IN THE LIGHT OF THEOSOPHY
The Theosophical Movement - a magazine devoted to the living of the higher
life.
Vol. 69- No. 4 - February 1999
FAR from being a unifying force, religion has been one of the most bitterly
divisive forces over the centuries. This must be so while religion remains
a matter of blind faith and outer observances. In recent times, serious
religious tensions have surfaced in dozens of countries around the world.
The answer of many governments has been the systematic persecution of millions
of people for their beliefs. One expert has described this century as the
worst - and bloodiest - in human history for its religious persecutions.
A Special Report in The World and I for December 1998 focuses on
"The Global Reality of Religious Persecution." Under the title
"A Worldwide Phenomenon," Nina Shea of the Center for Religious
Freedom describes religious persecution around the world. The persecution
varies widely from simple house arrest to state-sponsored terrorism.
David Aikman of the Ethics and Public Policy Center addresses the importance
of religious freedom in the 20th century. The reality is that developed
as well as developing nations practise persecution. Consequently, reports
Aikman, more and more members of all faiths are demanding that official
action be taken at the national and international levels to protect one
of the most basic of human rights - religious freedom.
Other parts of the Special Report dwell in sometimes horrifying detail on
the exact nature of religious persecution today. Men and women are still
being slaughtered and oppressed on an unprecedented scale as religious and
ethnic hatreds rage around the globe.
Freedom of conscience is fundamental, states Aikman:
There can be no serious freedom in any society without freedom of conscience.
The logical corollary is that freedom of conscience inherently implies
freedom to propagate one's individual faith - without coercion, manipulation,
or deceit of any kind - but freedom to propagate nonetheless. ...
As we move into the twenty-first century and the new millennium, those
who truly value freedom of conscience must extend to others the freedom
to propagate their own faith, however distasteful the beliefs of that faith
may sometimes seem.
Everyone but the hopeless bigot recognizes the desirability of freedom to
follow whatever religion may commend itself to one, but the privilege carries
with it the obligation to respect the sincere beliefs of others. The Buddhist
injunction "Respect the religions of other men and remain true to your
own," is quoted by H.P.B. with obvious approval in The Key to Theosophy.
The spirit in which the second object of the Theosophical Movement is to
be carried out is expressed thus by H.P.B.:
....it is only by studying the various great religions and philosophies
of humanity, by comparing them dispassionately and with an unbiased mind,
that men can hope to arrive at the truth. It is especially by finding out
and noting their various points of agreement that we may achieve this result.
For no sooner do we arrive - either by study, or by being taught by someone
who knows - at their inner meaning, than we find, almost in every case,
that it expresses some great truth in Nature.
A feature in Life magazine examines the reasons behind "the
strange allure of disasters." Is it just empathy or something deeper?
One explanation is that by reliving the events - such as the sinking of
the Titanic - we see how disaster affects the lives of real people
and we thus gain a deeper understanding of their sorrow, their pain, their
courage. George Howe Colt writes in Life:
We have immortalized disasters in ballads, folktales, lithographs, songs,
paintings, pageants and plays. After the ruins of Pompeii were discovered
in the late 18th century, Europeans flocked to the scene, making it one
of the first great tourist attractions. ...
These days there is something of a disaster boom. To begin with, there
are more of them, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
In the past five years, there have been nearly twice as many as in the
previous five. There are also more fictional ones, if the proliferation
of disaster-themed books, movies, calendars, Web sites and CD-ROMs is any
indication. ...
"People are attracted to disaster because it can be an ex-pression
of their deepest fears, but it is also a form of transcendence," says
psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton. "One can see death before one, and
match up against death and try to survive it - experiences that are ordinarily
denied. This transports us be-yond the boredom or routine of ordinary life.
Disaster helps us break out of what I call psychic numbing, a state of
diminished capacity to feel, which many of us experience much of the time."
...
Disasters also bring us together, uniting us against a common enemy. "When
a disaster occurs, we abandon the individual goals that underlie most of
our behaviour, and we identify with the community as a whole," says
sociologist Dennis Mileti. "People give to each other in disasters.
Strangers work for three days and nights without sleeping, trying to rescue
strangers." That altruism, he says, also applies to those who watch
from afar. "People who are drawn to their TVs after disasters are
not gore-mongers. Their empathy is kicking in. What we're observing is
the fundamental social mechanism that has enabled our species to survive:
When the chips are down, we come together."
Replaying disaster scenes may be therapeutic. "When people witness
others going through disasters, they confront their own vulnerability,
and they themselves have a traumatic experience," says Michael Blumenfield
of the American Psychiatric Association's Committee on the Psychiatric
Dimensions of Disaster. "Disaster films offer us a way to work through
anxieties. We live through them and come out O.K."
Disasters form a vast field of study for one who would begin to understand
the mysteries of Karma. Nothing good or ill ever happens by chance, or without
a corresponding cause; everything that happens is the result of Law - eternal,
immutable, ever active.
Astronomers are learning more about the vastness of the universe as they
discover galaxies that had till lately remained in hiding. A couple of years
ago they trained the Hubble Space Telescope on a seemingly empty patch of
sky and left it there for 10 days, trying to catch whatever images it could.
The result was the Hubble Deep Field, a series of images that doubled astronomers'
estimate of the number of galaxies in the universe to at least 50 billion.
Now researchers in Hawaii have done something similar. Using a new instrument
that can peer through the dust that obscures many galaxies, Amy Barger and
her colleagues at the University of Hawaii built up images of small parts
of the sky over the course of two weeks. They have uncovered evidence of
a population of never-before-seen galaxies - so many, in fact, that taken
together they shine as brightly as all the rest of the known galaxies in
the universe. (Discover, November 1998)
The vastness of the universe both baffles and fascinates the human mind.
The Earth that the ancients took to be the centre of the universe becomes
ever more marginal. Nothing could more profoundly shake man's sense of unique
destiny than the realization that we are not alone.
Child prodigies remain an unanswerable enigma to those who reject the
explanation that reincarnation offers. What but aptitudes cultivated in
previous lives can explain the case, reported recently by Indian newspapers,
of a mathematical wizard, Tathagat Avatar Tulsi? At the age of 11 years
and two months, he has found a place in the Guinness Book of World Records
by passing his Bachelor of Science (Physics) examination from Science College
of Patna University, securing over 70 per cent marks.
Tathagat is at present busy reading books by the likes of Ste-phen Hawking,
Robert Penrose and Sir Arthur Eddington. He hopes to clear his M.Sc. this
year, before moving ahead. His future plans include "developing fundamental
concepts in general relativity and cosmology."
There is a great difference, however, between such child prodigies and what
Theosophy would call real genius. Real genius is not an overdevelopment
in one direction, but the expression of the Divine which everyone is at
the centre of his being, an expression which depends upon the purification
and disciplining of the outer personality. H.P.B. says in her article, "Genius"
(U.L.T. Pamphlet No. 13), that great genius is not merely an abnormal
expansion of our human intellect; it is creative and original. In most cases,
the child has not created anything. Several seem merely to have had exceptional
memories and intellectual precocity.
The Health Awareness Centre in Mumbai encourages the development of natural
immunity in children, rather than a reliance on vaccines, for prevention
of diseases. Recent research has proved the vital role that nutrition plays
in strengthening the body's immune system and keeping at bay many diseases,
including AIDS, tuberculosis and cancer. An appreciation of this age-old
truth is now evident in a growing body of research literature which is receiving
attention in several countries. (The Times of India, December 30)
From ancient times, Indian experts have emphasized a holistic approach.
Nutrition is not just about food for the body, but encompasses the nutrition
of the mind and spirit as well. "In dealing with the causes of immune
suppression in a person, you look at the total person - the physiology,
sociology and psychology," says an expert, Vijaya Venkat. To have a
strong immune system, she maintains, one of the first things that needs
to be tackled is the issue of fear. This drives all our social programmes,
and influences the actions of individuals. Even the mother, for whom delivering
a baby should be a natural process, is treated like a patient and fear is
introduced into her psyche. This is immune suppression, Ms. Venkat asserts.
According to her, immunization as practised today amounts to the introduction
of foreign substances, and in time accelerates the degenerative disease
process in the body. A clean and healthy outer environment, as well as the
taking of steps to strengthen the child's internal system, is a better protection
against diseases.
The "epidemic of popularity" of transfusion of blood from a
donor is on the wane. A growing number of people about to undergo surgery
are opting for autologous blood transfusions. Said to be the safest source
of blood, autologous transfusions require patients to give their own blood
for their operations. Many patients are not yet aware of the concept, nor
have all doctors developed the confidence or experience for it. "In
autologous, the chances of picking up AIDS or any other infection from another
donor are eliminated," declares Dr. N. B. Jaju of St. George Hospital
blood bank in Mumbai. "It also prevents sensitization against foreign
antigens," says Dr. Manisha Khare of the Nair Hospital blood bank.
"Often, when blood is transfused from one person to another, the recipient
becomes sensitized to the antigens in the blood, thus producing antibodies
and causing a transfusion reaction." (The Times of India, December
29)
If the patient requires only a pint of blood, as in a small operation, the
blood may be taken from three to seven days prior to the surgery. However,
if several pints are required, it is staggered over a period of two to four
weeks to allow the patient's blood to be replenished.
Study of the part played by blood in the human economy, as found in Theosophical
teachings, will convince the open-minded of the undesirability and danger
of an artificial linking of two personalities when blood is transfused from
one person to another. Blood has occult properties, and the Karmic consequences
may be dire indeed. "The blood is the life" is as true as it is
ancient, and not a tenth of the real significance of the quality of the
blood is known to medical science. The intuitional, however, can work out
for themselves some of the possibilities of the random interchange of blood.
In the economy of nature, there is nothing that is useless. Even the
lowliest of organisms has its place and function in the scheme of things.
Despite their simplicity and seeming primitiveness, a special group of fungi,
known as the saprophytic fungi, play a fundamental role in the world, and
that role is predominantly beneficial. They recycle nature by breaking down
the huge masses of discarded remains of dead plants and animals, in the
process releasing nutrients that are so necessary for new life.
In The World and I for November 1998, Dwight G. Smith describes some
of their functions:
Every leaf, twig, tree or wild-flower that dies is colonized and ultimately
decomposed by a whole succession of these fungi. Mushrooms, toadstools,
and puffballs are the most common and familiar examples of saprophytic
fungi, but the saprophytes also include many thousands of minute fungal
species that permeate virtually every natural landscape and habitat.
These fungi play a vital role, far out of proportion to their size and
variety. Through decomposing carbohydrates and other carbon-containing
compounds in organic debris, the saprophytic fungi replenish the atmospheric
supply of carbon dioxide, which is essential for the photosynthetic activity
of plants. The fragmentation process also liberates vast quantities of
nitrogen, phosphorus, calcium, iron, and other minerals, which can then
be incorporated into plant tissue for eventual transfer up the food chain
to animals. If fact, if it were not for the decomposition activities of
saprophytic fungi and bacteria, the minerals and other building blocks
of life would soon be tied up in the bodies of dead plants and animals,
and ecosystems would shut down within a few generations.
The benefits of these fungi far outweigh their destructive and disease-causing
abilities. Many species are indispensable in the production of medicines
and industrial products, and many are sources of food. ...
A familiar biblical passage declares that the meek shall inherit the earth.
If we may modify it for the saprophytic fungi, we could say that these
meek and inconspicuous organisms restore and replenish the earth.
[From The Theosophical Movement, February 1999, pp. 138-144]
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