international relations

The Jain philosophy of Anekantavada (multitude beliefs) tells us that there are no absolute theories or formulae that can describe reality in absolute terms. Rather, our belief of Anekantavada tells us that we do not know the complete truth. We can learn from others as well. Let truth prevail, say Jains . Truth in its final analysis is wholesome and one, which leads us to love and understanding. And that is the very necessary essence of all religions.

Read more here: » Jainism: Let Truth Prevail

Feng Shui In The Bedroom: Romancing the Bagua

If one of your goals this year is to call a partner into your life or to enhance a partnership that seems to lack the thrill it used to have, the best room to adjust in your home is your master bedroom. This is true whether your master bedroom is in the Partnership corner of your house or not. The master bedroom represents a primary relationship, no matter where it's located. Anytime there are relationship issues, particularly in personal relationships, it is important to keep the bedroom in order and in a balanced and harmonious state.

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Read more here: » Feng Shui In Bedroom: Feng Shui In The Bedroom - Romancing the Bagua

The Venus Transit of June 8, 2004 is the astronomical event of the year. The Venus Transit has always preceeded great break thrus in human conciousness and played a very significant role in the Mayan Calendar. This article presents the significance of the Venus transit on June 8, 2004 in its larger context and in relation to the Mayan Calendar.

Read more here: » Venus Transit of June 8, 2004 � A Breakthrough of Intuitive Awareness

Most world leaders, international organisations and so-called peace summits tend to define peace in the shadow of war, as 'a situation where there is no war"between nations.

By doing so they are actually taking a negative view. By viewing the positive element in contrast to the negative, we will end up underrating the former'spotential. By defining light as the 'absence of darkness"or, life as the 'absence of death", we assign greater importance to the powers of darkness and death, or in the case of peace, to war, rather than peace.

(See also: Peace on Earth, Peace of Mind, Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

Read more here: » Peace on Earth: Peace Is More Than No War

Éire (pronounced [ˈeːrʲə]) is the Irish name for Ireland. The name Éire is the nominative form in modern Irish of the name for the goddess Ériu, a mythical figure who helped the Gaels conquer Ireland as described in the Book of Invasions. Éire is still used in the Irish language today to refer to the island of Ireland as well as the Republic of Ireland. The dative form Éirinn is anglicized as Erin, which is occasionally used as a poetic name for Ireland in English, and which h ...

Including:

• Éire - Éire in the Irish Constitution
• Éire - From Éire to the Republic of Ireland
• Éire - Footnote
• Éire - Additional reading and sources

Read more here: » Éire: Encyclopedia - Éire

Why have children? I often put this question to parents and I get varied answers: For the sheer joy of having them around, to ensure the continuity of the family tree, to produce heirs, for security in old age, and so on.

Others say that children enrich their lives. But how? I've always wanted to hear more on this, but they usually stop short of giving a deeper explanation.

In fact, very few parents have been able to give expression to the learning experience they undergo in the process of raising or interacting with children. Raising children or educating them is not just a one-sided affair where all learning / teaching flows from the parents or teachers to the child-students.

(See also: Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

Read more here: » Love and Happiness: Discover Yourself Through Children

Evil Good and evil are attributes of relativity in nature as cognized by the minds of percipient beings.

"Esoteric philosophy admits neither good nor evil per se as existing independently in nature. The cause for both is found, as regards the Kosmos, in the necessity of contraries or contrasts, and with respect to man, in his human nature, his ignorance and passions. There is no devil or the utterly depraved, as there are no Angels absolutely perfect, though there may be spirits of Light and of Darkness . . ." (SD 2:162).

Pythagorean philosophy regards the duad as evil, and the One as the only good; which symbolizes that manifested qualities are in pairs of opposites, so that contrast subsists not merely within the pair itself but also between the pair considered as a whole and the One which is superior to it. Since throughout nature we find such pairs of opposites, reconciled by a synthesizing unity, it follows that the words good and evil of necessity are used in a relative sense, and convey the notion of incompleteness as contrasted with an intuitively conceived perfection. We cannot suppose that things can be good or evil in themselves, except relatively, or even in their relations to other things.

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

Relationship karma operates in all our relationships and starts in each life with childhood family interactions. Relationships are where we learn fundamental lessons in life through contact with karmic connections and soulmates. Karmic connections or soul groups are people we feel instantly familiar with. We have a sense of connection stemming from a previous life or lives either in a positive or negative setting.

Read more here: » Karma: For the Love of Karma

Monad, Monas [from Greek monas a unit, individual, atom]

A unit, a one; something nondivisible and which is therefore conceived of as real, in contradistinction to compound things which (as compounds) are not real.

In the Pythagorean system the Duad emanates from the higher and solitary Monas, which is thus the First Cause or First Logos, the Duad being the Second Cause or Logos; and from the second emanates the third stage of individuality, the Triad, Third Cause or Logos. In the human constitution the Monas signifies atman, the Duad buddhi, and the Triad signifies manas.

The term monad was adopted from Greek philosophy by Bruno, Leibniz, and others. According to Leibniz there can be but one ultimate cosmic reality or monad, the universe; but he recognizes an innumerable multiplicity of monads which pervade the universe, copies or reflections of the universal monad regarded as real except in their relation to the universal monad. He divides his derivative monads into three classes: rational souls; sentient but irrational monads; and material monads, or organic and inorganic bodies.

As regards the material monads, while recognizing that corporeal matter is compound, and the attributes by which we perceive it unreal, unlike Berkeley, he does not deny its existence but regards it essentially as monadic. Thus his universe is an aggregate of individuals. The relations of these individuals to each other and to the universal is a supreme harmony, implying both individuality and coordination, thus reconciling the antinomy of bonds of law and freedom. The interrelations of various groups of monads is as a series of hierarchies.

Theosophical usage is largely the same as that of Leibniz, as the focus or heart in any individual being, of all its divine, spiritual, and intellectual powers and attributes -- the immortal part of its being. In The Secret Doctrine we find a triadic union of gods-monads-atoms, related to each other as spirit-soul-body (or more accurately spirit, spirit-soul, and spirit-soul-body). Monads and atoms are related to each other as the energic and the material side of manifestation, the atoms being the reflections, veils, or projections of and from the monads themselves.

Monads are the ultimate elements of the universe, spiritual-substantial entities, self-motivated, self-impelled, self-conscious, in infinitely varying degrees. They engender other monads, which in turn engender others, and thus springs up the host of living entities forming the immense variety and unity of the manifested world. As any monad descends into matter, it secretes from itself various veils or vehicles adapted for its self-expression on the various cosmic planes. Thus in man there is the divine monad, the spiritual monad, the higher human or chain monad, the lower human or globe monad, the animal monad, and the astral-physical monad. The following diagram shows the relations between the cosmic principles; the monads, egos and souls in the human being; and the human principles

The monad, as its name implies, is ever-enduring as an individual, although at the end of each manvantara it rises into a still higher or divine stage of perfect union with the boundless divine, only to re-issue forth again in due course as the monad it was before, thus beginning a new, immensely long time period of active individualized life as a spiritual consciousness-center. Thus it is that even the monads evolve, each on its own plane, for the hierarchies of the monads are innumerable and exist in all-various degrees at stages of evolutionary progression on the endless ladder of cosmic life.

(See also: Monad, Monas , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Thunder Sometimes called the voice of God, as used frequently in the Old Testament and the Apocalypse. With the Romans it was popularly considered a manifestation of Jupiter Tonans -- hence the name thundering Jupiter. Apart from its physical relations, and as one of the phenomena of sound, it may be considered a manifestation of the fifth cosmic element, akasa, whence sound is born, it being understood that what our ears feel as sound is a sense interpretation to us of vibrational effects. Science appears to identify sound per se with the merely vibrational effects which accompany it or are caused by it, or even at times evoke it.

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

Diana (Latin) (archaic fem of Janus)

Goddess of light; an old Italian divinity, later identified with the Greek Artemis as daughter of Zeus and Latona, and sister of Apollo. Goddess of the moon and queen of the night, she presided over the chase, open country, forests, war, and water. As the moon goddess, identified in one aspect with Hecate. She was worshiped in her form of Lucina as presiding over births; as goddess of the night she was worshiped with torches, and was beloved as the protectress of the outcast and slave.

The moon "stands in closer relations to Earth than any other sidereal orb. The Sun is the giver of life to the whole planetary system; the Moon is the giver of life to our globe; and the early races understood and knew it, even in their infancy. She is the Queen and she is the King, and was King Soma before she became transformed into Phoebe and the chaste Diana. . . . For, if Artemis was Luna in Heaven, and, with the Greeks, Diana on Earth, who presided over child-birth and life: with the Egyptians, she was Hekat (Hecate) in Hell, the goddess of Death, who ruled over magic and enchantments. More than this: as the personified moon, whose phenomena are triadic, Diana-Hecate-Luna is the three in one. For she is Diva triformis, tergemina, triceps -- three heads on one neck, like Brahma-Vishnu-Siva.

See also ARTEMIS; HECATE; MOON

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

Medicine As the healing art, medicine is as old as thinking man. Before the latent fires of mind were lighted in the third root-race, disease and death were unknown. However, with the physicalization of protoplastic humanity, and the separation of the sexes, the unnatural linking with the animals in the third and fourth root-races disordered the harmonious relations between man and nature. In addition, self-conscious man's continued evolution into matter, with the involution of his spiritual nature, brought about forms of disorder, disease, and physical death. Then, beings from higher spheres descended, and dynasties of divine kings and spiritual guides taught men, leading them to the invention of all the arts and sciences, including the medical use of plants (cf SD 2:364).

Medicine was originally a divine science, providing for the well-being of the spiritual, mental, psychic, astral, and physical man. Archaic medicine included a profound knowledge of genuine astrology, of true alchemy, of occult physiology, of the finer forces vibrating as sound, color, form, thought, and feeling, and whatever related man to his home universe of natural law and order. This was the basis of the natural "magic" which tradition has linked with the medical art. This knowledge was dual in its power to work for life or death, for good or evil ends. Its full comprehension required not only a trained intellect, but the intuitive understanding of a pure spiritual nature. Nevertheless, the Atlanteans acquired enough knowledge of the use of dangerous powers that they became -- albeit with numerous and noteworthy exceptions -- a nation of sorcerers. Then, the white magicians established the Mystery schools in which to safeguard the sacred teachings from evildoers and to protect humanity from their influence. Thus, the deeper truths of the healing art have ever since been entrusted only to pledged disciples and initiates. Such fragments of it as have been rediscovered by intuitive physicians from time to time have usually been in keeping with the general cultural level of their civilization. The exceptions have been men who have frequently been too far ahead of their times to be understood. Such a man was Paracelsus in medieval Europe, persecuted for heretical teachings such as the psychoelectric and magnetic play of sidereal forces which linked man with the stars -- the spiritus vitae in man came from the spiritus mundi.

Of the archaic history of medicine -- as of the race -- little is to be found. However, echoes of the primitive wisdom have survived, and every country having a literature of its ancient periods has some account of the healing art. The Hindu sacred scriptures -- the oldest literature extant -- have treatises upon medicine and surgery, showing a profound and intimate knowledge of the subject. This high standard was not maintained when the Vedic writings became misunderstood and mutilated by later commentators. The exclusive Brahmins' assumption of the right to all knowledge also prevented original thought and research. What writings are available today are of little practical value without the lost key. Even our typically matter-of-fact interpretation of legendary and classical beliefs and customs, and of archaeological findings, overlooks that what is known of ancient medical practice is largely exoteric, symbolic of a deeper teaching than we possess.

Records of ancient medicine in Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, etc., tell of the temples being used as hospitals, with priest-physicians supported by the state giving every care to the sick who came, both rich and poor. In addition to material means of treatment -- many of which we have rediscovered -- these devotees of the gods of healing used special incense, prayers, the "temple sleep," invocations, music, astrology, etc., which we regard as harmless superstition of an earlier day. However, such conditions, intelligently adapted to each case, in making a pure, serene, uplifting atmosphere around the sick person, would invoke the influences of wholeness within and without him. By putting the inner man in tune with his body, his disordered nature-forces manifesting as disease would tend to flow freely in the currents of health. Natural magic is as practical as the unknown alchemy which transmutes our digested daily bread into molecules of our living body.

There is a mystic science attached to the caduceus, the classical emblem of medicine. To the priest-physicians in the temples, this symbol was sacred not only to the god of wisdom and healing, but stood for profound cosmic truths, knowledge of which was held in common by all initiates. It symbolized the tree of life and being. Cosmically this symbol stood for the concealed root or origin of universal duality which manifests as positive and negative, good and evil, subjective and objective, light and darkness, male and female, health and sickness, life and death.

(See also: Medicine , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Trance [from Latin transpire to cross, pass over]

A state in which the soul seems to have passed out of the body into another state of being, a rapture, an ecstasy. In a general way, the entranced conditions thus defined are divided into varying degrees of a negative, unconscious state, and into progressive gradations of a positive, conscious, illumining condition. Examples of all degrees of these conditions have occurred among peoples in all ages, and the two conditions may exist coordinately, or either may exist as an active factor to the virtual exclusion of the other.

Although in both kinds of entranced cases there is a more or less temporary dissociation of the human soul -- a disruption of the normal relations of the personality -- the resulting psychological conditions in typical cases of the two classes are distinctly opposite. In the unconscious state, the person's mental-psychological or intermediate nature is in a subnormal and unnatural condition, even if he is seeing and reporting clairvoyant visions of unknown past events and of as yet unknown future. While his dislocated intermediate nature is thus functioning upon the chaotic astral plane, he is devoid of the judgment and will power of his higher mind, and is as helpless as in a nightmare or disorderly dream.

This subnormal state may result from self-psychologization or from the hypnotic or psychological influence of another person; the person may be the unconscious victim of primitive nature forces; or he may be controlled by some disembodied human elementary, as sometimes happens in cases of mediumship. In any one of the above unconscious "absences," no memory of the experience is self-consciously retained afterwards.

In cases of ecstasy, on the other hand -- or of the true seer -- there is supernormal activity of the mental-spiritual nature of the person whose human soul in being freed or absent from its kama-manasic desires and consciousness, becomes allied with his higher mind. Thus he becomes intellectually highly lucid, spiritually conscious, and illumined. His now quiescent personal self offers no bar to the reality of the light of truth flowing into him from his own higher nature. His condition, whether a spontaneous exaltation, a state self-induced, or invoked at will, is a direct contrast with the mediumistic state. He is vividly self-conscious of his experience, and he retains the memory of it. Such an exalted state of entrancement is only possible for those individuals who are prepared by great purity of life and a trained will, which are also prerequisites for the mystic rites of the higher initiations.

A person is entranced in various minor degrees when he is temporarily absent-minded, or is absorbed in a brown study, and even in a certain sense when he is asleep. Many persons of mediumistic or psychic constitution become negatively absent from their ordinary senses, or they cultivate such a state for the purpose of becoming conscious on the astral plane. These unfortunates, who yield to the psychic lure of the unknown, receive nothing but a confused and unreliable vision. Worse yet, they thus open their own natures to the invasion and possible possession by astral entities of all kinds, even by excarnate actively evil beings -- the elementaries -- seeking physical satisfaction of unexpended intense desires. Not a few of such victims become such from their craving to get out in the astral, and to cultivate powers for the controlling of others, as taught by various pseudo-occultists who brazenly advertise their appeals to selfish human nature.

Any phase of negative trance state is therefore unnatural and often highly dangerous, because the whole trend of nature is towards an ever greater self-consciousness and a stronger spiritual will and nobler intellectual activity.

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

Vibration, Vibrations Motion is a fundamental principle in universal nature, coeval with boundless space, ceasing not even during pralaya; and we can form only a relative idea of its real nature, yet can have intuitions of it through its manifestations, the most fundamental of which is vibration. The essential characteristic of vibration is periodicity or cyclic motion. It appears in the alternation of manvantara and pralaya in the cosmic Great Breath and in the most rapid oscillations of minutest particles. The relative periodicity of various vibrations is found to constitute a mathematical scale, according to which phenomena may be classified.

The principle of sympathetic vibration involves mysteries relating to the tremendous potency of sound, some of which are familiar to physicists. The discoveries of John Worrell Keely (cf SD 1:555-66) were of this nature. He was able to develop enormous energy in an engine without using the principle of pressure; but his discoveries were premature and their results were frustrated.

Sound is a universal principle which manifests itself physically as vibrations in the mass and particles of bodies. Physicists, by a logical confusion, have called the effects "sound," whereas they are only one of the productions of causal sound. We might as well define fear as a trembling of the body; whereas we know that the trembling is an effect produced by the emotion. The same applies to heat, light, and others of the list of physical forces which manifest themselves in vibrations.

Vibration, in all its myriad manifestations, is the consequence of inner hidden causal agencies. The vibrations ensuing from such inner movements expressing themselves through bodies or veils, are always in accordance with the causal rhythms and mathematics involving quantities such as rate, intensity, and quality, there being vibrations of as many kinds as there are different causal agents. Thus there are vibrations as effects on our gross physical plane, other vibrations which manifest themselves on the astral, emotional, and psychological or lower mental planes. There are again vibrations of higher type which originate in the intellectual and spiritual monads of the human constitution.

Furthermore, because it is an expression of energy, all vibration is force and energy itself, and hence capable of arousing energies or forces of exactly the same quality or rate of intensity in other beings which they affect -- this being the reason behind sympathetic vibration. When vibrations thus interlock and synchronize in rate, intensity, and quality, we have what is called sympathy, love, or attraction, and such sympathetic vibration is operative on all the planes of universal nature. Not only is this the case in all relations of humans with each other, but likewise sympathetic vibration plays an enormous part in such matters as mob psychology, quick electrical sympathies affecting audiences, hates and rebellions -- even what is known as health and disease are communicated by means of vibrations, the one first affected being able to communicate his "affection" of whatever kind to others who are at the time negative to the vibrational impact and in time vibrating synchronously with the impacting energy. There is, of course, such a thing as resistance, which expresses itself in manifold ways, such as being able to throw off the vibration affecting it, and even to return it upon the sender, consciously or unconsciously; and herein lies the secret of the old medieval saying that curses come home to roost, or that if the magician is not stronger than the elementals or nature spirits he attempts to control, he is almost invariably destined to become their victim.

All vibrational activity of whatever rate, intensity, or attributive characteristic is always an effect, although always capable of becoming in its turn a cause producing effects of its own type. In other words, there is always the originating or causal agent for any specific instance of vibration; thus the thinker produces mental vibrational activity which we call thinking or thoughts, or emotion or feeling.

Indeed, every entity or thing in the universe is in incessant motion or vibrational activity arising from force inherent in the entity or thing itself; and these interblending activities of vibration produce the vast diversity of the universe around us. Thus every atom, electron, molecule, or being anywhere, sings its own vibrational note, which is the sound production of its own characteristic svabhava or individuality; so that our physical bodies, could we but hear their mystical music, would sound like a vast and marvelous symphony of interblended sound. For this reason Pythagoras spoke of the music of the spheres, ascribing to each celestial body its own dominant note, and pointing out that from the blending of such individual notes or sounds arise the harmony of the spheres.

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

Physical Organs Natural history reveals that the organs of the body acquire a greater individual importance, and in some cases occupy a larger proportion of the organism, as we ascend from the lower to the higher animal forms. G. de Purucker points out that "Every one of the organs of the human physical body, both collectively and distributively, is the organic representative in man's physical sheath or body of one part or portion of his complex inner and invisible constitution. . . . every one of the monadic centers in man's being . . . has its own corresponding organ in the physical body, each such organ functioning in the body as much as it can according to the characteristic or type-activity of its inner and invisible cause. Thus the heart, the brain, the liver, the spleen, etc., is, each one, the expression on the physical plane and in the human physical body of a corresponding consciousness-center in the invisible constitution of the sevenfold man" (ET 961-2n).

There are manasic as well as kamic organs. The brain and heart are "the organs of a power higher than the Personality" (BCW 12:367; or St in Oc 89). The liver is called the kamic organ; the spleen is the vehicle of the linga-sarira. Of the rhythmic tides of vital air in the chest, it is said: "The primeval current of the life-wave is then the same which assumes in man the form of the inspiratory and expiratory motion of the lungs, and this is the source of the evolution and involution of the universe" (q from Nature's Finer Forces Rama Prasad, BCW 12:356 or Studies in Occultism 76). The uterus, within which a new manifestation of life appears, corresponds physically to the universal matrix -- cosmic space -- the fertilized cell being the point in the circle where differentiation begins. The eyes, from one standpoint at least, are the most occult of our senses. The fibers of the large optic nerves are interrelated with special organs of the senses and sensations -- optic thalami, pineal and pituitary glands, etc. -- which are grouped around the center of the brain.

Further, "every human organ and each cell in the latter has a key-board of its own, like that of a piano, only that it registers and emits sensations instead of sounds. Every key contains the potentiality of good or bad, of producing harmony or disharmony" according as the impulse comes from the higher or lower nature (BCW 12:368-9 or St in Oc 91). Memory has no special organ of its own in the brain, but has seats in every organ of the body. The whole body is a vast sounding board in which each cell bears a long record of impressions connected with its parent organ, and also it has a memory and consciousness of its own kind. These impressions are, according to the nature of the organ, physical, psychic, mental, or again mixed, as they relate to this or another plane, there being states of instinctual, mental, and purely abstract or spiritual consciousness. The physiological functions and reciprocal workings of cells and organs are in the body automatically directed by a "universally diffused mind" throughout that body, which is beyond all material analysis. Because of this intelligence operating throughout the organism, physiology is destined someday "to become the hand-maiden of Occult truths" (BCW 12:139; or Studies in Occultism 105).

On a larger scale, each organ has its own rhythm or vibratory rate of response to cosmic eternal motion. The response is animated by a "vital principle without which no molecular combinations could ever have resulted in a living organism, least of all in the so-called 'inorganic' matter of our plane of consciousness" (SD 1:603). The breaking of the normal rhythm of one organ disturbs that of all the rest, which accounts for the many reflex symptoms that often appear.

The general principles of occult physiology underlie and coordinate the numerous details of chemical, microscopic, and biological research. The human organism illustrates the modern scientific view of the electronic nature of matter. In man, the positive and negative phases of the one Life unite to manifest in functional currents of vitality; all of which has a significant bearing on the prevailing medical recourse to organotherapy, the end results of which are not recognized, as such, since they operate on inner lines of force. Each animal body -- human or beast -- is a complex organism whose various parts are vibrating in consonance with the synthetic character of its own evolutionary status of vital matter and conscious force -- its selfhood. Hence, the injection of the physiologic essence of any one creature's organs into the life-currents of another, aiming to give a certain impetus to functional reaction, inevitably adds a subtly disturbing foreign element. The same physical matter composes all animal bodies, so that the human and beast life-atoms are interchangeable, but such interchange is governed or regulated by extremely occult causal relations which raise their action outside or above the plane of human interference. Organotherapy, as at present understood and practiced, is a divergence from nature's normal processes, having no analog in nature which, in turn, provides resources of wholesome remedial matter. These artificial mixtures of both physical and superphysical forces, involve vital issues beyond the ken of research laboratories. The end results of unbalanced forces might be sought among the increase in cases of malignant, degenerative, and mental and nervous disorders, with their unequilibrated operation of functioning vitality and of consciousness.

Pi The mathematical symbol for the incommensurable ratio of the circumference of a circle to the length of its diameter, and for corresponding ratios in plane and solid geometry. Its incommensurability is a particular instance of the impossibility of expressing geometrical magnitudes exactly in number. Bearing in mind that there is a geometrical key to interpretation of cosmic law and structure, and that the facts of geometry cannot possibly be arbitrary or meaningless but must be faithful representations of general laws; then we shall understand that the ratio {pi sym}, involving such radial and important elements as the straight line and the circle, must be of paramount importance. The figures, either for approximate decimal evaluations or approximate fractional ratios, play an important part in the symbology of the ancient mystery-language. These figures and the numbers which they make are found in the numerical values of letters and words in the Hebrew and Greek alphabets. The problem of squaring the circle by a purely geometrical construction does not involve the use of {pi sym} at all.

(See also: Physical Organs , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Anugraha, Anugrahana (Sanskrit) (from anu-grah to support, uphold, foster, treat kindly)

Favor, kindness, promoting or favoring a good object. In the Vishnu-Purana (1:5) applied to the eighth creation (in the Matsya and other Puranas to the fifth creation), the period of formative development "which possesses both the qualities of goodness and darkness." In Sankhya philosophy anugraha-sarga is the creation or formation of "the feelings or mental conditions."

Blavatsky calls the anugraha creation a blind, "for it refers to a purely mental process: the cognition of the 'ninth' creation, which, in its turn, is an effect, manifesting in the secondary of that which was a 'Creation' in the Primary (Prakrita) Creation. The Eighth, then, called Anugraha (the Pratyayasarga or the intellectual creation of the Sankhyas . . .), is 'that creation of which we have a perception' -- in its esoteric aspect -- and 'to which we give intellectual assent (Anugraha) in contradistinction to organic creation.' It is the correct perception of our relations to the whole range of 'gods' and especially of those we bear to the Kumaras -- the so-called 'Ninth Creation' -- which is in reality an aspect of or reflection of the sixth in our manvantara (the Vaivasvata)" (SD 1:456).

All theses various "creations" mentioned in the Puranas represent stages of evolutionary production, following each other in regular serial order, and thus unfolding into manifestation what lay originally latent in the seed out of which these various stages arise. Thus the reference in the Vishnu-Purana, for example, by analogical reasoning can apply either to a universe, solar system, planetary chain, or to the developmental history of earth and its inhabitants.

(See also: Anugraha, Anugrahana , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Ten-brel Chug-nyi rTen-hBrel hchu-gnis (Tibetan) In philosophy, the twelve interdependent contributories to the origination of all phenomena, equivalent to the Sanskrit nidanas. As each one of these twelve originants or causes is dependent upon its predecessor, from which it is emanated, owing to a process of reaction the predecessor is karmically also dependent for its manifestation on its successor, and thus the twelve are not simultaneous in origination but occur in a certain regular sequence; because of this inseparable interdependence they also of necessity coordinate in action.

They are rendered in the Pratitya-samutpada as: 1) ma-rig-pa (Sanskrit avidya) nonwisdom; 2) hDu-bYed (Sanskrit samskara) aggregative forces; 3) rNam-Ches (Sanskrit vijnana) will, consciousness; 4) rMin-gZugs (Sanskrit nama-rupa) name-form; 5) Skye-mched (Sanskrit shadayatana) the six sense organs; 6) sparsa (Sanskrit sparsa) contact (for mind or senses); 7) tShor-ba (Sanskrit vedana) feeling; 8) sRed-pa (Sanskrit trishna) desire, thirst; 9) len-pa (Sanskrit upadana) sensual enthrallment; 10) sird-pa (Sanskrit bhava) being; 11) che-ba (Sanskrit jati) birth; and 12) rGa (Sanskrit jaramarana) old age and death.

Ten-brel chung-nyi is the Tibetan expression of the causal relations inherent in and affecting peregrinating monads, which bring about manifestation in successive imbodiments; this Buddhist teaching shows a somewhat more elaborate philosophical development in the Tibetan doctrine than elsewhere. Freedom from the entangling relations affecting consciousness is to be found by an earnest and strict following of the Four Noble Truths leading into the Noble Eightfold Path; yet the essence of the religion of the buddhas is in the words of Gautama Buddha: "To cease from all evil or wrong doing; to become enamored of virtue; to cleanse one's own heart or nature -- here is the religion of the Buddhas."

See also NIDANA

(See also: Ten-brel Chug-nyi , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Insanity (from Latin in not + sanus sound)

Unsoundness of the mental faculties or organs, with or without loss of volition and of consciousness.

"Arcane science teaches that the abandonment of the living body by the soul frequently occurs, and that we encounter every day, in every condition of life, such living corpses. Various causes, among them overpowering fright, grief, despair, a violent attack of sickness, or excessive sensuality may bring this about. The vacant carcass may be entered and inhabited by the astral form of an adept sorcerer, or an elementary (an earth-bound disembodied human soul), or, very rarely, an elemental. . . . In insanity, the patient's astral being is either semi-paralyzed, bewildered, and subject to the influence of every passing spirit of any sort, or it has departed forever, and the body is taken possession of by some vampirish entity near its own disintegration, and clinging desperately to earth, whose sensual pleasures it may enjoy for a brief season longer by this expedient" (IU 2:589).

Not all insane persons, however, suffer with the restless inner tension due to a besieging influence. Some grope along on their own kama-manasic level, bewildered because deprived of the directing influence of their higher principles. Some of these people are suffering from a dissociation of the inner conscious self from his brain which ordinarily connects him with the external world of things and people. Such cases know inwardly that they are not insane but, being unable to make themselves understood, and hence being regarded and treated as lunatics, they sometimes finally do become mentally deranged.

While karmic conditions may prevent a cure in this life for many cases, many others respond happily when, to the best resources of modern treatment, is added the knowledge of composite human nature with knowledge of its relations to the invisible astral sphere which interpenetrates and influences our world of mind and matter. Most important help may come from the confident, friendly, uplifting influence which emanates from intelligent, earnest, pure-minded attendants who deal with them.

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

Hypnotism (from Greek hypnos sleep)

One name for an artificially produced somnambulistic, entranced, or psychologized state. A better word for the procedure is psychologization, hypnotism being but one phase of the general subject which includes fascination, multiple or double personality, some religious ecstasies, and different methods of psychic healing. All these things operate in and upon the important intermediate part between our spiritual and physical-astral self and usually affect the latter self very strongly. This intermediate part is the human soul of the reincarnating entity -- the man or woman we see and know. As this includes the psychomental-emotional powers and faculties, it is intimately related to intelligence and sanity, to emotions and conduct, and to health.

Theosophy holds that mesmerism is not hypnotism. In hypnotism the subject's intermediate nature is disjoined from its natural relations with his physical and astral body and put out of the control of the person himself, becoming susceptible to other influences. This process is a reversal of all evolutionary currents which in every being unfold and manifest from conscious centers within. Such a reversal is dangerous and far-reaching in its results, spiritually, mentally, morally, psychically, and physically.

Moreover, the hypnotizer endangers himself by such intimate linking with the lower mind and feeling of his subject -- whose spiritual nature is always beyond another's control. From the operator's entrance into, and operation of, the subject's physico-astral body, there results a mutual infection with each other's faulty human nature. Whoever thus changes the forces and trend of another's life, obligates himself to share karmically in those changes to the end.

Psychologizing a person to heal him of disease or rid him of some injurious habit is also harmful. Bodily ills, in themselves, are the cleansing processes by which past inner wrongs of thought and feeling, having reached the material plane, can be worked out of the system. As for karmic faults and failings in character, the person restrained from them by hypnotism or psychologization merely loses a timely opportunity to develop his spiritual will by which alone every human being must consciously work out his own destiny. The apparent cure of disease, or of a weakness, means that these have been driven inwards, dammed back, inevitably to reappear with accumulated force at a less opportune time in this or a future life. Nor does the practice of self-hypnotization or self-psychologization prevent a disjunction of the person's intermediate nature from his immortal self. The results finally appear as mental disease resulting in crime or as physical disease which is the minor evil.

Suggestion has a dual power: for good or for ill, the results depending upon both the motive and the method of its use. The conscious and unconscious use of it for self-interest is unfortunately met with everywhere; as a part of modern training in high-power salesmanship, it pervades the methods popular in both commercial and professional circles. However, suggestion has a power of noble appeal to the intelligence and spiritual will of others whose better nature responds to a good example, impersonal teaching, and pure and helpful thoughts and feelings. Hypnotism and other such practices are dangerous because they so often fall into black magic or sorcery.

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

Root-manu and Seed-manu Fourteen manus preside over our planetary chain during its life-cycle, there being two principal or round-manus for each round. The first of each pair, appearing at the beginning of a round, is called the root-manu; the second, appearing towards the end, before the intervening twilight or nirvana, is the seed-manu, who presides over the holding of the seeds of life until the coming of the life-waves at the beginning of the next round. The root-manu appears on globe A, the seed-manu on the seventh globe (globe G).

Root- and seed-manu, in certain relations, are spoken of as being respectively the prime cause and its accumulated final effect at the end of the round. As we are now in the middle of the fourth round, there have so far been seven principal or round-manus.

By reason of nature's analogical procedures, there is for each globe of a planetary chain a root-manu at the beginning of its several succeeding periods of activity, and a seed-manu at the end of the same; as being their spiritual offspring, the names are the same as those by which the principal or round-manus are known. This list of root- and seed-manus for each round is given in The Laws of Manu (cf SD 2:309): 1) Svayambhuva, Svarochi or Svarochisha; 2) Auttami, Tamasa; 3) Raivata, Chakshusha; 4) Vaivasvata (our progenitor), Savarna; 5) Daksha-savarna, Brahma-savarna; 6) Dharma-savarna, Rudra-savarna; and 7) Rauchya, Bhautya.

Vaivasvata is the primitive root-manu of our fourth human wave. Manu, insofar as the human life-wave is concerned, is not a man but collective humanity; yet it is likewise true that Manu is a spiritual individual -- a difficult doctrine to grasp at first presentation. The name Vaivasvata is also used for one of the seven minor manus who preside over the seven root-races of our planet. It is this latter that among other peoples is called Xisuthrus, Deucalion, Noah, etc.

See also MANU

(See also: Root-manu, Seed-manu , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)