, yet the doctrines of each differ greatly, and none of these is likely to gain real Abhijñas (the supernatural abnormal five powers).


But this is just part of Prajnaparamita philosophy. Not very mysterious at all. Here she does a much better job with Manjughosha, although describing a Chinese branch:



The chanting of a Mantra is not a prayer, but rather a magical sentence in which the law of Occult causation connects itself with, and depends on, the will and acts of its singer. It is a succession of Sanskrit sounds, and when its string of words and sentences is pronounced according to the magical formulae in the Atharva-Veda, but understood by the few, some Mantras produce an instantaneous and very wonderful effect. In its esoteric sense it contains the Vâch (the “mystic speech”), which resides in the Mantra, or rather in its sounds, since it is according to the vibrations, one way or the other, of ether that the effect is produced. The “sweet singers” were called by that name because they were experts in Mantras.



The whole Atharva Veda comes under her same warning. It essentially is a book of sorcery, which, so to speak, only has the golden thread by way of extraction. The same is true in Buddhist tantras generally. So we are doing what Mahachohan described as "separating from superstition". However, this is mostly already done, and comes under the category "following the commentarial tradition" just as she said. And so this same thing, of course, was promoted by historical Asanga.



The most misguiding thing she has done is with Alaya Vijnana while quoting Avatamsaka Sutra. In Yogacara, this is false mentation composed of Karma, the very "Dweller on the Threshhold", etc., that a yogin seeks to extinguish. This is a fairly exoteric teaching of normal Asanga, and either represents all Yogacara, or most if not all Mahayana. If she wanted to convey the idea of a "source" which continues after the transformation of Alaya, it would be Dharmadhatu or Lokottara Citta. In this case I think she has actually obscured Mahayana, by resting on the literal translation of "storehouse" and re-ifying it.

Avatamsaka is from the same northwestern background as normal Asanga.

HPB expresses what we would call Prasangika intent, and she is adequately aware of the two kinds of meditation. We just mean a realization of Sunyata is necessary to progress into the realm of how to live with and operate the natural underlying fact of Sunyata--again so it is not merely a mental idea or lack thereof, but a deeply anchored experience. She is in the adverse position of upholding Svasamvedana, a Yogacara position, while saying that Prasangika is closest to Adwaita and so i. e. a more accurate depiction of Parabrahm.


Unlike her, we can, historically, name a system, Nirakara, that resolves this adequately.

Adwaitees however rely on Atman and they say it is our Tathagatagarbha which resembles this. Correct. Our main difference is not in the technical structure of reality or how it is experienced, but, rather, the intent. Mahayana is on a mission, this mission defines the real Tathagatagarbha. Nirakara is forthright that the reductions and negations placed by Sunyata doctrines all result in positivist transformations in something that proceeds to purify itself and entire world-systems.


Buddhism is basically unaffected by Jesuitry. They are clever and can do disciplines. In India, there was one who had mastered the art of "shampooing", a word similar to "massage", gaining the ability to carry handfuls of live coals. There once was one in Lhasa who was allowed to copy some folios. He could never get Sunyata. To his linear mind, it was incomprehensible. He left with little but this marker that Sunyata must be some kind of mental barrier if you are conditioned against it.



It may have been too easy to make Theosophists jumpy by more or less asserting that historical Asanga was a Red Hat and they are everywhere. A lot of the warnings she is giving actually sound like the reaction of orthodox Hinduism to tantra generally. However, in other areas, in 1882, Koothoomi responded to a string of insults saying:

we "may be tantrikists" (better ascertain the value of the compliment paid)


In "Kosmic Mind", defending Vital Forces, HPB says there

"exists no more serious denunciation than that which accuses and convicts them of personifying and even deifying the chief organs of, and in, the human body. Indeed, do not we hear these “benighted fools” of Hindus speaking of the small-pox as a goddess [Hariti]—thus personifying the microbes of the variolic virus? Do we not read about Tantrikas, a sect of mystics, giving proper names to nerves, cells and arteries, connecting and identifying various parts of the body with deities, endowing functions and physiological processes with intelligence, and what not?"


So although used very reservedly in Theosophy, tantra must underlie some of the philosophy, which might be found outside of Gelug. One of the most revelatory things I have found that she said was buried in Footnotes to Gleanings from Eliphas Levi, 1882:


To this day, the initiation beyond the Himalayas is followed by temporary death (from three to six months) of the disciple, often that of the Initiator; but the Buddhists do not spill blood, for they have a horror of it, knowing that blood attracts “evil powers.” At the initiation of the Chhinnamasta Tantrikas (from chhinna “severed” and masta “head”’—the Goddess Chhinnamasta being represented with a decapitated head), the Tantrik Shastras say that, as soon as the Adept has reached the highest degree of perfection, he has to initiate his successor and—die, offering his blood as an atonement for the sins of his brothers. He must “cut off his own head with the right hand, holding it in the left.” Three streams of blood gush out from the headless trunk. One of these is directed into the mouth of the decapitated head (“. . . my blood is drink indeed”—the injunction in John that so shocked the disciples); the other is directed toward the earth as an offering of the pure, sinless blood to mother Earth; and the third gushes toward heaven as a witness for the sacrifice of “self-immolation.” Now, this has a profound Occult significance which is known only to the initiated; nothing like the truth is explained by the Christian dogma, and imperfectly as they have defined it, the quasi-inspired “Authors of the Perfect Way” reveal the truth far nearer than any of the Christian commentators.



I do not know what Sastras she is speaking from, but we are aware of the practices she is talking about.

With Cinnamasta, we have a specific lineage derived from Crazy Princess Laksminkara. It may stem from older Aryan traditions of Renuka Ma. However the real tantric practice of it is Buddhist, and it is this which was copied back to the Hindu tantra or Mahavidya system. That is clearly what she is saying "Initiation" is.

Our simplest response is that it is the real matured esoteric Vajrayogini, and that the system we provide is an outer-to-inner Vajrayogini teaching, which was more or less the life mission of Abhayakaragupta. By asserting the "incarnations of Amitabha", she has indirectly invoked him.


It took me about twenty-five years to find that she said this about Cinnamasta.

So it is not pareidolia or confirmation bias.




It comes with a warning. Hindus say Cinnamasta is a Teevra and if you approach her unprepared or in vain, she may kill your family.

Her name however is really a verb, the head-cutting rite of Vajrayogini. Moreover, the Gelug system has Vajrayogini because Pabonkha (1878-1941) had got it from the Sakya. He claimed it was a secret or private practice of Tson kha pa. Most of the material that is easily found online comes from Pabonkha. It is too vast and gives the impression that the reading of a litany is going to take care of all of those things. Instead what we are advocating is a slow educational build-up.

Because HPB was not associated that formally with Gelug, but, rather, with the private retreat of the Panchen Lama, it is entirely possible that Vajrayogini and Cinnamasta lineages could be found there. I am not sure.

I was not born with psychic abilities, I figured out how to do yoga in a way that further down the road I would say is best explained by the Buddhist Vajrayogini system, and so at that point, HPB shows up in the courtyard of what I personally know and understand. There is nowhere else she says anything like this that I know of. She advises yoga broadly, agrees with tantra in a certain context, and is working for people trained in Vajrayogini.

Rather than burdening it with warnings or obscurity, I would say it only works one way, it only does one thing, to expand the Purified and Transcendental Awarenesses. That is what makes a Buddha. Anyone who is sincere can do it.

Both Chinese Yogacara and the very Mahayoga that she repudiated are very focused in the "transformation of the disciples" stage. Nirakara says that most other systems rely too much on just a declaration of the final state of a Buddha and how different and alien that is to an ordinary sentient being. The point of Asanga and Nirakara is how immanent Prajnaparamita really is. This is why we have a lot of original Indian material that is more valuable than what would otherwise appear to be more advanced designs by Pabonkha. None of it is Hatha Yoga, and, it is externally ritualized, shall we say, to the degree appropriate for the practitioner.


Tson kha pa used Kagyu Guhyasamaja and Nepalese Chakrasamvara. A good bit of what he says does somewhat resemble HPB's Prasangika attempts. Before long, however, we find he is an advocate of sexual yoga. And so it seems she might not have read that far into it. In fact, while most authors mention Bliss on a recurring basis, some Tson kha pa translations say Orgasmic Bliss about every thirty seconds.

H. H. First Karmapa (1109-1193) was a disciple of Gampo and Rechung and began what is known as the Tibetan tulku system of reincarnating lamas. He did this without a significant pre-incarnation or attribution of him to a Bodhisattva, however the Black Hat is woven from Dakini hair because he was initiated by dakinis.

So what we call Kagyu is like a gigantic import of the final Nalanda system, whereas the Sakya lineages are about as old as Mahayoga. The Sakya are located along the Nepalese border. And so it is mainly this Sakya Vajrayogini system that we are dealing with.

All Nepalese Buddhists are "tantrics" because Vajrayana is the only kind present. Everyone recites Namasangiti. Those who question it for the profound things it has to say are fewer in number. Those who are driven to put money and time into a secretive location for training, even if an attic that just stays locked most of the time, are estimated in Nepal's three main Buddhist cities to be about a thousand in number there.

Accounting for the whole country, it is not expected to come up to more than around five thousand ardent devotees.

So in having many more translated manuscripts available now, we have a yoga system based in the Mahayana principle of study and interiorization. This is closer to the Chinese way. Most of us are not monks, nor are we in a position to take and uphold a major tantric commitment. There may be little connectivity with official branches of the Sangha. By focusing in original Sanskrit, it just about matches HPB's Alpha of "spiritual yoga generally" and Omega of "Cinnamasta tantra".


As far as I know, this information has never been picked up by adverse forces. It appears in a seemingly-unrelated article which also contains the correspondence:


Cupid, the god, is the seventh principle or the Brahm of the Vedantin, and Psyche is its vehicle, the sixth or spiritual soul. As soon as she feels herself distinct from her “consort”—and sees him—she loses him. Study the “Heresy of Individuality”—and you will understand.


Cupid or Eros is equivalent to Amitabha, or, Amida, which she actually says is Senzar for Adi Buddha.

[NX.P]

Here is the most modern incarnation I could find for HPB:

"In 1750 Vajra was born in Austria, as Zimski (Pere Josef)."

(Vajra was the 'star name' given to HPB according to Annie Besant's and C.W. Leadbeater's clairvoyant investigation of 48 lives of Jiddu Krishnamurti going back as far as 70,000BC in the Gobi region).
Ref: https://theosophy.wiki/en/Lives_of_Alcyone_(book)

I'm curious whether your friend feels any affinity for this Austrian lifetime as well.

[Bo Atkinson]

A Famous Buddhist Quote from the www:

“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”

Daring to study and work independently has always been criticized and even targeted in this world. Common sense is hated by haters and loved by lovers.

Both Christian and Buddhist teaching have inspired the founding of the UN, no matter how some later mismanaged developments involved the same kinds of villains and conspiracies which have infiltrated almost every large fund of money, e.g. big biz, big science and big anything.

Accusations of fraud were the old strategy to keep any sort of sobering truth silent. The newer Orwellian strategies are disinformation and weapons of mass distraction against better knowledge. A little distraction may not hurt if it just adds better clarity to our errors in life.

Today we have the www to check out all sides of the story. Ideally this should encourage us to look and see, all sides of stories, (pertaining to our consciousness development). The predictions of cataclysms have energized me ever since the 1970s, to really choose understandable materials and practice the lessons learned.

No doubt the oldest sustaining cultures of India deserve much appreciation, but also we may deserve the realization that Buddha broke away from the "the powers that be" in ancient India.

It could be enough for people of other world-wide cultures to understand the modernized availability of higher knowledge, bypassing most of the Sanskrit articulation or acculturation. We may be as foreign to India as to Atlantis, and our intuitions, our attributes and our unconscious content could have accumulated in various world locations.

The English language bares sufficient content for me to progress forward with great respect for credible esotericians, who lived in any culture. The flaws of modernity can be avoided, providing we had already begun learning and choosing higher principles, higher virtues, learning about higher laws, and continuing with the that trend in some credible fashion.

It took kind of a selfless bravery to jump start a consciousness movement in the west. How odd is that? Have we any clue how fixated the west was in the 1800s?

Pertinent treatment from Laurency:
http://www.laurency.com/L3e/L3e5.pdf

[shaberon]

Posted by wavydome (here)
Both Christian and Buddhist teaching have inspired the founding of the UN, no matter how some later mismanaged developments involved the same kinds of villains and conspiracies which have infiltrated almost every large fund of money, e.g. big biz, big science and big anything.

I have brought up this particular question in the forum before, without getting answered. Alice Bailey has a claim that a few of them were members of the "occult hierarchy" and at first glance, it seems to come up as being the Synarchy. Is it separable from the Fabian Society. There are specific personages involved here. Is it an arm of the Inter-Parliamentary Union of 1889? Was there anything besides utter villainy in its background?

Once it was formed I can say, there was, I think, Canadian, a Dr. Brock or someone who was the first leader of the health organization. He was controversial because he was one of the first to say that we should not automatically teach our children to believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and so forth.

He has been "revived" and twisted out of context by 1970s right wing literature, so, there is an anti-cult of him based on nothing.

I am sure that it must have attracted well-intentioned people like him, but, I am not sure that it was ever anything but a "program" at its core. The internationalist enclave at the time was really of a certain caliber.

Have we any clue how fixated the west was in the 1800s?

Very little at first, since, the Anti-Masonic Party starting around 1801:

The Anti-Masons emerged as an important third-party alternative to Andrew Jackson's Democrats and Adams's National Republicans. In New York, the Anti-Masons supplanted the National Republicans as the primary opposition to the Democrats.


Jackson was more or less the last American spine, resisting the British and their Bank which had been defeated in 1812. Our national anthem is based in this occurrence but who remembers it?

Anti-Masonry promoted Conspiracy Theory via Nesta Webster and others.

On a socio-political level, there was a high degree of combative awareness, which is corroded and tossed to the side by the implementation of the Federal Reserve and then the coming of the Synarchy.

In terms of consciousness expansion or practice of a spiritual path, no, I am not particularly aware of this being the case. In the 1800s for political reasons, Italians were granted asylum and so Catholicism became a much larger presence than previously. By becoming interested in ghosts and ouija boards and so forth, to Theosophy this was seen as degradation.


At the time, it was probably considered that among the Masons there might be some slightly open minds. The U. S. never had Natural Science institutions or Alchemy to ban. It has Masons, who, according to those who follow the Jesuit view of the French Revolution, must be stopped. Hence the party, and everything leading to Jew scares and Zionism and Nazism.

The first thing that seems to be widely misunderstood in anti-Masonic literature is that Craft Masonry only has Four Degrees. There is no such thing for example as a Thirty-third Degree Mason. These other degree systems pertain to optional practices called systems of Rites. There are many of these. They represent man's attempt to Restore the Mysteries, or to rework Gnosticism, or something along those lines. And so it may be that somewhere within the Rites is a nugget or two of value. For instance, in hopes that Annie Besant would work out as a TS organizer, HPB had a magnificent jewel of the Knight of Rose Croix that she passed along, which I think is the eighteenth degree in some systems.

If I remember rightly, it has the pelican wounding itself to feed her young. In any case, we get the sense that some of the subjects in the Rites may not be a total loss.

I do not think they are as good as Theosophy.

Most of the early Americans were Deists which as Buddhists, or at least as Yogacara, we would not accept, because it is the practice of Reason, and the denial of mystery and revelation.

Here in the U. S. we had excellent early examples of political awareness, but nothing much I would call particularly spiritual.


In the Glossary, HPB does have a name for the "kind" of Buddhism she was supposed to teach:


Amrita-yana (Sanskrit) Amṛta-yāna [from a not + mṛta dead from the verbal root mṛ to die + yāna path, vehicle] The path of immortality; in The Voice of the Silence the path followed by the Buddhas of Compassion or of Perfection. It is the “secret path,” the arya (noble) path of the heart doctrine of esoteric wisdom. The Buddhas of Compassion instead of donning the dharmakaya vesture and then entering nirvana, as the Pratyeka Buddhas do, give up nirvana and assume the nirmanakaya robe, thus enabling them to work directly for all beings less evolved than they; and because of this great individual sacrifice, the nirmanakaya condition is in one sense the holiest of the trikaya (three vestures). The amrita-yana is thus a lofty spiritual pathway, and leads to the ineffable glories of self-conscious immortality in the cosmic manvantaric “eternity.”

The term may also refer to the “immortal vehicle” within each person, the individuality in contradistinction to the evanescent personality; that is, “the Spiritual Soul, or the Immortal monad — a combination of the fifth, sixth and seventh” principles (ML 114).


By "Monad" it means what was called in Theosophy, Atma Buddhi Manas. Then she will give the operative principle of Secret Skull Worship or Secret Mantra as practiced in Nepal:


Amrita (Sanskrit) Amṛta [from a not + mṛta dead from the verbal root mṛ to die] Immortality; the water of life or immortality, the ambrosial drink or spiritual food of the gods. According to the Puranas, Ramayana, and Mahabharata, amrita is the elixir of life produced during the contest between the devas and asuras when churning the “milky sea” (the waters of life). It has been stolen many times, but as often recovered, and it is still preserved carefully in devaloka.

In the Vedas, amrita is applied to the mystical soma juice, which makes a new man of the initiate and enables his spiritual nature to overcome and govern the lower elements of his nature. It is beyond any guna (quality), for it is unconditioned per se (cf SD 1:348). Mystically speaking, therefore, amrita is the “drinking” of the water of supernal wisdom and the spiritual bathing in its life-giving power. It means the rising above all the unawakened or prakritic elements of the constitution, and becoming at one with and thus living in the kosmic life-intelligence-substance.



And here she will give the educated side of Nepalese Buddhism an extraordinarily high rank:


Svabhavika (Sanskrit) Svābhāvika [from svabhāva self-becoming] The Svabhavika school, perhaps the oldest existing school of Buddhism, is one of the principal Buddhist philosophical system and is still prevalent in Nepal. Its teachings are highly mystical, and when properly understood may be said to have remained faithful in large degree to the esoteric teachings of Gautama Buddha. The Svabhavika philosophers teach the becoming or unfolding of the self by inner impulse or evolution of the inherent seeds of individuality lying latent in every monad or jiva.

Like all other profound philosophic systems, the Svabhavika has been subjected to misinterpretation, in this case taking the form of a somewhat materialistic framework of thought. The inner essential teaching, however, is identic with the more spiritual outlook of Mahayana systems of Northern Asia.


The Sphinx here is that Brian Hodgson had already published the majority of the framework of Nepalese Buddhism by 1840. It is still considered highly accurate and everything is about the same. This, however, was overlooked by western experts, and still is. It is a lot easier and straightforward than going to Tibet and China and so forth. If anything, rather than Gelug, the Mahatmas say their system is closest to that of Nepal.


Svabhava and Amritayana are packed together by G. de Purucker in what he calls the Seven Jewels of Bhagavad Gita. However this is extraordinarily unclear as it does not seem to come from the book itself, but, rather, almost looks like a handful of tenets of Nepalese Buddhism forcefully aimed at the Gita--although "amritayana" is Puranic.

Trevor Barker apparently also gave this same set-up.

Those are agreeable enough tenets, except they are not the Seven Jewels of Enlightenment. I do not know how it actually matches any eastern scripture or system of practice. By sticking to a basic definition of Karma as "Cause and Effect", it has nothing really to do with the Buddhist Karma Family. Rather than following this list almost religiously, they would have been better off to extrapolate Hodgson's information. He certainly didn't know what it was.

We do, of course, have a seven-principled book which is based on Bhagavad Gita, RGV, but this is not what it says. It may be somewhat close if we were to rake over these seven with a process of synonyms and interpretations. Books like Voice of the Silence are intended to be primers and study guides. Whereas if we follow through on HPB's definition of just Amrita itself, it actually does almost entirely summarize the real tantric Path.

Others have picked up on this "Amritayana" and equated it to the Fourth Turning, which is really Tathagatagarbha and Vajrayana. If you take de Purucker's idea--i. e., take the right definition of the term Amrita and carry it into the actual teachings about it--then you will be fine. As to the whole set of things, unless it can be traced then it is in the vein of "commentarial tradition".

According to Barker, these are actually the Keys of the Secret Doctrine.

Perhaps that makes it "the practice of Theosophy".

It is a blend of the Puranas and Nepalese Buddhism. However it is correct to say that there is one Buddhist Purana, which is the Swayambhu Purana of Nepal.

Svabhāva (स्वभाव) is a name for Svayambhū (or Ādi-Buddha), according to the Svābhāvika, a popular buddhist sect in Nepal

In Hinduism, it is considered Carvaka or Atheism, as it views self-propelled substances rather than a Creator.

However if it misses the point that consciousness is an aspect of a certain substance, then it would seem to contradict the usage of Svabhava as a mental presence in Vaisnava and Sakta, and in Buddhist Yogacara as the Three Natures of the Knowable:

three svabhāva, mentioned Laṅkāvatāra-sūtra 132.4; 227.10; 348.10; and listed 67.2 ff. as parikalpita, paratantra, and pariniṣpanna


It is fairly atheistic towards most types of Creator-based religions, while it is actually pantheistic in honoring all life and its potential to rise to divinity.


The Mahatma letters explain better but do not quite "mandala-ize" these Keys, where as we have seen, "infinite life" is Buddhist Amitayus or Greek Eros:


The initiated Brahmin calls it Brahman and Sakti when manifesting as that force. We will perhaps be nearer correct to call it infinite life and the source of all life visible and invisible, an essence inexhaustible ever present, in short Swabhavat.

It is pravritti when active, nirvritti when passive. Call it the Sakti of Parabrahma, if you like, and say with the Adwaitees (Subba Row is one) that Parabrahm plus Maya becomes Iswar the creative principle -- a power commonly called God which disappears and dies with the rest when pralaya comes. Or you may hold with the northern Buddhist philosophers and call it Adi-Buddhi the all-pervading supreme and absolute intelligence with its periodically manifesting Divinity -- "Avalokiteshvara"...


Again here then we are easily able to refer this to well-known Buddhist practices (Amitayus, Sukhavati, etc.) dating to ca. year 300 which have spread into multiple countries. But by this choice of doctrines, we would almost say he is preaching Nepalese Buddhism. If we try to get something like this from Tibet, we might get chased out. Buddhists fog their own understanding by refusing to admit our goddesses are Shaktis. This by far is a greater key to getting the whole system to actually work. HPB has not really defined Amritayana in a way that is much different from Mahayana. She is just describing a reincarnating Bodhisattva. Moreover, we can finish her sentence and say that Honey Doctrine or Madhu Vidya is the Yogacara that starts in Brihadaranyaka Upanishad and used basically the same way, but, as Bodhisattva practice, in Mahayana Buddhism. All of the historical evolution through Atharva Veda and the Puranas is based in this. So it has always been the esoteric cream of other yogas, and, still, one of our main subjects.

That is the Key to Indian Alchemy.





HPB met Morya in Hyde Park, London, in 1841, in such a way as to obscure his mode of travel. At one point it was with the Nepal delegation, and at another it was The Great Exposition. He became infamous for refusing to meet the Queen and was called in the newspapers, "Raja Misanthrope" and "Prince Jamla Samson" as a result. He is an unusual character as one of the few things he says of himself is:


My Rajput blood will never permit me to see a woman hurt in her feelings


Koothoomi was of Punjabi heritage, and his family had moved to Kashmir and Ladakh relatively recently before the advent of Theosophy. So in this area, there are plenty of reasons that he could easily have entered Buddhism. Morya has identified himself as something solidly Indian from a Hindu or Sikh region, that would have little ostensible reason to be connected. Not in a way that would make him exclusively Buddhist without having converted from something else. As to the prevalence of spiritual growth in the west, he says:



Ransack the Spiritualistic literature if you will till the year 1877. Search and find in it -- if you can, one single word about occult philosophy, or esotericism or anything of that element now so largely infused in the spiritual movement. Ask and enquire whether the very word of "occultism" was not so completely unknown in America, that
we find Cora of the 7 husbands, the Zappan woman and talking medium inspired in her lectures to say that the word was one just coined by the Theosophists -- then dawning --; that no one ever heard of elementary spirits and "astral" light -- save the petroleum manufacturers and so on and on.



Comparatively, Europe had many who were interested in the Egyptian discoveries and so forth; some edge of curiosity in magic and occultism was always in the background. Out of this, it was considered that Levi was coming closest to what the Mahatmas were interested in. Their associates whom we might call "real underground Rosicrucians" were few in number and were not publishing books. Ever since the French Revolution, quiet survival mode was much more important.


The Mahatmas can most clearly be seen as practitioners of "Svabhavika Yana", portrayed in Lotus Family Buddhism of Nepal, synonymous to the original Eros and Psyche. We can check, but, Tson kha pa most likely refutes this. But it is fine in Yogacara. It is fairly system-specific, whereas "Amrita Yana" is not really a Buddhist term at all. Because original Theosophy was at least temporarily successful in India, then, one could perhaps glimpse a need to somehow interleave Buddhism and Adwaita, because it would not ordinarily be accepted.

It is didactic because Buddhism does have multiple languages and systems of other schools folded into it already.

My atonement to Vajrayogini consists in explaining this Amrita and its thread in Buddhist Yoga.

It is not necessary to go around for twenty years with nebulous doctrines and practices.

Comparatively, what we have as Kagyu Guru Yoga is Adi Buddha but not in that Lotus Family expression. When I was young I was actually afraid to ask for Long Life or Immortality as I thought it was like asking to wander in form and continue to sin. And so I personally do not have that much bond to the more well-known practices. However I do know that Amrita in Buddhism is exactly what it says it is, which is how we do Subtle or Suksma Yoga. If HPB had really emphasized this term like she was supposed to, it might have become obvious a long time ago. By now, like the Mahatmas and English, it is difficult if not impossible to express myself about how real, important, and definitive this is.

That is what I mean by "practices"--in much the same way that HPB said Raja Yoga was generally safe to do--this is the same. Following the guide. I messed something up horribly and I have to go back and redo it.


Unlike what was stated above, the actual aim of Buddhist meditation is Sambhoga Kaya:






Sambhoga is stable in the Akanistha and so, i. e., is arbitrarily permanent. A Nirmana Kaya is a response or emanation from it. The challenge, so to speak, is in using this effulgent power, to manifest Perfection in the Nirmana Kaya. A Buddha has Full Sambhogakaya, and others only have incremental tastes.

That is why there is what we might call Vajrayogini's system of Amrita.

Vajrayogini is an advancement of Tara. And so on the one hand, basic Tara is easily and quickly accessible as a Yidam or meditational deity. Over time, as a mantric science, she has many various forms. Eventually, you will become able to do Subtle Yoga and Vajrayogini will become relevant. It is not that different from studying Theosophy, except it is about practices.


The Keys as given are not Buddhist in any way, except for the configuration of Amrita and Pratyeka which are not technically the right names for, but here are presented as, Greater and Lesser Vehicle Buddhists, in the study of a non-Buddhist text, Bhagavad Gita.

Well, Tri Yana really is a Yogacara doctrine, it is the same as Gotra or spiritual disposition and tradition. And this has two kinds of Lesser, and then the Mahayana Buddhist. According to the definitions of meditation, then, only the Mahayanist has really got the Jewel Gotra which is the Dhatu or Mental Element, which is the Tathagatagarbha. And, it is this Dhatu which replaces "Atman" in the Buddhist quote of Bhagavad Gita.

So Yogacara is going to react to a sweeping statement like "Everyone has Buddha Nature" by something like "well yes, sort of, but...the Mahayana Buddhist has it consciously".

Or, it almost denies you have a mind, in the spiritual sense, unless you have the Bodhisattva intent. There is no Atma other than the kind that serves these purposes.

What is also true is that this kind of inter-textuality was a standard device of intelligentsia and literati. And so Maitreya is really at a level of scholarship that the target audience would be perfectly aware that BG was being pulled in. Obermilller first published RGV in the 1950s, and within around three years, an Indian reader had responded with this fact.

Exactly why there are quasi-Buddhist terms in the otherwise Puranic Theosophical Keys, I am not sure. Going the other way, we can see that Maitreya is doing a sort of Buddhist-modified Adwaita. This is a Sastra. He is explaining Seven Mysteries from a Buddhist Sutra, and quoting other places, including Bhagavad Gita in a somewhat bold way. Jewel or Ratna Gotra is the title of the whole text. Surely the Gotra--Dhatu--Atman must be a significant subject, the Tathagatagarbha or Buddha Nature.

So it is, but this is not a matter of conviction but of practice, which is Yogacara, or Mahayana itself.

Historical Asanga went on a journey because he was frustrated with the Hinayana level of meditations he was given. It may have had some visualizations and mantras and Buddhist Abhidharma, but, in his view, it failed to really seize and increase the power of a Bodhisattva. Mahayana was not a new idea, but the practices were not living up to the archetypes. And so Maitreya is mainly the teacher of yoga meditation. This is, more or less, Nirakara without very many kinds of actual practices, and Ratnakarasanti is Nirakara with the majority of the Sarma system except for Kalachakra. RGV is the root of all those sadhanas.

Even most of the other Indian schools were deviations, except for Candragomin. Ratnakarasanti's point with Triyana is that those beings in the Lesser Gotras are still able to receive the relief of liberation from harmful emotions. They can attain a spiritual benefit but they do not become a Buddha. Instead someone's claim to be in the Greater Gotra is falsifiable because it has requirements concerning whether they actually do it or it is in name only. And so if one acquires a doctrine that negates the way Maitreya is teaching meditation, I do not see how that is supposed to help. He has already taken Prajnaparamita, Nagarjuna, Sunyata, and Catuskoti for granted. The yoga he is giving cannot be penetrated by Reason, and Cessation of Thought only gives part of it. Most of it is in the sadhanas and especially the technique of Amrita.

[shaberon]

I have spent some time puzzling over the Providence of the United Nations, in what way it may stand for or be attempting to unfold a particularly spiritual act.



With "later mismanaged developments" of big industries, it seems they have not infiltrated, but, "are" the Fondi of Venice passed through Antwerp--Brussels--Amsterdam--London. It knowingly armed the Bolsheviks, Soviets, and Nazis, which the public at the time did not really understand.


AB and Lucis Trust were active in New York since around 1922. That was the League of Nations era, the thing that more or less directly spawned the United Nations. It is relatively difficult to figure out who was involved with Lucis. So just to temporarily keep her at arm's length, what does the organization say for itself?



There actually is a United Nations NGO that specializes in this, CSVGC.

It says that "spiritual growth" is one of its original values, and that "spiritual consciousness" is expressed by the Preamble. Let us review:


WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED
to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and

to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and

to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and

to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

AND FOR THESE ENDS
to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and

to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and

to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and

to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples,

HAVE RESOLVED TO COMBINE OUR EFFORTS TO ACCOMPLISH THESE AIMS.
Accordingly, our respective Governments, through representatives assembled in the city of San Francisco, who have exhibited their full powers found to be in good and due form, have agreed to the present Charter of the United Nations and do hereby establish an international organization to be known as the United Nations.



Is that spiritual? It sounds socio-political to me. Message is missing. History is already littered with shattered peace treaties. Well, it has negotiated a temporary cease-fire. But that is just part of a continuing program to make Germany work for Europe.

They do, however, have a few paragraphs on "spiritual history". It says the moment of silence and the meditation room were brought in by the Laymen's Movement, which is The Watchtower/Jehovah's Witnesses.



Further along the CSVGC page are more recent "spiritual additions" such as Aquarian Age and others, certainly none of which are Christianity or Buddhism. Although they too talk about the "spiritual foundation". If I look at this, I seem to become confused rather quickly. More like a New Age book store.


Since 1995, Lama Gangchen (d. 2020) has not yet established the Spiritual Forum for World Peace.

At the 60th Anniversary we are able to find him and the Syrian Church. This far into it, we are able to find that Christianity and Buddhism are allowed to participate, sort of, but I would not tend to call it at the level of "founders".





AB is actually closer to the Council on Foreign Relations, a 1920s vehicle before the U. N., but we also know there is a kind of throughput and revolving door since powers have learned to coin any number of "agencies" and shift themselves around. Before Versailles, and behind most of the twentieth century, was the Pilgrims' Society. Just as raw data, for what is known of its members, the Pilgrims are by far mostly committed to one group.

CFR: 235

The next two biggest groups are Morgan and Rockefeller employees, and then:

UN: 84, including a number of founders, board members of the private UN association, and the League of Nations being dominated by Pilgrims.

And so not only does the group straddle both generations of internationalist collectives, but, it can be found to have individuals who were highly influential in both, such as:


Lord Makins (League and United Nations)

Lord Robert Cecil (Versailles Treaty, League and UN)


and there we are already at one of the most influential dynasties since the time of Queen Elizabeth. It is hard to get more British Imperialistic than Cecil.


The United States, by having Chinese and Japanese settlers, already has Buddhism in those communities, but of course those are racially segregated and have no part in public consciousness, of which there is little until perhaps the time of D. T. Suzuki. and Evans-Wentz ca. 1927.

Here, in the 1930s, were a few fringe publications that were at least somewhat accurate towards actual Buddhism, versus dynasties from the beginning of the British Empire. Then there also became the personal mysticism of the Roerichs, which got the attention of the U. S. government at some level. I am not sure how physically possible it might have been for very many English speaking Americans to have been particularly aware of Buddhism.


UNESCO, IMF, and World Bank were already formed before the United Nations itself. Everything was mostly heavily developed by certain Allied nations, and then as previous talks headed into what actually went into writing, it was to:

draft the charter of a postwar international organization based on the principle of collective security.


So it is a bit like terms of surrender, pre-loaded with parasites that half the world does not understand. It sounds exactly like the phase of a plan where someone is satisfied they have conquered Germany, and are going to find new ways to either own or physically break Russia/U. S. S. R. and China next, especially since the poor fools have no idea how modern finance is going to try to pick up where colonialism left off.

The U. N. is therefor a lot like the moment of the U. S. Federal Reserve upgraded to the global scale.

It does not seem to be specifically Israeli Zionist by its main design, and, it would probably be reasonable to say that they opportunistically took advantage of it as soon as they could.

ULT took place in California in the early 1900s. B. P. Wadia rejected the Indian Adyar TS, came to join the ULT, and then in the 1920s opened a few lodges on the east coast and in London, France, and India. I am not sure it has really grown that much since then. These are just small libraries and a handful of people.



Although some Buddhist cultures had more or less gained peace with Tsarist Russia:


The Soviet law for separating church and education immediately disintegrated the Buddhist culture of Buryatia in 1925.

Book printing [in Buryatia] developed quickly. In 1887, twenty-nine print shops were already in operation, which until their destruction in the 1930s published about 2000 book titles, written in Tibetan and Mongolian.

The Soviets physically destroyed Kalmyck Buddhism; some of them emigrated to Serbia in 1929 and the U. S. in the 1950s.


China, of course, became rather unfriendly to Tibet.

The decades running up to the U. N. do not see Buddhism inspiring much of anything, but, actually suffering losses in its native places. The first significant Japanese American Buddhist organization was made in the prison camp.


This "inter-war" period of the 1920s-30s is more characterized by Golden Dawn, Yogananda, and I Am, and various uses of the free press. Or of the secret door.




I would say that Buddhism became more publicly-knowable starting with Dr. Alex Wayman around 1958. And then in the 1970s we had Vajradhatu which actually was the American move of Buddhism generally:


Vajradhatu hosted visits by Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, 16th Karmapa, head of the Kagyu, in 1974, Khyentse Norbu, head of the Nyingma, in 1976, and the 14th Dalai Lama in 1981.


If you follow it through time, many of its leaders became corrupt, and also created Shambhala Training which is their own thing, not exactly traditional Buddhism. It has actually become an embarrassment to the Tibetan elders. I really do not know off the top of my head how to know the difference between regular Kagyu and these crazy wisdom places.

So although the Beat Poets and some others have admired sayings and so forth that are from Buddhism, I am not sure how much any of the public "gets it". I have read several Q & A sessions that really make it seem like people have difficulty with basic things that are in it. I am not persuaded that the Lamas always have a very satisfying answer. Sometimes they do.

Although C. Jung was to some extent influenced by the books of Evans-Wentz, he was not a Buddhist, and for example in 1938 wrote to him essentially a denial of Nirakara, similar to the argument of Jnanasrimitra in the eleventh century. He is like Harari, they have a meditative technique but they do not really have basic qualities that are supposed to go along with it.

[Bo Atkinson]

Posted by shaberon (here)
I have spent some time puzzling over the Providence of the United Nations, in what way it may stand for or be attempting to unfold a particularly spiritual act.

United-anything sounds attractive, and someone involved with wealth, reached out to promote a struggling author.

Otherwise, public outreach was limited without a bigger basis for promotion. Where could she find that? What other avenue exists at all?

A corporation or charter can conceivably start out honestly, but then it can get abused by others, and then if it sells, it can get super charged into the weirdest worldwide agendas.

Big-time marketers and share holders took hold and developed a branding. It was taken out of her hand.



Abusers are able use the cover of higher ideals, and that can brighten up the front office.


At least, she was spared having to live through a very old age to witness that kind of outcome.

With the internet, her books are published free of charge, downloaded as PDFs. Great karma, methinks. Ultimately she gave more than she took from life.

On the other hand, they say that bad news or bad notoriety is good advertising, just to get a word out edgewise. The observer can decide for themself.

What kind of world is this? It just is what it is.

Religion has its own promoted brands and issues, (both east and west, north and south). Truer esoterics is basically free of this, because it is almost unheard of, and for the most part, it gets falsified and hijacked. Sound familiar?

Humans are left to work from a low stage of development, on their own and through the issues they so create.

A cleaner organic work-up would make more sense, if we focused right, but we leave that problem to others, to the default vendors, with their seductive branding.

Then we learn about our lack of scientific concerns, e.g.... The forever chemicals, (Per/polyfluoroalkyls), now available in drinking water. Out of site, out of mind. Do we support legislation to stop the spread, or do nothing, and then eat the contaminated foods.

Blavatsky also became much wider read, due to the very bad press she got, when her books were finally circulated.

What was so bad there? People wanted to know, so study commenced.

The increased availability of these books found their way out into a world which was very uninterested in wisdom or brotherhood.

The higher leaders of India in the 1800s greatly assisted the western debunker of Blavatsky, because they wanted to keep their secrets of higher learning all to themselves. The idea of westerners getting hold of these secrets was not what they wanted, not at all.

[shaberon]

Posted by wavydome (here)
The higher leaders of India in the 1800s greatly assisted the western debunker of Blavatsky, because they wanted to keep their secrets of higher learning all to themselves. The idea of westerners getting hold of these secrets was not what they wanted, not at all.

There are a few angles on that.

During her lifetime it was mainly stuff like the Coulombs, who said that the Mahatmas were sheets over balloons.

This has a lot to do with the public greed for "proof" of supernatural abilities and so forth. Unfortunately, that is not even the point; but how does one get their attention?


To contend with the subjects that she actually wrote is another matter.

In her whole catalogue are no practices. The most extensive thing that she even taught was to get people to say Om when they first wake up. No context. She didn't say you had better convert to Shiva first. Just experience the sound in the appropriate mindset.

Bhagavad Gita and Vishnu Purana had been entirely translated; but I am unaware of retaliation over these.

I would say that Orthodox Hinduism took over the TS, and then we get the wave of Krishna = Christ teachings. In the Theosophical view, this is correct, but it means the seventh principle. It's not something you sing to. HPB opposed their exoteric doctrines. These schools are mostly Vasistadvaita or "qualified", which to an extent accepts the Advaita tenet that man's seventh principle is qualitatively identical to Brahman--but then they always hold "you" out as a lesser quantity, and there is always a bigger "He".

If that is how someone wants to train, ok, but it is not Adwaita or Buddhism. And of course they are heavily monied interests, able to publish a hundred times as many books and information and so on.


The first main thing I remember someone flaming her about was Dhyani Buddhas because it is not Tibetan. But it is Nepali.

I am not sure I have come across anything from the Vedas or Puranas where she was off. It may not suit the believers of other schools, but it reveals more than it conceals. And here again I am even a bit similar to her detractors: I am trying to falsify anything she says if it really does not bear out. A lot of Lamas appear to still have the same type of difficulty she did, lacking much of a way to distinguish Buddhism from Hindu Yoga, letting it blend in as another synonym. And so her Buddhist explanations are kind of muddled, but, the main thing she consistently says of her Lodge and practice is:


Yogacara.


This has nothing to do with Tson kha pa, who refutes aspects of it, and so Gelug generally is not the same kind of environment. It has a lot to do with Asanga, whom she dismisses for evidently copying some part of Mahatantra. I have not found this yet and I do not know what she is talking about. She makes a lot of virulent warnings about sorcery, where she could have expanded what she said on Mantra. This is where Hodgson, Jung, etc., grind themselves out. They go blank on central elements of Buddhism like this because they cannot understand or cannot do it. Yogacara is definitely Asanga's teaching blended with Mantra. In its time, yes, it was certainly exoteric and popular. But one would be unable to do what we consider esoteric procedures without this foundation.

Because HPB heavily argues pro-Svasamvedana, then she really is pro-Asanga Yogacara and refuting Tson kha pa.




Here is some bird's eye Wiki stuff about how there came to be a Kalmyk Buddhist nation in Europe. It has to do with Kagyu forming an alliance with the descendants of Genghis Khan (Khalkas):


After the fall of the Mongol Yuan dynasty of China in 1368, the Oirats emerged as a formidable foe against the Khalkha Mongols, the Chinese Ming dynasty (1368–1644) and the Manchus who founded the Qing dynasty in China in 1644. For 400 years, the Oirats conducted a military struggle for domination and control over both Inner Mongolia and Outer Mongolia. The struggle ended in 1757 with the defeat of the Oirats in Dzungaria; they were the last of the Mongol groups to resist vassalage to Qing.



The Oirats converted to Tibetan Buddhism around 1615, and it was not long before they became involved in the conflict between the Gelug and Karma Kagyu schools. At the request of the Gelug school, in 1637, Güshi Khan, the leader of the Khoshuts in Koko Nor, defeated Choghtu Khong Tayiji, the Khalkha prince who supported the Karma Kagyu school, and conquered Amdo (present-day Qinghai). The unification of Tibet followed in the early 1640s, with Güshi Khan proclaimed Khan of Tibet by the 5th Dalai Lama and the establishment of the Khoshut Khanate. The title "Dalai Lama" itself was bestowed upon the third lama of the Gelug tulku lineage by Altan Khan.



Kalmyks are a migration of these Oirats. It is mainly Gelug that has the Mongolic tribes who themselves became zealous about Russia. It may sound odd to us that although they were very violent, they are not called barbarians and ostracized. A large part of the difference is the honesty of it. I say something, and you agree, or we fight. It's not the glitter of colonialism and false money and social engineering as comes from Europe. Most "native cultures" have figured out this ruse; the same reaction has been expressed in Himachal, by the Maori, and American Indians, who knows how many others...usually when it is too late for them.


For two people to travel around the world following an apparent Gelug to convert to Buddhism in Sri Lanka remains an odd circumstance. It was mostly within the intent of a hundred year plan to put something in English from Tibetan Gelugs, and yet this context can hardly be found. It would have, if she had survived longer, but was in some way published as S. D. III by Ms. Besant; and I cannot say what anyone may have made of this at the time. The Collected Writings went to Boris de Zirkoff and I cannot remember the timeline of their publication.

If I speculate about it, perhaps it suggests that Tson kha pa is the ultimate mystic known to history, and so that when the "western public" somehow does interface with Tibetan Gelugpas, they will be given great respect because of following this profound man.

It sounds like an art of persuasion, because otherwise they could have simply said "here, copy these actual texts".

However it is still true that Buddhism was built with Indian culture. And Tibet for example uses Chinese astrology. The system, so to speak, does not. Although Theosophy does exalt Tson kha pa, both HPB and the Mahatmas speak of "original Indian esoteric Buddhism", to which the closest is Nepalese, such as with Svabhava and Dhyani Buddhas. That definitely is Yogacara. Because of Svasamvedana, she is implying Samputa Tantra, as Abhayakaragupta and Vajrayogini did.

"More detail" about Nepalese Buddhism was not really even available in the west until 1995.


There, it was never a difficulty to have Sanskrit Asanga. They do not have Tson kha pa and those things. Instead they have memories of Historical Buddhas, such as Vispasin, Krakucchanda, Kanakamuni, and Kasyapa. They definitely have more of a trace-it-to-the-beginning-of-the-world feel even though those Buddhas had limited followings.


If HPB was trying to get Yogacara to "include" Prasangika, then she was trying to do what Ratnakarasanti already did. His technique is in saying, well, with three or four modifications, then you are in my school. Almost all of the others are very divisive, and call each other fools and so on. But the actual Yogacara just argues its points, and says once you realize this, you are doing it. It is about the open-est example of anything so incredibly specific.


To try to explain what Kagyu is, Ratnakarasanti is at the head of its famous elders. He was the teacher of Maitri. From Maitri to Marpa, Gampo, Mila...in fact he would fill in the empty spot the way they normally say it, which would become Tilo, Naro, Ratnakara, Maitri, Marpa...and the main basket of scriptures is known as Marpa Kagyu. So they are essentially representing the literature of Nalanda and India emigrating to Tibet in the wake of the Mughals.


The first Karmapa was the first Tibetan tulku. And then one of the earliest comprehensive Tibetan Yogacara manuals is that of H. H. Third Karmapa Rangjung Dorje (1284–1339). It is translated as Luminous Heart.








One of the doctrines he gives is about the regular Buddhist term Eight Consciousnesses. He says that there are really only seven consciousnesses, because the eighth, Alaya Vijnana, is effectively removed by the practice of Yogacara.

Although this sounds like the Theosophical "system of seven", it is not a linear match, because it is a meditation practice that deals with Manas. And so that is the closest way you could put it, Buddhism has a Sevenfold Manas. It is a training to collapse the Manas, so you will experience what Theosophy would call the higher planes, Atma Buddhi. Except it is not described that way whatsoever.

It is a subtle point, but, Buddhism does not directly match the same kind of universal Theosophical system, particularly because it is not based from the view of Creation. It will work admirably with a "system of seven", but, this would be more along the lines of Buddha Families, which are not planes or principles in the Theosophical sense.

[Bo Atkinson]

Posted by shaberon (here)

There are a few angles on that.
[...]

You cite immense information with extensive terminology and meanings, far beyond what I know, except for one salient point. I know that higher worlds are not exclusively attained by Indian methods or Buddhist methods, exclusively, no matter how vitally important these practices were in themselves.

By focusing on Theosophy, this thread is liberated from "a whole catalogue" or exclusive practices, or singular methodologies, with all the esoteric terminology, on an English speaking forum, via extensive and foreign terms, to explain Theosophy.

Blavatsky wrote pretty much ad hoc, to get communication lines kick-started. She had the strength to do that, few others could open really deep communication lines between east and west, in 1875. She wasn't polishing up a complete system or teaching for posterity. There was no instant-nirvana as the rock song sang about.

Just a strong, international communication avenue, between east and west was needed first, to benefit mankind with eastern consciousness examples, and to introduce these, ultimately for studies with western scientific habits. This was a gradual unfolding, and not HPB's job, as we already know.

What has remained of Theosophy is its own individualized makings, and not in the hands of HPB nor the original founders, nor of the higher worlds. The law of non-interference is maintained. The modern Theosophical org, big- gov, big biz, and the UN are all contrivances on their own personalized responsibilities, (of the individual people who control them).

We can learn from human practices and groups, if we choose to. I pick and choose to better understand mankind's progress, and with due diligence, in an effort to progress beyond the difficult errors, except of course, I'm just human myself, so that I practice with interesting conversation.

There is not one shoe which fits each and everyone of us for this difficult journey on planet earth, so that proselytizing is not likely an effective guide, for developing consciousness. Learning about what has been done here and done there might spur us on, to find the best method we can, and live with the results of method we choose.

With all due respect for other views on this subject matter, may this be discussed: For all my learning, Advaita might be an absolute from of subjectivism. I'm studying this very difficult teaching. We have huge western forms of subjectivism too. Is this correct? Good science rejects subjectivism as personally propped up and applied constructs, (illusion). Could these illusions become deeply ingrained, from one lifetime to subsequent lifetime?

Can subjectivism be removed from our habituation? The scientific method provides some tools to experiment with this prospect. Will we balance science with spirituality for mutual, comprehension?

Here again, Theosophy is an open space to discuss this kind of question and to answer these processes in human life. Illusionism is not blamed on the east nor the west nor on the north or south. It just is something which holds us in the emotional world here and beyond, in the physical life and beyond the physical, it holds us back from becoming aware of higher processes, and it bars us from worlds beyond the higher emotional or higher mental worlds.

This is not accusatory, but rather it is something to ponder. Do we really want to believe certain parts of the higher emotional world is heaven or Shangri-La? (Etc..) By contrast, do we want surgeons to remove our physical brain at some point and keep it alive for replanting it in a less contaminated body? What could go wrong?

[onawah]

Thanks Wavydome.
I didn't really intend for this thread to be full of terminology and detailed, scholarly examination of the history of Theosopathy and that which led up to it (though that may be useful info for some), but to be more about how it affects us personally today.
Being more of an intuitive myself and less of an intellectual, and one who is more interested in connecting dots and seeing the big picture, I appreciate your perspective and the balance it has helped bring to this thread.
It's the uniqueness of Theosophy and how it has changed our perspectives on the whole in many ways that most interests me (and most people, I imagine).
What brought it to my attention for the most part was the role that people like Rudolf Steiner and Edgar Cayce played in it, how it inspired them, and how that makes it stand out from all that has gone before.

[shaberon]

Posted by wavydome (here)
For all my learning, Advaita might be an absolute from of subjectivism. I'm studying this very difficult teaching. We have huge western forms of subjectivism too. Is this correct?

Here is one of my favorite Adwaitees:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=q3Z-dOvOf-0

At least in philosophy. In the interview where she says this, her question is:


What is inside us that reincarnates?


as in, she is not looking for the explanation, but, an experience of something that shows her gnosticly.



Adwaita is a type of yoga which includes the following that I have found to be incredibly potent:

Soham Hamsa


which is probably in all schools, notably:

Adi Shankara's Vakya Vritti subsequent works in the Nath tradition foundational for Hatha yoga.

Matsyendranath's Yogavishaya



The last time I personally had enough peace and quiet to do some yoga was based on Ganapati which is Ganesh.

It is also the school of Sri Yantra.






Since those things are part of the practices in that vein, I would understand hearing someone knows or understands, or has done it. But then for example HPB tells me that the Elohim are equivalent to Dhyani Buddhas. But in printed form the redacted texts have obscured the meaning. On this I have asked several times if the Elohim means anything to anyone or how they do a spiritual practice with it.

No one ever said anything.

It seems actually kind of difficult to find...representatives or adherents? Of things. Like there are five different kinds of Judaism and Islam. I have heard that Sufi is similar to yoga, but, no one is speaking for it.

I strongly agree with the point that was made early on about "intellectual religion", or however you would like to call it. From there, it turns to a question of, what does someone do as spiritual practices? What is this and how does it help you?

It is up to anyone to represent something.

Whatever I am into already has thousands of stuffs from Adwaita or Sakta or Vaisnava and I try to laterally involve these as much as possible. That is one of the main reasons I post here instead of a specifically Buddhist site, since there, about all that happens is "my teacher says x about y", very open-and-shut. Theosophy recommends spiritual yoga, so, how does anyone do this? If they don't then we can comb for ways to make it accessible, but, I cannot really say much about doing anything with, for example, the Elohim, not having the transmission from Mt. Athos, or understanding any original sacred text, etc.

[shaberon]

Posted by onawah (here)
more about how it affects us personally today.

We are still in the same boat.

Do you not agree that it teaches the technique of mind control from the pre-Christian era?

That this was about hypnosis which controlled the governments of Europe like an autocrat?

And so "we", in a certain sense, if we were affected, then we learned how to blink out of that mentality. I figure I have. I have barely learned to count to two, but I am not in that headspace. On that account, I could perhaps credit Theosophy with keeping me out of sheer nihilism. Because I knew things were wrong, but I would have just gotten mad and confused. That's just me. Overall, "we" are fighting out our failure to grasp this message in Ukraine. The Pelings are really being Pelings.

As you might imagine, I no longer consider anything metaphysical a mystery. Everything is in this Karma. We are witnessing a time when this leadership excuses its deadly vaccine for a non-plague that it probably designed, while severing half the world due to more or less getting caught at its own dangerous activities, which, it admits to not being truthful about.


Reflecting on these conditions after all the training against them bears a slightly unpleasant taste.

Theosophy does not really give spiritual practices, but, the history of it explains everything. At the moment we can sort of read it and weep if the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse loom large in our experience.

[Bo Atkinson]

Posted by onawah (here)
... It's the uniqueness of Theosophy and how it has changed our perspectives on the whole in many ways that most interests me (and most people, I imagine).
What brought it to my attention for the most part was the role that people like Rudolf Steiner and Edgar Cayce played in it, how it inspired them, and how that makes it stand out from all that has gone before.

I loved Cacye's book, early in the 1970s, which widened my perspective on reincarnation, and his health food readings had me going too, to learn about diet. I think he actually helped people with day to day needs, which he could somehow assist with. I focussed on radical books because the obvious failure of leadership and the lack of societal models compelled me to look around, through many alternative sources.

I gathered that Steiner was the highly focussed scholar, and wanted to succeed HPB with all his occult teachings, but I only liked his book called Agriculture, with his exotic concoctions to heal the land. These were encouraging at first but became embarrassing later, after learning that organic gardening was as good as it gets, and is much easier to do than Steiner's biodynamics. My wife and I had moved onto a junkyard property way back then, to clean it up and grow things.

I became disappointed with Steiner's occult books with his tremendous obscurity, while I was more interested in arts, technology and how to build a whole life from scratch. His presentation for sort of transcending the beings beyond death really lost me, (end of life passage). Subsequently, I'm groking that his way enters the mysteriously tricky, emotional world, at the deep end, by trusting nonsensical entities, way more idiotic than modern life already is. I needed to try this house of mirrors for myself, through dream chanting before I could realized how hopeless such empty promises can be.

I never read Theosophy until recently, after hylozoics presented the East-West explanation and much more about the unpublished source. Without www searches in the old days, there was no way to follow through on points of interest. Today I'm streamlining to clear up karma so to speak, sowing and reaping, cause and effect, and go for common sense, combined with consciousness development, attention focusing, based on serious study, to improve the unconscious which we carry around like a mystery bag, around on our back, until we finish our lessons of earth.

At our ending point of this life, I don't want to reach into that mystery bag of the unconscious, and find a useless collections of infatuations, of entertaining stuff that never quits and misguided teachings. Instead, I hope today's studies will come out of the bag intact, to continue guiding consciousness wakefully forming.

[shaberon]

Posted by wavydome (here)
...to clear up karma so to speak, sowing and reaping, cause and effect, and go for common sense, combined with consciousness development, attention focusing, based on serious study, to improve the unconscious which we carry around like a mystery bag, around on our back, until we finish our lessons of earth.

That is a reasonable synopsis of the purpose of Christianity and Buddhism.

In the case of the former, we will find that which is called the West or Nazism revealing itself with a few basic ideas in the Great Schism:



Lossky argues the difference in East and West is because of the Catholic Church's use of pagan metaphysical philosophy (and scholasticism) rather than actual experience of God called theoria, to validate the theological dogmas of Catholic Christianity.

Eastern Orthodox theologians charge that, in contrast to Eastern Orthodox theology, western theology is based on philosophical discourse which reduces humanity and nature to cold mechanical concepts.

Eastern Orthodox theologians argue that the mind (reason, rationality) is the focus of Western theology, whereas, in Eastern theology, the mind must be put in the heart, so they are united into what is called nous; this unity as heart is the focus of Eastern Orthodox Christianity involving the unceasing Prayer of the heart.



Without contrasting the details of the practices, we can see that largely and by intent, Orthodoxy is closer to the side of Yogacara vs. Madhyamika and other Buddhist sects it rejects for similar reasons. They are giving a very basic principle, which is distributed in a pattern of equality. And on this, the Western way is again opposite:



According to Eastern Orthodox belief, the test of catholicity is adherence to the authority of Scripture and then by the Holy Tradition of the church. It is not defined by adherence to any particular see. It is the position of the Orthodox Church that it has never accepted the pope as de jure leader of the entire church.


The Catholic Church's current official teachings about papal privilege and power that are unacceptable to the Eastern Orthodox churches are the dogma of the pope's infallibility when speaking officially "from the chair of Peter (ex cathedra Petri)"...and the affirmation that the legitimacy and authority of all (Catholic) Christian bishops in the world derive from their union with the Roman see and its bishop, the Supreme Pontiff, the unique Successor of Peter and Vicar of Christ on earth.


And so for example in the nineteenth century, it is again correct there were 1870--papal bull of infallibility, and 1879--suppression of Johannites. And then today we have a major clash of forces of Orthodoxy vs. "others" or "western", which, everyone there is aware of this ongoing thing. But Theosophy digs into this even deeper by having a very harsh review of what happened in terms of people starting to think St. Peter at Rome was particularly important. In other words, it is making a specific anti-western religion narrative as the starting point. This sphere of influence even agrees, by separating and isolating itself such as by The Great Schism and by Ukraine.

Yogacara is a Noumenal Path because it is the same Nous as mentioned above. Theosophy may indifferently regard this as the operative principle of the Greek Mysteries or of Orthodoxy.



What would have been "The Secret Doctrine Volume Three" is framed around exactly this. It turns on a dime when getting to Peter:

St. Paul, The Real Founder of Present Christianity (120-124)
Peter, A Jewish Kabalist, Not an Initiate (124-127)


The ending third of the book is an attempt to present Tson kha pa-type Buddhism, despite also making Yogacara arguments. And then her whole summary of Buddhism is expressed in the final chapter:

Heart Doctrine or Seal



which again contains a similar proscription about not all branches of Buddhism clearly supporting it.

Hesychasm as the Orthodox practice strongly resembles what we call Pratyahara or withdrawal of the senses, the first part of yoga.

So that is why historically, there is a "sphere" of Russia, Greece, and Buddhism, and outside of it, similar spiritual practices are hard to find. Theosophy is not making a heretic and censorship situation, but it is making some pretty strong statements about its main meaning. Weaknesses of many creeds versus Nous or Heart.

[Journeyman]

I continue to follow this thread without feeling able to contribute much other than appreciation for the posts! In truth, as someone that's (slowly and painfully) trying to extract himself from the Western Ahrimanic mindset and try to ascertain what exactly 'spirituality' is, let alone some of the concepts expressed here, this fascinating thread is probably way beyond my pay grade.

I would however like to attempt to participate put some questions / reactions forward, on the understanding that my knowledge of Theosophy, Steiner, Buddhism etc is rather thin and mostly obtained at one remove rather than diving in to some of the texts which as already noted above can be a little obtuse* to those without some kind of basic grounding in the concepts discussed.

*(or I'm too thick to grasp it, both possibilities definitely on the table at this point)

I get this idea of theosophy building a bridge between Eastern and Western approaches. I'm just not sure where we go to begin with the Western tradition? To me (non Catholic) the Catholic part of Christianity appears hopelessly compromised almost from the outset. A concoction of Roman civic power which has morphed through the ages to either act as or on behalf of the hidden power structure? When I looked at Revelation and found the Eastern Orthodox had resisted its incorporation in the Bible, that struck a chord with me. It's not Christianity, any more than enthroning a man with infallibility or amassing the wealth of the world and temporal authority on the ancient altars of the Queen of Heaven in Rome. It feels like any kind of bridge built to this would result in the fruit of the poisoned tree? Likewise perhaps one alternative from the Western tradition culminating in Alice Bailey and Lucis Trust linking to United Nations meditation room and the various symbols of NWO thinking, it feels spiritually bankrupt and self serving beneath a veneer of idealism. I'm not sure where the 'good' sound Western spiritual thinking is to be found? That's not to say the Eastern won't have its own issues, perhaps I'm just not as aware of them although I have come across discussion of dark currents of thinking in some of the Tibetean schools of thought?

I guess my question, which could already be answered above but I'm too idiotic to grasp it, is does Theosophy represent a good pathway today for the spiritual novice from a Western background? Or is it very much of its time and one would be better advised looking either direct to the source of Eastern thinking, or direct to the source itself by looking within? The latter was where my own research was leading me, because there appears to be a morass of deception, twisting of sources etc etc in almost every direction I look.

[onawah]

That "morass of deception" is why I found Zen and Taoism in their purest form to be very appealing.
They push the practicioner directly into experiencing, not thinking.
Once you have a truly revelatory experince, so many questions are answered.

Posted by Journeyman (here)
I guess my question, which could already be answered above but I'm too idiotic to grasp it, is does Theosophy represent a good pathway today for the spiritual novice from a Western background? Or is it very much of its time and one would be better advised looking either direct to the source of Eastern thinking, or direct to the source itself by looking within? The latter was where my own research was leading me, because there appears to be a morass of deception, twisting of sources etc etc in almost every direction I look.