Theos-Talk Archives (May 1995 Message tl00040)

Syhcronistically, I keep running up against this concept of
Chaos. Today I picked up a book called "The Tao of Chos" which
links mathematics, fractals (the beauty of the Mandelbrot and
Julia sets), the I Ching and DNA in a interesting psychological,
but not systematic way.

The link seems to be that there is an "Unseen Hand" in Chaos or
underlyning reality that seems to synchronistically appear when
we examine such things as the I CHing, DNA, and I suppose dreams
too when we try to give meaning to our lives with these things.
These seems to be the action at a distance problem that seems to
plague subatomic physics (trying to measure the speed or location
of a particle seemed to affect it at a distance).

I admit I know the concept more from Ilya Prigogine's now early
"Order Out of Chaos" and not all the recent work.

Jerry mentions that the past and the future may be more linked
than we think.

But to be breif and over simply, I have been tossing around these
ideas:

1. Karma focuses on the Past as cause and effect as a type of
memory - it is reactive

2. Dharma or our personal mission, obligation, duty or whatever
projects us into the Future as out ability to plan and reason
about cause and effect - it is proactive

3. Chaos allows the present to be free from both. Its is the
Nothingness, Sarte talks about a nothingness that slips and
slides and seperates like a knife (magic?) - it is creative.

Chaos is strangely Creative, because of its nihilating (making
nothing) or seperating the past from the future so that
consciousness or time itself can slip in as free, as alive, as
evolving.

Sartre was supposed to be an atheist, but he made Nothingness
into a kind of creative principle or god.

I haven't thought about Sartre in years. He acknowldged the
neo-platonists, the gnostics as the fore runners of
existentialism. Existentialism sees to have fallen from favor as
has Marxism (and maybe for good reason).

But the problem of the ego as a kind of vortex of negativity and
creativity stills haunts me. That is spiritual people seem to
agree that the ego should be "bound back", the meaning of the
word "religion" to a higher purpose.

Many suggest the ego should be in service of humanity, the group,
- this is the view of Christians and many Western occultist
systems including theosophy.

Some suggest the ego should be extinguished so the Self can enter
Nirvana - Buddhism.

All suggest the ego should become united with something beyond
selfishness to the higher Principles, the Higher Self, the Will
of God or something. This is YOGA.

But people disagree on how to do this and how you can tell if
this has been done.

I think Blavatsky said that theosophy was a type of Jyana or
intellectual yoga. The Bakti yoga or the cult of the guru has
never appealed to me - look at the Branch Davadians and that
Japanes cult. Karma yoga seems to be the way of the Puritan
heritage - work out your salvation with fear.

This Puritan idea of purifying the body, the emotions, and the
ego so as to make it a temple or fit receptical of the higher
principles seems noble, enlightened, worthwhile, but Chaos seems
to tip the applecart in unexpected directions.

Has anyone talked about the idea that Blavatsky seemed to suggest
that Lucifer (bringer of the light of consciousness) got a bad
name somewhere along the line? That consciousness was a gift, but
that it gave man, the Promethean fire of the mind. The gift of
freedom and knowlege brought guilt. Or was it just the
Agnishwattas from Venus?

Namaste

Keith Price