The phenomenon of interchangeability of the
senses has fascinated scientists since a long
time. "The brain is so adaptable, some researchers
now think, that any of the five senses can be
rewired," writes Michael Abrams (Discover, June
2003). Paul Bach-y-Rita, a neuroscientist at the
University of Wisconsin at Madison, is carrying
out experiments to prove that our senses are interchangeable.
In one such experiment, a blindfolded man—who
was fitted with a camera and some electrodes on
his tongue—reported that he could see with his
tongue. "We don't see with our eyes," says Bach-y-Rita,
"we see with our brains." He is of the opinion
that similar to sight and touch, sound and touch
could also be swapped.
It is generally believed, even by some neuroscientists,
that sight is a complicated phenomenon and that
the eye is an astonishing organ that cannot be
replaced. Bach-y-Rita counters this by saying,
"There's nothing special about the optic nerve.
The brain doesn't care where the information comes
from. Do you need visual input to see? Hell, no.
If you respond to light and you perceive, then
it's sight." Already, attempts are being made
to take advantage of this discovery. "The Navy
SEALs are working with him on a system that will
allow them to see infrared through their tongues
and to find their way through murky waters, leaving
their eyes free for other tasks. NASA has worked
with him to develop sensors to enable astronauts
to feel things on the outside of their space suits."
Madame Blavatsky has this to say:
...the senses are to a certain extent interchangeable.
How would you account, for instance, for the
fact that in trance a clairvoyant can read a
letter, sometimes placed on the forehead, at
the soles of the feet, or on the stomach-pit?
...The sense of seeing can be interchanged with
the sense of touch....One sense must certainly
merge at some point into the other. So also
sound can be translated into taste. There are
sounds which taste exceedingly acid to the mouths
of some sensitives, while others generate the
taste of sweetness; in fact, the whole scale
of senses is susceptible of correlations. (Transactions,
pp. 43-44)
Americans are debating the morality,
legality and practicality of physician-assisted
suicide. Is it legitimate to deny someone a right
to die with dignity, especially when pain-relieving
medicines prove ineffective? This and allied questions
are being debated at Oregon, which passed the
Death with Dignity Act (1997), making it the only
state to permit physician-assisted suicide. "Although
Oregon's law has strong safeguards against misuse,
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has strenuously
opposed it, threatening that any physician who
prescribed lethal doses of medicine would lose
his license to prescribe medications as well as
serve a twenty-year prison sentence," writes Lawrence
Rudden (The World and I, May 2003). Gerard V.
Bradley explains why the government has an interest
in preserving life. He writes:
A doctor's calling is always to heal, never
to harm....The scandal created by doctors who
kill is great, much like that caused by lawyers
who flout the law, or bishops—shepherds—who
do not care about their flocks....
When someone commits the crime of murder, all
we can say is that the victim's life was shortened.
We know not by how much; the law does not ask,
or care....
Some risk to life is acceptable where the
risk is modest and the activities that engender
it are worthwhile....We might instinctively
step in front of a car, or jump into a freezing
lake to save a loved one, or a stranger's wandering
toddler. We might do the same upon reflection,
but we do not want to die. We do not commit
suicide....
This distinction between intending and accepting
death is...real, as real as space shuttles....
Some critics feel that such a law would result
in driving the terminally ill patients to end
their lives, out of guilt for being an emotional
and a financial burden upon their relatives. It
is feared that such a practice could be misused
and may quickly become a norm. Cathy Cleaver of
the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops points
to the Netherlands, where physician-assisted suicide
has been legalized for years—supposedly only in
cases where desperately ill patients have unbearable
suffering. However, now the Dutch policy has expanded
"to allow the killing of people with disabilities
or even physically healthy people with psychological
distress; thousands of patients have been killed
by their doctors without their request."
A little reflection shows that this amounts
to "suicide." The soul is deprived of its opportunity
to go through the experience of coping with the
illness and learning its lesson—what it is to
work through an extremely sick body. By trying
to end life, we leave behind unexhausted karma—which
is like leaving a debt unpaid—so that in some
future life we will be placed in a similar situation
by the unerring law of Karma, till the lesson
is learnt. It is perhaps an opportunity for the
family members also to learn something in attending
to a terminally ill patient, and be willing to
suffer along with him, helping him in bearing
his suffering. Madame Blavatsky writes in "Modern
Ignorance of Life and Soul":
No man...has a right to put an end to his existence
simply because it is useless. As well argue
the necessity of inciting to suicide all the
incurable invalids and cripples who are a constant
source of misery to their families....There
is a vast difference between the man who parts
with his life in sheer disgust at constant failure
to do good, out of despair of ever being useful...and
one who gives it up voluntarily to save the
lives either committed to his charge or dear
to him....One takes away his life, the other
offers it in sacrifice to philanthropy and to
his duty. (H.P.B. Series No. 15)
We generally try to look for
a support outside of ourselves. It is this tendency
to readily accept as a "saviour" any person promising
to provide an immediate solution to our problems,
which is at the base of the New Age "guru-cult."
"The stereotype of the saffron-clad sadhu is out.
The New Age gurus are trendy, young people dispensing
a designer manual for modern living," writes Surya
Swami (India Today, July 14, 2003):
In the past five years, a plethora of new gurus
has sprung up across the country and unlike
the earlier, older masters, they are trendy,
urbane and educated. They are bending and blending
ancient wisdom and modern techniques to concoct
a novel millennial spirituality. For them wellness
is the buzzword and they are more likely to
discourse on relationships and career stress
than the Upanishads and Vedas....The new generation
teachers aren't deified, remote saints but accessible,
aware buddies-cum-psychiatrists who help navigate
through the minefield of modern life. It is
the age of anti-guru.
The Guru-chela relationship has been considered
sacred, occupying a central place in Theosophy.
Thus:
One of the missions of Theosophy is to rescue
and re-elevate the chair of the Guru to its
noble height. It is most likely that immediately
after her arrival in India, H.P.B. publicly
spoke of the existence of the Great Gurus for
the purpose of drawing a distinction between
the Teachers of Universal Divine Wisdom pointing
to the Path of Real Renunciation and those many
others who taught numberless ways to personal
emancipation or mukti....
The bond between Chela and Guru of the true
Gupta Vidya, the Secret Science, is a purely
spiritual one....Beyond the physical and the
psychic worlds is the spiritual world, the Hall
of Wisdom, and there only the Guru of soul-life
awaits the aspiring Chela....
Make yourself dry of the moisture of the personal
and human feelings and then the wood will catch
fire. Within the heart the Guru is to be found.
(The Theosophical Movement, Vol. 8)
Madame Blavatsky describes the "true guru" thus:
...the real Guru is always an Adept in the
Occult Science. A man of profound knowledge,
exoteric and esoteric, especially the latter;
and one who has brought his carnal nature under
subjection of the WILL; who has developed in
himself both the power (Siddhi) to control the
forces of nature, and the capacity to probe
her secrets by the help of the formerly latent
but now active powers of his being:—this is
the real Guru. (Raja Yoga or Occultism)
Geologists are debating whether
the Black Sea is the place of Noah's flood. According
to the current theory, ten thousand years ago,
the Black Sea was a freshwater lake. But, some
7500 years ago when the ice age ended, the world's
climate warmed, raising the water level six inches
each day, causing the flood, writes Eve Conant
(Newsweek, July 14). Geologist Robert Ballard,
who is investigating the Noah's flood theory,
says, "I am convinced that there is more history
in the Black Sea than in all of the museums of
the world combined." Robert Ballard and his colleagues
are exploring the Black Sea for any evidence of
human settlement. Many scientists are skeptical
and feel that it would be difficult to prove the
occurrence of such a flood and that it was indeed
Noah's.
In The Secret Doctrine Madame Blavatsky mentions
several deluges and cataclysms. She observes that
Noah's flood is allegorical.
What we object to is the literal acceptation
of Biblical chronology, as it is absurd, and
in accord with neither geological data nor reason.
Moreover, if Noah was an Atalantean, then he
was a Titan, a giant, as Faber shows; and if
a giant, then why is he not shown as such in
Genesis? (S.D., II, 265)
Noah's Deluge is astronomical and allegorical,
but it is not mythical, for the story is based
upon the same archaic tradition of men—or rather
of nations—which were saved during the cataclysms,
in canoes, arks, and ships. No one would presume
to say that the Chaldean Xisuthrus, the Hindu
Vaivasvata, the Chinese Peirun—the "beloved
of the gods," who rescued him from the flood
in a canoe...are all identical as a personage.
But their legends have all sprung from the catastrophe
which involved both the continent and the island
of Atlantis. (S.D., II, 774)
The "Deluge" is undeniably an universal tradition....Stockwell
and Croll enumerate some half dozen Glacial
Periods and subsequent Deluges—the earliest
of all being dated by them 850,000 and the last
about 100,000 years ago. But which was our Deluge?
Assuredly the former, the one which to this
date remains recorded in the traditions of all
the peoples, from the remotest antiquity: the
one that finally swept away the last peninsulas
of Atlantis....The little deluge, the traces
of which Baron Bunsen found in Central Asia,
and which he places at about 10,000 years B.C.,
had nothing to do with either the semi-universal
Deluge, or Noah's flood—the latter being a purely
mythical rendering of old traditions....(S.D.,
II, 141)
According to the story of Kaliya
daman lila from the Srimad Bhagavatam, when Krishna
found that the venomous serpent Kaliya had been
contaminating the river water with his poison,
he jumped into the river and after a long struggle,
subdued him. Amishi Dhanuka interpretes the symbology
of the story (The Times of India, July 8):
Kaliya symbolises many aspects of Kaliyug.
Kaliya is black, the colour symbolising demoniac
characteristics very similar to the inherent
nature of contemporary man who is devious, proud,
arrogant and envious. Kaliya imagines himself
to be invincible, like many of us do today as
we glow in the deceptive light of our false
ego....
The story of Krishna and Kaliya the Snake is
the story of how, ultimately, good triumphs
over evil.
H. P. Blavatsky has something definite to say
on the subject of Good and Evil, and especially
on the symbology of this tale.
As there is far more evil than good in the
world, it follows on logical grounds that either
God must include evil or stand as direct cause
of it, or else surrender his claims to absoluteness.
The ancients understood this so well that their
philosophers...defined evil as the lining of
God or Good.... If evil disappeared, good would
disappear along with it from Earth. (S.D., I,
413)
We must not forget that Krishna does not destroy
Kaliya, but asks him to retire into the fathomless
depths of the sea.
Does not the permission granted [by Krishna]
to the serpent [Kaliya] to betake himself to
the fathomless depths of the sea, indicate that,
though we may purge our individual natures of
evil, it can never be extirpated but must still
linger in the whole expanse of the Kosmos, as
the opposing power to active goodness which
maintains the equilibrium in Nature—in short,
the equal balancing of the scales, the perfect
harmony of discords? (U.L.T. Pamphlet No. 26,
p. 15)
Most of us are curious to know
our pedigree. Where do we really come from? "A
new generation of DNA genealogists stand ready
to unearth our ancestors. We may not like what
they find," writes Kathleen McGowan (Discover,
May 2003). For $150 to $500, and by sending one's
cheek swab or hair sample, one can know one's
line of descent. It all started with tracing the
roots of Melungeons in the United States. Could
their ancestry be traced back to Portuguese sailors
shipwrecked in the 16th century, or to Gypsies,
or to the ancient Phoenicians? Geneticist Kevin
Jones seeks to unlock the mystery, using genetic
analysis. Thus:
Most of the time, the three billion nucleotides
in the human genome reproduce just fine. Occasionally,
though, one of the nucleotide base pairs that
make up the molecules gets switched, or a short
stretch of genetic code is duplicated. Figuring
out who is related to whom, scientists have
realized, is just a matter of comparing these
mutations. People with recent ancestors in common
will have many of the same mutations. Distant
relatives will share fewer of them.
Anthropologists now isolate the Y chromosome
DNA or mtDNA from the rest of the cellular gunk
and feed the purified, prepared DNA into a machine.
They then read out the nucleotide sequence of
A's, C's, T's, and G's that comes out on the
other side and compare the pattern of mutations
with those in various public genetic databases.
These patterns are known as haplotypes, and
sets of similar haplotypes are organized into
haplogroups. A haplogroup tells where a given
line came from on a global scale (sub-Saharan
Africa versus eastern Asia, for example). Often...a
haplotype will point toward a more specific
geography, like Japan or southern India.
Besides the uncertainty of the results, geneticist
Jones realized that there is also the human side
to this research, when he received a death threat
from a Melungeon repelled by the possibility of
having African-American blood. "I don't think
many of us have a sense of how dangerous this
is," he says. "It stirs the hornet's nest. We
are driven, through the purity of science, to
support or reject hypotheses, but it's a terribly
naïve, pure, God-like approach..."
Is it enough to know our earthly pedigree?
We think we know our earthly pedigree when
we have looked at the genealogical family-tree;
science thinks it knows the physical pedigree
of man and humanity, having traced his form
from the protoplasm, and its growth from savagery.
Neither the modern philosopher, nor the scientist,
has traced the links of heredity, psychic, intellectual
and spiritual; in the absence of that knowledge,
it is not surprising and is very natural that
the modern estimate of the human form is altogether
a mistaken one. (Studies in the Secret Doctrine,
Book I, by B. P. Wadia)
The "easy" and happy times are the periods
of rest; the "hard" times are the periods of
training—opportunities for gaining strength
and knowledge. —Robert Crosbie
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