Theosophy

A place to discuss casual topics amongst spiritual friends.
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Theosophy

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

A blog by contemporary theosophist, Vic Hao Chin:

https://insightsonlife.net
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Theosophy

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European conference in mid-October 2018, with theme of Death & Dying:

http://europeanschooloftheosophy.eu/wp- ... 2018-2.pdf
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Theosophy

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Undoubtedly moral elevation is the principal thing insisted upon in the Theosophical Society. He who would be a true Theosophist must bring himself to live as one.
Blavatsky
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Theosophy

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Tim Boyd President of the Adyar Theosophical Society talking about theosophy at Singapore conference - he begins at 7 minutes:

Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
freedom
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Re: Theosophy

Post by freedom »

A lot of wisdom ...

One should not be negligent of discernment, should guard the truth, be devoted to relinquishment, and train only for calm - MN 140.
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Theosophy

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Learning and study via listening to a Sage is an ancient method which seems to be coming back into use, now that fewer folks like to read. Yet for that latter group, here is the text of Light on the Path:

https://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/li ... e_path.pdf
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Theosophy

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Deeply sensible of the Titanic struggle that is now in progress between materialism and the spiritual aspirations of mankind, our constant endeavor has been to gather into our several chapters, like weapons into armories, every fact and argument that can be used to aid the latter in defeating the former. Sickly and deformed child as it now is, the materialism of To-Day is born of the brutal Yesterday. Unless its growth is arrested, it may become our master. It is the bastard progeny of the French Revolution and its reaction against ages of religious bigotry and repression. To prevent the crushing of these spiritual aspirations, the blighting of these hopes, and the deadening of that intuition which teaches us of a God and a hereafter, we must show our false theologies in their naked deformity, and distinguish between divine religion and human dogmas. Our voice is raised for spiritual freedom, and our plea made for enfranchisement from all tyranny, whether of SCIENCE or THEOLOGY.
From Blavatsky's first book, Isis Unveiled, published in 1877.
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Theosophy

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The original attitude of the American Indian toward the Eternal, the "Great Mystery" that surrounds and embraces us, was as simple as it was exalted. To him it was the supreme conception, bringing with it the fullest measure of joy and satisfaction possible in this life.

The worship of the "Great Mystery" was silent, solitary, free from all self-seeking. It was silent, because all speech is of necessity feeble and imperfect; therefore the souls of my ancestors ascended to God in wordless adoration. It was solitary, because they believed that He is nearer to us in solitude, and there were no priests authorized to come between a man and his Maker. None might exhort or confess or in any way meddle with the religious experience of another. Among us all men were created sons of God and stood erect, as conscious of their divinity. Our faith might not be formulated in creeds, nor forced upon any who were unwilling to receive it; hence there was no preaching, proselyting, nor persecution, neither were there any scoffers or atheists.
From: Ohiyesa, The Soul of the Indian.
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Theosophy

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A blog that surveys the influence of HP Blavatsky since 1875:

https://blavatskynews2.blogspot.com
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Re: Theosophy

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The adept hierarchy is as strictly a product of nature as a tree is: it has definite and indispensable purpose and function in the development of the human race: this function is to keep open the upward path, through which descend the light and leading, without which our race would require to make each step by the wearisome, never ending method of trial and failure in every direction, until chance showed the right way. In fact the function of the adept hierarchy is to provide religious teachers for the stumbling masses of mankind.

But this path is eminently dangerous to those who do not hold the talisman which ensures safety; this talisman is a perfectly unselfish, self-forgetting, self-annihilating devotion to the religious good of mankind, a self-abnegation, which is not temporal, but must have no end for ever, and the object of which is the religious enlightenment of the human race.
T. Subba Row (d. 1890)
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Theosophy

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However odd Theosophy may appear nowadays, in India of late 19th century it had a beneficent effect. Here is the first year of the monthly journal The Theosophist. It contained stories, and interfaith articles about Jainism, Buddhism, Vedanta etc.

https://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/th ... eos-hp.htm
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Re: Theosophy

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Upasaka Olcott wrote a little book that endeared him to all Buddhists of Ceylon and South Asia. Since the teachings of Buddha were so clearly set forth, many Mahayana sages accepted this book as solid Dhamma:

Buddhist Catechism.pdf
(103.85 KiB) Downloaded 213 times

It is still in print, I think.
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Theosophy

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There is an offshoot of Blavatsky's theosophy, which is scholarly, proper & scorns Blavatsky. It is called the Perennial Philosophy.
The self-validating certainty of direct awareness cannot in the very nature of things be achieved except by those equipped with the moral 'astrolabe of God's mysteries'. If one is not oneself a sage or saint, the best thing one can do, in the field of metaphysics, is to study the works of those who were, and who, because they had modified their merely human mode of being, were capable of a more than merely human kind and amount of knowledge.
Aldous Huxley
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
chownah
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Re: Theosophy

Post by chownah »

There is an offshoot of Blavatsky's theosophy........... It is called the Perennial Philosophy.
I think this is a misrepresentation.
chownah
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Theosophy

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chownah wrote: Tue Aug 20, 2019 3:11 am
There is an offshoot of Blavatsky's theosophy........... It is called the Perennial Philosophy.
I think this is a misrepresentation.
chownah
Rene Guenon Theosophy: History of a Pseudo-Religion (Le Théosophisme – Histoire d'une pseudo-religion, 1921)

The ground covered by Blavatsky is the same (yet more vast) as that of Guenon, his predecessors and followers. It is just that the charlatan labeling of HPB scared away most scholars, so a purified group was formed with a Traditionalist or Perennialist label.
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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