{"timeout":"7000","width":"990"}
  • Wisdom for practice
  • Wisdom is applied knowledge
  • Wisdom spreads itself

Wisdom for practice

Wisdom is for practice, not for continuous speaking. If we keep on speaking about the Masters, the Rays, and the Hierarchies, we are only missing our duties for the present.

Wisdom is applied knowledge

Knowledge, when applied becomes wisdom. We gain a lot of knowledge, but it has to be applied in daily life, then it transforms itself into wisdom. Through wisdom we will experience the existence.

Wisdom spreads itself

We need not be anxious to spread the wisdom without working it with ourselves. It is a wrong understanding if one thinks that he can spread wisdom. Wisdom knows how to spread itself. It only needs channels.

Death, Birth and Continuity

The Thread of Consciousness

Garland In the Eastern scriptures spiritual consciousness is compared with a thread running through the many flowers of a garland. This means that consciousness exists continuously, even while passing through the different transformations. Thus through birth only a transformation happens, a development of the consciousness existing even before birth. Wouldn’t it already exist before, it couldn’t unfold. The body is subject to birth and death; it goes through the stages of infancy, youth, adult and old-age. The indwelling consciousness doesn’t know these stages, doesn’t know neither birth nor death. It is just like an electrical appliance, which may get broken, but not the electricity. When someone refers to us as being a young or an old person, he is only referring to our body, but not to us. We are eternal, the body, however, can be healthy or sick and can also get injured. However, we easily identify with the body and think: “Oh, I’m going grey, I think I’m getting old”, and thus we start believing it. And if other people also tell us, “You are getting old”, we quickly get stuck in the illusion.

Consciousness is the background for the events of birth, growth and death. When we are in conscious contact with the principle of consciousness, we experience ourselves as a pure, unlimited being. This inner being gets enveloped by the body, just like we put on clothes. We exist before we put on clothes, otherwise we couldn’t put them on. We also continue to exist, when we take them off again. If, however, the connection with the universal existence gets interrupted, this is an interruption of awareness. The scriptures say that we live in a state of death when we aren’t in the awareness of existence. Life is a continuity of consciousness. Death causes an interruption. A conscious leaving of the body isn’t called death. It is a departure, not dying. Mostly people lose consciousness before they die. With them the thread of consciousness is suspended, and it has to be found anew. If we learn to live consciously, the change of death and birth cannot touch us. Master CVV says, “If you consciously exist, you do not die.”

For the wisdom teachings all fears building up from the seeming appearing and disappearing are an expression of a deep ignorance about the nature of the soul, and ignorance was there already before knowledge. But just as the sun already exists before it becomes visible for us at the eastern horizon, the appearing is no birth, but only getting visible.

Reincarnation

However, until the individualised soul realises his identity, a body is necessitated for the learning process, and a series of births supports this process. The individual soul is a spark of the universal soul. The individual goes through a large number of situations in order to regain his identity. Even while the individual is ignorant of his status, the Nature knows it and tries to protect him in this state of ignorance, which the seers compare with a dream.

There are people who have not yet got the stature to believe that there is rebirth and a future development. But even the majority of those who believe in reincarnation only rely on the scriptures and on what they have heard, without actively going in for it themselves. It is certainly better to believe in it until you can see instead of blocking experiences with a mind that doubts. He who can see only the world perceptible by the senses cannot accept the truth of subtle things. Direct perception, however, is always insufficient, and things like reincarnation exist, though some are not yet ready to see it. Different religions have the doctrine of reincarnation, but according to time they don’t inform about it everywhere. He who is ready to hear can receive the teachings.

Many want to know what they have been in former lives. This information is shut to us. It only will open up in time and in a natural way, when we walk the path. He who undergoes any experiments doesn’t obtain the right knowledge but gets further blinded.

The Process of Incarnation

By means of fiery aspiration and deep contemplation, the seers have found methods to consciously leave the body and also consciously enter again into a new form and an individual consciousness. According to their vision the interval between death and re-entering into a womb corresponds to the urge for material possession and the satisfaction of desires. When the desire gets stronger, the soul moves again down to earth and lands in a place which is opportune to its vibrations. This landing is into the thought of a man, and the descent is into his semen through thought. Through sexual intercourse the soul expresses through the semen into the womb of the woman and grows up there with a body.

The soul is tied by the thread of life. The thread of consciousness is tied by the thread of life at three places in the body: in the head, around the pituitary – this is called the plane of consciousness; between the solar plexus and the heart – the plane of force; between the Muladhara and the sacral centre - the plane of matter. On the path of evolution these ties are slowly de-linked again from bottom upwards.

A self-sufficient being should come to the parents before it takes birth. This is what we call rebirth. The individual consciousness manifests from the soul just as light manifests from fire. The soul doesn’t belong to the individual consciousness, for it doesn’t have neither beginning nor ending. The fact that we are born and exist without our individual consciousness being included shows that we are above it and that we are unlimited.

We are the continuation of a continuity of past lives and we also will go on into future lives. We cannot just cut out a piece and say, “This here is my complete life.” The personality traits, the likes and dislikes, the strengths and weaknesses which we have from birth on we have brought from past lives. Therefore we should keep on working consciously, overcome some weaknesses and gain some strengths in this life. He who has overcome his behavioural instincts doesn’t have to come back. However, he can descend for the well-being of mankind and help others as a spiritual guide.

At birth the soul finds itself in a new surrounding. It is immersed in a body, in the mother, which is at first totally strange to the soul. This loneliness can be a source of fear and anxiety, and it disappears only gradually. It is therefore necessary to offer a congenial and harmonious condition, lest the soul would be dreaded. The thought of the parents has an effect on the kind of thought of the growing child up to a certain degree, just like with a plant certainly the quality of the soil doesn’t change the seed, but determines the growth and health of the seedling. Throughout pregnancy the future parents should follow a discipline to maintain harmony in the mind, peace in the emotional plane and health in the body.

The astrologers know that the impressions received by a baby during the first six hours after his birth (90 degrees rotation of the earth on its own axis) will progress into his behaviour through 90 years of span. The planets in the heavens at the time of his birth will receive his twelve houses of the horoscope in various angles and produce a framework of individual karma to work out of 90 years. This can be sanctified and elevated into nobler terms by performing a ritual at the time of birth, which invokes the thread of consciousness of the child and thus works to develop the gradually unfolding mind in an orderly way.

Name and Code-Name

The spiritual part of man has one name through all incarnations as a code-name. Through this code-name one is known and identified on the inner planes. The personality aspect of man is given a new name at birth in every incarnation. Linking up the two layers of consciousness enables man to realise his original identity and his purpose in life. This is also called the third initiation: The death of the separated personality and the birth of soul consciousness. The soul now permeates the personality and man becomes a conscious co-worker in the Plan.

K.P. Kumar: Sankya. The Sacred Doctrine / notes from seminars / E. Krishnamacharya: Ayurveda. The World Teacher Trust - Dhanishta, Visakhapatnam, India.