In the November issue there was unfortunately a link that pointed to the wrong page. Here is the correct link: G. de Purucker on In times of crisis (about World War II)
The Dalai Lama wants to put it to the vote: Do his people want him to reincarnate? I have a hard time not smiling because if his people say 'yes', he says he is considering appointing his reincarnation when he is still alive. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article2955350.ece
"Now because there is a law of opposites it must appear that
there are two ways of arriving at a given goal. The one is violent, the
other not; and each way has a multitude of bypaths that may lead into
inertia, but
none of which connects the way of bloodshed with the way of peace. For
they
are separate, although their courses appear parallel; but that is only
an
appearance. One way leads toward the true goal, peace and patience
begetting
patience and peace, albeit often after many perils narrowly avoided.
But
he who travels by that other way sees nothing but a false goal that
recedes
as he advances, every act of violence inevitably giving impulse to
another
of its kind."
"The spiritual truths of the past are identically the spiritual truths of the present and the future. Time cannot swallow that which is eternal."
141 Neither nakedness, nor entangled hair,
nor uncleanliness, nor fasting, nor sleeping on the ground, nor
covering the body with ashes, nor ever-squatting, can purify a man who
is not pure from doubts and desires.
142 But although a man
may wear fine clothing, if he lives peacefully; and is good,
self-possessed, has faith and is pure; and if he does not hurt any
living being, he is a holy Brahmin, a hermit of seclusion, a monk
called Bhikkhu.
Heaven can be entered after death only if we have already
entered it while
alive. This is the value of life in the flesh; there is no other
worthwhile
value that I know.
Friends and foes! Criticism is the sole salvation for intellectual salvation. It is the beneficent goad which stimulates to life and action-hence to healthy changes-the heavy ruminants called Routine and Prejudice. In private as in social life, adverse opinions are like conflicting winds which brush from the quiet surface of a lake the green scum that tends to settle upon still waters.
H.P. Blavatsky, Literary Jottings, CW XIII page 243.
In this year when the USA will perhaps vote a woman or a black man to be its president (I do so hope for a Democratic president) - I wish you all a happy and healthy 2008!
Katinka Hesselink
"On close observation, you will find that it was never the intention of the Occultists really to conceal what they had been writing from the earnest determined students, but rather to lock up their information for safety-sake, in a secure safe-box, the key to which is - intuition. The degree of diligence and zeal with which the hidden meaning is sought by the student, is generally the test - how far he is entitled to the possession of the so buried treasure." (Mahatma Letters)
"Indeed it must be remembered that all these Stanzas appeal to the inner faculties rather than to the ordinary comprehension of the physical brain." (Proem to The Secret Doctrine)
So it is apparent that The Secret Doctrine is difficult, not because H.P.B. was individually obscure, but because it is not possible to present Theosophy in a language which "all who run may read."
St. Paul cannot too often be defended against the reproach cast upon him fifty years ago by Dr. Goldwin Smith, touching the argument about the seed sown in the ground that it must die before the new life can appear. The Church would rather let St. Paul suffer in literary reputation as the author of I Corinthians than sacrifice their dogma. St. Paul was too well versed in rhetoric to go before the clever scholars of Corinth with a false metaphor and he did not do so. Goldwin Smith did not bring his knowledge of Greek to bear upon the passage, but accepted the interpretation of the Church that the corpse, already dead, was the seed sown in the earth that would spring to life again. The Church has made a graveyard discourse of this chapter, which St. Paul could not possibly have intended as verse 50 makes evident. As a graveyard exhortation to those who blindly believe in the resurrection of the physical body, could a more bitter mockery be conceived than the closing verses: "O grave where is thy victory, O death where is thy sting?"
What a difference when the chapter is read as St. Paul intended it to be: a paean of jubilant life and birth, of life more abundantly, of birth and rebirth on the physical earth, of birth in the psychic world, of birth in the noetic or spiritual world. All this is concealed from the English-speaking reader by mistranslation of important words and the apparent transposition of one or two verses. One Greek word in particular appears to have gained the enmity of the theologians. It is the word psuche, or psyche in English, the butterfly, applied by the Greeks to the human soul, which flits and flutters from flower to flower of the desires of life, so that a man changes from hour to hour, from day to day and from year to year, so that he is never the same at one period of life that he was at another. Jesus and Paul both use the word to represent the human soul or personality, but the translators do their utmost to conceal or camouflage this fact, because "saving the soul" is the great mission of the evangelical preacher, though Jesus taught that he who would seek to save his soul would lose it, the changeable personality having to be abandoned so that the stable spiritual Self, the ever present Christ principle, available to every man, may become the basic reality of his existence. The translators make Jesus say that "he who would seek to save his life shall lose it," which is nonsense. (See Luke ix. 24, and kindred passages for the substitution of life for soul.) A similar deception as found in the writings of St. Paul. Verse 44 of this 15 chapter of I Corinthians may be studied as the basis of Goldwin Smith's charge of false metaphor. The Authorized Version reads: "It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body." The word "Natural" should be "psychic," and is so rendered in the margin of the Revised Versions of 1881-1886. "Natural" conveys to people generally the meaning of common or ordinary, so that the corpse is understood to be meant as what is "sown" in the burial of a dead body. This is an entire misconception of Paul's teaching. Burial in a grave of a dead body was not in his mind at all. What he speaks of is the psychic body, sown at birth in a physical body, to be raised in its reincarnation or resurrection, the conditions mentioned duly applying to the psychic body which the experiences of the disciple must change it into a more glorious spiritual body or if he fails try again in another incarnation. These conditions obviously do not apply to a body of flesh and blood as verse 50 makes plain. It, that is, the psychic body, is sown in corruption: it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in dishonor (how can this apply to the mortal bodies of our beloved ones?): it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness: it is raised in power: it is sown a psychic body: it is raised a spiritual body. There is a psychic body and there is a spiritual body. It depends wholly on the disciple himself of what kind of flesh his next body shall consist of if he reincarnates, whether he shall have a terrestrial or a celestial body; whether he shall share the glory of the sun or that of the moon or a star. If he is able to transcend the psychic world he will become a quickening spirit, for the "second man is the Lord from heaven."
It is clear enough from all this that Paul used no false metaphor. The psychic seed, which is the personality must die, as Jesus taught: "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whosoever will save his soul (psuche, personality) will lose it; but whosoever will lose his soul for my sake, the same shall save it." (Luke ix. 23, 24).
"I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called. With all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love; endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace . . . till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God; unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." (Ephesians iv. 1, 2, 3, 13).
A hungry lion happened to see this man and began to chase him. The man came to the edge of a cliff and fell into the abyss. On his way down, he saw a branch and grabbed it. When he looked down, he saw another lion waiting for him at the bottom of the ravine and when he looked up he saw the first lion that had caused this predicament to start with. At that very moment, two mice, one white and one black, started to gnaw away at the very branch that was saving him from certain death and to which he tenaciously clung. Just before the two mice were to completely gnaw through the branch, the man saw a wild strawberry growing there. Ah! How sweet it tasted!
The past and future are hungry lions that will devour you in the present. The black and white duality of thought will gnaw away at, and separate us from, the very Life to which we cling. Awareness of the life of now is an indescribable sweetness.
Only now is real.
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