Theos-Talk Archives (April 1996 Message tl01355)

Hi, Virginia,

Thanks for your thoughtful answer.

I especially like your apt use of the word "tenant". I had thought of it as
"consciousness", but that gives a vague image. When you use "tenant", you're
clearly describing a being, a tenant, residing within something else. When
the tenant leaves, the dwelling places is empty & lifeless, even though a
few signs of what was life still stay behind as reminders that here there
once was life ... until the reminders decompose. It's like an empty
apartment stripped to the walls, but the light switches are still there
unused, & a few things are left behind which the tenant didn't want to take
along.

The picture fits all along the line, until one comes to what Theosophists
call the monad. And I'm wondering ... does the tenant reside there, or do
you think the monad is the tenant itself?

To your question further on, I'd guess, same as you, that the tenant needs
to be present "to keep the units of so-called aetheric or astral substance
attracted." It makes sense, but it's also conjecture. I have no ESP to prove
it's right either.

I think, in a way, one can borrow the scientific method to investigate
non-physical phenomena, dunno about substance. The best I've come across
which one can do is for a number of people who have ESP to view the same
subject, or do the same experiment, and then compare notes of what they
found. Besant & Leadbeater did that while researching "Occult Chemistry".
They used a technique that allowed them to look at very small things. I've
heard that modern scientific findings have borne them out. You say
non-physical substances change a lot. I wonder how that fits into the
puzzle. When you look at the pictures of auras drawn from Leadbeater's
descriptions, they're quite different in some of the details from the ones
drawn from Dora's descriptions.
And yet, I know that Leadbeater taught Dora how to interpet more clearly
what she saw, so some of the vision must've been the same, or one wouldn't
have been able to learn from the other, & CWL had a number of gifted
clairvoyant etc. pupils, whome he taught to better intepret what they saw.
But how to capture this into something more concrete?

Well, in 1 of the books it mentions that in her younger years the
clairvoyant worked with a physician, & the clairvoyant diagnosis was
compared with what was found on the X-rays, or during a subsequent
operation. I've also read of an experiment where a modern yogi was able to
stop his heart for a while, & the result was confirmed, because he was
strapped to an electrocardiogram. Incidentally, after the experiment he told
the scientists that he could have stopped his heart longer than he did, but
someone had told him before the experiment that the cardiogram graph paper
was very expensive. So he didn't want to use up too much of it.

That's sort of at the edge of it. It proves phenomena more than it does what
substance they are made of. I don't know what kind of experiments they're
doing at Duke University. Do You? Do you know anything about the experiments
the Russians did, are doing, because it seems they didn't deny the existence
of ESP the way we did, but instead went right ahead & experimented with it.
I understand some scientists are experimenting in this country as well, but
they don't very readily admit to it, because it's frowned upon. I wonder
whether any of them are coming any closer to what it is. From some of the
things my Teacher said, I suppose that etheric material is made up of finer
& finer vibes.

Liesel




>Sat, 27 Apr 1996 12:09:09 -0400, liesel@dreamscape.com (liesel f.
>deutsch) wrote:
>>So I thought maybe if I give a couple of quotes we could start a
>>discussion going. So I'm trying:
>>"In the presence of a corpse, the skeptical physiologist stands
>>dumb when asked by his pupil whence came the former tenant of that
>>empty box, and whither has it gone."
>>"Who has been able to penetrate the secret formation of a body...?
>>who has sounded to the bottom the abyss in a grain of sand" which
>>"has been studied for thousands of years?"
>>"Why should there be an attraction between the molecules of
>>matter, & none between those of spirit?"
>>"The Hermetic, Orphic, and Pythagorean cosmogonical doctrines, ...
>>are all based upon  one irrefutable formula, viz.  that the Aether
>>& Chaos, or, in the Platonic language, mind and matter, were the 2
>>primeval and eternal principles of the universe..."
>
>These quotes, from my perspective, relate, in part, to non-physical
>substance.  Out of body experiences have proved to me that humans
>have non-physical bodies.  These bodies stay in a specific form so
>it folows they consist of a substance that coheres.  Is this
>non-physical substance (aetheric? or astral?) made up of units?  If
>so, this would mean the non-physical body holds form because the
>units of its substance attract each other?  On the physical level,
>when the tenant leaves the units of physical substance break apart
>from each other.  The physical units diffuse.
>
>[This leads to a sure way of knowing if the physical body is empty
>or not.  See if the physical body rots.  Of course our modern noses
>can't stand the thought.  We freeze and then embalm or burn bodies
>before they stink.]
>
>The attraction of the units of the physical body depend, then, upon
>the presence of the tenant.  Does the tenant need to be present to
>keep the units of so-called aetheric or astral substance attracted?
>If so, how many other bonds must be broken and other bodies
>dispersed?  Dying - what a process!
>
>I wonder how the make-up of non-physical substance can be
>investigated?  So far I've found the contributions of people who
>see non-physical substance not very helpful.  From the little I've
>seen, on my own, of these non-physical substances I can understand
>why.  They change so much!  Talk about variability - it's mind
>boggling.
>
>Virginia Behrens TI, TSA
>
>
>