Theos-Talk Archives (November 1994 Message tl00018)

>Any help out here?

I think I understand what you mean.  Spiritual hedonism is not
the right attitude towards life.  The true theosophist _must_
work in this world.  First of all, he should do his duty towards
others.  He must work _in_ this world, but he is not necessarily
_from_ this world, if you get my point.

The theosophist and certainly the chela makes his personality
transparent to the Spirit within and becomes a 'vehicle' or means
for Spirit to express itself in this world, bringing vibrations
of harmony and compassion into the world's mental & emotional
atmospheres.

The chela and even the 'ordinary' theosophist must learn to
balance his thoughts, in order to arrive at a 'sattvic' or
tranquil state of his mind, enabling the spiritual energies to
flow into his mind.  This, we can learn from the Bhagavad Gita:
the immortal teachings of Krishna.  We can learn to stand above
the pairs of opposites.  BTW, sattva is one of the three guna's
or qualities that play a major role in nature's processes.
Sattva is connected with the idea of harmony, Reality and
balance.

Also, Arthur, emotions have a higher aspect: involvement with
others, caring for others.  This is an important point to realize
for all theosophists.

The disciple may be temporarily 'ensnared' by _his_ experience
with spirituality, but he must learn to stand above this
experience, as that is a kind of illusion too, one of the traps
on the Path so to speak.

One word about 'the relationship to the Divine'.  Theosophy
declares that we have a Divine element _in_ ourselves.  But this
is not the same as the 'One Unknowable Principle', that is not
manifested itself.  The Divine element is an _emanation_ or
radiation from the One Principle.  So, even Buddha Gautama has 'a
relationship with the Unknowable', although being extremely high
developped, there still being higher Hierarchies of life.  The
'absorption' you speak of is only on a relative scale (in the
manifest world), never absolute, I guess.  I hope this doesn't
make it all more confused to you Arthur.  But I do feel the need
to present a larger picture of the Kosmos.

You mentioned William Quan Judge.  He is the author of the
letters that are collected in the book: "letters that have helped
me".  You may find this book extremely usefull in contributing to
your understanding of discipleship.  At least it was so for me
and many others.

Enough now.  Feel free to discuss any of these difficult,
sometimes very metaphysical issues.  We can all learn from this.

Martin Euser
xs4all
Netherlands