The absolute acceptance of a just Law that governs the universe, based on knowledge of its existence, would mean neither the repulsion nor the seeking of what that Law brings or withholds. But even without that knowledge, one can take what comes with equanimity.
We must remember that cold, unfeeling mentality alone will not suffice during the analysis; this path demands that we put the heart, as well as the head, into it.
This issue of Lucifer7 abounds with short quotes and dips into subjects. Quite a few classic theosophical interests are delved into. For instance Dr. Jeremy Wheeler, an experienced hypnotist, shares his view on the dangers of hypnosis. A link to his very interesting site is included. Other than that most of this issue is a dip by the editor into various subjects. She's either simply quoted and commented, or included links and hopes an interesting issue has once again been produced.
As many of you will realize: on june 8th the planet venus will
go
before the sun. I guess astrologically this means the sun and venus are
in conjunction. Views on what this means are invited.
THEOSOPHIST. To be pointed, according to our teaching all these great social evils, the distinction of classes in Society, and of the sexes in the affairs of life, the unequal distribution of capital and of labour -- all are due to what we tersely but truly denominate KARMA.
ENQUIRER. But, surely, all these evils which seem to fall upon the masses somewhat indiscriminately are not actual merited and INDIVIDUAL Karma?
THEOSOPHIST. No, they cannot be so strictly defined in their effects as to show that each individual environment, and the particular conditions of life in which each person finds himself, are nothing more than the retributive Karma which the individual generated in a previous life. We must not lose sight of the fact that every atom is subject to the general law governing the whole body to which it belongs, and here we come upon the wider track of the Karmic law. Do you not perceive that the aggregate of individual Karma becomes that of the nation to which those individuals belong, and further, that the sum total of National Karma is that of the World? The evils that you speak of are not peculiar to the individual or even to the Nation, they are more or less universal; and it is upon this broad line of Human interdependence that the law of Karma finds its legitimate and equable issue.
ENQUIRER. Do I, then, understand that the law of Karma is not necessarily an individual law?
THEOSOPHIST. That is just what I mean. It is impossible that Karma could readjust the balance of power in the world's life and progress, unless it had a broad and general line of action. It is held as a truth among Theosophists that the interdependence of Humanity is the cause of what is called Distributive Karma, and it is this law which affords the solution to the great question of collective suffering and its relief. It is an occult law, moreover, that no man can rise superior to his individual failings, without lifting, be it ever so little, the whole body of which he is an integral part. In the same way, no one can sin, nor suffer the effects of sin, alone. In reality, there is no such thing as "Separateness"; and the nearest approach to that selfish state, which the laws of life permit, is in the intent or motive.
ENQUIRER. And are there no means by which the distributive or national Karma might be concentred or collected, so to speak, and brought to its natural and legitimate fulfillment without all this protracted suffering?
THEOSOPHIST. As a general rule, and within certain limits which define the age to which we belong, the law of Karma cannot be hastened or retarded in its fulfillment.
Know, O brother mine, that where a truly spiritual love seeks to consolidate itself doubly by a pure, permanent union of the two, in its earthly sense, it commits no sin, no crime in the eyes of the great Ain-Soph, for it is but the divine repetition of the Male and Female Principles - the microcosmal reflection of the first condition of Creation. On such a union angels may well smile! But they are rare, Brother mine, and can only be created under the wise and loving supervision of the Lodge, in order that the sons and daughters of clay might not be utterly degenerated, and the Divine Love of the Inhabitants of Higher Spheres (Angels) towards the daughters of Adam be repeated. But even such must suffer, before they are rewarded. Man's Atma may remain pure and as highly spiritual while it is united with its material body; why should not two souls in two bodies remain as pure and uncontaminated notwithstanding the earthly passing union of the latter two ...
The author of this article assumes that no one believes that people physically go to hell. I don't know, I've met many who thought they might physically be resurrected at the 'End of Time', just because they believed (in Jesus Christ as the only Savior). They took tremendous comfort in this fact and seemed not at all perturbed by the fact that by that token I'd be going to eternal hell. The usual answer: but you too could believe in the salvation by Christ... Unfortunately (or fortunately) I am quite incapable of that belief. Of course, eternal hell and damnation is the strongest punishment one could come up with. For the credulous it will create a fear beyond any other. Since a solid basis for this belief is missing in the Bible, I guess this fear is precisely the motive those who propagate the thought had (and have) in mind.
In today's modern man the chakras beneath the diaphragm are all well developed, and the energies from these areas strongly influence the subconscious and lower mind – man's animal self. When another person imposes their will upon yours it activates and stimulates certain chakras, especially the solar plexus chakra which is already well developed in man. When it is stimulated due to hypnosis it opens you up to the astral planes, and the world of glamour and illusion. Equally so I believe the sacral chakra also becomes over-stimulated. Over stimulation of this chakra eventually causes lust and sexual perversions. I also believe that from regular subjection to hypnosis it causes the base chakra to malfunction producing anxiety, instability and in some cases even psychosis
The chakras in the heart mainly, and also in the throat and the head that are not as yet so well developed in man, and it is from above the diaphragm we have the energy centres which mainly influence the higher mind, super-consciousness, or divine Self. Man is half-animal from the diaphragm down and half-divine from the heart upwards.
The ajna chakra or pituitary gland is the main gland that controls the secretions of the rest the endocrine glandular system. It is also known as the master chakra, controlling the other chakras. It is also the area of intellect and reasoning. You could think of it as a computer, the control room for the rest of the mind and body. You, the operator at the keyboard of this computer are stunned by hypnosis and another person takes control. Being hypnotized and going into trance is like losing your freedom, surrendering your will and control to another person. This other person – the hypnotist – whether he himself is conscious or not of his control and how that works, is now able to influence your chakras – the energy centres – and give your mind, the lower or subconscious mind, new instructions of a mental and emotional nature. It is not the subject controlling him or herself and using their own will and mind, but it is as though the hypnotist has stunned the other person's mind by repeated blows from his will to hypnotize the subject. With hypnosis it is the ajna chakra being stunned, which in turn also over activates and stimulates the lower chakras. (A clue here is to watch the Evangelist healers who, by touching "patients" on the centre of their forehead, can cause them to collapse through the power of the Holy Spirit: or is it just hypnosis?)
Think of the mind like a team of wild horses, and rather than controlling them through muscular strength and taking hold of the reins, you ask another to hit them on the head to stun them into a submissive state for a short period of time. Each time another stuns the horses into submission the person loses an amount of their own mental energy. From continued regular sessions of hypnosis from another person, entering into this docile state, instead of gaining power and better control, the mind can become a shapeless powerless mass. (Raja Yoga by Swami Vivekananda)
It is as if the personality becomes dormant or retreats from its seat in the control room leaving no one to push the buttons of the computer. Hypnosis is a form of trespass upon another's consciousness. Repeated hypnosis, and the negative effects it produces, can eventually derange the brain cells.
Hypnotism has been used by physicians in minor operations as a sort of psychical chloroform for persons who might be endangered by an aesthetic. But a hypnotic state is harmful to those often subjected to it; a negative psychological effect ensues that in time deranges the brain cells. Hypnotism is trespass into the territory of another's consciousness. Its temporary phenomena have nothing in common with the miracles performed by men of divine realization. (Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda)
If another person's will is continually imposed upon you via hypnotic techniques, that energy from their will, forcing control over your mind or bodily functions, only hammers in another nail to your own bondage of being a slave to your senses, and hinders you from becoming a master of yourself. Also, there are the other unconscious suggestions that are entering your subconscious, which you are not even aware of. Remember, the chakras are centres or entry points to the subconscious mind allowing various energies into your etheric body. While in this docile negative state of hypnotic trance, you are more open to the other millions of negative thoughts that are flying around the ether of the universe.
When a subject is in hypnosis the psychic centres, or chakras, become more open: this is why and how different forms of psychic phenomena and certain types of clairvoyance are heightened when in a hypnotic trance. Most psychics today, reading tarot cards and such like, work from the solar plexus, the instinctive mind. This is the lower mind, the animal part of the human being, and the information is not always accurate; after all it is instinctive, and is of the astral body, or emotional body. It is mainly these lower centres that are influenced while in a hypnotic trance.
It is the higher mind, and the higher self that separates us from all other creatures of the animal kingdom. It is as if we are half-human and half-divine. Knowledge from the higher mind manifests itself as inspiration and intuition. Intuition is inner knowledge, knowledge of the truth, knowledge from the soul.
It is as if we are all sleeping gods. How ironic that the word hypnosis comes from the Greek word Hypnos, the god of sleep.
Once we start to truly awaken from our sleep our possibilities are infinite. You may think you are not asleep. Wakey, wakey, can you control your thoughts and feelings? Are you in a state of continual happiness and unconditional love? Are you a master of yourself and are all your needs met, and have you no insatiable desires? If there is such a thing as a spiritual awakening, what is it we are awakening from?
In our approach to life, be it pragmatic or otherwise, a basic fact that confronts us squarely and unmistakably is the desire for peace, security and happiness. Different forms of life at different levels of existence make up the different levels of existence on this earth of ours. And no matter whether they belong to the higher groups such as human beings, or to the lower groups such as animals, all beings primarily seek peace, comfort and security. Life is as dear to a mute creature as it is to a man. Even the lowliest insect strives for protection from dangers that threaten its life. Just as each one of us wants happiness and fears pain, just as each one of us wants to live and not to die, so do all the other creatures.
One is trained to be an individual - me as opposed to you, my ego against your ego. But the fact is that one is the entire humanity. One goes through what every human being goes through, all one's sexual appetites, indulgences, sorrow, great hope, fear, anxiety, the immense sense of loneliness - that is what every human being has, that is one's life. One is the entire humanity, one is not individual. One likes to think one is, but one is not.
There is a life in which there is no centre as 'me', a life, therefore, walking hand in hand with death; and out of that sense of ending totally, time has come to an end. Time is movement, movement is thought, thought is time. When one asks: "Can one live in that eternity?" - one cannot understand. See what one has done. "I want to live in eternity, to understand immortality" - which means the 'I' must be part of that. But what is the 'I'? A name, a form, and all the things that thought has put together; that is what the 'I' actually is, to which one clings. And when death comes, through disease, accident, old age, how scared one is.
... One night when I had tasted bitterness I went out on to the hill. Dark heather checked my feet. Below marched the suburban street lamps. Windows, their curtains drawn, were shut eyes, inwardly watching the lives of dreams. Beyond the sea's level darkness a lighthouse pulsed. Overhead, obscurity.
I distinguished our own house, our islet in the tumultuous and bitter currents of the world. There, for a decade and a half, we two, so different in quality, had grown in and in to one another, for mutual support and nourishment, in intricate symbiosis. There daily we planned our several undertakings, and recounted the day's oddities and vexations. There letters piled up to be answered, socks to be darned. There the children were born, those sudden new lives. There, under that roof, our own two lives, recalcitrant sometimes to one another, were all the while thankfully one, one larger, more conscious life than either alone.
All this, surely, was good. Yet there was bitterness. And bitterness not only invaded us from the world; it welled up also within our own magic circle. For horror at our futility, at our own unreality, and not only at the world's delirium, had driven me out on to the hill.
We were always hurrying from one little urgent task to another, but the upshot was insubstantial. Had we, perhaps, misconceived our whole existence? Were we, as it were, living from false premises? And in particular, this partnership of ours, this seemingly so well-based fulcrum for activity in the world, was it after all nothing but a little eddy of complacent and ingrown domesticity, ineffectively whirling on the surface of the great flux, having in itself no depth of being, and no significance? Had we perhaps after all deceived ourselves? Behind those rapt windows did we, like so many others, indeed live only a dream? In a sick world even the hale are sick. And we two, spinning our little life mostly by rote, seldom with clear cognizance, seldom with firm intent, were products of a sick world.
Yet this life of our was not all sheer and barren fantasy. Was it not spun from the actual fibres of reality, which we gathered in with all the comings and goings through our door, all our traffic with the suburb and the city and with remoter cities, and with the ends of the earth? And were we not spinning together an authentic expression of our own nature? Did not our life issue daily as more or less firm threads of active living and mesh itself into the growing web, the intricate, ever-proliferating pattern of mankind?
I considered "us" with quiet interest and a kind of amused awe. How could I describe our relationship even to myself without either disparaging it or insulting it with the tawdry decoration of sentimentality? For this our delicate balance of dependence and independence, this coolly critical, shrewdly ridiculing, but loving mutual contact, was surely a microcosm of true community, was after all in its simple style an actual and living example of that high goal which the world seeks.
The whole world? The whole universe? Overheard, obscurity unveiled a star. One tremulous arrow of light, projected how many thousands of years ago, now stung my nerves with vision, and my heart with fear. For in such a universe as this what significance could there be in our fortuitous, our frail, our evanescent community?
But now irrationally I was seized with a strange worship, not, surely of the star, that mere furnace which mere distance falsely sanctified, but of something other, which the dire contrast of the star and us signified to the heart. Yet what, what could thus be signified? Intellect, peering beyond the star, discovered no Star Maker, but only darkness; no Love, no Power even, but only Nothing. And yet the heart praised.
On the technical aspects of this cd-rom, there is one unfortunate aspect. The quotes are published as microsoft-word documents. This means that the majority of readers will be able to use this cd-rom. On the other hand, as microsoft changes its word-format with every new version of its software, and doesn't always include the option of reading older versions, this cd-rom may well be illegible in 10 years time. A better choice would have been PDF, RTF or HTML format. The cd-rom is published as 'Volume One, The Heritage Series'. This suggests the publishers hope to continue this effort. Let's hope next time they will pay a bit more attention to finding a format that may stand the test of time a bit better. Unfortunately the electronic age isn't one where formats last very long, but there are attempts to limit this problem, and I feel one of those attempts should have been chosen.
Perhaps it's my familiarity with the above mentioned booklets that makes me critical, but to my mind the quotes on this cd-rom don't come near the quality of the works I'm familiar with. The merits of this cd-rom lie in making a few decent quotes available for those unfamiliar with Sri Ram's work and those fans of Sri Ram that want to have everything that is published on and by him. That said, there is a good biographical scetch of N. Sri Ram and the documents are enriched with pictures of N. Sri Ram, pictures by Roerich and pictures of places on the theosophical estates owned by the TS in America (Adyar).
Available from Quest Books
The second issue is the return of Freud. Sigmund Freud was one of the first wester psychologists. The gist of his theory of human consciousness was that large amounts of our motivation for certain actions is embedded in the unconscious. Scientists moved away from that theory as they didn't at that time find a lot of evidence for this theory. Neorologists of today are finding the opposite though. Apparently Freud's theory provides a framework in which many detailed findings of modern neurology can be put. This development puts psychoanalysis back into the centre of 'evidence-based' psychological treatments. Undoubtedly this will lead to more respect for talking therapy in general.
F. SPANNER, U.S. Navy, Retired, woke up in the morning still full of the ideas he had gotten from a dream that was as clear as a real experience. It impressed him so much that while it was still fresh in his memory he went and told it to his wise old friend, Mr. Whitely. It ran very much as follows.
"It seemed as if my old Navy shipmate Sparks, the Radioman, and I were having an interesting experience testing a new radio device by which a person could listen in to the thoughts of other folk - their actual thought - not the seeming thoughts back of their conversation, and also that the same device made it possible for Sparks and myself to broadcast our actual thoughts to impinge on the minds of any particular persons we wished.
"While I was intent on broadcasting to a certain group some thoughts that seemed helpful and kind and friendly, I happened to glance over at Sparks. His face showed a sort of puzzled concern, so that I asked him what was wrong. He answered that he had been listening in on the thoughts of a group of people together at some apparently friendly entertainment. There seemed to be, as it were, two sets of thought-actions going on in the minds of each of the folk he was studying. There were the thought-forms directly connected with the conversations, which were amiable and friendly, and then there seemed to be certain vigorous thought-forms that appeared to be stamped with suspicion, distrust, and fear. And further, these qualities of thought coming from one person seemed to react on others so as to increase the disturbing thoughts already in their minds. While Sparks and I were talking about it, I woke up."
After Mr. Spanner finished telling his dream Mr. Whitely remained quiet, in deep thought, for a while. Then he turned to Mr. Spanner and said: "You have been dreaming about some very serious facts that the majority of men do not consider. Men's brains are very wonderful radio sets that are fitted for both sending and receiving ideas. It is very important to understand this quality of brain structure in these days when people are in such close association with each other. It is just as dangerous to be ignorant of this as it is to be willfully destructive, as you can see. Unfriendly ideas, unexpressed, build up into dangerous forces for destructiveness. It is a further fact that a person in a group where such harmful thought-emanations are building up, can by a strong, positive, friendly, goodwill thought-force from himself counteract the unfriendly thought-structure and may even start a wave of positive friendly thoughts that will build up into bases for real trust and true friendship. Refuse to think unkind thoughts; think kind thoughts, and trust and friendship are bound to develop. That is what makes real civilization."