Theos-Talk Archives (March 2004 Message tt00559)

March 24th 2004

RE Freedom in Thinking -- 
Who binds us other than ourselves?

Dear Friends :

Let me ask and observe: Are there any answers?


Why is there anything? You try and escape !! Should we ?


In response let me observe (technically, and with reference to 

HPB's The KEY TO THEOSOPHY (p. 134) on 

PERSONALITY AND INDIVIDUALITY 

that :

The "Personality" being a short-lived being is always "unstable." But
it has an insatiable urge to make itself "stable" and "permanent." How
is this to be done? Can it be done?

However, THEOSOPHY teaches there is the more fundamental and permanent
INDIVIDUALITY [Atma-Buddhi-Manas] -- and that is the eternal MONAD (the
ONE in three) that does not die. [ATMA = Spiritual universal
perfection -- Man's "Atma" being a "ray" of the ONE UNIVERSAL
PARAMATMA.] [BUDDHI = the accumulated grasp and understanding of the
operation of KARMIC LAW everywhere without any exception.] [MANAS =
Mind, the power of the developing Monad-unit to THINK independently, and
on understanding the rule of immutable LAW, choose to cooperate with
it.] 

On IT (the INDIVIDUALITY -- the MONAD) the many "personalities" we wear
hang like gems on a string. Theosophy declares that the highest
aspirations of the personality form those beads of memory that decorate
the past of all individuals. 

Perhaps we ought to find out what "aspirations" are. The VOICE OF THE
SILENCE enjoins the study and practice of "virtues." Are they to be
known and cultivated, or to be shunned with fear and loathing? Who or
what is it in us that decides? Isn't this the paradox the real problem
we all encounter as embodied "personalities?" What ought to be our
relation to our "INDIVIDUALITY?" Do we have an "INDIVIDUALITY?" How is
it to be identified?

Our talents (or lack of them) would seem to indicate the trend of our
self-made capacities to determine our own fate or destiny. Each
"Personality" (on review) shows how our "Karma" is operating. To
"review" implies a "Thinker" and material in memory-storage to review
and re-evaluate. How is such a "review" set up? Who, or what in us,
profits from such a review?

Without the background of a cooperative, life-giving, and law filled
universe surrounding us, our individual and personal existence has
little if any meaning. 

But if one takes the view (as THEOSOPHY teaches) that there is an
unbroken continuity of life and individual existence -- from "atom" to
"Galaxy" -- and that the "path" of individual progress is an unbroken
continuity, one that can be traced through the experience of the whole
of manifestation and progress, and that the stage of "manhood" (as a
thinker and a chooser) is essential for all, then the situation that we
find ourselves in "today and now" begins to assume purpose and meaning.
(Is this valuable? If so, to whom?) 

Our greatest difficulty in this incarnation(I would observe in myself)
is to realise intellectually the deathless state of the interior
INDIVIDUALITY. That it is stable and permanent in(myself) in us. We
need only consider that which Science demonstrates: that everything
physical in us alters and changes constantly -- every moment since our
"birth." What then, holds it stable and useful as a tool with the
consciousness of a "past" and the ability to foresee potential
"futures": that depend on present choices? 

If as THEOSOPHY teaches the "astral body" serves as an electro-magnetic
lattice work for new atoms and molecules to align themselves on, then in
counterpart, what do our thoughts and feelings find to use as a "lattice
work of energy" interior to us on which they are arranging themselves?
How do they exist and what makes them change? Finally might we not
ask: What is REAL in me? What is the "will" with which I am able to
consider and make changes that I decide on ? If I can change my thinking
and rearrange my thoughts, then am I not superior to the process of
thinking? Who or what in me is the THINKER ? [ Could we use some of
the ideas and the definitions given above?]

>From my own experience, I would observe that a careful review of what
HPB teaches in The KEY TO THEOSOPHY is of inestimable help. Another
book that synthesizes and makes practical both philosophy and ethics is
Mr. Judge's The OCEAN OF THEOSOPHY .

[Should the personality wish "beast "wishes to the INDIVIDUALITY in this
?]

Best wishes.

Dallas

=====================

Original Message-----
From: Drpsionic
Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2004 8:03 AM
To: 
Subject: Re: Freedom of THOUGHT



<< My take is that real theosophy is no 
place for the unstable or unbalanced, and that it can in fact,
unbalance 
even the well-grounded and stable personality.. >>

Which would obviously explain most of the folks in the TS. :)

Couldn't resist that one.

Chuck the Heretic