HPB's meditation chart

Helena P. Blavatsky, the co-founder of the Theosophical movement created the above diagram to help aspirants choose their thoughts and actions wisely. Acquisitions are qualities we must acquire and Deprivations are thought patterns/attitudes we have to avoid.

As per theosophy, our minds are dual- a higher mind which deals with abstract, universal ideas and a lower mind which deals with our lives in our present personality in this birth. The qualities we acquire in our higher mind remain with us through future births while only the effects created by the lower mind affect us in the next births.

The Higher mind is required for Acquisitions (refer pic) which are Courage in the face of one 's obstacles- which we ourselves have created, Kindness, Compassion and Justice to the suffering of other beings and an attitude of identification to the wrong in others without negative criticism.

The Deprivations are all things connected to our lower mind which deals with our present experiences like the past in this birth, our relationships, our egoism and the desires of our body. All these have to be avoided, focusing on the higher goals.

This mediation is a model for checking one's thoughts regularly and as often as possible and staying in the higher mind plane, slowly reducing to null the chatter of the lower mind. Its a meditative state of mind and thus a re-wiring of the brain takes place with continuous effort and practice.
 

Evolution –our place in it.

Theosophy’s version of evolution is entirely unique and has to be understood elsewhere. There are plenty of websites dedicated to it. This article is my reflections of this knowledge.

In theosophy we study that we are in the 4^th round out of 7 rounds which will end when our solar system itself ends, ie a solar pralaya. Each round develops a faculty or body in us and in the 4^th round we develop our fourth body or the Kamarupa body (our bodies according to theosophy is septinary-seven fold). This is the body we build of our emotions which we feed into it. The good emotions or the healthy emotions like love, compassion, joy will be in their best form at the end of the round. In this, our fourth round, we are in the fifth root race, and we also develop our 5^th body which is our mind or manas. Though overall we are still working to develop our kama rupa body. The two bodies overlap and are called kama-manasic too.

We hear of people trying different means to achieve higher levels of being, some even working towards that moment of enlightenment which I think for many, means the moment where they will never have to face pain again. But barring a few, no one appears to understand that there is nothing instantaneous about nature and it will take tremendous effort on our part to develop the faculties or develop the planes to their highest qualities and that only through living and facing each problem that life throws at us, do we build these qualities. If a person wanted to develop a high level of mathematics, can he do that without going through the baby steps, one milestone at a time?  Then why do we expect that spirituality will be sudden? Also I see a lot of people wanting to feel they have already achieved some high level of spirituality if they can quote some scripture or are following some daily regimen. Their self-belief is so strong, that they aren’t even willing to explore new ideas. Rigidity of ideas is itself stagnation.

In theosophy we study how the two Mahatmas and their chelas reach out, through letters,  to Englishmen who were really from an entirely different stream of thought. Their attempt at trying something unusual shows us how, we, at our level should also be open to new knowledge, and ways of thought. There is no end to this inner development and any new way of thinking or activity merits our meditative thought.

There is so little that we understand about evolution. Theosophy points that by the time this wave of humanity reaches the 7^th root race in a couple of million years, man will be androgenous -that is neither male nor female, having both qualities in him. Theosophy teaches that Buddha was a sixth round man and there are many 5^th round men amongst us.

All this indicates that we have a lot of work left to do. That it will take much effort on our part to remove all the natural automatic negative thoughts and feelings that we are plagued with, to develop new neural pathways. Much of our thinking is repetitive and on familiar lines. This leads us to do the same mistakes over and over again, which creates the same type of karma and eventually equally difficult future lives. To put an end to this vicious circle, we need to start at the thought level. Examine our approaches to various situations and issues and develop a higher or better way of thinking about the same.

Today at a meeting, one of the senior theosophists commented, that we have a wealth of information about the evolution of man, but this knowledge has to change us. Instead of changing ourselves, we look at others and criticize them. Not realizing that our present actions and thoughts sow the seeds for future troubles in other incarnations and that unless we focus on doing the right thing, thinking the right thought, today, all will be lost.  We use our past and present to change our future and that is evolution.

Three

A theosophist today treads a lonely path. Very few in the exoteric world of philosophy or religion are willing to apply their minds to the theosophical literature and mine its gold. Many a time one wonders if the society will last another couple of centuries, inspite of reading contrary predictions. Can we hold on?

In one of the mahatma letters, it is mentioned that even if there are three people in the society, the masters will support it. This stuck me as significant. Perhaps all I need to do is ensure three people after me, will continue to support the movement with their time and resources. This is not too difficult at first sight, but can be a life challenge, if thought through carefully.

Let us say, these three people come from a closely related member of one’s family, or a close friend. The only way such people will follow you into theosophy is if they see that you have developed into a far better and stronger individual, a clear and unbiased thinker and have lead a meaningful and useful life. It’s the ultimate test of your success in this birth, to see whether you could inspire three other people to walk on parallel paths.

This path requires you to climb the golden stairs every minute of every day forsaking immediate ratification for long term goals.

'A clean life,
an open mind,
a pure heart,
an eager intellect,
an unveiled spiritual perception,
a brotherliness for one's co-disciple,
a readiness to give and receive advice and instruction,
a loyal sense of duty to the Teacher,
a willing obedience to the behests of TRUTH,
once we have placed our confidence in,
and believe that Teacher to be in possession of it;
a courageous endurance of personal injustice,
a brave declaration of principles,
a valiant defence of those who are unjustly attacked,
and a constant eye to the ideal of human progression and perfection which the Secret Science (Gupta-Vidya) depicts
- these are the Golden Stairs up the steps of which the learner may climb to the Temple of Divine Wisdom.'

Yet, if you have not been able to motivate three people, one musn’t be disillusioned, for surely you are one of the three people, someone, whom you cherished, has lead you to this path, and has through you, fulfilled his or her duty to the theosophical society. With this small peace and a hope, one has to continue this lonely track.

Studies on" The Voice of Silence ' by HPB

'Thou shalt not let their senses make a playground of thy mind'
Anger, lust, pride, jealousy and greed all act like sensations on the mind, often pushing our thoughts to negativity. When one is angry, one tries to justify his anger with all sorts of explanations and justifications. When one has lust, one thinks that just as one satisfies the hungry stomach, its ok to satisfy the desirous body. When we are proud, we tend to run other people down, get an unrealistic image of ourselves and when we are jealous, once again we tend to nurture feelings of hatred and anger towards another. Greed makes us want what is not ours, forcing us to  feel unhappy and ungrateful for what we already have. In fact all these thoughts and their accompanying sensations run amok in our mind, taking complete control of our rationality, so much so that we become temporarily blind to the truth or reality of things.
To get a grip over oneself, one has keep watch out for how these sensations creep in stealthily robbing us of our sanity and our sense of compassion for all, in fact stealing our very humanity from us.
This aspect of control is called will and one has to constantly use it to keep the mind out of muck. The state of mental harmony and quiet rationality is the highest mental state one can aim for through our days and nights.
These mental states affect not only the mind but cause diseases in the body as well. Its very important to control, clarify and purify one's mind of such instability.
Daily awareness and meditating over the whys of this and replacing the negative emotions with positive rational ones, will help us grow healthy both in mind and body.


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'Live in that MASTER as its ray in thee. Live in thy fellows as they live in it'
To be aware that the divine is not a force out there but actually in us or is us, is by itself a difficult concept to live by and accept. It takes a lot of determination and awareness to  dis-associate oneslf from the personality we so pain-stakingly create through childhood and adulthood and seek something much much higher and greater that us. To also be aware that that ray is in each and every being around, makes one humble immediately.


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Before thou standest on the threshold of the path; before thou crossest the foremost gate, thou has to merge the two into the one and sacrifice the personal to Self impersonal, and thus destroy the "path" between the two-Antaskarana.
This Antaskarana is the communication path between the lower manas or the personality (the temporary reincarnating entity) and the higher manas or the monad(the permanent reincarnating entity). At death it is destroyed as a path and its remains to survive in the form of kamarupa or the 'shell'. This is an important piece of information and its good that this matter is clarified here. I had heard so many other definitions like the word 'conscience' used as an explanation for antaskarana. But that it is the lower mind, is a more rational explanation. And that it is also the only way to communicate with our higher selves our reincarnating ego/monad/soul. Protecting this communicating corridor is very important for its our only link to our higher selves.


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'If thou would'st not be slain by them, then must thou harmless make thy own creations, the children of thy thoughts, unseen, impalpable, that swarm round humankind, the progeny and heirs to man and his terrestrial spoils.'
Our thoughts are real creations which we cloud the mental space of the world influencing others.
Its important to control and let thoughts that help not harm be sent out. This is of utmost importance. Though this is mentioned as the fourth portal- the first three being Dana or charity, Shila or courage in the face of adversities due to karma, and Kshanthi, patience, the fourth portal is Viraga or detachment to both pain and pleasure.