A Wisdom Archive on Mutual

Hoboken New Jersey - Early History. Hoboken was originally an island, surrounded by the Hudson River on the east and a swamp at the foot of the New Jersey Palisades on the west. It was used seasonally as a campsite by the Lenni Lenape Native Americans until they fell victim to war, disease and forced migration brought by Europeans in the 17th century. The name Hoboken is derived from the original Lenape name for the area “Hobocan Hackingh” or “land of the tobacco pipe.” The Lenape made t ...

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DYADIC EYE FIXATION - meditation technique of mutually gazing into one another’s eyes. (NAD)

 
(See also: DYADIC EYE FIXATION, Wiccan Pagan, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary )

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In the perspective of Baha'u'llah's teachings, the greatest danger of both the moral crisis and the inequities associated with globalisation is an entrenched philosophical attitude that seeks to justify its failures.
 
Philosophically and politically, the concept of western civilisation presents itself as a kind of liberal relativism, economically and socially, as capitalism - two value systems that have now so adjusted to each other and become so mutually reinforcing as to constitute virtually a single, comprehensive worldview.

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

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Agape (Ancient Greek). Love Feasts; the early Christians kept such festivals in token of sympathy, love and mutual benevolence. It became necessary to abolish them as an institution, because of great abuse ; Paul in his First Epistle to the Corinthians complains of misconduct at the feasts of the Christians. .

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

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Maha Maya (Sanskrit). The great illusion of manifestation. This universe, and all in it in their mutual relation, is called the great Illusion or Mahamaya It is also the usual title given to Gautama the Buddha’s Immaculate Mother - Mayadevi, or the "Great Mystery", as she is called by the Mystics.

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

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Magic. The great "Science". According to Deveria and other Orientalists, "magic was considered as a sacred science inseparable from religion" by the oldest and most civilized and learned nations.
 
The Egyptians, for instance, were one of the most sincerely religious nations, as were and still are the Hindus. "Magic consists of, and is acquired by the worship of the gods", said Plato. Could then a nation, which, owing to the irrefragable evidence of inscriptions and papyri, is proved to have firmly believed in magic for thousands of years, have been deceived for so long a time. And is it likely that generations upon generations of a learned and pious hierarchy, many among whom led lives of self-martyrdom, holiness and asceticism, would have gone on deceiving themselves and the people (or even only the latter) for the pleasure of perpetuating belief in " miracles" ?
 
Fanatics, we are told, will do anything to enforce belief in their god or idols. To this we reply: in such case, Brahmans and Egyptian Rekhget-amens (q.v.) or Hierophants would not have popularized belief in the power of man by magic practices to command the services of the gods: which gods, are in truth, but the occult powers or potencies of Nature, personified by the learned priests themselves, in which they reverenced only the attributes of the one unknown and nameless Principle. As Proclus the Platonist ably puts it: "Ancient priests, when they considered that there is a certain alliance and sympathy in natural things to each other, and of things manifest to occult powers, and discovered that all things subsist in all, fabricated a sacred science from this mutual sympathy and similarity......and applied for occult purposes, both celestial and terrene natures, by means of which, through a certain similitude, they deduced divine virtues into this inferior abode".
 
Magic is the science of communicating with and directing supernal, supramundane Potencies, as well as of commanding those of the lower spheres; a practical knowledge of the hidden mysteries of nature known to only the few, because they are so difficult to acquire, without falling into sins against nature. Ancient and medieval mystics divided magic into three classes - Theurgia, Goëtia and natural Magic. "Theurgia has long since been appropriated as the peculiar sphere of the theosophists and metaphysicians", says Kenneth Mackenzie.
 
Goëtia is black magic, and "natural (or white) magic has risen with healing in its wings to the proud position of an exact and progressive study". The comments added by our late learned Brother are remarkable. "The realistic desires of modern times have contributed to bring magic into disrepute and ridicule. . . . Faith (in one’s own self) is an essential element in magic, and existed long before other ideas which presume its pre-existence. It is said that it takes a wise man to make a fool; and a man’s ideas must be exalted almost to madness, i.e., his brain susceptibilities must be increased far beyond the low, miserable status of modern civilization, before he can become a true magician; (for) a pursuit of this science implies a certain amount of isolation and an abnegation of Self ".
 
A very great isolation, certainly, the achievement of which constitutes a wonderful phenomenon, a miracle in itself. Withal magic is not something supernatural. As explained by Jamblichus, "they through the sacerdotal theurgy announce that they are able to ascend to more elevated and universal Essences, and to those that are established above fate, viz., to god and the demiurgus: neither employing matter, nor assuming any other things besides, except the observation of a sensible time".
 
Already some are beginning to recognise the existence of subtle powers and influences in nature of which they have hitherto known nought. But as Dr. Carter Blake truly remarks, "the nineteenth century is not that which has observed the genesis of new, nor the completion of old, methods of thought"; to which Mr. Bonwick adds that "if the ancients knew but little of our mode of investigations into the secrets of nature, we know still less of their mode of research".

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

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Trimurti (Sanskrit) [from tri three + murti imbodiment, form]
 
The Hindu triad, consisting of Brahma, the emanator or evolver; Vishnu, the sustainer or preserver; and Siva, the beneficent, the destroyer, and the regenerator. These three entities as individualized divinities form the apex or crown of the spirit of the solar system. In the human being, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva represent the three divine-spiritual principles of the seven -- directly following forth from the highly recondite superspiritual triangle which, with the seven principles, make the full ten human principles.
 
In the world of matter, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva are each personified by earth, water, and fire, i.e., each of these divinities combines in itself these three elements, one predominating when the divinity manifests one of its three fundamental gunas. "In Indian Puranas it is Vishnu, the first, and Brahma, the second logos, or the ideal and practical creators, who are respectively represented, one as manifesting the lotus, the other as issuing from it" (SD 1:381n). But Brahma, for instance, because of the significance of expansion inherent in the name, could equally well be looked upon as the source of Vishnu, manifesting as the cosmic waters or Second Logos. This perhaps is the reason why in this Trimurti, Brahma is called the emanator or evolver, and Vishnu the sustainer or preserver.
 
These three persons or aspects of the triad are really three sides of the same cosmic reality; and to gain an accurate understanding of their respective functions it should be born in mind that any one of the three may at any time, if the matter is considered from a different viewpoint, be said to contain the functioning elements of the other two in addition to its own. "Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva are a trinity in a unity, and, like the Christian trinity, they are mutually convertible. In the esoteric doctrine they are one and the same manifestation of him ''''whose name is too sacred to be pronounced, and whose power is too majestic and infinite to be imagined'''' " (IU 2:277-8).
 
In the Vedas, where neither Brahma nor Siva is known under these names, the trinity usually consists of Agni (fire), Vayu (air), and Surya (sun), the originants of the terrestrial, atmospheric, and heavenly fire respectively. The Padma-Purana states that in the beginning the great Vishnu desiring to produce the whole world, became threefold, in himself the creator, preserver, and destroyer. In order to produce the world, the supreme spirit emanated from the right side of his body, himself, as Brahma; then, to preserve the universe, he produced from the left side of his body, Vishnu; and to destroy the world he produced from the middle of his body the eternal Siva.
 
The three persons of the Trimurti are the three qualificative gunas or attributes of the universe of differentiated spirit-matter, self-formative, self-preserving, and self-destroying for purposes of regeneration and perfectibility. Because Brahma is the considered the formative or emanative force, it is said to be personified imbodiment of rajas, the quality of activity, of desire for creation -- that desire owing to which the universe and everything in it is called forth into being. Vishnu because of its preservative and sustaining function is said to be the imbodied sattva, which characterizes the intermediate period between full growth and the beginning of decay; and Siva is said to be the imbodiment of tamas which, in one of its functions, is the attribute of stagnancy and final decay, and thus becomes the destroyer.
 
The Jewish Qabbalistic triad, Sephirah, Hokhmah, and Binah, is identical in certain philosophical respects with the Hindu Trimurti.

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

For more dictionary entries, see » Mutual Dictionary

Telepathy [from Greek tele far off, at a distance + pathos feeling]
 
The transference of thought or feeling from mind to mind independently of ordinary modes of communication. This very interesting and common fact may be noted as not only existing between human beings, and humans and animals, but likewise between animals and insects -- the last being one of the commonest phenomena of natural history -- and in the plant kingdom. People have always known that they talk to each other through the air, or through air vibrations, and that these strike the ear and are conveyed to the brain. The notion of transference from one mind to another across a distance is a physical conception, and its applicability to minds is questionable. Mind can hardly be regarded as physical, and though our brains are physical and separated by distances, the mind is not synonymous with the brain, for if it were telepathy would be impossible because brain does not physically touch brain in the transference of thought, therefore it is not brains which send and receive except as instruments, but it is minds which touch or interpenetrate along the inner planes.
 
We live in a common mental atmosphere, taking in and giving out thoughts and feelings, which must often pass from mind to mind, though we may not be aware of the fact. The undoubted fact of our having separate minds does not mean that these minds are closed systems, and not mutually penetrable. The experiments which are made to prove thought transference defeat their object to a great extent, because the mind of the transmitter is not concentrated on the idea to be transmitted, so much as on the idea that he is trying to transfer it. The most conclusive proofs, and curiously enough the most common, are unpremeditated, and actually are daily occurrences.
 
A thought entertained by one person may pass inwardly through planes of consciousness until it reaches a point where minds are no longer separate, and from thence it may travel outwardly to the brain of another person. It may even be said that what we require is not so much an explanation of thought transference as an explanation of why thoughts are so seldom transferred -- why our minds are so separate; and the explanation is the concentration of each individual''s normal daily consciousness upon affairs immediately concerning himself. This clothes the individual in a mental shell of interests, around which rush the radiatory influences emanating from the thinker. Universality of sympathy therefore is the key to successful telepathic communication.

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

For more dictionary entries, see » Mutual Dictionary