Showing posts with label Theosophy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Theosophy. Show all posts

Saturday, February 7, 2026

Why do good things happen to bad people?


Karma is so complex a topic that trying to fathom the "working out of karma" is something on a scale so staggering that it is considered one of the Four Imponderables in Buddhism. Only a buddha can begin to navigate the intricacies, probabilities, and intrepidities of how any deed (action) will meet its many results.

Therefore, the comic above is very funny. Of course, we do not see things working out! We are, for one thing, looking on too infinitesimally small a timescale. For another, imagine just the balls on a billiard table. They are all more or less equal, except for positioning.

One ball bangs into them, and no one can predict where they will go -- not even the one with the stick banging one into the others in a very controlled setting. Now take the countless variables associated with any single deed -- the intention behind it, the thoughts after it, the unknowable impacts on others... It's just too much.

Even the Buddha, when he looked into the future, did not give an exact date when things would happen. But he did know that when this or that sign appear, the results are coming, and that was on a grand scale of collective karma.

More importantly he knew that it was not possible for bad karma (such as the breaking of the Five Precepts) to produce a welcome result. This seems like nonsense to us because we get pleasant results from breaking them all the time.

What we don't know is that that result is not the karmic result, the vipaka. When that resultant ripens, woe. If we knew that, what we shrink back from the unskillful, the unwholesome, and the unwise courses of action, of which there are ten, the Ten Courses of Unwholesome Action.

The Four Imponderables
The acinteyya are identified in the Acintita Sutta (AN 4.77), as follows [8]. There is the:
  1. buddha-range of buddhas [i.e., the range of powers a Buddha develops as a result of becoming a buddha];
  2. jhana-range of one absorbed in jhanas (the meditation absorptions) [i.e., the range of powers that one may obtain while absorbed in the jhanas];
  3. [precise working out of the] results of karma;
  4. speculation about [the origin, etc., of] the cosmos.
These four are imponderables that ought not to be speculated about [as doing so may lead one to become unhinged and nevertheless not understand them, when the path-of-practice that is the purification of the mind/heart is here and yields insight into all these things and why they are imponderable in the first place].
  • NOTE: (SN 56.41 develops this speculation as the ten indeterminate).
Acinteyya literally means "that which cannot or should not be pondered or thought about, the unthinkable, the incomprehensible, the impenetrable, that which goes beyond the limits of thinking and over which therefore one should not ponder.

These Four Imponderables (unthinkables) are:
  1. the sphere of a buddha (buddha-visaya),
  2. the sphere of the meditative absorptions (jhāna-visaya),
  3. the sphere of karmic-results (kamma-vipāka),
  4. brooding over the world (loka-cintā), particularly over an absolute first beginning of it. (See A.IV.77).
SUTRA
"Therefore, O meditators, do not brood [fret, preoccupy, waste time, become distressed] over the world as to whether it is eternal or not eternal, finite or infinite (limited or endless)...

"Such brooding, O meditators, is senseless, has nothing to do with genuine good conduct (see ādibrahmacariyaka-sīla, "supreme or higher morality"), does not lead to turning away, letting go, extinction [of delusion and suffering], nor to peace, full comprehension, awakening (enlightenment), and nirvana, and so on" (S.56.41).
  • Buddha's Wisdom (video); Ven. Nyanatiloka, Buddhist Dictionary; commentary and editing by Dhr. Seven and Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly Wiki edit

Wednesday, August 14, 2024

Madame Blavatsky on Bamiyan Buddhas

Buddhist Tillya Tepe ("Golden Hill") gold crown from formerly Buddhist Afghanistan
Tillya Tepe gold coin, Dharma wheel, Kabul Museum (Gerard Fussman/Anna Maria Quagliotti)

Massive Buddha of Bamiyan
The Buddhas of Bamiyan (Persian بت های باميان – Bothā-ye Bāmiyān) are or were monumental statues of the Buddha standing.

They were carved into the side of a cliff in ancient Gandhara, in Bamiyan Valley in the Hazaras' Hazaristan region of central Afghanistan, 140 miles (230 kms) northwest of Kabul [another seasonal capital of ancient Kapilavastu (Kapil, Kapila, Kapila-pura, Kapila-vatthu), where Prince Siddhartha Gautama, the future Buddha, grew up] at an elevation of 8,200 feet (2,500 meters).
Modern archeologists believe they were built around 550 CE, although Madame H. P. Blavatsky claims they are remnants of "the Initiates of the Fourth Race" [1].

They were dynamited and destroyed in March 2001 by the Taliban [which was created and inspired by the CIA and ISI, intelligence agencies for the USA and Pakistan, respectively] after they declared that they were idols, carrying out an extreme Islamic religious iconoclasm.

According to Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, these statues are witnesses to earlier civilizations. She rejected the fact that the statues [previously] represented the Buddha, claiming they come from the ancestors of the Miao people, and were "the work of the Cyclopes, the true and actual Giants of old" [2].
  • [This would make sense. There are still redheaded, six-fingered giants in the area, Nephilim, Asuras, Nagas, Yakkhas, dwelling in caves and reported by US servicemen at war in the area for 20 years. They were likely repurposed to represent the historical Buddha, the scion of the region who became a great religious figure in neighboring proto-India then returned to the region to save everyone with his teachings on bringing about the end of all suffering. The Indo-Scythians or Shakyas/Sakas of the area then expanded and took over what is now Bihar/Vihar, India, the site of the Buddha's Great Awakening or Mahabodhi. This was before India came into being, 200 years after the life of the Buddha, what the Buddhist Emperor Ashoka conquered and unified many independent states or mahajanapadas into one empire, leaving behind many Ashokan pillars.]
Psychic Madame Blavatsky
Being built long before the birth of Prince Siddhartha Gautama (2,600 years before the present), they were made to look like him in modern times, in other words repurposed.

As archeologists discovered, the main bodies were hewn directly into the sandstone cliffs, but details were modeled in mud mixed with straw, coated with stucco. They are the site of the world's oldest oil paintings, as the entire cliffside is riddled with caves used by Buddhist monastics in the past and modern Hazari and/or Pashtun people today.
  • Madame Blavatsky explains:
The Buddhist Arhats [enlightened ones] and Ascetics [monastics] found the five statues, and many more, now crumbled down to dust, and as the three were found by them in colossal niches at the entrance of their future abode, they covered the figures with plaster, and, over the old, modelled new statues made to represent Lord Tathagata [the Buddha]. The interior walls of the niches are covered to this day with bright paintings of human figures, and the sacred image of Buddha is repeated in every group. These frescoes and ornaments—which remind one of the Byzantine style of painting—are all due to the piety of the monk-ascetics, like some other minor figures and rock-cut ornamentations. But the five statues belong to the handiwork of the Initiates of the Fourth Race, who sought refuge, after the submersion of their continent [Atlantis], in the fastnesses and on the summits of the Central Asian mountain chains [3].



Trifecta: Mes Aynak, Kabul, Bamiyan
Blavatsky states that the sizes of the statues had an esoteric meaning:

Moreover, the five statues are an imperishable record of the esoteric teaching about the gradual evolution of the races.

What is left of Kabul after the US War?
The largest is made to represent the First Race of mankind, its ethereal body being commemorated in hard, everlasting stone, for the instruction of future generations, as its remembrance would otherwise never have survived the Atlantean Deluge.

The second—120 feet high—represents the sweat-born; and the third—measuring 60 feet—immortalizes the race that fell, and thereby inaugurated the first physical race, born of father and mother, the last descendants of which are represented in the Statues found on Easter Isle; but they were only from 20 to 25 feet in stature at the epoch when Lemuria was submerged, after it had been nearly destroyed by volcanic fires.

The Fourth Race was still smaller, though gigantic in comparison with our present Fifth Race, and the series culminated finally in the latter [4].


Online resources
Articles
Notes
  1. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine Vol. II (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), p. 339.
  2. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine Vol. II (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), p. 337.
  3. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine Vol. II (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), p. 339.
  4. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine Vol. II (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), pp. 339-340.
Intrigue
The Aryan Buddha in the Kabul Museum
On Dec. 24, 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and Kabul [Kapil] was heavily occupied by Soviet Armed Forces.

In Pakistan, Director-General of the ISI [Pakistan's CIA] Akhtar Abdur Rahman advocated for the idea of a covert operation in Afghanistan by arming Islamic extremists who formed the Mujahideen [85]. Gen. Rahman was heard loudly saying, "Kabul must burn! Kabul must burn!" [86] and masterminded the idea of a proxy war in Afghanistan [85].

Pakistani Pres. Zia-ul-Haq authorized this operation under Gen. Rahman, which was later merged with Operation Cyclone, a program funded by the United States and carried out by the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). More
  • Theosophy Wiki edited and expanded by Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Thursday, August 31, 2023

Visiting the Masters of Wisdom in Shambhala

Madame Blavatsky (amazon.com); Amber Larson and Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

The Land of the Gods: The Long-Hidden Story of Visiting the Masters of Wisdom in Shambhala
(Sacred Wisdom Revived Book 1) This book by the co-founder of Theosophy, Madame Helena P. Blavatsky (with 4.5 stars out of 5 with 574 ratings), is Book 1 of 7: Sacred Wisdom Revived. It was a #1 best seller among New Age books.

Question: Elvis Presley and Oprah Winfrey, Mahatma Gandhi and the 14th Dalai Lama, Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, Harry Potter and Star Wars, what do they have in common?

Answer: They have all been directly or indirectly influenced by psychic Madame Blavatsky — the trailblazing woman who indelibly shaped our world and changed the course of history, “being as much talked about as an emperor” (The Sun).

Now, Ukrainian-born Russian mystic Madame Helena Blavatsky returns with a long-hidden book. She took a vow of silence not to reveal during her lifetime the name of the place she had visited.
She cleverly hid her secret in plain sight by giving the story to another writer to claim as his own.

American Col. Olcott vowed to uphold Buddhism's Five Precepts and wrote A Buddhist Catechism, as he revived Theravada Buddhist practices in Sri Lanka in the late 1800s.
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What long-lost, timeless wisdom did she conceal in her wonderful narrative? Immersive and engaging, this profound book provides readers with a unique outlook on the deeper side of life, exposing our true nature, interior powers, and ultimate destiny.

American Buddhist revivalist in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) with Theravada Buddhist monks, 1883
American Buddhist Col. Olcott, Madame Blavatsky, co-founders of Theosophy, Bombay, 1881
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It explains grand, spiritual ideas more thoroughly and swiftly than any book previously read.

REVIEW: Blavatsky's sacred wisdom
“Whatever critics may say against Madame Blavatsky, [her] contribution to humanity will always rank high.” — Mahatma Gandhi

“I am happy to have this long association with the Theosophists.” — The 14th Dalai Lama

Get it now to find out what secrets this most mysterious woman — hailed as an icon — couldn’t reveal during her lifetime!

Friday, August 19, 2022

Shambhala, the spiritual Buddhist kingdom

Holly Gary, grunge.com, Aug. 2, 2022; Pat Macpherson (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly
Helena Roerich translated The Secret Doctrine by Madame Blavatsky (Atlas Obscura).
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Inside the story behind Shambhala, the spiritual Buddhist kingdom that was never discovered
Madame Blavatsky and Theosophists in Asia
It may be part of human nature to imagine there's a place out there free from strife and full of knowledge. Certainly, more than one culture has this concept.

One such place is the Buddhist Kingdom of Shambhala in Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain mythology.

Shambhala is Sanskrit and means "place of peace" or "place of silence" (IndiaDivine.org). This myth dates back more than a thousand years and varies depending on the source.

However, Buddhists, Hindus, and Jains agree that Shambhala is both a physical and a spiritual place (Atlas Obscura). While there is debate on where the physical Shambhala is located, according to ThoughtCo., it is between the Himalayan mountains and the Gobi Desert.

All the citizens of Shambhala have achieved enlightenment, so it represents a Buddhist ideal. The tantalizing myth of Shambhala has led quite a few people into the Himalayas to try to find it. It has attracted the attention of everyone from hippies and spiritualists to Christian missionaries to the NAZIs and Soviets.

In the 1920s, a Russian couple named Nicholas and Helena Roerich made one such expedition. They had escaped Russia just before the revolution of 1917 and were living in the United States.

Helena Roerich (pictured above) had translated The Secret Doctrine by Madame Helena Blavatsky, a Russian spiritualist (Atlas Obscura).

The book mentioned Shambhala, claiming that finding it was a shortcut to enlightenment. The Roerichs began to seriously believe in Shambhala, and Helena Roerich claimed to have received a message from an otherworldly being telling her to go there. More

Monday, April 13, 2020

American Buddhist Col. Olcott, Theosophist

Pat Macpherson and Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly Wikipedia edit

Theosophy is not Buddhism. It is a newer Western religion based on ancient Eastern philosophies that include Buddhism, a belief system given to Russian writer, clairvoyant, and mystic Madame Blavatsky (1831-1891) by a consortium of unseen beings.

American Buddhist Col. Henry Steel Olcott (1832-1907) was an officer, lawyer, journalist, and co-founder of the Theosophical Society and its first president. He was the first well-known American of European ancestry to make a formal conversion to Buddhism.

Col. Olcott drawn by Blavatsky
His subsequent actions helped create a renaissance in the study of Buddhism. He is considered a Buddhist modernist for his efforts at interpreting Buddhism through a Western lens and was a major revivalist of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, where he is still honored for his efforts.

He was important to the new movement; he is famous for reviving indigenous Theravada Buddhism in Sri Lanka. Moreover, Theosophy helped revitalize the West's interest in spirituality. One interesting aspect of Theosophical study we now take for granted is "color mysticism" in the aura or astral body of a person.

Aura, astral body, and color mysticism

Pat Macpherson and Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly Wikipedia edit
The Buddha as envisioned and presented by Theosophist Florence Fuller (wiki).
Theosophical art is profound. This is "The Path" in Machell's influential style, 1895.
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Theosophical color mysticism [15][16]
"Vision of the New Day" by Machell
The Theosophical teaching on the human aura was elaborated by Charles W. Leadbeater and Rudolf Steiner in early 1900s [20][Note 4].

Both Leadbeater and Steiner stated that clairvoyants (clear-seers) are gifted with the ability to see so-called "thought-forms" [23] and "human auras."

They wrote the "impressions" received by such people from the "higher worlds" are similar to the "color phenomena observed in the physical world" [24][25][Note 5].

Theosophist Charles W. Leadbeater
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Frontispiece of Thought-Forms
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke pointed out that Leadbeater (in collaboration with Irish-English Annie Besant) published an "influential book" entitled Thought-Forms [28], a record of clairvoyant investigation [29].

The frontispieces of both Thought-Forms and Man Visible and Invisible [30] contain a table for "the meanings of colors" of thought-forms and human aura associated with feelings and emotions.

The meaning of aura colors
It begins with "high spirituality" (light blue, in the upper left corner) and ends with "malice" (black, in the lower right corner), with 25 colors in all [31][Note 6].

According to Besant and Leadbeater, feelings and thoughts shape specific forms. For example, "lightning-like shapes" emerge in connection with "anger" [33] and "malice" [34], zig-zag lines show fear, and so on [35].

The average human astral body aura
Thanks to Leadbeater and Steiner, "Theosophical color mysticism," as Finnish Professor of Art Sixten Ringbom has formulated [36], became a subject in which modern artists have been particularly interested [Note 7].

In addition, they were attracted by the Theosophical concept of a "universal harmony underlying the apparent chaos" of the physical world [3]. More

Spiritualism: Evolution or Devolution?

Pat Macpherson and Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly Wikipedia edit
Hypnotic Séance painting by Swedish artist Sven Richard Bergh 1887 (National Museum).
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American Spiritualist pantheist Cora L. V. Scott
Theosophy opposes Spiritualism's interpretation of evolution. It instead teaches a metaphysical theory of evolution mixed with human devolution.

Buddhist sacred texts and Hindu Vedas agree: Humanity is not evolving but devolving, even as some individuals make meditative and karmic progress.
Madame Blavatsky was guided by the Masters
Spiritualists do not accept the devolution of the Theosophists.

To Theosophy, humanity (life on the human plane, which refers to an entire plane not just the miniscule portion of it on Earth) starts in a better state, one of presumed perfection (a Golden Age).

This, of course, is not actual perfection. It then falls into a process of progressive devolution -- materialization, density, coarseness, sickliness, shrinking lifespan, and so on -- which is not linear but punctuated by periods of progress and regress, with minor cycles within a much larger samsaric cycle, developing the intellect and losing spiritual consciousness.

Spiritualist Gerald Massey
After the gathering of experience and growth through repeated rebirths, humanity in general regains the original spiritual state (goes back to being like the superior deva plane), as individuals in specific may do at any time, which is one of self-conscious evolution that begins devolving again.

Theosophy and Spiritualism were both very popular metaphysical schools of thought especially in the early 20th century and were always clashing in their different beliefs.

Russian Madame Blavatsky was critical of Spiritualism; she distanced Theosophy from Spiritualism as far as she could and allied herself with eastern occultism (G. Baseden Butt, Madame Blavatsky, p. 120).

British Spiritualist Gerald Massey claimed that Darwin's theory of evolution was not wrong but incomplete (Concerning Evolution, p. 55). More

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

The Hidden History of Humanity (video)

Monadic Media, Aug. 18, 2017; Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
The Leshan Giant Buddha (Chinese Da Fo, 乐山大佛) is a 233 feet (71 meter) tall stone statue cut out of a mountain next to the river, built between 713 and 803 (Tang Dynasty), depicting Maitreya.


The Hidden History of Humanity is a full-length feature documentary. Based on the Buddhistic Theosophy (the Secret Doctrine of Russian psychic Madame Helena Blavatsky, American Col. Henry Steel Olcott, Annie Besant, and others) this documentary focuses on the evolution of consciousness over millions of years while revealing the secret chronology of human history from ancient Lemuria and Atlantis to our current root race, while following the natural cyclic deluges between races.

Friday, May 27, 2016

Nazi UFOs: Vril and Maria Orsic (video)

Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; Robert Sepehr (818Encino, Atlantean Gardens)

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(May 14, 2016) Ancient antediluvian civilizations were said to have mastered a mysterious universal life force called "Vril" using it to power vimanas (spaceships, UFOs).

They guarded this sacred knowledge, passing it down through initiations into sacred mystery schools.
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Spiritual ("breath") energy
  • Esoteric Vril symbols
    Tibetan Buddhists referred to this esoteric energy as "lung" (sacred breath, possibly forming the rare concretions of the atmam called a "relic" or Śarīra, one of Hinduism's 25 coverings)
  • Latin Christians as anima and spiritus ("soul," "holy spirit," from which we get the English word "spirituality")
  • Hebrew Jews as ruah (whole spirit, perhaps empowering the U.S. military's inspirational expression "Hooah" and its variants, including the plosive exclamation "Hah!" in martial arts)
  • Native American Hawaiians as "mana"
  • Indian yogis as "prana"
  • Ancient Greeks as "psykhē"
  • Indian Jains as vitality
  • Chinese Taoists as "hun and po"
  • Chinese Buddhists as "chi" and "qi"
  • Korean Buddhists as gi
  • Japanese Buddhists as "rei," vital "ki," or "reiki." 
Vril in 1920s Germany (viewzone.com)
What are the Occult Secrets of Vril? Author Robert Sepehr -- an anthropologist specializing in linguistics, archeology, and paleobiology (archeo-genetics) -- explains who the Vril Society's Austrian Maria Orsic (Orsitsch) and her beautiful companions were and what they taught the Occult Nazis.

"Vril" was first popularized in the 1871 novel Vril: The Power of the Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. The book is about a superior energy-form -- like Wilhelm Reich's sexual "orgone" energy -- and subterranean "master race" (with "Aryans" being a hybrid race blended with Nordic aliens rather than its Buddhist meaning) of which the Theosophists (most notably its co-founder the Russian mystic Madame Blavatsky) made much.

Vril-powered UFOs: vimanas
Bibliotecapleyades.net (vimanas) edited by Wisdom Quarterly
goetia_girls_vril_ufo_society

Vimanas: ancient UFOs/spaceships (BIB)
The Buddhist Indian Emperor Ashoka started a "Secret Society of the Nine Unknown Men," great Indian scientists who were supposed to catalogue the many sciences.

Asoka kept their work secret because he was afraid that the advanced science catalogued by these men, culled from ancient [Vedic] sources, would be used for the evil purposes of war, which Ashoka was strongly against, having converted to Buddhism after defeating a rival army in a bloody battle.

Vril women (ßril-Damen) of the Vril Gesellschaft in front of Nazi aerial craft (Faustus Crow)

The "Nine Unknown Men" wrote a total of nine books, presumably one each. Book Number [?] was The Secrets of Gravitation!

This book, known to historians but not actually seen by them, deals chiefly with "gravity control." It is presumably still around somewhere, kept in a secret library in India, Tibet, or elsewhere (perhaps even in the USA and Germany).

One can certainly understand Ashoka’s reasoning for wanting to keep such knowledge a secret, assuming it exists. Ashoka was aware that devastating wars using such advanced vehicles and other "futuristic weapons" had destroyed the ancient Indian "Rama Empire" [Rama being the superhuman king of Agartha, the Inner Earth] several thousand years before.

According to ancient Indian texts [of the pre-Indian Indus Valley Civilization], the people had flying machines which were called "Vimanas."
 
Ancient Indian epics describe a Vimana as a double-deck, circular aircraft with portholes and a dome, much as we think of flying saucers.

It flew with the "speed of the wind" and gave forth a "melodious sound." There were at least four different types of Vimanas, some saucer-shaped, others like long cylinders ("cigar shaped airships")...
Alexander the Great and Adolf Hitler
It is interesting to note that when Alexander the Great invaded India more than 2,000 years ago, his historians chronicled that at one point they were attacked by "flying, fiery shields" that dove at his army and frightened the cavalry.

Hitler in Tibet, 1943
 These "flying saucers" did not use any atomic bombs or beam weapons on Alexander’s army, however, perhaps out of benevolence, and Alexander went on to conquer India.

It is interesting to note that the Nazis developed the first practical pulse-jet engines for their V-8 rocket "buzz bombs." Adolf Hitler and the Nazi were exceptionally interested in ancient India and Tibet and sent expeditions to both these places yearly, starting in the 1930s, in order to gather esoteric evidence... More
  
Meanwhile, back in Nazi German, Hitler and Co. promote pagan past and nationalism.
Underworld: How is Agartha lit? Bioluminescence glows like "Avatar" (AtlanteanGardens)