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Free Your Mind From the Universal Theosophy Library 2016 part III

… We know the word philosophy was coined by Pythagoras in pre-Socratic days in Greece. Philo=Love and  Sophia=Wisdom.  But the idea of philosophy is extremely ancient and has been referred to with other words and conceptions in various cultures throughout human history . What all these ancient conceptions have in common is the notion that the human mind has immense hidden power and vast untapped potentiality. And this, according to ancient philosophers is due to the connection the human mind has to the Whole, Oversoul, or the Divine, however conceived.    Modern philosophy in its normal academic setting has often crippled the notion of philosophy and relegated it to mere logic and semantics. In modern times it has lost the luster of its arcane roots.  In ancient Greece for example, man is the “microcosm of the macrocosm”. There is nothing in contemporary thought that approaches this Olympian vantage point and therefore the depth and breadth of the mind are significantly “crimped, cabined and confined” as Shakespeare says in Macbeth.

Many philosophy courses in college or high school take a tour through a laundry list of significant thinkers usually in the western tradition.  Descartes, Hegel, Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Nietzsche, and  sometimes ancients like Plato and Aristotle usually get touched upon in these classes just to name a few. It is good training to try to understand these thinkers but the main point is missed.  What are the enduring questions?  Why are they important to YOU? Once you have raised the big questions: Who am I?  What does it mean to be human?  What is justice? What is real? What is my role in life?  What is life for?  What happens after death? etc. it might then interest you to find out what other people think as well.  But until these are burning questions for you academic philosophy will remain nothing more than intellectual gymnastics and the point will be missed.  Philosophy is not about a survey of what other people think, it is an investigation into what is true and important to you.  In the end you must make choices as to HOW you are going to live.

Thirdly our depth of perception is also severely limited due to our range of sympathies. A Christian would say the depth of our love, a Buddhist would say compassion perhaps.  If I fiercely identify with my ethnic group, country, family or my community it has an effect on what one would think and care about. Additionally if I fiercely identify with a group of personality traits, favored activities, likes and dislikes this also determines  the range and reach of one’s perceptions and sympathies.  The aim of philosophy is to grasp the whole and to transcend the parts, no small task.

So put another way philosophy is important because it  has to do with seeing things as they are and not as we want them to be or as they appear to our limited senses or the range of our social concerns or our personality or prejudices. The goal of true philosophy is to perceive the Truth. It is to gain a universal perspective and to become liberated from a private, personal, partial and parochial ones.  (It is best to assume that most all of us labor under these limitations in differing degrees all the way along the path  until some level of transcendent enlightenment is achieved. And even with enlightenment, like a black belt in karate, there are additional levels of refinement available we are told by Great Teachers.

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Jewels of Wisdom

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Cross Currents

The Logos and the Mind Part III

By Charles Johnston

…..It is one of the great positive truths of Life, that a spiritual power rightly used is far stronger than the same spiritual power wrongly used. As soon as we begin to offer up self-will on the simple and austere altar of duty, we begin to profit by that benignant law. Even a small duty faithfully performed with entire disinterestedness will prevail over a large accumulation of self-will, and will begin to undermine and lessen the heap. So we can definitely make a beginning, by responding to that unquenched spark that is in every one of us, the sense that the duty immediately before us ought to be done because it ought to be done, because that course is right.

We can gain an initial leverage in this way for our next step. Through following the Light in the first step, we shall find ourselves in possession of a light already growing brighter, a light that will begin to illumine the furniture of our inner dwelling, and will begin to bring out the ugliness of much that we accumulate there. And we shall see, perhaps, that we have brought these unlovely things into our dwelling by misusing that other spiritual gift, the power to be attracted; by fixing it on ugly and unworthy things.

If this be so, and if we so perceive it, then it would seem possible to detach that power of attracting us from these unlovely things, and to transfer it immediately to the Power to which it rightfully belongs, the divine Power which so unwearyingly seeks to lead our feet into the way of Peace.

If we succeed even to a little degree in making this transfer, in detaching the golden particles of attraction from things we now see to be ignominious, and attaching them to the guiding Light above us, then sheer duty, at first a stern lawgiver only, will begin to appear to us with the Godhead’s most benignant grace. Or if we have already caught a first glimpse of the truth that the Power which is guiding us and strengthening us on our way upwards is inspired by fully conscious and responsive love, that it is the power of the living Master, then we may begin with reverent heart to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.

And once more we may remind ourselves that spiritual powers restored to their right place and their right use steadily overweigh and overbear the same powers wrongly used; so that the golden particles of attraction, once we have detached them from the unworthy things in our minds and restored them to the Light and Power above us, will immediately gain in drawing power, reinforced by all the strength of celestial Being. Emerson has a happy simile to express this law: cut downward with an axe, and the whole weight of our planet aids you; try to cut upward with the same axe, and the weight of the planet pulls against you.

Let us then consider how we may use our powers so that the whole weight of the Divine Power may pull with them, instead of pulling against them. And let us note, in passing, that that steady pull against our perverse wills, bringing with it pain and suffering, has again and again kept us back from destruction. It is as ready, yes, far more ready, to labour for our salvation.

Let us begin with will, the power to use our powers. Jules Payot has well said that the most important element of the will is the power of voluntary attention. Truly, a great power, and a magical power, if we so see it. It is not difficult to illustrate this. We of this generation have seen a succession of the most marvelous scientific discoveries; and each of these was the fruit of voluntary attention. It is true that an element of “happy accident” entered into the first discovery of the matter-penetrating cathode rays, while a second “happy accident” entered into the first discovery of the radioactivity of uranium. But without the steady, voluntary attention of the observers, these happy accidents would have borne no fruit. And it seems certain that, in this providential Universe, we are all surrounded with happy accidents, potentially capable of bearing no less valuable fruit, if only we used an equal power of attention. For it seems that attention not only is the power to hold the perceiving thought steady, but that it also contains within it the power to perceive the inner significance of what we steadily view; this, in virtue of its being a ray of the Logos.

So we can begin to turn our attention, and to fix our attention, on that divine star in our hearts, which shines with the everlasting Light; and, in virtue of our miraculous gift of true perception, we shall begin to learn more of that Light, we shall see more clearly what part of the furniture of our inner dwelling is worthy and what unworthy, what is good and what is evil.

Then we have the power to form mind-images, and to confer upon them the power to attract us. But this power also, which has hitherto worked to allure and enmesh us, can be turned round, so that it will work for our liberation. For we can as easily form mind-images of things true and holy, which will draw us toward the everlasting way.

And, as soon as we consider the matter, as soon as we turn on it that other power of attention, as a searchlight is turned upon scenery hidden in the darkness of night, we shall find that endless riches have already been gathered for us, immediately available for this very purpose. Those books which deal with the things of the Logos, and of our relation with the life of the Logos, the Sacred Books of the world, are filled from cover to cover with mind-images lit with the beauty of holiness. We have only to build them up in our own minds, and we shall have an army of lovely images, ready to fight the battle of purification and redemption within us continually.

Take, for example, that ancient Upanishad, which pictures the youth, Nachiketas, descending into the House of Death. Here are mind-pictures which show us our own position, in the House of Death in which we have elected to dwell, and also the choice we must make, to find the way of liberation.

Or take the setting of the Bhagavad Gita: the field of Kurukshetra with the armies of kinsmen arrayed against each other. That is the type of the battle within ourselves, against the deformation of ourselves, which we have undertaken to wage; and Krishna’s exhortation to valour in that contest is an exhortation to us.

Or, again, take the kingly figure of the Buddha, Siddhartha the Compassionate, which has drawn millions of hearts, even though his followers have rendered much of his teaching almost sterile, through their over-use of the argumentative mind, neglecting almost wholly the power of the heart. Yet even with this handicap, the story of the formation of his Order is full of compelling beauty.

Again, if we consider it a moment, we shall find the history of the Master Christ doubly enriched with food for the imagination spiritually used. Christ constantly exercises the power to create mind-images that shall hold our thought and draw our hearts. All the parables are such images. And he has set in them those particles of gold which do draw us; in that respect, the work is already done.

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Theosophy is Divine Wisdom and?

The Freedom of Thought

“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of one’s own mind” Ralph Waldo Emerson reminds us. Theosophy is about independent inquiry and investigation. The pursuit of wisdom requires independence of thought. Each human being must come to terms with the world and universe they live in through their own experience, reasoning power and intuition. It is possible to disagree without being disagreeable. Seeking out the ideas of those who see things differently than ourselves broadens our understanding while respecting the freedom of thought we cherish for ourselves. In Theosophy no one is asked to believe anything with the possible exception of universal brotherhood.

Go here to read our 21 statements about Theosophical Philosophy