Realities

[Sharon Ormerod]

The following is one of my favourite quotes of Blavatsky's in the Secret Doctrine. It reminds me that when I am having one of those awesome moments, when I suddenly see the whole picture and understand it more clearly than ever before, it is one more step on the journey through Maya!


“Whatever plane our consciousness may be acting in, both we and the things belonging to that plane are, for the time being, our only realities. As we rise in the scale of development we perceive that during the stages through which we have passed we mistook shadows for realities, and the upward progress of the Ego is a series of progressive awakenings, each advance bringing with it the idea that now, at last, we have reached ‘reality;’ but only when we shall have reached the absolute Consciousness, and blended our own with it, shall we be free from the delusions produced by Maya [illusion].” (SD 1:40)

[Susan Thomas]

I think we maybe concern ourselves too much with maya.  Most of us ponder a lot of "what-if's" that never materialize in our lives, and I think we may gain just as much spiritual experience by projecting what we would do in the event that a sunami would hit our desert home, or if the cat should run away while I am too slow to catch her.  Our responses to these fictions are as much a part of our reality as our reality is.  If where we are is all maya, and our tendency is to create even more maya by imagination, then I doubt we would be fit to recognize more thana a glimpse of the absolute consciousness anyway.  When we're ready, we'll be there.  (my 2 cents worth)

[Martin Euser]

"only when we shall have reached the absolute Consciousness, and blended our own with it, shall we be free from the delusions produced by Maya"

 

This is nice mystical talking, and in line with old religions ideas about "the Absolute", but in contradiction to 20th century understanding of relativity and relationality. There never can be an end to the evolution of consciousness. A limited being does not become unlimited. Only in a relative sense can a human being reach the apex (top, "absolute") of a hierarchy of being, only to transcend it in another form, in a new cycle. De Purucker understood that. It was one of his best realizations IMO, which I include in a modern synthesis of world wide wisdom. The realization of the importance of the notions of relativity and relationality has been insufficiently expressed in 19th century theosophy. Hence the objections by many post-modern philosophers! In process-theosophy this defect is repaired and relativity, context and relation get the prominent place they deserve.

[Joe Fulton]

This inspires a thought from a training session I went to at Krotona in the 1980's (eek...hordes of ancientness!) where, as a group we were split up and encouraged to come up with limericks that described pieces parts of the Secret Doctrine.

So a couple of questions, how would you put this into your own words? How can it help in our daily life?

This also reminds me of much of what neuroscience is concluding, that is, what the mind gets from the senses, directly, is pretty well useless.  It is only after we 'process' the information that it becomes anything that we are familiar with.  What our senses generate, is for all practical purposes, unintelligible.

Of course, in Buddhism, the mind is considered a sense, too.