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Go Back   Spiritual Forums > Religions & Faiths > Interfaith

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  #171  
Old 04-08-2018, 02:37 PM
Skull Skull is offline
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President Tim Boyd talking about Theosophy at Singapore conference; he begins at 7 minutes:

https://youtu.be/mFGLcXOyu1s
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  #172  
Old 31-08-2018, 12:22 AM
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The law of karma and rebirth powerfully affects human life. Here is a little from Christmas Humphreys booklet Karma and Rebirth:

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Only by studying, and to some extent grasping, an outline of the Wisdom of which Karma and Rebirth are part can the meanest vision of the doctrine be attained, and even then it is difficult to examine it apart from the Wisdom itself from which, as sunlight in the air, it is inseparable. Yet the difficulty is largely of our own making. For centuries the Western mind has been building up an utterly false notion of a separate ‘I’, and it is hard for us to grasp a view of existence in which the separative self is viewed as an illusion and the father of all suffering. It follows, whether or not the idea be pleasing to the scholar mind, that only he who treads the Way which leads to the end of separative self-hood will attain to understanding of the Wisdom wherein self, as something separate, can have no abiding-place.

Study, deep study, quiet meditation on the living principles revealed in that study, and the constant, self-regardless application of those principles to daily life, these alone will provide the final ‘proof’ of the laws of Karma and Rebirth, and only he who knows them thus will be in a position to offer to the West, by the written and the spoken word and by the force of character, the Wisdom of which the West has so abundant and so urgent need.
Christmas Humphreys, 1942
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  #173  
Old 31-08-2018, 04:51 PM
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In 1887 Charles Johnston a Sanskrit scholar & friend of Blavatsky interviewed her:

http://www.philaletheians.co.uk/stud...s-johnston.pdf
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  #174  
Old 01-09-2018, 06:03 PM
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Deeply sensible of the Titanic struggle that is now in progress between materialism and the spiritual aspirations of mankind, our constant endeavor has been to gather into our several chapters, like weapons into armories, every fact and argument that can be used to aid the latter in defeating the former. Sickly and deformed child as it now is, the materialism of To-Day is born of the brutal Yesterday. Unless its growth is arrested, it may become our master. It is the ******* progeny of the French Revolution and its reaction against ages of religious bigotry and repression. To prevent the crushing of these spiritual aspirations, the blighting of these hopes, and the deadening of that intuition which teaches us of a God and a hereafter, we must show our false theologies in their naked deformity, and distinguish between divine religion and human dogmas. Our voice is raised for spiritual freedom, and our plea made for enfranchisement from all tyranny, whether of SCIENCE or THEOLOGY.

Isis Unveiled, Blavatsky's first book of 1877.
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  #175  
Old 05-09-2018, 08:44 PM
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Student.—How is one to know when he gets real occult information from the Self within?

Sage. [HPB]—Intuition must be developed and the matter judged from the true philosophical basis, for if it is contrary to true general rules it is wrong. It has to be known from a deep and profound analysis by which we find out what is from egotism alone and what is not; if it is due to egotism, then it is not from the Spirit and is untrue. The power to know does not come from book-study nor from mere philosophy, but mostly from the actual practice of altruism in deed, word, and thought; for that practice purifies the covers of the soul and permits that light to shine down into the brain-mind. As the brain-mind is the receiver in the waking state, it has to be purified from sense-perception, and the truest way to do this is by combining philosophy with the highest outward and inward virtue.

Student.—Tell me some ways by which intuition is to be developed.

Sage.—First of all by giving it exercise, and second by not using it for purely personal ends. Exercise means that it must be followed through mistakes and bruises until from sincere attempts at use it comes to its own strength. This does not mean that we can do wrong and leave the results, but that after establishing conscience on a right basis by following the golden rule, we give play to the intuition and add to its strength. Inevitably in this at first we will make errors, but soon if we are sincere it will grow brighter and make no mistake. We should add the study of the works of those who in the past have trodden this path and found out what is the real and what is not. They say the Self is the only reality. The brain must be given larger views of life, as by the study of the doctrine of reincarnation, since that gives a limitless field to the possibilities in store. We must not only be unselfish, but must do all the duties that Karma has given us, and thus intuition will point cut the road of duty and the true path of life.

From “Conversations on Occultism”.
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  #176  
Old 08-09-2018, 06:15 PM
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The dual nature of our mind is an old, and true notion. So removing vice and fostering virtue is the path to realization & benefitting self & others.

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The whole of our literature proves that real Theosophists, worshipping universal wisdom, worship in reality the same wisdom which has been proclaimed by St. James in the third chapter of his Epistle [verse 17], i.e., “the wisdom that is from above (δοΦία ἄνωθεν [which] is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy,” avoiding, on the advice of the same Apostle [verse 15], wisdom that “is earthly, sensual, devilish (ψυχική δαιμονιώδης).”

Blavatsky
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  #177  
Old 05-10-2018, 09:28 PM
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"Abuse of power, whether it proceeds from excess of wisdom or ignorance is alike obnoxious in its effects. Besides, the clergy are silenced now. Their protests would at this day [1877] be scarcely noticed in the world of science. But while theology is kept in the background, the scientists have seized the scepter of despotism with both hands, and they use it, like the cherubim and flaming sword of Eden, to keep the people away from the tree of immortal life and within this world of perishable matter."

Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled
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  #178  
Old 30-01-2019, 05:14 PM
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About Masters

Modern Theosophy started with HP Blavatsky, WQ Judge and others. Here is a later follower of HPB writing on the subject of Adepts or Masters of Wisdom:

http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/...p.htm#contents

From the Introductory:

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It is our Theosophical teaching that greater men even than those geniuses to whom I have last above alluded exist in the world at the present time and existed in past times; and they have lived and taught and guided their fellowmen; and these Great Ones compose a spiritual Brotherhood of the Great Sages and Seers of the human race. These are what are called the Theosophical Mahatmans. They are the Elder Brothers of mankind. They are men, not spirits. They are men who have evolved through self-devised efforts in individual evolution, always advancing forwards and upwards until they attained the lofty supremacy that now they hold. They were not so created by any extra-cosmic Deity, but they are men who have become what they are by means of inward spiritual striving, by spiritual and intellectual yearning, by aspiration to be greater and -- better, nobler and higher. They are not what they are by any favoritism either of a god or of Fate, but have merely run ahead of the great multitude of men. There they stand; they are Helpers, they are Seers, they are Sages. They have naught that they have by way of gift. All that they have -- which means all that they are -- all that they have evolved to, all that they have become, they have gained by self-devised efforts in individual evolutionary growth.

Last edited by Skull : 30-01-2019 at 07:45 PM.
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  #179  
Old 13-03-2019, 06:08 PM
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The adept hierarchy is as strictly a product of nature as a tree is: it has definite and indispensable purpose and function in the development of the human race: this function is to keep open the upward path, through which descend the light and leading, without which our race would require to make each step by the wearisome, never ending method of trial and failure in every direction, until chance showed the right way. In fact the function of the adept hierarchy is to provide religious teachers for the stumbling masses of mankind.

But this path is eminently dangerous to those who do not hold the talisman which ensures safety; this talisman is a perfectly unselfish, self-forgetting, self-annihilating devotion to the religious good of mankind, a self-abnegation, which is not temporal, but must have no end for ever, and the object of which is the religious enlightenment of the human race.

T. Subba Row (d. 1890)
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  #180  
Old 30-03-2019, 06:20 PM
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Crime of Suicide

Whether imposed with legislation or embraced by practical or depressed people, suicide is a disaster in many ways. Here is one of Blavatsky's remarks about it:

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If you mean by such desire [to quit life as] "suicide," then I say, most decidedly not. Such a result can never be a "natural" one, but is ever due to a morbid brain disease, or to most decided and strong materialistic views. It is the worst of crimes and dire in its results.
But if by desire, you mean simply aspiration to reach spiritual existence, not a wish to quit the earth, then I would call it a very natural desire indeed.
Otherwise voluntary death would be an abandonment of our present post and of the duties incumbent on us, as well as an attempt to shirk Karmic responsibilities, and thus involve the creation of new Karma.
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