I would quote part of two pages from
The Secret Doctrine (footnotes included), which I stumbled upon the other day (in researching hylozoism & panpsychism), since I think they are especially relevant to this discussion and to what you posted, Virtual_Cliff:
Here, again, unless the Occult teaching is accepted, we are compelled once more to face a
miracle; to accept the theory of a
personal, anthropomorphic Creator, the attributes and definitions of whom, as formulated by the Monotheists, clash as much with philosophy and logic, as they degrade the ideal of an infinite Universal deity, before whose incomprehensible awful grandeur the highest human intellect feels dwarfed. Let not the modern philosopher, while arbitrarily placing himself on the highest pinnacle of human intellectuality hitherto evolved, show himself spiritually and intuitionally so far below the conceptions of even the ancient Greeks, themselves on a far lower level, in these respects, than the philosophers of Eastern Aryan antiquity. Hylozoism, when philosophically understood, is the highest aspect of Pantheism. It is the only possible escape from idiotic atheism based on lethal materiality, and the still more idiotic anthropomorphic conceptions of the monotheists; between which two it stands on its own entirely neutral ground. Hylozoism
demands absolute Divine Thought, which would
pervade the numberless active, creating Forces, or "Creators"; which
entities are moved by, and have their being in, from, and through that Divine Thought; the latter, nevertheless, having no more personal concern in them or
their creations, than the Sun has in the sun-flower and its seeds, or in vegetation in general. Such active "Creators" are known to exist and are believed in, because perceived and sensed by the
inner man in the Occultist. Thus the latter says that an ABSOLUTE Deity, having to be unconditioned and unrelated, cannot be thought of at the same time as an active, creating, one living god, without immediate degradation of the ideal.*
*The conception and definition of the Absolute by Cardinal Cusa may satisfy only the Western mind, prisoned, so unconsciously to itself, and entirely degenerated by long centuries of scholastic and theological sophistry. But this "Recent philosophy of the Absolute," traced by Sir W. Hamilton to Cusa, would never satisfy the more acutely metaphysical mind of the Hindu Vedantin.
A Deity that manifests in
Space and
Time -- these two being simply the forms of THAT which is the Absolute ALL -- can be but a fractional part of the whole. And since that "all" cannot be divided in its absoluteness, therefore that
sensed creator (we say
Creators)can be at best but the mere
aspect thereof. To use the same metaphor -- inadequate to express the full idea, yet well adapted to the case in hand -- these creators are like the numerous rays of the solar orb, which remains unconscious of, and unconcerned in, the work; while its mediating agents, the rays, become the instrumental media every spring -- the Manvantaric dawn of the Earth -- in fructifying and awakening the dormant vitality inherent in Nature and its differentiated matter. This was so well understood in antiquity, that even the moderately religious Aristotle remarked that such work of direct creation would be quite
unbecoming to God -- [[
aprepes toi theo]]. Plato and other philosophers taught the same: deity cannot set its own hand to creation, -- [[
autournein hapanta]]. This Cudworth calls "Hylozoism." As old Zeno is credited by Laertius with having said, "Nature is a habit moved from itself, according to seminal principles; perfecting and containing those several things which in determinate times are produced from it, and acting agreeably to that from which it was secreted."**
** Cudworth's "Intellectual System,"I. p. 328.
{
The Propositions are also thoroughly NeoPlatonic, Vedantin, or even Kabbalistic, if we examine them.}
None of this, in my understanding,
excludes, or precludes, the concept of an unconditionally Loving, Infinitely Wise, Majestic Being ... called by esotericists
the Planetary, or
Solar LOGOS (Seven Elohim, Seven Rishis, Seven Dhyani Buddhas, Seven Amshaspends, Seven Spirits before the Throne, if you will - but
always as expressions of the ONE).
What is said is quite in keeping with what we already know ... from say, the past century or so of
LIMITED discovery, understanding & application ... of
but one aspect, or example, of nature's Forces. Heat, Light, Sound, are all related to
Electricity. But electricity,
however we generate it upon earth (giving physical expression to something
from higher worlds altogether), exists in terms of
voltages ... and we speak of
currents,
frequences, and
vibration.
Simply put, you cannot run a line, straight from
your toaster, to the
nuclear power plant down the road ... and expect every one else to do the same, then expect to
press the little button and get toast. yeah toast!!!
That word kinda says it all. Moses, he saw the
burning bush.
Aaron, in the Priestly Blessing of the Kohanim, speaks
volumes to us ... if you will look at what is being said -
not once, but twice, in this blessing. The
Secret Doctrine speaks of the
Lords of Shining Countenance, as finally being
forced out of incarnation (or exoteric appearance) by the
Lords of the Dark Face ... during Atlantis.
We know that we are all created
"in God's image," and I think that when we conceive of this in terms of the ability to
co-create - on a lesser, but
tremendously important scale - we are on the right track. If we will add to this the
understanding of our potential to Love with the Love of Christ, then the
image begins to shine. And when to this, we add Service, or Sacrifice,
the "making Holy" of our entire, lesser being ... then we have grasped the Divine Blueprint (in broadest outline), in terms of Humanity's
intended relationship with the Divine.
We do not plug the toaster into the nuclear power plant. It will blow up.
We do not even plug it into the
box hanging out there on the power lines - the
transformer. That will blow up our toaster too. And if you plug that kind of transformer into a nuclear power plant,
guess what! Yeah, it's toast!!!
This is overly simplistic, obviously. There are countless
more Divine energies, expressing though dozens, hundreds, thousands, even millions of possible combinations ... than just
electricity - but we could come up with an analogy for the princples of
Love, and
Understanding, to illustrate this same idea:
God reaches us, not by yelling in our ear (Alanis showed us what happens whe She does that, remember?). There is the
"still, small voice," and once we have tuned into
"it," everything else tends to fall into place.
I think it's worth imagining, for a moment, that it's as if we are
bending down, looking through a keyhole. Sometimes there is enough light, and
we manage not to be blinded, so that we can catch a glimpse of what lies beyond. Other times, we cannot
"see," but if we turn our head, it
is possible to hear a whisper - and in rare instances, the conversation can be as clear as a phonecall. It does not surprise me that people refer to this as
"talking to God," or
"speaking with Jesus." It only makes sense.
I
would not dare suggest that we dabble around in the astral plane, or
sit with a ouija board, because in my experience, this is just inviting trouble. Others may feel that a good
"Lighten up, dude," is in order, and I think in the context that much of this stuff is discussed, this is okay advice. God knows I need to, often enough.
But you can't have it both ways. If all this
spirit guide crap, mumbo jumbo .... hocus pocus, scam, trickery,
hieararchy that doesn't need to exist ... really
doesn't - then do we each, as it were,
have God's ear? I think we are back to
the toaster. The only reason I don't get totally freaked out about it (having expressed this, as I have, in terms of
voltages) ... is because I think Nature (God's
Creation) has some
Awfully good, clever safeguards built-in - such that even when people
do try to plug that toaster in too close to the source,
electric currents are properly stepped down, and seldom does a person end up looking like Wile E. Coyote after the
ACME bomb trick backfired.
Incidentally, the whole idea of
increased vibrational frequency - on all levels from physical, through emotional, psychological and into the Spirtual, is
part of what Initiation is all about.
IF there is a
Hierarchy of spiritual beings (including Humans) more evolved than us ... then, I am much more likely to
believe in Them if there are poeple around who claim to have had encounters with them.
And such people abound,
from all walks of life, of ALL prior religious orientations, and NONE, exceedingly skeptical, as well as
extremely gullible or impressionable. Theosophists are one example of
esotericist, but we can look at the S
piritualists, people having had
Near-Death-Experiences and out-of-body experiences, folks who claim to
channel aliens/angels/masters, and so forth. To lump these all together,
as if all were saying the
same thing ... is a disservice, and gets us nowhere. If our argument is that all this is just
hocus pocus and nonsense, then so too, this silly notion of
an invisible man in the sky - WHO NEEEEEEEDS MONEY!!! Ughhhh!
The anthropomorphism, to me, is what insults our intelligence ...
as people still chase around Grandpa, with the white beard, through the endless maze of the subconscious. And if he were a happy old chap, that would be one thing, but the wrathful, jealous, tribal
bugger of a badguy still frightens children -
well into adulthood. No wonder children have bad dreams!
As one Master points out, this is - essentially -
Santa Claus ... and as our images, and wish-life, and morality-consciousness begins to
clash with the more objective side of things, we find that we must
repress Santa Claus - the happy, cheery old fella, who will nonetheless
bring coal if you have been wicked.
He KNOWS.
The Santa-Claus God ... alive and well, here on planet earth.
But masters? Oh they're just a fiction, some crap that some old trickster dreamed up one day, wanting to pull the wool over your eyes.
If there are no Masters in the world,
we're ALL in a mess o' trouble! Spirit Guides? I am a bit skeptical, and
do not seek them, personally. But if I fell overboard, and needed someone to throw me a rope,
I wouldn't care WHAT planet they said they were from ... I don't wanna drown!
This is pretty much the story of the poisoned arrow ... and I've already been babbling about it for hours. Time to get something done!
Love and Light,
~zagreus
