Theos-Talk Archives (August 1993 Message tl00010)

Hi Everyone!

This is a letter I wrote before the system crashed (written on 8/1/93)
so I'm sending it out now.

I'm writing in reponce to Leonard's letter (of 7/29), but this material
is directed to the whole group.

< I don't have MS Windows.  I installed it when it first came out, but
I got mired down in the detail>

If your machine can handle Windows (i.e.  you have the appropriate
hardware), I'd really recommend using it.  Its much, much better than
DOS.  Now that I'm using Windows, I won't go back to DOS.  Windoiws is
very well designed and it makes your computer a much more efficient
machine.  If you need any help at all, I'd be very happy to help get
you going, and I'm sure others here in the group could help too.

<Will we read and then exchange ideas or just freewheel it?>

I'm for freewheeling it.  Once school starts, I won't have any time to
read anything other than my school work.

< HoloNet.  Cost: $6.00 a month plus connect charges of $2.00/hr.
offpeak and $4.00/hr peak.  Local call in over 850 cities nationwide;
modem to 510-704-1058 (8N1) to find the closest access number and a
free demo.>

This sounds like a good idea.  I was telling Mike that I am concerned
with costs and that we need to find a cost effective way to hold this
group.  Right now, its costing me too much to operate out of
CompuServe.  What is everyone else's feelings on this?

<Re: starting a discussion of Occult Chemistry >

Leonard, I gave a brief intro to Occult Chemistry (OC) in a previous
message.  I myself am greately interested in this topic.  Generally, i
think the greatest significance of OC is that it serves to vindicate
the theosophical world-view more strongly than anything else I am aware
of.  Its easy for skeptics to dismiss theosophy and other forms of
occultism for any number of reasons, but OC is not easy to dismiss.  An
interesting approach to OC that won't boggle us down in chemistry and
physics is to focus on *how* Besant and Leadbeater clairvoyantly
observed the elements.  They claimed to have used a psychic ability (or
siddhi) called "anima".  Anima is the ability to percieve minute and
gigantic structures.  Patanjali desribes this ability in the Yoga
Sutras.  According to both Leadbeater and Geoffrey Hodson, there is an
organ in the third eye chakra in the etheric body, a tube with an eye
at the end of it, and it is by using this organ that one develops
anima.  The Egyptians seemed to have known about this organ as it's
represented by the snake that protrudes from between the eyes in some
ancient Egyptain art.  Now, the psychic ability anima is generally
little known here in the West, as opposed to other psychic abilities
such as telepathy or telekinesis, which are better known, However,
though the anima is not recognized as a psychic ability here is the
West, there are actually many documented cases of it.  One of the most
famous examples is the chemists Keluke who discoved that the molecule
benzene has a circular structure.  According to popular myth, Keluke is
reported to have had a dream about oroborus, the snake who eats itself
from the tail (the one in the theosophy symbol), and by seeing this he
realized that benzene was circular.  But, this is the popular myth, and
I was even taught this in school.  However, I have read Keluke's actual
journal entry about this expereince and in his own words he describes
how he would come home from the lab at night and rest in front of the
fireplace.  Often, he explained, he would see marvelous visions when
his eyes were closed, though he himself says that he wasn't asleep.
One night in this amazing state, he saw dancing colored lights forming
all kinds of interesting geometric patterns, patterns that he fancied
were the atoms of his body.  He says that he saw a group of these
colored lights form into a circle and it was then he realized that
benzene was a circlur molecule.  So, what this all sounds like to me is
that Keluke actually possessed a rudimentary clairvoyance and actually
saw atoms and molecules much like Besant and Leadbeater did.  It seems
that Keluke has the spontaneous ability to use anima.  Furthermore, you
will note that Keluke claimed that he was *not* asleep, but just highly
relaxed.  Thus, he did not dream.  The expereince Keluke describes is
called by psychologists; the hypnogogic state.  Hypnogogia is the state
that occurs right before one falls to sleep.  This state is
characterized by the fact that one often percieves images, very vivid
images.  I myself have seen a lot of things in the hypnogogic state and
as well have often used it as a spring board into the state called
astral projection.  Many of the members in the group may have actually
had the expereince of seeing vivid images of perhaps faces or forests,
buildings, or anything, as they have fallen off to sleep.  If not, I
strongly recommend to all members that you try to pay close attention
as you fall off to sleep.  Pay attention and look for these images.
They will come if you don't just drift off to sleep.  Now, my reason
for going off on all this is the following: I very strongly believe
that the ability that Besant and Leadbeater used to see atoms - anima -
is within the grasp of all the members of this group.  To some extent
or another, you can learn to do exactly what Besant and Leadbeater did.
By learning, even if only to a minor degree, to use anima during the
hypnogogic state, then you will see *first hand* that there is a very
real and substantial basis behind Besant and Leadbeater's claims.  This
prevents alienating you from their teachings and also brings their
teachings closer to home, makes them more real in your personal
expereince and less abstract and obtuse.  This way you have some type
of experiential basis for accepting or rejecting what other
Theosophists have taught and you will not be so depandant to accept
their ideas on sheer authority alone.  I think this approach is very,
very important.  It is the way science works.  A scientist does not
simply accept what another scientist says.  Ideas are constantly
tested, and only those ideas that hold up to independant confirmation
get accepted.  I think this is a very useful policy to initiate for any
learning, and most especially for any occult learning.  That is not to
say that its not useful to study the teachings of the great teachers
who have come before us.  What I am saying is that, along with studying
and learning the ideas, you must develop concrete means of testing the
ideas as well.  You need both approaches.  If you just learn the ideas
without them having any relevance in your actual experience, then the
ideas don't have a lot of worth.  At the very least, you stand on very
shakey intellectual grounds.  On the other hand, if you can spit out a
bunch of ideas and *at the same time* teach people methods that will
allow them to confirm your ideas, then you are on subtantially better
intellectual grounds.  I strongly recommend that we as a group try to
find concrete methods that substantiate the theosophical ideas we
discuss.  Thus, if we are to discuss Occult Chemistry, I recommend that
we discuss methods whereby each of us can, to some extent or another,
actually *see for ourselves* that what Besant and Leadbeater taught has
a basis in actual fact in so far aas we can develop similar faculties.
It takes very little effort to pay attention as you fall off to sleep
at night, and I'll bet that if every memeber of this group did this,
that by the end of the week at least one of us will report having seen
a hypnogogic image.  These hypnogogic images are a rudimentary form of
the type of clairvoyance that Leadbeater described and used.  So,
there, that's a different slant on Occult Chemistry, a slant that puts
the material within each of our grasps, and none of us really need to
know much about physics or chemistry to appreciate this aspect of
Occult Chemistry, which, again, we are now focusing on the psychic
ability - anima - used by Besant and Leadbeater.  So, that's it for
now.  I'll be very happy to hear anyone's comments on anything said
above.  All my best, Don

> Date: 16 Aug 1993 13:48:05 GMT Submitted-by: oneill@cs.uml.edu
> Posting-number: Volume 23, Issue inf02 
> Archive-name: admin/starter.kit

[Date of last change 11-Nov-92 Release 1.9.1]

UseNet CBIP Starter's Kit

This kit contains what you will need to begin downloading files from
comp.binaries.ibm.pc. This kit contains:

1) Instructions
2) Text source for UUDECODE
3) Documentation for UUDECODE
4) BOOZ 2.0, ZOO extractor, in uuencoded form

All you need is a file editor.

What to do:

You will need to split this file into 3 parts.  Each part is separated
by a line stating "---CUT HERE---" and a short description.  Using a
text editor, separate the parts for the UUDecode program and the BOOZ
extractor.

Save the UUDecode program as "uudecode.com", making sure that there are
no blank lines at the top, and the first line begins with "ENC.COM.".
This is a special encoding of an executable which is a true text file,
but is still executable.  It was produced with COMT by Alex Pruss, and
the file was provided by him...this eliminates the need for BASIC or
DEBUG to create UUDECODE.COM...

Make sure you save it as a DOS file, with CR-LFs at the end of each
line.

Then use the UUDECODE program to decode BOOZ into executable form by
saving the BOOZ.UUE file and saying

UUDECODE BOOZ.UUE

This will create BOOZ.EXE, which can be used to extract ZOO archives by
specifying

BOOZ X FILENAME

NOTE: This file is for the purpose of ease of use on any system.
Although other formats (such as shar files) are easier to handle, they
present a problem on the portability between systems.

UUDECODE.DOC by David Kirschbaum
<kirsch%maxemail@peo-mis-emh1.army.mil>

UUDECODE uudecodes uuencoded files to original binary form.  It is
compatible with the Unix (and other) uuencode/uudecode utilities.

Usage:

UUDECODE<RETURN>
Displays usage message, prompts for input file name.

UUDECODE [-o ][d:][\path\]filename.uue
Produces a uudecoded file, with the filename taken from within the
uuencoded file (which might include a path), (provided the
filenameCODE
/? (or -?) Writes a brief help screen to STDOUT and terminates.

Notes:

UUDECODE checks for existing files with the same name as the newly
created output file.  It will produce an error message and abort if it
finds one! (Use the "-o" switch to force overwriting existing files.)

UUDECODE will accept an input path\filename up to 80 chars long, and
will prompt if none is specified.

A uudecoded filename is taken from the uuencoded source file and is
written to the current directory (or to the path included in the file
header).

Input files may be any length.

Uuencoded file headers (mailing headers, etc.) need not be removed.
However, any spurious lines between the "begin" and "end" lines MUST be
removed.

Anything beyond the "end" line is ignored.  If no "end" is found, the
output file is saved, but an error message is displayed.

Certain uuencoders append a "checksum" character to the end of each
uuencoded line.  UUDECODE ignores these.

Uuencoded files generated or moved through a Unix system may have LF
(ASCII 10) line endings instead of the DOS-convention CR/LF (ASCII
13/10) endings.  UUDECODE will handle those LF ends of line as well.
you MAY get a "end not found" message, but the uudecoded file will be
intact.

Certain systems and mailers will strip off trailing spaces on lines.
UUDECODE attempts to replace them.