Dream Dictionary Flame

Fire-philosophers Philosophers of medieval Europe who regarded fire as the supreme principle. Their ideas were largely those of Oriental occult or semi-occult bodies; hence they may be described as either the Persian Magi, or the European followers of Robert Fludd (1574-1637), a student of Paracelsus who taught the analogy of macrocosm and microcosm and the four elements.

"The name given to the Hermetists and Alchemists of the Middle Ages, and also to the Rosicrucians. The latter, the successors of the Theurgists, regarded fire as the symbol of Deity. It was the source, not only of material atoms, but the container of the spiritual and psychic Forces energizing them. Broadly analyzed, fire is a triple principle; esoterically, a septenary, as are all the rest of the Elements. As man is composed of Spirit, Soul and Body, plus a fourfold aspect: so is Fire. As in the works of Robert Fludd (de Fluctibus) one of the famous Rosicrucians, Fire contains (1) a visible flame (Body); (2) an invisible, astral fire (Soul); and (3) Spirit. The four aspects are heat (life), light (mind), electricity (Kamic, or molecular powers) and the Synthetic Essence, beyond Spirit, or the radical cause of its existence and manifestation. For the Hermetist or Rosicrucian, when a flame is extinct on the objective plane it has only passed from the seen world unto the unseen, from the knowable into the unknowable" (TG 119-20).

(See also: Fire-philosophers , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Deity or God. Intelligence and will superior to the human, forming the intelligent and vital governing essence of the universe, whether this universe be large or small.

The principal views as to the nature of deity may be classed as

1)    pantheistic,

2)    polytheistic,

3)    henotheistic, and

4)    monotheistic.

Pantheism, which views the divine as immanent in all nature and yet transcendent in its higher parts, is characteristic of certain Occidental philosophical systems and of all Oriental systems.

Polytheism implies the recognition of an indefinite number of deific powers in the universe, the plural manifestations of the ever immanent, ever perduring, and manifest-unmanifest One. Polytheism is thus a logical development of pantheism.

Henotheism is the belief in one god, but not the exclusion of others, such as is found in the Jewish scriptures, where the ancient Hebrews frankly worshiped a tribal deity and fully recognized the existence of other tribal deities.

Monotheism is the belief in only one god, as is found in Christianity and Islam. These religions, in inheriting the Jewish tradition, have confounded this merely personal and local conception with the First Cause of the universe, which in theosophy would be called the formative cosmic Third Logos, thus producing an inconsistent idea of a God who is both infinite, delimited, and personal in character, with an intuition, however, of the necessarily impersonal cosmic intelligent root of all.

In theosophical philosophy, the cosmic divine in the hierarchical sense is both transcendent and immanent, during manifestation breaking as it were into innumerable rays which produce the various deific powers in inner and outer nature; each such immanent divinity, however, itself emanating from the all-encompassing and forever unmanifest Rootless Root or parabrahman.

The various universes, sometimes referred to as sparks of eternity, spring from parabrahman at periodic intervals called manvantaras, and then resolve back into the pre-manvantaric condition or pralaya, only to issue forth again when the pralaya of whatever magnitude has run its course. Therefore, at one and the same time divinity is transcendent and immanent, eternal and unmanifest, while its rays or cosmic sparks of whatever magnitude are periodic and manifested. Hence from each such manifested One or cosmic hierarch proceed the multiple rays, to which in various theogonies are given names and attributes of superior deities. Thus the words god and deity become generic, and the general definition may be applied to the core of the core of any being, great or small, cosmic or human, for all are sparks of the cosmic flame of life.

The word deity, in the sense of beings which are more spiritual than the human being of today, may be applied to the divine rulers of human races before the times of the demigods and heroes; or more generally to an indefinite range of nonphysical beings, spiritual or ethereal in character, including among the latter the so-called "spirits of the elements."

See also GOD; GOD(S)

(See also: Deity, God , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Pramantha (Sanskrit) [from pra-math to stir about violently]

The upper stick used by the ancient Brahmins to kindle fire. By rubbing it against the arani or under stick, the friction produced the heat and subsequent flame. It would be wide of the inner significance of the pramantha and arani to concentrate attention upon their supposed phallic or sexual significance as these are described both pragmatically and mystically in ancient Hindu works, although unquestionably the language used is at times suggestive.

Mystically, the pramantha stands for the will in man, whirling and unceasingly active in and upon the passive portion of the human constitution, arousing the latter into corresponding activity, bringing about there the fire and flame of animate life. When the will is stilled the being is dormant; when the will acts all portions of the constitution touched by the whirling activity of the will react and spring themselves into corresponding motion.

(See also: Pramantha , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Meditative Postures

Yoni Mudra

·  Close your ears with thumbs.

·  Cover your eyes with your index finger.

·  Close your nostrils with your middle fingers.

·  Press your lips together with your remaining fingers.

·  Release the middle fingers gently to inhale and exhale while you meditate.

Frontal & Nasal Gazing

·  Gaze at a point between your eyebrows, seat of the 'Third Eye' or at the tip or your nose.

·  This would improve your level of concentration. At the same time, strengthening your eye muscles. Nasal gazing has a positive effect on the central nervous system.

·  Remember not to strain your eyes. Start with one minute of gazing and then slowly build it up to ten minutes.

Candle Gazing

• Place a candle at eye-level in a darkened, draught-free room.
• Close your eyes and hold an after-image of the bright flame.

The practice steadies the wandering mind, leading you to focus with pin-point accuracy.

(See also: Meditative Postures , Ayurveda, Ayurvedic Dictionary, Alternative Health, Body Mind and Soul)

CRYSTAL GAZING - the use of a candle flame, a crystal ball, a black mirror, a dark bowl of water or a bright sword for divination. (SD)

(See also: CRYSTAL GAZING , Wiccan Pagan, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

Trataka: fourth shatkarmas; technique of gazing into steadfastly upon an object such as a candle flame, mandala or yantra.

(See also: Trataka , Hinduism, Yoga, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Jyota se jyota:

A chant; an invocation to the Guru asking for the flame of divine love in the disciple's heart to be kindled with the Guru's own heart flame.

(See also: Jyota se jyota , Yoga, Yoga Dictionary, Siddha Yoga, Siddha Yoga Dictionary)

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V X Y Z

Tapas (Sanskrit) Warmth, fire, heat; abstraction, meditation. To perform tapas is to sit for contemplation or undergo some special observance. Occultly the inner fire or spiritual flame aroused by intense abstraction of thought or meditation.

The Laws of Manu says tapas with the Brahmins is sacred learning; with the Kshatriyas, protection of subjects; with the Vaisyas, giving alms to Brahmins; with the Sudras, service.

(See also: Tapas , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Trataka:

one of the cleansing techniques (shatkarma) in which the gaze is focussed upon an object such as a candle flame.

(See also: Trataka ,Yoga, Yoga Dictionary)

Uchnicha, also Buddhochnicha (Sanskrit). Explained as "a protuberance on Buddha’s cranium, forming a hair-tuft ". This curious description is given by the Orientalists, varied by another which states that Uchnicha was "originally a conical or flame-shaped hair tuft on the crown of a Buddha, in later ages represented as a fleshy excrescence on the skull itself ". This ought to read quite the reverse; for esoteric philosophy would say: Originally an orb with the third eye in it, which degenerated later in the human race into a fleshy protuberance, to disappear gradually, leaving in its place but an occasional flame- coloured aura, perceived only through clairvoyance, and when the exuberance of spiritual energy causes the (now concealed) "third eye to radiate its superfluous magnetic power. At this period of our racial development, it is of course the "Buddhas" or Initiates alone who enjoy in full the faculty of the "third eye" , as it is more or less atrophied in everyone else.

(See also: Uchnicha, Buddhochnicha , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

Ark (from Latin arca chest)

A chest, covered basket, or other closed receptacle; the womb of nature, wherein are preserved the seeds of preceding ages which at a later date inaugurate and unfold into a new system of evolutionary development. Thus reappears after its periodic rest a new universe, solar system, planet, or being such as man; each such entity being the reimbodiment of a previously living entity. The connection with sishtas is apparent.

The ark or argha was used by the high priests in ceremonials connected with nature goddesses such as Ishtar or Astarte: at such times the representative emblem or ark was shaped as an oblong vessel, and occasionally fish-shaped, the most familiar instance being the Ark of the Covenant. Oftentimes a mystical flame representing reproducing life was associated with the ark, which thus became a distinctly phallic emblem of maternal reproduction, and also referred to the spiritually and intellectually generative power of the upper triad working in and through the lower quaternary of the septenary principles of either nature or man.

The crescent moon, because of its curved form, either represented the mystic ark itself or was conjoined with it in various manners, for the moon in archaic teaching was the fecund yet presently dead mother of our earth, the latter being its reimbodiment. Thus the moon stood as an emblem of the cosmic matrix or ark floating in and on the watery abyss of space -- just as the ark in the Jewish form of this cosmogonic legend was associated with the flood waters as the bearer of all the seeds of lives. In the view of the later rather materialistic Hebrew rabbis the human womb became the maqom or ark, the place representative on earth of what the moon was in the cosmic sphere.

It was natural in time to connect the ark with a ship, as in the symbolism of the ancient Egyptian boat, on which the chest or typical ark was so prominently placed as the repository or womb of the seeds of lives.

Thus the ark has both a cosmic and a human significance. In one sense it is man himself who is the ark; for, having appeared at the beginning of sentient life, man (as he then was) became the living and animal unit, whose cast-off clothes determined the shape of every life and animal in this round. In its widest sense the symbolism refers to the first cosmic flood, the primary creation, and so the ark also is Mother Nature; but it likewise refers to terrestrial deluges where its application is twofold, for it means the saving of mankind through physical generation, and also cyclic deluges, especially the Atlantean one.

The ark is argha in Chaldean, vara in Persian, and is referred to in the stories about Noah, Deucalion, Xisuthrus, Yima, etc. The ark in which the infant Moses is saved is an instance of many similar legends conveying the same root idea. The ark, therefore, is the receptive aspect of the principle of reproduction and regeneration, ranging from the most fundamental Mother Nature to her every correspondence on the various planes.

(See also: Ark , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Logi (Scandianvian Norse). Lit., "flame". This giant with his sons and kindred, made themselves finally known as the authors of every cataclysm and conflagration in heaven or on earth, by letting mortals perceive them in the midst of flames. These giant-fiends were all enemies of man trying to destroy his work wherever they found it. A symbol of the cosmic elements.

(See also: Logi , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

Mahajvala (Sanskrit) [from maha great + jvala flame]

A large flame; name of one of the hells in Hindu philosophy.

(See also: Mahajvala , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Emanation (from Latin emanatus having flowed forth from e from + manare to flow)

The issuing of streams of light and life from a sun is an act of emanation; the unfolding of what is latent in a germ is an act of evolution -- but equally so an emanation, for all the attributes of the developing germ "flow forth" from the inherent life which is unfolding itself.

Emanation is the more appropriate term for the process by which hosts of individual monads issue from their originant or parent-source; and evolution for the subsequent unfolding, from each monad, of what is latent in it. In the word emanation is summed up the doctrine of the manifestation of worlds and living beings from a unitary divine source; so that it is opposed both to the Christian doctrine of special creation and to the materialistic scientific theory of evolution, which is a blind building up from below.

The word has a particular use in the Gnostic system of Valentinus, where the pairs of aeons successively emanate, the lower from the higher.

"The doctrine of Emanation was at one time universal. It was taught by the Alexandrian as well as by the Indian philosophers, by the Egyptian, the Chaldean and Hellenic Hierophants, and also by the Hebrews (in their Kabbala, and even in Genesis). For it is only owing to deliberate mistranslation that the Hebrew word asdt has been translated 'angels' from the Septuagint, when it means Emanations, AEons, precisely as with the Gnostics. Indeed, in Deuteronomy (xxxiii., 2) the word asdt or ashdt is translated as 'fiery law,' while the correct rendering of the passage should be 'from his right hand went (not a fiery law, but)

a fire according to law'; viz., that the fire of one flame is imparted to, and caught up by another like as in a trail of inflammable substance. This is precisely emanation" (TG 113-4).

(See also: Emanation , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Ahamkara:

Ahamkara: Ego, ego(ism). (SSS-III)

(See also: Ahamkara , Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Atma-vidya (Sanskrit) (from atma self + vidya knowledge)

Knowledge of the self; the highest form of spiritual-divine wisdom, because the fundamental or essential self is a flame or spark of the kosmic self. "Of the four Vidyas -- out of the seven branches of Knowledge mentioned in the Puranas -- namely, 'Yajna-Vidya' (the performance of religious rites in order to produce certain results); 'Maha-Vidya,' the great (Magic) knowledge, now degenerated into Tantrika worship; 'Guhya-Vidya,' the science of Mantras and their true rhythm or chanting, of mystical incantations, etc. -- it is only the last one, 'Atma-Vidya,' or the true Spiritual and Divine wisdom, which can throw absolute and final light upon the teachings of the three first named. Without the help of Atma-Vidya, the other three remain no better than surface sciences, geometrical magnitudes having length and breadth, but no thickness.

They are like the soul, limbs, and mind of a sleeping man: capable of mechanical motions, of chaotic dreams and even sleep-walking, of producing visible effects, but stimulated by instinctual not intellectual causes, least of all by fully conscious spiritual impulses. A good deal can be given out and explained from the three first-named sciences. But unless the key to their teachings is furnished by Atma-Vidya, they will remain for ever like the fragments of a mangled text-book, like the adumbrations of great truths, dimly perceived by the most spiritual, but distorted out of all proportion by those who would nail every shadow to the wall" (SD 1:168-9).

Called by Purucker the last of the seven jewels, the keynote running all through this jewel of wisdom being how the One becomes the many.

(See also: Atma-vidya , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Buddhist:

Buddhist. Follower of Buddhism.

(See also: Buddhist , Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

A Theosophical definition of Soulless Beings :

Soulless Beings

"We elbow soulless men in the streets at every turn," wrote H. P. Blavatsky. This is an actual fact. The statement does not mean that those whom we thus elbow have no soul. The significance is that the spiritual part of these human beings is sleeping, not awake. Soulless Beings are animate humans with an animate working brain-mind, an animal mind, but otherwise "soulless" in the sense that the soul is inactive, sleeping; and this is also just what Pythagoras meant when he spoke of the "living dead."

Soulless Beings are everywhere, these people. We elbow them, just as H. P. Blavatsky says, at every turn. The eyes may be physically bright, and filled with the vital physical fire, but they lack soul; they lack tenderness, the fervid yet gentle warmth of the living flame of inspiration within. Sometimes impersonal love will awaken the soul in a man or in a woman; sometimes it will kill it if the love become selfish and gross. The streets are filled with such "soulless" people; but the phrase soulless people does not mean "lost souls." The latter is again something else.

The term soulless people therefore is a technical term. It means men and women who are still connected, but usually quite unconsciously, with the monad, the spiritual essence within them, but who are not self-consciously so connected. They live very largely in the brain-mind and in the fields of sensuous consciousness. They turn with pleasure to the frivolities of life. They have the ordinary feelings of honor, etc., because it is conventional and good breeding so to have them; but the deep inner fire of yearning, the living warmth that comes from being more or less at one with the god within, they know not. Hence, they are "soulless," because the soul is not working with fiery energy in and through them.

A lost soul, on the other hand, means an entity who through various rebirths, it may be a dozen, or more or less, has been slowly following the "easy descent to Avernus," and in whom the threads of communication with the spirit within have been snapped one after the other. Vice will do this, continuous vice. Hate snaps these spiritual threads more quickly than anything else perhaps. Selfishness, the parent of hate, is the root of all human evil; and therefore a lost soul is one who is not merely soulless in the ordinary theosophical usage of the word, but is one who has lost the last link, the last delicate thread of consciousness, connecting him with his inner god. He will continue "the easy descent," passing from human birth to an inferior human birth, and then to one still more inferior, until finally the degenerate astral monad  - all that remains of the human being that once was  - may even enter the body of some beast to which it feels attracted (and this is one side of the teaching of transmigration, which has been so badly misunderstood in the Occident); some finally go even to plants perhaps, at the last, and will ultimately vanish. The astral monad will then have faded out. Such lost souls are exceedingly rare, fortunately; but they are not what we call soulless people.

If the student will remember the fact that when a human being is filled with the living spiritual and intellectual fiery energies flowing into his brain-mind from his inner god, he is then an insouled being, he will readily understand that when these fiery energies can no longer reach the brain-mind and manifest in a man's life, there is thus produced what is called a soulless being. A good man, honorable, loyal, compassionate, aspiring, gentle, and true-hearted, and a student of wisdom, is an "insouled" man; a buddha is one who is fully, completely insouled; and there are all the intermediate grades between.

See also: Soulless Beings , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

Trees,:

Trees, (Krishna about) [vriksha]: (SB 10:22)

'O Stoka Krishna and Ams'u; o S'ridama, Subala and Arjuna; o Vis'ala, Vrishabha and Ojasvi; o Devaprastha and Varuthapa, just see these ones so fortunate whose life is only there for the higher purpose of keeping off the rain, the wind, the heat and the snow they bear for us.

(33) Oh how superior the birth of these trees that, like great souls do, give support to all living entities; for certain will no person in need ever go away disappointed by them

(34) By their leaves, flowers and fruits; shade and roots, bark and wood; by their fragrance, sap ashes, pulp and shoots they award all things desirable.

(35) It is to each living being to live up to this perfection of birth in this world: to be with ones life, wealth, intelligence and words towards the embodied always of the highest good in ones dutiful activities [see also the vaishnava pranama].'

(See also: Trees, , Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Advaita:

Adv(w)aita: A-dwaitha is the awareness of the One in full measure, in all things, at all times. (SSS-II) Without duality, which means with regard to the Lord that there is no difference between His body and Himself.

(See also: Advaita , Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Jalpa:

Jalpa: (chatter): the ten different types of strange talk or citra-jalpa that the gopis in divine madness [divyonmada] have, missing the outer form of Krishna: prajalpa (denigrating), parijalpa (exposing), vijalpa (sarcasm), ujjalpa (spite), san'jalpa (decrying), avajalpa (belittleling), abhijalpa (plaintive remorse), ajalpa (disgust), pratijalpa (self-depreciating hope) and sujalpa (concern) [see 10.47: 12-21]. With this they modelled meritoriously the emotional, irrational tie a devotee can have being separated from Krishna.

(See also: Jalpa , Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Vedic:

Vedic (Vedhik). Of or pertaining to the Vedas.

(See also: Vedic , Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)