Theosophy

What Music Teaches Us about Presenting Theosophy

Details: Published: Friday, 17 September 2010 03:00

Edi Bilimoria – Australia

Music is not mere entertainment or just a pleasurable distraction when we have finished with the more serious side of life. Nor are opera, dance, and ballet just the elitist pursuit of the social dilettante. Music expresses the deepest core meaning of living and learning. For example, Handel, whose tremendous oratorio The Messiah has uplifted the consciousness of humanity for centuries, is supposed to have declared that his purpose was to make people better, not just to entertain them. As the first notes of the triumphant Hallelujah Chorus rang out at the London premier of The Messiah, King George II rose to his feet and remained standing until the end of the chorus. To this day, audiences spontaneously revere this Chorus by standing up.

Handel

Of course, music like any of the arts, may hinder the seeker. Sensual or nerve-jarring cacophony, such as that at a disco, is a hindrance and arguably even a physical and moral danger to a sensitive person. But as elevating feeling by music is a yoga path to a perfect connection between the divine and the human, music is not only a form of expression but a means of lifting thought and feeling to the higher realm of illumination.

Bach

Knowledge Comes in Visions

Details: Published: Monday, 13 September 2010 03:00

H. P. Blavatsky

Collected Writings 13:285 [A posthumously published fragment attributed to HPB in the Theosophist 31 (March, 1910): 685]

Knowledge comes in visions, first in dreams and then in pictures presented to the inner eye during meditation. Thus have I been taught the whole system of evolution, the laws of being and all else that I know—the mysteries of life and death, the workings of karma. Not a word was spoken to me of all this in the ordinary way, except, perhaps, by way of confirmation of what was thus given me—nothing taught me in writing. And knowledge so obtained is so clear, so convincing, so indelible in the impression it makes upon the mind, that all other sources of information, all other methods of teaching with which we are familiar dwindle into insignificance in comparison with this. One of the reasons why I hesitate to answer offhand some questions put to me is the difficulty of expressing in sufficiently accurate language things given to me in pictures, and comprehended by me by the pure Reason, as Kant would call it.

Theirs is a synthetic method of teaching: the most general outlines are given first, then an insight into the method of working, next the broad principles and notions are brought into view, and lastly begins the revelation of the minuter points.

The Essence of H.P. Blavatsky’s Message

Details: Published: Saturday, 11 September 2010 22:51

Gottfried de Purucker – USA

We speak of rendering homage. There are various ways of so doing. There is the homage of words, and there is the homage of the heart which leads to emulation. The homage of words is good when the heart is behind it; but the homage imitating grand action is finer and higher still.

I think the best homage we can render to H. P. Blavatsky, outside of the words with which we express our deep gratitude, is by copying her, copying her life and her work for mankind: being as like unto the example she gave to us as it is possible for us to be. She indeed said the same in regard to her relation to her own teachers: they teach, I follow. My message is not my own, but of those who sent me.

In the Theosophical world since her passing there has been no small amount of talk about the successors of H.P.B.; and all this has seemed to me to be so perfectly trivial, a trifling with words and with the most sacred instincts and impulses of the human heart. For every true Theosophist is a successor of H.P.B. and should be glad of it and proud of it. We are all successors of H.P.B., every one of us without exception whatsoever. And the least is often the greatest amongst us. Here is a case where it is not conceit or arrogance but the impulse of a loving and grateful heart to come to the front and serve, and dedicate one's service to the cause which our teachers have served and which they still serve. What is grander than this? Actually it is the abdication, the rejection, of the low and the personal. It is the forgetting of the personal and the sinking of the self into the immensely greater self of the universe. When we forget ourselves, then something supremely grand is born in us; for then the spiritual, of which we humans are such feeble examples, has a chance to come forth in us, to speak and to work in and through us, because then it begins to find its channel in and through the human heart and mind.

The Path of Committed Service

Details: Published: Saturday, 11 September 2010 22:40

Lorraine Christensen – Canada

[The following article is based on a talk by Lorraine Christensen, given during the 2007 summer meeting of the Theosophical Society in America at Wheaton, Illinois.]

The ideal of a path of committed service derives from what Theosophy teaches about the spiritual path and the place of service on that path. That teaching is set forth clearly in three well-known Theosophical classics: At the Feet of the Master, Light on the Path, and The Voice of the Silence. Each of these books describes progressively the journey of the aspirant along the far-reaching spiritual path, offering guideposts along the way.

Each of those books talks about three key aspects of the topic: the path, commitment, and service. For a Theosophist these aspects are inseparable, as we cannot have any one of them without the other two. In the lives of each of us, all three are mixed in varying degrees. So let us explore each of these aspects and consider how they fit together.

Path. In the Theosophical tradition, "the path" implies a conscious journey, returning to our ultimate spiritual source. This journey contrasts with traveling through life like a leaf in the wind, pulled and charmed every which way by a variety of outside forces and impelled from within by often unruly and conflicting impulses, desires, and instincts. The path denotes not only a journey, but also a state of being. The Voice of the Silence says: "Thou canst not travel on the path before thou hast become that path itself."

What are some of the characteristics of this spiritual path? They include the following. The path implies active movement, as opposed to remaining static. The path is often rugged, so those who walk it need sometimes to take refuge and find shelter along the way. We do not travel alone on the path. We receive from, and extend to others, helping hands. The path has purpose, which gives meaning to our lives. The path is empowering, as one's confidence grows with each step forward. The path involves being in the divine flow, which we can experience profoundly as losing ourselves in the moving energy of something greater than ourselves.

SELF KNOWLEDGE

Details: Published: Saturday, 19 June 2010 03:00

The first necessity for obtaining self-knowledge is to become profoundly conscious of ignorance; to feel with every fibre of the heart that one is ceaselessly self-deceived.

The second requisite is the still deeper conviction that such knowledge—such intuitive and certain knowledge—can be obtained by effort.

The third and most important is an indomitable determination to obtain and face that knowledge.

Self-knowledge of this kind is unattainable by what men usually call "self-analysis." It is not reached by reasoning or any brain process; for it is the awakening to consciousness of the Divine nature of man.

To obtain this knowledge is a greater achievement than to command the elements or to know the future.

Collected Writings 8:108 [Lucifer, 1.2 (October, 1887): 89] [Authorship somewhat uncertain, but presumably by HPB.]