| Grandmaster
Status: Offline Posts: 3,225
Thanks Given: 460
Thanked 542x in 472 Posts
Join Date: Aug 2007 Rep Power: 47 | Re: The Will is the first wave=1st motion! -
07-02-2008, 09:14 PM
> We hold that a good book which gives people food for thought,
> which strengthens and clears their minds, and enables them to
> grasp truths which they have dimly felt but could not formulate
> . . . does a real, substantial good.
>
> H.P. Blavatsky, THE KEY TO THEOSOPHY, page 249
----------------------------------------------------------
AVALOKITESHVARA -- THE DIVINE PRESENCE
By G. de Purucker
[From STUDIES IN OCCULT PHILOSOPHY, pages 309-12.]
Mahayana Buddhism, which is mainly the form studied in Tibet
today, as it has been for centuries past, recognizes three
distinct entities or hierarchical Logoi in the Buddhists'
hierarchy of spirit. They are the Buddha Amitabha or the Buddha
of Boundless Light, then Alaya, then Avalokiteshvara. Alaya
means the spirit-source of all, the garment or clothing of the
boundless light; matter cosmic or infinitesimal in nature. Out
of it spring the multitudinous rays, as rays of light leave the
sun for instance; and each ray is itself a being.
Avalokiteshvara does not mean "the Lord looking down," as Rhys
Davids translates it, in direct violation of the elementary rules
of Sanskrit grammar. Ava means 'down,' lokita is the past
participle passive of the Sanskrit verbal root lok, 'to see,'
hence meaning 'seen.' Ishwara means 'Lord.' So Avalokiteshvara
means, paraphrased somewhat, "the Lord who is beheld everywhere,"
the cosmic light, the cosmic spirit, in which we live and move
and have our being, whose very essence, whose very light, thrills
and burns in every human soul, the spark within every human
being. It is the immanence or the constant presence of divinity
around us, in everything, seen down here in all its works,
preeminently for humans in man, the most evolved vehicle of this
divine presence.
Compare this wonderful Buddhist triad of Tibet, which is likewise
our own, although our Christian trinity is degenerated and
grossly transmogrified through centuries of theological and
scholastic mishandling because of misunderstanding. We find that
Amitabha, the Boundless Light, corresponds to the Father in the
Christian Trinity, the Cosmic Father or Abstract Spirit, the
Pythagorean monad of monads, the source -- in silence to us, and
darkness to us -- of all the monads emanating from it, streaming
from it, born from it through the second logos, Alaya, the
Spirit, which in original Christian teaching was feminine, the
productive and generative power in nature, in spiritual matters
as well as material, the mother of all, the fosterer of all, the
preserver of all. And Avalokiteshvara corresponds to the
original third Person of the Christian Trinity, the Son, the
cosmic or Third Logos.
In Brahmanism the triad runs: Parabrahman or Brahman, Pradhana or
Mulaprakriti, Mahat. When manifesting in individual monads such
as a human being, the trinity is Amitabha, Atman; Alaya or
Mahakasha, Buddhi; Avalokiteshvara, Manas; for Manas is a direct
ray from the cosmic Alaya, and our Atman, a direct ray from the
Paramatman, the cosmic Atman, or Brahman or Parabrahman, or the
Father.
Thus we have Father, Spirit or Holy Ghost, and Son -- the
original Christian trinity which the Latin Church finally
succeeded in turning around into Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
making the Son or Logos precede the Mother from which it is born!
So, as the Masters pointed out in the last part of the letter we
have been studying, Avalokiteshvara has its temple in the
Universe around us. It is the creative Logos, the Third Logos,
the one closest to us as it were, from which we all spring as
rays from a cosmic sun, which is the divine presence in nature,
which is the divine presence in the human manasic part, emanating
of course from Atman or Amitabha; for the Son, is he not the Son
of his Father? Is not Manas through Buddhi the offspring of
Atman? Is not Mahat through Alaya or Mahakasha or Pradhana -- all
names for the same thing -- the offspring of Adi-Buddha, or if
you wish Paramatman or Brahman or Parabrahman?
So Avalokiteshvara is the divine presence around us everywhere,
which every sensitive human soul can feel continuously, day and
night, even when we are in dreamland or when embodied on Earth.
And that same divine presence is in the human breast, because the
human breast, even the human body, is a microcosmic
representation on this plane of the Universe. No wonder the
ancients had their Holy of Holies in every temple -- originally a
beautiful metaphor and a suggestive one when understood by those
who came to the temple to worship the divine in purity of heart
and with utmost reverence -- wherein as in the universe, the
divine presence dwells. It was a symbol; so that when one
approached the Holy of Holies, shoes were cast from the feet, the
garments were wiped, the heart was raised, the mind was elevated;
for the worshipers in their reverent raising of their own spirits
upwards entered into the Presence, even the Presence Divine.
That Presence is Avalokiteshvara; and its ray in us through the
Atman is the Higher Manas, illuminated by Buddhi, Buddhi in its
turn filled with the divine light of Atman. For the Father
dwelleth in the Mother; and the Mother giveth birth to the Holy
Son; and the three are one and yet three, each distinct from the
other. Very simple to understand, but amazingly difficult to
attain a deeper realization of that marvel! Yet it is wonderful
to know and to strive upwards towards. Would that every man and
woman realized that in every human breast is such a Holy of
Holies; for when the man, through his own self-discipline and
cultivation of the highest within him by forgetting himself in
service to all others, thus sinking the unit into the all, thus
becoming even then relatively divine, becomes so over powerfully
strong that nothing less than It will ever satisfy, then he
yearns upward, he opens the portals of his holier being, and the
light streams in and fills the Holy of Holies within his breast.
Then the man is transfigured, he is a Christ, he is a
Bodhisattva, for the time being.
That was the effect of successful initiation, just that.
Sometimes the aura of the event remained with the man for days,
it may be weeks, and his very body at the time was surrounded
with light. He was spoken of as being clothed with the solar
splendor, the sun being a symbol of Atman, as he is in his
kingdom; and our own inner God being the sun, the inner God of
our own divinity, our Father in Heaven, that ray from the cosmic
Avalokiteshvara.
I think it is just here that we find the reason why the Tibetan
esotericists and mystics, Initiates, and the common people -- by
that I mean the mass of the people, the hard working, kindly,
good-natured, loving, aspiring men of the multitude -- why they
all look upon the Bodhisattvas with deeper reverence and a more
fervent love than they do even upon the Buddhas. For the Buddhas
have achieved, they have left these spheres. Behind them remains
their glory as a spiritual influence. But the Bodhisattvas are
still men, not yet Buddhas, men whose life is consecrated to
making Avalokiteshvara a living power in the world through
themselves.
This is why it is the Bodhisattvas that the multitudes love.
They deeply revere the Buddhas as having gone on and shown the
way, but they love with an exalted human devotion the
Bodhisattvas who remain behind with arms outstretched to help in
pity. No wonder they love the Bodhisattvas, for he who brings
Avalokiteshvara to live in this Holy of Holies in the human
breast, becomes more than man. No wonder he is loved and revered
and trusted. I think these thoughts are beautiful beyond
description. Their sublimity does not blind us, for it is like
divinity clothing itself in human habiliments, in human apparel,
and therefore becoming understandable to us humans. It is like
seeing humanity clothed with divinity. The Bodhisattvas are not
so abstract, so seemingly far away, as are the Buddhas.
So true is this psychology that to it is due, to it alone I
believe, all the success of early Christianity, that it taught
the very ancient doctrine which had become almost forgotten in
the so-called pagan world, and it was this: that a man lived who
had been filled with divinity, and that he came amongst us and
taught and showed the way and loved us all so greatly that he
laid down his life and all that was in him so that others seeing
might follow on the path -- the typical Bodhisattva, the typical
Christ. I think THAT one thing alone captured for Christianity
those who joined the Christian Church.
But how very old is this doctrine of beauty and inspiration! The
Christians received it from the Orient. It is far older than the
so-called enduring mountains, for when they were still sea-slime,
not yet having been raised, these doctrines were taught among men
in other continents, in other ages, in other Root-Races, these
same wondrous teachings of cosmic origin.
See the difference between the Christian theological idea of
Avalokiteshvara as wrongly translated by Rhys Davids and others
as being the "Lord who looks down," something "up there" and
apart and away, as compared with the real meaning: the Lord here
amongst us, the Lord of Pity, human and yet divine, the Divine
Presence surrounding us everywhere, which makes the human breast
recognizing this the human Holy of Holies. |
Re: The Will is the first wave=1st motion! -
07-02-2008, 05:23 PM
]?...
Linear Mode
