Lucifer7, December 2008


Contents

New Online
Short Quotes
Editorial
The Lord's Prayer

New online

New on squidoo

On all Considering in November


Short Quotes

Talbot Mundy (Theosophical Path, April, 1924)

"We are all afraid. Our lower nature, which persists in every one of us (or we should be invisible to mortal eyes and functioning on vastly higher planes of being) dreads its own destruction and deceives us - even the best of us - with arguments of ever-increasing subtility, of which a favorite one is that we should be at the mercy of the lower nature of others unless ready at all times to use dishonest methods for our own defense. But the truth is that the only absolute protection against treachery is honesty. The slightest compromise with dishonesty provides an opening through which the darkest forces surge and gain control of us. It is not the other man's dishonesty, but our own that endangers us as individuals. In other words, if we admit one trace of insincerity into our reasoning the effect is similar to that of poison introduced into a well; it does not poison one part of the water, but all of it; and the more colorless and unnoticeable it is, the more deadly the results."

Buddha, Dhammapada, Translation Juan Mascaro

63 If a fool can see his own folly, he in this at least is wise; but the fool who thinks he is wise, he indeed is the real fool.

H.P. Blavatsky

(..)According to our theosophical tenets, every man or woman is endowed, more or less, with a magnetic potentiality, which when helped by a sincere, and especially by an intense and indomitable will--is the most effective of magic levers placed by Nature in human hands--for woe as for weal. Let us then, Theosophists, use that will to send a sincere greeting and a wish of good luck for the New Year to every living creature under the sun--enemies and relentless traducers included. Let us try and feel especially kindly and forgiving to our foes and persecutors, honest or dishonest, lest some of us should send unconsciously an "evil eye" greeting instead of a blessing.(...)

Paul Brunton, The Spiritual Crisis of Man, Chapter XII

What does spiritual progress mean? Does it mean to have more and more visions, raptures or strange happenings? No! It means that every year a man shall feel more control of himself, more improvement in his character, more watchful of and obedient to his intuitions, more devoted to his higher self. 


Editorial

The holiday season is upon us. I will for instance be celebrating 'Sinterklaas' on Friday December 5th as is the Dutch custom. We will be sharing gifts (anonymously) enhanced with poems for the occasion. I expect at least one gift will be hidden somewhere in the house with the poem giving some hints on where that gift might be. Last year I had to follow a series of such clues: each gift found contained merely a poem describing where next to look. This was all properly symbolical as the gift was a dvd-set containing information on the Tibetan Bardo's - or the stages of consciousness after death (or between lives).

The Lord's Prayer

Canadian Theosophist, Volume 25, #9 - 1944

The late James Morgan Pryse, when he was a child of five or six, had been taught Greek by his father and in repeating the Lord's Prayer to himself he discovered that the Greek version was a mantram, a magical invocation which had the effect of raising his consciousness to a higher level.  Mr. Pryse translated the prayer as follows:
Our Father who art in the Over-world, thy Name be intoned, thy Realm return, thy WILL arise.
As in the Firmament, so on the Earth.
That Bread of the coming day give us today:  and free us from our obligations, as we also have freed those under obligation to us;  and bring us not to the test, but deliver us from uselessness.
For thine is the Realm, the Force and the Radiance, throughout the Life-cycles.  Amen.
    This incantation involves esoteric knowledge, and those who seek it seriously will find it.  Those who are satisfied with exoteric statements will get nowhere.
    Mr. Pryse explains that the Greek epiousion, is a coined word found nowhere except in this prayer;  it clearly does not mean "daily", but evidently "which is coming" or "of the future."  The Bread is the "Bread of Life", of which the Christos says:  "I am that Living Bread that came down out of the Firmament.  If anyone eats of this Bread he shall live throughout the Life-cycle (aion) " (John vi. 51) .

Previous issues of Lucifer7 can be found at the online index of Lucifer7

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