Theos-Talk Archives (May 1996 Message tl00349)

Alan writes>
>Forty years of Kabalist study suggest that Kabala renders it *without*
>the reference to breath - BUT - "God" as "Breath" would be taken as a
>*given* in all such expressions of development.  HPB also quotes other
>(biblical) references to the divine breath having a generative effect,
>though in one place she appears to use the incorrect Hebrew word, while
>rendering the correct English translation!
>
>So, yes, the above table makes sense to me, at least.
>
>Hope this is of some value.

Richard Ihle writes>
Thank you, Alan.  Your post was very valuable.

Forty years with the Kabala!   You know, sometimes I think there is nothing
on this earth which impresses me more than the ~people who persist~, year
after year, decade after decade, in their theosophical interests.  Show me
the man or woman who dies with his or her index finger wedged in some arcane
volume "in order to save the place," and I will show you someone whose
passing was indeed premature, no matter what the advanced age. . . .

The question of HPB's inclusion of *Breath* in the Kabalistic sequence
remains an interesting one.  Long ago, I was forced to give *Prakriti* this
horrific definition: "the circular, interpenetrating, continuum (from
energy/matter up through Spirit) of Substance."   (*Purusa* [Self,
Undifferentiated Consciousness], of course, stands apart from Prakriti except
to the extent that it can be "contaminated" [egoically deluded] by it in a
human incarnation.)

Anyway, it is possible to understand how Self may be able to "make a
connection" with Spirit (Atma-Buddhi) because of the "verisimilitude of their
ultra-rarefied Natures"; however, it is problematic to conceive of how Spirit
can have any association with a physical body at all unless something else on
the "Prakriti side of things" operated as its "threshold of interpentration."
 Perhaps HPB's *Breath* (poss. *prana* or "*Fohat*") provides this.  Perhaps
not.

In any case, show me the person who dies with his or her index finger on the
foregoing two paragraphs and I will show you a person whose passing was a
blessed relief for that person. . . .

Thanks again, Brother Alan.

Godspeed,

Richard Ihle