Between Incarnations

[Skull]

One of the best surveys of the death and after-death processes is by the late Geoffrey Farthing, a British Theosophist. His knowledge is based on that of HP Blavatsky and her Adept gurus.

http://www.theosophical.ca/books/AfterDeathConsciousnessAndProcesses_GFarthing.pdf

[mac]

One of the best surveys of the death and after-death processes is by the late Geoffrey Farthing, a British Theosophist. His knowledge is based on that of HP Blavatsky and her Adept gurus.

http://www.theosophical.ca/books/AfterDeathConsciousnessAndProcesses_GFarthing.pdf (http://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/redir.php?link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theosophical.ca%2F books%2FAfterDeathConsciousnessAndProcesses_GFarth ing.pdf)

Would that be of better guidance than the words of spiritually evolved teachers and guides? Theosophy is a man-made, actually woman-made, following....

Much guidance on life before, after and between incarnations may be found without needing such compilations.

[Skull]

Would that be of better guidance than the words of spiritually evolved teachers and guides? Theosophy is a man-made, actually woman-made, following....

Much guidance on life before, after and between incarnations may be found without needing such compilations.

Of course you can deny it or maybe you just did not read closely - "and her Adept gurus." Blavatsky's gurus knew from personal insight what death & after was all about. Not to mention their wisdom regarding all things occult & spiritual.

Yes, guidance is all over the place, but is it accurate, is it trustworthy & true? Not much of it.

[mac]

Of course you can deny it or maybe you just did not read closely - "and her Adept gurus." Blavatsky's gurus knew from personal insight what death & after was all about. Not to mention their wisdom regarding all things occult & spiritual.

Yes, guidance is all over the place, but is it accurate, is it trustworthy & true? Not much of it.

I read every word of your posting - the gurus were no more held in high regard than Madame Blavatsky as I recall. Whether that was deserved is for the historians or those who have an interest to judge - for me it is not important. When you speak of the occult, though, my heart sinks....

I disagree that guidance is all over the place. What we hear are claimed channelling of 'ascended masters' and the like whose words add nothing to those delivered many decades ago by sources who were widely regarded as reliable and trustworthy. Presently I am not aware of any comparable spiritually-evolved teachers.

But, then, what would pearls of wisdom, what insight into life before and after death, would we, could we. should we expect from contemporary gurus?

What do we think they might know that hasn't already been told?

[Skull]

I read every word of your posting - the gurus were no more held in high regard than Madame Blavatsky as I recall. Whether that was deserved is for the historians or those who have an interest to judge - for me it is not important. When you speak of the occult, though, my heart sinks....

I disagree that guidance is all over the place. What we hear are claimed channelling of 'ascended masters' and the like whose words add nothing to those delivered many decades ago by sources who were widely regarded as reliable and trustworthy. Presently I am not aware of any comparable spiritually-evolved teachers.

But, then, what would pearls of wisdom, what insight into life before and after death, would we, could we. should we expect from contemporary gurus?

What do we think they might know that hasn't already been told?

Those who knew HPB & her Gurus considered them as much wiser than she - as did she herself.

It is not clear to me if you think anyone has ever really known the truth about death & after. Kindly give some teachings from those you think did know or say you doubt anyone knows. Oh, and what is with this "sinking heart" at the word "occult" - it just means hidden - nothing bad.

[mac]

Those who knew HPB & her Gurus considered them as much wiser than she - as did she herself.

It is not clear to me if you think anyone has ever really known the truth about death & after. Kindly give some teachings from those you think did know or say you doubt anyone knows. Oh, and what is with this "sinking heart" at the word "occult" - it just means hidden - nothing bad.

Well those who admired her would say that...:wink: And she in turn about her helpers. But that's of no real interest for me. I leave that to those who are. :smile:

Maybe another time I will comment on those whose words I find totally persuasive. Tonight it's just a general discussion.

Occult? I didn't mean it's bad, it's just something I find trite... Occult and spiritual are not natural bedfellows I feel.

[Skull]

"Spiritual" is hardly patent or obvious, neither is "occult" - so....

Anyway, we all just follow our best lights.

[Summerland]

Skull, I am sorry, but none of that rings any bells of familiarity with me. I have quite clear recollections of many of my past lives and the times following death and in what I call"Summerland". I was never stripped of anything, in fact quite the opposite. I could feel the harm and pain that I caused to others, I was aware of the good deeds of that life. I chose my future life and those lives very often were to try to make amends for the wrongs that I did. I am not talking about crimes against the law (except for the time that I was burned as a witch); I am talking about choices that disregarded the emotional pain that I was inflicting on loved ones.
I thank you for offering all of that information, but at this point I will stay with what I recall and remember.

[Greenslade]

That's the trouble when we adopt someone else's Truth as our own. Blavatsky' gurus might have been very aware of what death and the Afterlife was like - for them. It's a pretty big Universe out there.

When you stop making gurus Life gets a little bit easier, you start making your own sense of the Universe and see it through your own eyes. Perhaps instead of believing Geoffrey Farthing's Truth you could be spending better time and energy finding your own? These boards are scattered with little nuggets - people's own personal experiences.

[Skull]

That's the trouble when we adopt someone else's Truth as our own. Blavatsky' gurus might have been very aware of what death and the Afterlife was like - for them. It's a pretty big Universe out there.

When you stop making gurus Life gets a little bit easier, you start making your own sense of the Universe and see it through your own eyes. Perhaps instead of believing Geoffrey Farthing's Truth you could be spending better time and energy finding your own? These boards are scattered with little nuggets - people's own personal experiences.

Ah, beloved ole "personal experience". It is refreshing to know that anybody can comprehend the truth of death & after via "personal experience".

After all, do we not understand the truth of incarnation via "personal" avenues; like the fully trustworthy senses and our fully enlightened mind. :rolleyes:

Not for me, thank you very much. Truth is where one find's it and I find much more from the Masters of Wisdom, such as HPB's gurus, Je Tsongkhapa, Buddha, Shankara etc. then my befuddled persona.

Besides, all insights into truth come via our own "personal experience" anyway. Whether the source is "objective" or "subjective", it is our mind that accepts or rejects it. To assume that "our" separate, solitary insight is superior to "Their" insight is silly. Such dualistic thinking is a major delusion anyway.

So if folks wish to exclude that portion of universal mind that is thought to be "other" and rely only on "our" mind - so be it.

As for "making gurus" - come now - what is the guru if one rejects all sources of wisdom that is not me? Right - "I" or "Me" is the guru. Good luck with that.

[Greenslade]

What is the Truth, Skull? Because I've been given various definitions and personal opinions on that one, and every time someone tells me what it is all they seem to do is convince me more that there is no such thing.

To my mind, calling them Masters of Wisdom is judgement. What makes them Masters? We do, we believe what they say and hold their Truth as our own. We judge what they say to be wise and just, and before you know it they are Masters of Wisdom. Yes, I gain any amount of nuggets from a number of sources, much admittedly from those you would call gurus. But you know what? I get just as much from my own intuition and instincts, as much again from the very people who are trying hard to put their feet in the right order so they can take the next step. I stopped believing in gurus a long time ago and things made much more sense. If their Truths work for you, Skull, then blessings to you. It doesn't for me. Nobody has all the answers, everybody has their own perspective. The gurus were perhaps masters of their own perspectives, they weren't masters of mine.

[Skull]

There are forms of death that are exceptional and suicide is one. It is not freeing one from suffering, for one still exists, just without a physical body. And one must continue in this state for the rest of one's natural term of life. So a suicide at age 20, destined to live to 80 would spend 60 years trapped in a horrid state of consciousness.

Here is a little more, from the theosophical point of view:





Suicide is the most unfortunate of all forms of violent death. This is because it meansthe deliberate taking of one's own life in order to escape the consequences of what one has earned; and if any man thinks that he can cheat Nature in that way, he greatly errs. He but adds to the heavy burden he has to carry in the future. . . . He has deliberately forced Nature's hand, so to say; he has deliberately exercised his own will-power and consciousness for an unholy deed in an unnatural way, and done an act which Nature, through its unerring laws, has not itself brought about; and when you break a law of Nature, what happens? -- G. de Purucker, Questions We All Ask, Series I, No. 6 The answer is briefly given:The fate of the suicide is a sad one, indeed a terrible one, and it is good and right that the truth concerning suicide be told. The suicide wilfully cuts short the life that Nature, as we Theosophists say, intended to be longer, and he has thus placed himself in a postmortem condition in which he must live and suffer greatly until the term of his lifetime, had he lived on earth, is closed. The fate of the suicide is an awful one. -- Op. cit., Series II, No. 19 The whole point is indicated here in the statement that the suicide willfully cuts short the life that karma intended to be longer. In other forms of violent death, the accident or crime or execution, as the case may be, was karmic. In suffering such a misfortune the human being is paying his "karmic price." Suffering the consequences of his own actions in the past, he thus wipes the karmic slate clean of that particular debt.
But the suicide, by his act of selfishly shirking the consequences of his failures in this life and -- as frequently happens -- leaving the burden to be borne by others, has set in motion for himself a fresh cause of misery. In his next life he will have to meet again the same conditions which led to his suicide in this, only in a form intensified by the very energy of his refusal to meet them now. Every act of ours is made up of energy and with every intensification of energy the consequences deepen. So the last state of that person will indeed be worse than the first. The postmortem state of the person who takes his own life is the terrible one of living over and over again the horror of his act and the mental torture which led up to it. Suicides, like executed criminals, must in most cases become powerful vortices of diseased thought-energy adding their force to the existing handicaps to the spiritual progress of the world.

[Xanth]

There are forms of death that are exceptional and suicide is one. It is not freeing one from suffering, for one still exists, just without a physical body. And one must continue in this state for the rest of one's natural term of life. So a suicide at age 20, destined to live to 80 would spend 60 years trapped in a horrid state of consciousness. Fortunately, I only agree with part of that. :)

Suicide is never the answer, agreed.
It's not an escape in the slightest, because what you are "Here" is exactly what are you "There". What I mean is any and all emotional problems you're experiencing here are the same ones you'll carry over to the other side with you. The only difference is that now, you don't have a physical body with which to return to.

Frank Kepple, from the Astral Pulse said it best, so I'll just quote a post he made here:

That is how people get "stuck" on the lower planes following physical death. Their emotional outpouring creates what I call a reality sphere within the lower astral. Which is the emotional scenario being played out all around them. The scene they are engrossed within will cause them to react in a certain way; which will cause that same certain circumstance to manifest; which will cause them to react in that same certain way; which will reinforce that same certain scene; which causes them to react in that same way etc., etc, ad infinitum... literally.

People can get locked in these kinds of emotional loops within dreams, but it's only a matter of time before their alarm goes off, or it gets so bad their protective sense of awareness zaps them back to physical, or whatever. Some people suffer from recurring dreams. Which is basically an emotional loop that gets broken during waking hours. But some kind of mental neurosis causes the person to outpour the same emotional feelings during sleep.

However, once you lose the ability to zap back to physical, i.e. following physical body death, it is possible to get caught in a loop for the equivalent of a good many physical years.
People who commit suicide generally do it with the desire to escape from their problems. But they're really only locking themselves into an emotional loop.

Now, where I disagree with you is you don't have any predetermined "life limit". You could, quite possibly, spend THOUSANDS of years of human time caught in these emotional loops.

However, there's also a difference between killing yourself to "escape" from physical reality and killing yourself if you feel that your work here is done, or if you have a terminal illness.

The first one will, most likely, lock you into one of those emotional loops... cause you'd die, then realize, OMG I'm still alive!! And bam, you're nailed.
The second one, you'd die, and accept the transition.

I think that we are the ultimate deciding factor on our own lives. Society and Religion have tried to take that choice away from us by telling us that removing ourselves from this reality is wrong and you'll 'burn in hell' for it. Sorry, but I don't buy that. :)

[Greenslade]

What if it was that Soul's Karmic Obligation to commit suicide, Skull? If there is indeed such a thing as Free Will, isn't it our Free Will to commit suicide? If it is not then there isn't as much Free Will as there is supposed to be. Destiny is not immutable neither - nothing is written in stone because that would imply limitations on Free Will too.

There is also a huge assupmtion that the person who commits suicide is of a deranged mental state. Have you ever been close to that point, Skull? In my own personal experience once the decision is made then there was complete clarity, probably the most clarity I have ever had before or after.

The problem with copying and pasting someone else's Truth, Skull, is that you may never see your own.

[Skull]

What if it was that Soul's Karmic Obligation to commit suicide, Skull? If there is indeed such a thing as Free Will, isn't it our Free Will to commit suicide? If it is not then there isn't as much Free Will as there is supposed to be. Destiny is not immutable neither - nothing is written in stone because that would imply limitations on Free Will too.

There is also a huge assupmtion that the person who commits suicide is of a deranged mental state. Have you ever been close to that point, Skull? In my own personal experience once the decision is made then there was complete clarity, probably the most clarity I have ever had before or after.

The problem with copying and pasting someone else's Truth, Skull, is that you may never see your own.

You seem to have used your personal insight to put Skull in a tidy box of robotic cut & paster. So be it. Act as you see fit - I will do the same.

My remarks about guru & personal experience etc. were aimed at a generic aspirant I have seen many of - not to Greenslade specifically.

This is not a private conversation, so I generally address all possible readers.

[Skull]

After-death States

"Withdrawing into Stillness -- Sleep and Death (http://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/redir.php?link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theosophy-nw.org%2Ftheosnw%2Fdeath%2Fde-jbel2.htm)" by Jim Belderis
"Children of the Sun, Offspring of the Stars (http://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/redir.php?link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theosophy-nw.org%2Ftheosnw%2Fdeath%2Fde-jvm.htm)" by John P. Van Mater
"The Change Called Death (http://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/redir.php?link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theosophy-nw.org%2Ftheosnw%2Fdeath%2Fde-ebt2.htm)" by Elsa-Brita Titchenell
"Man After Death (http://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/redir.php?link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theosophy-nw.org%2Ftheosnw%2Fktmanual%2Fkt-death.htm)" (Theosophical Manual) (44K)
Book Review (http://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/redir.php?link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theosophy-nw.org%2Ftheosnw%2Fdeath%2Fde-elo.htm): Life after Death by Deepak Chopra (rev. Eloise Hart)
"The Mystery of Death and Rebirth (http://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/redir.php?link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theosophy-nw.org%2Ftheosnw%2Fdeath%2Fde-ivm3.htm)" by Ingrid Van Mater
"Through the Portals of Death (http://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/redir.php?link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theosophy-nw.org%2Ftheosnw%2Fdeath%2Fde-azeb.htm)" by Armin Zebrowski
"Death Is a Season (http://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/redir.php?link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theosophy-nw.org%2Ftheosnw%2Fdeath%2Fde-weng.htm)" by Agnes Wengert
"Sleep and Death Are Brothers (http://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/redir.php?link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theosophy-nw.org%2Ftheosnw%2Fdeath%2Fde-gdp5.htm)" by G. de Purucker
"The Panoramic Vision (http://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/redir.php?link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theosophy-nw.org%2Ftheosnw%2Fdeath%2Fde-gdp3.htm)" by G. de Purucker
"The Nature of the Kama-Rupa (http://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/redir.php?link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theosophy-nw.org%2Ftheosnw%2Fdeath%2Fde-gdp4.htm)" by G. de Purucker
"Kama Loka (http://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/redir.php?link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theosophy-nw.org%2Ftheosnw%2Fdeath%2Fde-wqj1.htm)" by William Q. Judge
"Devachan (http://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/redir.php?link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theosophy-nw.org%2Ftheosnw%2Fdeath%2Fde-wqj2.htm)" by William Q. Judge

[mac]

Coincidentally on another 'spooks' thread where I'm a regular contributor we're looking at the issue of how long between incarnations we may experience, and why.

Naturally enough I'd say we're also discussing the nature of multiple incarnations - I'm here deliberately avoiding using the emotionally charged term of 'reincarnation' and all the baggage it's being lumbered with....

So many additional matters get thrown into the melting pot that it rapidly becomes a mish-mash of thoughts, ideas, references and quotations.

The underlying principle is simple and deserves consideration on its own merit, away from such distractions.

It is also an important part of any death and after-death discussion such as this.