Theos-Talk Archives (February 1998 Message tt00167)

Mon. Feb 16 '98

Dear Bruce:                Yours of the 13th concerning my
question about "I" - the "self" that
                                            observes and notices
all changes


Ecstasy    Webster    -  being outside of "ones' self -- out of
reason or self-control -- over-
                                        mastering feeling  --  In
mysticism:  prophetic or poetic trance
 Apparently there are two levels/stages:  Controlled and
uncontrolled

Hence in theosophical psychology (as I read it) you have the
condition of the Adept who
controls and of the medium (or channeler) who is passive and is
controlled by some external "influence"

As I understand it for an Adept to contact his "Divine Inner
Self"  [ HIGHER SELF ] he has to so purify his personal [ Lower ]
Self that it can become transparent to the "divine" and the
"spiritual."  Hence, the study of and practice of morals on the
thesis that we are at root immortals and that Karma operates
incessantly and our 'motives' make or break or progress to that
point of divine or spiritual contact.

To me it seems that the personal mind (my self here, awake in
this body, now) has to make itself as pure as possible so that it
can unerringly contact by will-power, its own
HIGHER SELF.  I found some very suggestive notes on this in HPB's
SD.
[ see SD II 79-80, 109-110, 318fn, I 260 bottom, ]

It thus seems to me that the inclination of the/my embodied,
personal mind/self is towards a selfishness that desires to
"protect" the status quo to which it is accustomed.

Whereas, the impersonal mind/Self is actively encouraging that
same lower self (its mirror in matter) to transcend the limited
personal for the boundless spheres of knowledge and life which is
represented to us as the divine and "spiritual."

I don't think I am adding much more to what you said, but perhaps
I am wring in understanding you.

Dallas