Theos-Talk Archives (May 1996 Message tl00187)

Keith:

>I can only speak for myself, but I wonder if many get frustrated with this or
>that approach because it doesn't address the core issue of the spiritual
>development of the individual in practical terms as opposed to theoretical and
>historical issues.

That is because the approach promoted in theosophical groups is more
subtle than that. It gives guidelines, but then has us studying the
spiritual books. And you know what? Without realizing it, our elevated
thought life has infected us with an unexpected transformational power,
and our lives start to change on their own accord!

>In other words, how do the notions of the cycles of manifestation, reincarnation
>and karma help one develop all of the vehicles.  How do we stop arguing the
>ideas and live the life?

We live the life by living the life. It sounds circular, but it's
no different than anything else. How do we pick up a coffee cup on
the table? We reach out our arm and pick it up. How do we make a
friend? We get to know someone and just do it. How do we awaken
inner fires that start our lives cooking? By standing close to
someone's already burning flame, or by patiently striking one's
flint until a spark can be obtained, then with tinder nurtured into
a fully-bruning flame!

>I have been forced to focus on the need to regenerate the incessant demands of
>my kama-manas or desire-mind.  This has strengthened my belief in reincarnation
>in that I can see how these issues came over from another life and I have been
>given the opportunity to pay karmic debts by suffering  to restructure myself  a
>little at a time.  Christina Grof has written about the spiritual emergence
>movement and has started a network to help those in a spiritual crisis.

That regeneration can be an ordeal, like a "dark night of the soul", or
it can be a happy letting go of the garbage of the past, like "eternal delight".
The first approach is more often experienced in the west, because we're so
caught up in the western psyche, with an abnormal and overly-developed sense
of personal self. The second approach is more easy for easterners, not having
the same psychic baggage to dispose of.

>Transpersonal psychology, deep ecology and other movements are addressing
>issues beyond mental analysis.

Simply explaining it in words would be mere mental analysis. But there are
other ways of using the mind, where the "mental analysis" is a co-process
with deeper changes in one, and not empty and lacking in meaning.

>I am brainstorming, but I think that many feel this and
>may be looking for answers in karma yoga, bakti yoga, hatha yoga
>and tantra because rational analysis has reached a kind of dead
>end crisis.

Rational analysis *without a total saturation in the spiritual* is, as you
say, a dead-end. But any approach without understanding and comprehension,
is mindless, instinctual, and lacking in depth.

>This could lead to a new type of irrationality of cults, drugs, violence,
>gangs, terrorism etc. or type of transrationality we all dimly expect
>and even glimpse, but have trouble making it practical perhaps.

The rejection of the mind and the intellect is certainly as much of a
dead-end as a purely arid mind-based approach.

>Unity consciousness at one with everyday consciousness is the philosopher's
>stone and jewel of great place and like the grail seems "occult" in a special way.

And this unity arises in our everyday awareness as we transcend the personality
as we know it. It is with a great sigh of relief that we cast off it's shadow
upon our mind and heart, and see things from the standpoint of the greatest good.
We are not omniscient and omnipotent, but we have then become more than ourselves.
We can know things that we would not have ordinarily comprehended, and have become
able to do things that weren't possible to us before. We're still like baby
chicks, needing to peck through the eggshells, the confining personalities, and
find our birth into a wider field of life.

-- Eldon