Theos-Talk Archives (July 2009 Message tt00482)

As I said Adelaise, Anand isÂa christian posing as a Theosophist 

Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum Illuc, unde negant redire quemquam
Catullus, Gaius Valerius

Cass


>
>From: Anand <AnandGholap@gmail.com>
>To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com
>Sent: Tuesday, 28 July, 2009 1:26:51 AM
>Subject: Theos-World Re: On Personal Gods
>
>Â 
>Adelaise,
>I also don't have any desire to argue with you. Blavatsky's blasphemy against Christianity, Hinduism and Islam is making Theosophical Society look ridiculous. 
>
>--- In theos-talk@yahoogro ups.com, adelasie <adelasie@.. .> wrote:
>>
>> Anand,
>> 
>> While I have no desire to argue with you about this or anything, and 
>> while I know that you are impervious to any opinion but your own, I must 
>> make a few statements, for the sake of others who may be new to 
>> Theosophy and/or to this list, and who may wonder what you could be 
>> talking about.
>> 
>> Theosophists know there is no bearded man sitting on a throne in the sky 
>> separate from humanity passing judgement on our personal lives and 
>> listening to our petty woes. Theosophists know that this concept 
>> belittles the vast power of the Infinite from whence all emanates and 
>> whence all eventually returns. Theosophists know that this unknowable, 
>> inconceivable, eternally unmanifest Absolute expresses itself in form in 
>> cyclic rounds throughout infinity and that every unit of that expression 
>> contains a spark of the eternal Source. Theosophists know that in that 
>> sense, God, meaning the absolute, is in everything in manifestation, is 
>> as intimately connected with mankind as is every atom of his body, every 
>> thought of his mind.
>> 
>> Madame Blavatsky had the job of trying to explain this to a humanity 
>> which had lost its way and was in danger of losing everything due to 
>> wrong headed and wrong hearted practices for a long age. Theosophists 
>> are grateful to her for bringing these teachings to light so they might 
>> begin to understand what has gone wrong and how it might be addressed.
>> 
>> It is extremely offensive to read post after post criticizing HPB and 
>> promoting misunderstanding after misunderstanding. It also indicates 
>> that the poster might actually have some interest in these teachings. 
>> Why else post on a theosophical network?
>> 
>> To all students if theosophy I suggest that when someone protests too 
>> much, they have some hidden agenda, and they are to be avoided at all 
>> costs. There is way too much at stake to allow ourselves to be 
>> distracted from our work by doubt and confusion.
>> 
>> Adelasie
>> 
>> Anand wrote:
>> >
>> > I can see incredible confusion caused by Blavatsky and Mahatma Letters 
>> > which were probably materialized by herself and so could not stop from 
>> > including her thoughts in Mahatma Letters.
>> > There is certain sense in which Personal God of Christians does exist 
>> > and Gita supports the same idea of personal God of Christians. I don't 
>> > think Christians and Hindus were wrong and Blavatsky was right.
>> >
>> > Anand Gholap
>> >
>> > --- In theos-talk@yahoogro ups.com 
>> > <mailto:theos- talk%40yahoogrou ps.com>, "robert_b_macd" 
>> > <robert.b.macdonald @> wrote:
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > Hi All,
>> > >
>> > > I wonder if Anand understands what a personal god is. What exactly 
>> > is theosophy denying when it argues that there can exist no personal 
>> > god. The idea of a personal god is at the heart of the Christian 
>> > religions. The Maha Chohan writes the following on this idea of the 
>> > personal god: "The world in general and Christendom especially, left 
>> > for two thousand years to the regime of a personal God as well as its 
>> > political and social systems based on that idea, has now proved a 
>> > failure." (Maha Chohan, Masters of the Wisdom) This particular idea of 
>> > a personal god working through the popes, priests, etc of the world is 
>> > a bankrupt idea. The violence perpetrated by the Church has proven it 
>> > beyond a doubt.
>> > >
>> > > A personal god takes notice of human affairs, gets angry when Man 
>> > misbehaves, and generally shows the emotional scale of a less advanced 
>> > member of the human race. This is what Christians and others who 
>> > follow a personal god worship, an emotionally crippled entity not wise 
>> > enough to deal with the growing pains of an adolescent humanity. The 
>> > Mahatma Letters refer to a different origin for humanity. There we 
>> > read: "The cycle of intelligent existences commences at the highest 
>> > worlds or planets â the term "highest" meaning here the most 
>> > spiritually perfect. Evolving from cosmic matter â which is akasa, the 
>> > primeval not the secondary plastic medium, or Ether of Science 
>> > instinctively suspected, unproven as the rest â man first evolutes 
>> > from this matter in its most sublimated state, appearing at the 
>> > threshold of Eternity as a perfectly Etherial â not Spiritual Entity, 
>> > say â a Planetary Spirit. He is but one remove from the universal and 
>> > Spiritual World Essence â the Anima Mundi of the Greeks, or that which 
>> > humanity in its spiritual decadence has degraded into a mythical 
>> > personal God. Hence, at that stage, the Spirit-man is at best an 
>> > active Power, an immutable, therefore an unthinking Principle (the 
>> > term "immutable" being again used here but to denote that state for 
>> > the time being, the immutability applying here but to the inner 
>> > principle which will vanish and disappear as soon as the spark of the 
>> > material in him will start on its cyclic work of Evolution and 
>> > transformation) . In his subsequent descent, and in proportion to the 
>> > increase of matter he will assert more and more his activity." (ML 18)
>> > >
>> > > The Anima Mundi is not a personal God. It is an impersonal spirit 
>> > unable to receive the prayers of Mankind and hence personal in no 
>> > sense. Blavatsky explains as early as Isis:
>> > >
>> > > The existence of spirit in the common mediator, the ether, is denied 
>> > by materialism; while theology makes of it a personal god, the 
>> > kabalist holds that both are wrong, saying that in ether, the elements 
>> > represent but matter â the blind cosmic forces of nature; and Spirit, 
>> > the intelligence which directs them. The Hermetic, Orphic, and 
>> > Pythagorean cosmogonical doctrines, as well as those of Sanchoniathon 
>> > and Berosus, are all based upon one irrefutable formula, viz.: that 
>> > the ether and chaos, or, in the Platonic language, mind and matter, 
>> > were the two primeval and eternal principles of the universe, utterly 
>> > independent of anything else. The former was the all-vivifying 
>> > intellectual principle; the chaos, a shapeless, liquid principle, 
>> > without "form or sense," from the union of which two, sprung into 
>> > existence the universe, or rather, the universal world, the first 
>> > androgynous deity â the chaotic matter becoming its body, and ether 
>> > the soul. According to the phraseology of a Fragment of Hermias, 
>> > "chaos, from this union with spirit, obtaining sense, shone with 
>> > pleasure, and thus was produced the Protogonos (the first-born) 
>> > light."* This is the universal trinity, based on the metaphysical 
>> > conceptions of the ancients, who, reasoning by analogy, made of man, 
>> > who is a compound of intellect and matter, the microcosm of the 
>> > macrocosm, or great universe. (IU I, 341)
>> > >
>> > > Very clearly we read above that Blavatsky does not accept that 
>> > Spirit as described by the ancients is or could ever be a personal 
>> > god. It is a principle, not an existing entity. Combined with Matter 
>> > it produces the primordial light of the World.
>> > >
>> > > There is a sense of personal god that HPB sometimes uses. She writes:
>> > >
>> > > "May we be allowed a comparison, the best we can find, between the 
>> > concrete and the abstract; between what our critic calls "the triple 
>> > hypostasis" and we "the tetraktys"? Let us compare this philosophic 
>> > quaternary, composed of the body, the pÃrisprit, the soul and the 
>> > spiritâto the etherâso well foreseen by science, but never definedâand 
>> > its subsequent correlations. The ether will represent the spirit for 
>> > us; the dead vapor that is formed thereinâthe soul; waterâthe 
>> > pÃrisprit; iceâthe body. The ice melts and for ever loses its shape, 
>> > water evaporates and is dispersed in space; the vapor is liberated 
>> > from its grosser particles and finally reaches that condition in which 
>> > science cannot follow it. Purified from its last defilements, it is 
>> > entirely absorbed into its first cause, and becomes a cause in its 
>> > turn. With the exception of the immortal nousâthe soul, the pÃrisprit 
>> > and the body, all having been created and having had a beginning, must 
>> > all have an end.
>> > >
>> > > "Does that mean that the individuality is lost in that absorption? 
>> > Not at all. But between the human Ego and the wholly divine Ego, there 
>> > is an abyss that our critics fill in without knowing it. As to the 
>> > pÃrisprit, it is no more the soul than the delicate skin that 
>> > surrounds the almond is the kernel itself or even its temporary husk. 
>> > The pÃrisprit is but the simulacrum of the man.
>> > >
>> > > "It follows that Theosophists understand the hypostasis, according 
>> > to the old philosophers, in a very different way from the 
>> > Spiritualists. For us, the Spirit is the personal god of each mortal, 
>> > and his only divine element. The dual soul, on the contrary, is only 
>> > semidivine. Being a direct emanation from the nous, everything it has 
>> > of immortal essence, once its earthly cycle is accomplished, must 
>> > necessarily return to its mother-source, and as pure as when it was 
>> > detached; it is that purely spiritual essence which the primitive 
>> > church, as faithful as it was rebellious to the Neo-Platonic 
>> > traditions, thought it recognized in the good daÃmon and made into a 
>> > guardian angel; at the same time justly blighting the "irrational" and 
>> > fallible soul, the real human Ego (from which we get the word Egoism), 
>> > she called it the angel of darkness, and afterwards made it into a 
>> > personal devil. The only error was in anthropomorphizing it and in 
>> > making it a monster with tail and horns. Otherwise, abstraction as it 
>> > may be, this devil is truly personal because it is identical with our 
>> > Ego. It is this, the elusive and inaccessible personality, that 
>> > ascetics of every country think they chastise by mortifying the flesh. 
>> > The Ego then, to which we concede only a conditional immortality, is 
>> > the purely human individuality. Half vital energy, half an aggregation 
>> > of personal qualities and attributes, necessary to the constitution of 
>> > every human being as distinct from his neighbor, the Ego is only the 
>> > "breath of life" that Jehovah, one of the Elohim or creative gods, 
>> > breathed into the nostrils of Adam; and, as such, and apart from its 
>> > higher intelligence, it is but the element of individuality possessed 
>> > by man in common with every creature, from the gnat that dances in the 
>> > rays of the sun to the elephant, the king of the forest. It is only by 
>> > identifying itself with that divine intelligence that the Ego, soiled 
>> > with earthly impurities, can win its immortality.
>> > >
>> > > "In order to express our thought more clearly, we will proceed by a 
>> > question. Though matter may be quite indestructible in its primitive 
>> > atomsâindestructible , because, as we say, it is the eternal shadow of 
>> > the eternal Light and co-exists with itâcan this matter remain 
>> > unchangeable in its temporary forms or correlations? Do we not see it, 
>> > during its ceaseless modifications, destroy today what it created 
>> > yesterday? Every form, whether it belongs to the objective world or to 
>> > that which our intelligence alone can perceive, having had a 
>> > beginning, must have an end. There was a time when it did not exist; 
>> > there will come a day when it will cease to be. Now, modern science 
>> > tells us that even our thought is material. However fleeting an idea 
>> > may be, its conception and its subsequent evolutions require a certain 
>> > consumption of energy; let the least cerebral motion reverberate in 
>> > the ether of space and it will produce a disturbance reaching to 
>> > infinity. Hence, it is a material force, although invisible."
>> > >
>> > > Here HBP states very clearly what she call the personal god. It is 
>> > our Atma or Nous, personal in the sense that it is our individual 
>> > personal spark or connection with the impersonal Spiritual World Essence.
>> > >
>> > > Do not put words into HPBs mouth. Understand what she writes before 
>> > you begin accusing her of anything. Chances are the confusion is not 
>> > in what she writes, but rather in your understanding of it. God and 
>> > Devil do not exist for theosophists except in this narrow sense of 
>> > Nous and Ego.
>> > >
>> > > This is how I read it,
>> > >
>> > > Robert Bruce
>> > >
>> >
>> >
>>
>
>
>


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