Theos-Talk Archives (November 1994 Message tl00025)

Sarah,

Glad to find you back--I thought that you might have forever
disappeared into cyberspace.  I want to start by finally
responding to a question you asked some months ago concerning the
September chart for the T.S.  HPB penned a footnote to a comment
concerning the founding of the T.S.  She was responding to a
statement that the T.S.  was founded 17 Nov.  1875.  She wrote:
"Formally; yet in truth it was founded on 7th Sept.  1875 at my
house in 46 Irving Place New York" (See BCW Vol.  1, p.123).
Unfortunately, the records of this meeting does not give times,
but they do mention that it convened in the "evening." Sept.  7th
was a Tuesday.  My guess is that the meeting probably began
around seven.  George Felt gave a talk, and the suggestion
concerning the formation of the T.S.  occurred afterward, during
discussion.  This must have occurred sometime after 8:00 p.m.
Thus, I would look between 8 and 11 for the founding time of the
T.S.  as HPB would have it.

S> Pranayama is an exercise of the breath which has as
> its objective the control and expansion of the life
> force. How exactly does this happen and what is the
> relationship of the principle PRANA to the prana which
> yogis speak of? The principles have been called by
> other names such as: bodies or sheaths. What takes
> place in these principles/bodies when the process
> spoken of in The Voice of the Silence is experienced,
> and how are the planets we see in orbit related to
> this experience and the principles? You mentioned a
> meditation in a past communication, one which assisted
> chelas or students to develop control of their emotions
> and desires. Could you speak a bit more about this.

Wow! I'm not sure where to start.  Perhaps we need to break
things down a bit, and start with your passing comment that
principles have been called by other names such as bodies and
sheaths.  I think the teachings concerning the seven principles
has been one of the real stumbling blocks for the understanding
of Theosophical teachings, because they have been so mutilated by
later writers.  They have come down to us in a hopeless confusion
of rhetoric.  Without going into detail as to how this happened,
just let me say that "principles," "bodies" and "sheaths" are not
synonymous terms, and derived from very different systems.

Now prana, to be perfectly correct, is not a principle, but an
aspect of jiva ("life").  On this plane, it is the organizing
force in matter.  Though pana is an aspect of life, it is really
the primary cause of physical death.  That is why prana is such a
big subject in hatha yoga, where they have exercises that are
supposed to "regulate" the flow of prana, therefore maintaining
physical health etc.  They do this by special breathing exercises
which HPB, by the way, does not recommend.

~The Voice of the Silence~ concerns itself with the moving of
consciousness from the lower to the Higher Self--from Kama- Manas
to Buddhi, in terms of principles, but I think that can be
misleading.

There is a correlation between the planets and principles.  They
are listed in the E.S.  Instructions, BCW vol.  12.  I've been
experimenting with them, and I'm convinced that there is a whole
other level of understanding of the functions of the planets
here, that has been completely lost.  We are used to reading
horoscopes psychologically now-a-days.  But I think there are
some very profound insights in a horoscope when one applies HPB's
correlations.  Look at the Greek myths, and interpret them
esoterically, and there is a whole world of material for esoteric
astrology.  For instance, Venus corresponds to manas, and
Artemis, to one of the occult aspects of the moon (Bhakti in this
case).  Hippolytus (the to be failed initiate), who has taken a
vow of chastity and to the worship of Artemis, still had to
reckon with Aphrodite (not sex, but the karmic burden of who he
is).  One cannot reach enlightenment by skipping rungs.  Venus is
bound to Saturn (Kama to Manas) and Hippolytus cannot escape his
own karma through devotionalism and denial.

As for meditations that "bring control of emotions and
desires"--all decent forms of meditation will get one to that
point eventually.  A direct way is to use one's own thoughts,
perceptions and feelings as the object of meditation.  In this
exercise, one observes one's own thoughts etc.  in a manner where
a measured amount of time is given to each.  For instance,
imagine yourself sitting by a river.  As each thought/feeling
etc, arises, imagine it on a leaf floating by you on the river.
observe it moving away from you and disappearing into the
distance.  Each thought that arises becomes a new leaf floating
down the river.  It is a Buddhist method--however they use logs
instead of leaves.  But I like trees the way they are.  Anyway,
give it ten minutes a day, increasing to twenty after a couple of
weeks to a month.  Work with it for about a month before deciding
whether it is useful or not.  Meditation takes patience more than
anything else.

Liesel,

L> There's a movement among us to work together more.  I think
one of its first manifestation was a conference in New York City
in the late 1980ies on ways to propagate Theosophy.  I attended
that, because I think that even though we're all very
individualistic, there are few enough of us that we could at
least try to work together.  I think Jerry H-E had a part in it.
I also remember having a very warm conversation with an elderly
gentleman from the ULT, during which we both expressed the
sentiment that we could really work together a lot better & more
easily than we do.  I learned a lot at that conference.

I guess we met and never spoke to each other.  Strange how karma
works.  We know all of the same people but never actually met.
That New York conference was organized by Michael Revere, my wife
and I.  My presentation was on techniques for promulgating
theosophy that we had developed.  I also showed a portion of a
historical video.  That was in 1986.  The elderly gentleman was
probably Joe Pope who was the head of the New York ULT.  He
passed away recently.  The conference was one of a series of
"networking" conferences that were done all over the world at the
time.

Jerry Hejka-Ekins