Letter 48
Mahatma Letters wrote:Believe me: we may yet walk along the arduous path together. We may yet meet: but if at all, it has to be along and on — those "adamantine rocks with which our occult rules surround us" — never outside them, however bitterly we may complain. No, never can we pursue our further journey — if hand in hand — along that highway, crowded thoroughfare, which encircles them, and on which Spiritualists and mystics, prophets and seers elbow each other nowaday. Yea, verily, the motley crowd of candidates may shout for an eternity to come, for the Sesam to open: it never will, so long as they keep outside those rules.
This might be tiring and and well repeated teaching in our circles, but it is very much in the core of occultism and links interestingly to the recent discussion on truth here at our forum. Thinking about chaos magic as a bit more modern addition to the motley crowd presented here, coming to find it at the starting point towards my occult studies I felt it definitely lacked something essential. Though chaos magic was very much a luring subject I couldn't bear myself to study it ~30 pages further, for it seemed to base more on what might work because of ones subjective structures, than what is behind those subjective structures and what does it say about the nature and acting in it. Understanding the whole structure, the ethics are revealed. Chaos magician or post-structural movement gain in their realization of the alive worlds of meaning the subjective is. There are a pursuit for freedom in there, but without the rock to stand on it seems the subject is imprisoned in floating chaos where no thorough understanding of ethics can be revealed, thus it's playing around in a sandbox where one doesn't want to know about the laws and wishes the sandcake wouldn't come out ”bad”. Where as the stream of holistic occultism flowing out of the rock, offers understanding of the hidden layers that necessarily will be taken in to account while passing further..
Mahatma Letters wrote:Doubt not, my friend: it is but from the very top of those "adamantine rocks" of ours, not at their foot, that one is ever enabled to perceive the whole Truth, by embracing the whole limitless horizon. And though they may seem to you to be standing in your way, it is simply because you have hitherto failed to discover or even so much as suspect the reason and the operations of those laws; hence they appear so cold and merciless and selfish in your sight...
How encouragingly put. The simplicity of the humble approach to the opening world is comforting for those of us who also have idealistic pursuits going on so strong that potential conflicts with the outer world are behind every corner.
Mahatma Letters wrote:Remember: too anxious expectation is not only tedious but dangerous too. Each warmer and quicker throb of the heart wears so much of life away. The passions, the affections are not to be indulged in by him, who seeks to know; for they "wear out the earthly body with their own secret power; and he, who would gain his aim — must be cold." He must not even desire too earnestly or too passionately the object he would reach: else, the very wish will prevent the possibility of its fulfilment, at best — retard and throw it back. . . .
Here the problem with astral attachment is remarked quite clearly. ”Outside” of individuals occult endeavor, an example of this can be also seen in a conversation sorting out a problem with strong emotional attachment towards the subjects; the setting tending to pull the ponderings relentlesly to a ditch, and things are hard if not impossible to get sorted out with muddy eyes. The coldness itself can be violent ofcourse with one-eyed implementation. I guess the passion and the affection are also at the root for the celibacy of the Gelukpa school discussed about during the previous letter. It might be a feeble endeavour to touch this subject in couple of sentences, but one could hear the passions in sexual practice whisper of themselves as symbolic of the core of the act, and the affections created can be embraced with the opposite — the idea of loosing the companion to the beautiful decaying rosebeds on her grave. The last sentence of the quote draws lines of the adamant laws affecting not only reaching nirvāna or adepthood, but to me, the experience of orgasm too. Their cores being of the same.
Mahatma Letters wrote:...hence your attention is asked to the
"Elixir of Life" (
Pt. 2) and W. Oxley's
"Philosophy of Spirit." The former contains references and explanations, the haziness of which, may remind you of a man who stealthily approaching one gives him a hit upon his back, and then runs away; as they most undeniably belong to the genus of those "Fortunes" that come to one like the thief by night and during one's sleep, and go back, finding no one to respond to the offer — of which you complain in your letter to Brother. This time, you are warned, good friend, so complain no more.
KH, presumably tired of repeating the requirements the occult path asks — by law — of the aspirant, warns Sinnet to complain no more. As a student under a master who is very much able, one might think knowledge/abilities/connection can be given just like that, when in reality the words have to be ”translated” and realized by oneself with the help and understanding of tools pointed out here and there.
Mahatma Letters wrote:...though he seems to have but very hazy notions about what he calls the "astro-masonic basis of Bhagavatgita " and — Mahabharata to both of which he evidently attributes the same author — yet he is positively and absolutely the only one, whose general comprehension of Spirit, and its capabilities and functions after the first separation, we call death, are on the whole if not quite correct, at least approximating very nearly truth. Read it, when it comes out, especially par. 3, col. I, page 152 et seq, where you will find them. You may then understand, why, instead of answering your direct question I go into a subject, so far, perfectly indifferent to you. Follow, for instance his definition of the term "Angel" (
it will be on line 30,) and try to follow and comprehend his thought, so clumsily yet withal so correctly expressed and then, compare it with the Tibetan teaching. Poor, poor Humanity, when shalt thou have the whole and unadulterated truth!
Referring to a second article KH succested Sinnet to read, the author William Oxley seem to have made surprisingly good sense of the natural laws considering his Spiritualist background. But then again, Blavatsky had the same background.
Oxley on The Theosophist wrote:...fixes the spiritual Ego in state No 6. and this is exactly where we place the “perfect man, (see my prior definition of the twelve states or degrees,) next to which comes the Angel, the lowest or external of which is our seventh. And it is at his stage where the “ All of Memory” is gained, and from which altitude, the cycles of existence can be clearly discerned.
Those previously mentioned twelve states or degrees:
Oxley on The Theosophist wrote:”According to the teaching of my Guru—at whose feet I sit—every human organism, or embodiment, if we will, contains within it twelve degrees. The three lowest or more external pertain to the animal; the next three to the human; the next three to the angelic; and the most interior three to the deific. In our present state of conscious life, these are understood as principles, but on each of their own specific planes, they are manifested in forms.
Concidering this letter touch the subject of reading of texts and the treasures one might find under all the ”manure,” I wonder if the mentioned seventh ”where ”All of Memory” is gained”, the place where angelic and human meet, refers to the sudden connection felt when something rings true and familiar. It is a beautiful image to think of; some scribbles on a tattered piece of paper read by the attuned individual forming connection to the angelic structures, a recall of home. The experience of tapping in to the stream which provides the treasures we seek, the pieces of truth we'll never lose and have sort of recalls of when finding new pieces of the puzzle. Can't help but quote more of KH's beautiful words:
Mahatma Letters wrote:Illuminated sentences may gleam out upon them, at some time or other, shedding a bright light upon some old puzzling problem. Yourself, some fine morning while poring over its crooked columns with the sharpened wits of a well rested brain, peering into what you now view as hazy, impalpable speculations, having only the consistency of vapor, — yourself you may, perchance, perceive in them the unexpected solution of an old, blurred, forgotten "dream" of yours, which once recalled will impress itself in an indelible image upon your outer from your inner memory, to never fade out from it again. All this is possible and may happen; for our ways are the ways of "madmen" . . . . .
Mahatma Letters wrote:Since my return I found it impossible for me to breathe — even in the atmosphere of the Headquarters! M\ had to interfere, and to force the whole household to give up meat; and they had, all of them, to be purified and thoroughly cleansed with various disinfecting drugs before I could even help myself to my letters. And I am not, as you may imagine, half as sensitive to the loathsome emanations as a tolerably respectable disembodied shell would be, — leaving out of question a real Presence, though but a "projecting" one. In a year or so, perchance earlier, I may find myself hardened again. At present I find it impossible — do what I may.
Compassion towards KH's sensitivity after his temporal retiring to the mountains might draw us better understanding towards the sensitivity of an empty shell randomly targeted by a spiritualist seance, and overall the relation between the higher and the lower self. For example we can take the spiritualist Oxleys principles and think the higher and lower selves as the human and the animal. The shell being animal, but empty, imprints the skandhas of the medium, a karmic matrix (the form we've failed to let go) of sorts and starts to respond to impulses accordingly, like the animal principle tends to do. The bell rings and it's time for snacks! The Presence might then whisper for silence, and the human-animal is granted a chance to work the form. The Presence is sensitive too, detecting all the mischief under the heavens. Though there's a great difficulty in communication; the world presenting it's symbolic dance is often hard to understand to be the profound happening it is.
Mahatma Letters wrote:Bhavani Shanker is with O., and he is stronger and fitter in many a way more than Damodar or even our mutual "female" friend.
I don't remember Shanker being mentioned before. According to the
Theosophy Wiki, he was a chela under KH.
Mahatma Letters wrote:Morya, to enable you, as he says to confront your enemies, the believers in the materialization of "individual souls," wanted me, to acquaint you with the totality of the subtile bodies and their collective aggregate, as well as with the distributive aggregate or the sheaths. I believe it is premature. Before the world can be made to understand the difference between the "Sutratma" (thread-soul) and "Taijasa," (the brilliant or the luminous) they have to be taught the nature of the grosser elements.
Before this paragraph we have a page missing, and I wonder if there's been some fine teachings of the grossers elements that Sinnet has taken somewhere to study closer ending up the page to drift somewhere. Anyway I guess the talk about the empty shells the mediums hang around with, has opened the matter already quite nicely.
Mahatma Letters wrote:On close observation, you will find that it was never the intention of the occultists really to conceal what they had been writing from the earnest determined students, but rather to lock up their information for safety-sake, in a secure safe-box, the key to which is — intuition. The degree of diligence and zeal with which the hidden meaning is sought by the student, is generally the test — how far he is entitled to the possession of the so buried treasure: and certainly if you were able to make out that which was concealed under the red ink of M\ — you need despair of nothing. I believe, it is time now to bid you farewell, hoping you will find less trouble to read the blue than the red hieroglyphics.
Thinking intuition as a key it could be thought to point towards the center of individual, where one has every human principle at hand, and back towards the right combination of those tools for the moment.
Mahatma Letters wrote:And now, need I remind you that this letter is strictly private?
Raiding a tomb here, are we?