Theos-Talk Archives (October 1993 Message tl00048)

The idea of group souls is related to several other ideas that are seen
in the Besant/Leadbeater school, but which I haven't found in Blavatsky
nor Purucker/Point Loma writings.

It is important to keep flexible in our thinking, to keep our thoughts
from crystalizing, to have every idea open to reevaluation and deeper
understandings. (In this regard, I want to reexamine the idea of karma
in the near future.)

Because there are differences in what is taught in the different
schools of theosophy, having studied more than one school, I can
offer different slants on some of the ideas. There are perhaps one
to two dozen key ideas in the Besant/Leadbeater writings that might
be reconsidered. Some Purucker/Point Loma ideas could be reexamined
as well. We have to handle each idea on a case-by-case basis to see
if it is a deviation from the original theosophy, a further revealation
of the teachings, or a simple idea that veils a deeper truth, where
we want to explore that deeper truth ...

A Monad is the basic unit of being. It is indivisible. It is unique.
It is not composite, although in manifestation the ray that it
projects into existence is composite, impermanent, relatively unreal.
It has its own relation to the Timeless, and is thereby eternal in
nature. It has no beginning nor end, because only things that *exist*
have a start and finish. It is a point of consciousness, ever hungering
for increased self-consciousness, which can only be found by coming
into life, by periodic existences.

A Monad is not created at some point of time by "fission" from another
Monad. In manifestation, it bears close relationship with other Monads,
and these relationships could exist for an entire mahamanvantara. It
does not have a birth by "individualization" from an animal group soul.

Looking at ourselves, we are more evolved than the animals. We
function self-consciously in a higher principle of consciousness than
they do. But any of us as a human monad could not exist as many
independent human beings, with separate personalities and bodies, at
once! Not as twin-souls nor as a group of people! There is no
oversoul that we lose our separate identity into at some future point
in time, with a permanent, eternal loss of selfhood! We are a part of
the eternal nature of things, deeply rooted in the timeless, and will
always persist.

Now our manifested existence at a particular point of time may be
derived from various other beings, which provide the elements and
materials of form and being that allow us to *be* ourselves. But
our essential unique nature as Monads is not derived from anything
else but the *Source*. And it is not possible for us to be rooted in
the timeless, unless there is something in us that partakes of the
nature of timelessness...

                                 Eldon Tucker
                                 eldon@netcom.com