Truth does not change because of ridicule" -- Annie Besant, in Aspects of the Christ
INTRODUCTION:
Humanity has reached through evolutionary progression the Fifth Root race of the Fourth Round; an era the Cosmic Plan calls for the mental development of humanity. Thus, we find there are more and more divinely inspired ideas coming forth into the world, although the majority of humanity still is overly influenced by its emotions. The workings of the mind, called by the occultist, chitta or "mind-stuff" can be likened to the child with his tube of silly putty. We are constantly creating one image after another. Our minds during our waking state are a virtual parade of endless thoughts and continue even when we are asleep.
"Thoughts Are Things" is the title of a book by Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater. (See, "Thought-Forms," Theosophical Society Publishing House, Adyar, Madras (now Chennai) India, 1901.) Thus, the world today is overridden with a plethora of manmade ideal. And, it goes without saying that a great many of these modern ideals are in conflict with other ideals depending on where we were born and were we live. If one is born in Europe or the Western world, our Christian Bible is the reservoir of our Judeo-Christian concepts and ideals. If born in the Middle East, the Koran will dominate society's ideals. If one is born in India, The Hindu traditions embody that society's ideals, as set forth in the various Upanishads and the Bagavad Gita. If it is ask, which ideals are the truth, and should be followed by all mankind, what would be your answer? Assuredly, each earthly location would indicate its traditions and religion and its ideals are the only truth, much as do modern day Christians, of whatever domination.
DISCUSSION:
It was Plato who first wrote of the differences between Ideas and Ideals. In his version, Ideas come from a Spiritual realm, which once filtered down through the various planes of our solar system and culturally interpreted by the various races and the religions founded on our planet, become manmade Ideals. He called cosmic Ideas, Forms, which are a sort of archtypes. These God-given Ideas might be referred to as various "Patterns of Energy" which are struggling to emerge as manifested expressions. The ability of any particular individual, race or nation to manifestly express these Ideas depend upon the entities achieving union between the current conditioning with these God-give Ideas.
Manmade ideals, then, are a lower level, material world rendition of higher spiritual level Ideas. If manmade ideals degenerate even further, they become our idols; as exemplified by a society's famous characters bathed in illusion and glamour.
Idols can be both in human form and in symbols. Human idols, a further degenerate rendition of the ideal human being in our modern day world are movie stars, rock stars, outstanding athletes, and certain personalities of wealth and social standing. Symbolic ideals, for examples, are certain artifacts, crystals, amulets, statutes, and other physical, material items we worship according to our faiths and places of origin.
In ancient times, these ideals were more worthy of a given society. For example, in Greece, Knowledge was the Ideal; in Persia, Purity; in Egypt, Beauty and in Rome, Law. Early Christianity gave us a sense of Individual worth and Self-Sacrifice. Each of these ideals established a religion. The reason was they were Ideas brought down from on high by a living Avatar; a Buddha, a Christ or a Mohammad.
For the occultist or the serious student of the Ancient Wisdom, there exist only one real source of Truth, which are the Ideas of our solar Logos, whose body is our solar system; a Supreme Being Whom the occultists regards as the only real God for our earth, for Whom it has been written: Having pervaded the universe with a fragment of Myself, I remain. The Ideas of the Solar Logos, in turn, were reflected in the creation of our planet by the Planetary Logos; a lower Spiritual Being "In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being." as recorded in our western Bible (Acts:17-28.) Occultists refer to this spiritual Idea as the HylozoisticTheory which holds that there is a unity behind all diversity, and that all forms in our universe are alive and with some level of consciousness used to create thought forms, which means the distribution of energies containing higher Ideas to humanity. This concept is the opposite of later manmade ideals, which are the cultural and social misinterpretations of these godly Ideas according to each religion's developed biases and prejudices and the distortion of the ancient Ideas from the two Logos'. The manmade ideals through history have polluted and distorted the Godly and Righteousness Ideas of the Ancients.
MYTHIS ARE SPIRITUAL IDEAS:
Those concepts coming down directly to the minds of humanity from "on high" the occultists refer to as found in ancient Myths as were taught in the mystery schools of Egypt, Greece, Rome and India. The stand as unadulterated Truths once correctly interpreted. These truths come into the mind of humanity in a pictorial form, such as stories or parables which Jesus used in speaking to the masses. They are only esoterically comprehended by human Insight, since words and intellect fail to express them rightfully. An excellent source of recorded myths would be those Edith Hamilton writes about in her famous book on Mythology that many may have read.
It was the great Gautama Buddha that anchored Wisdom on earth for humanity. His younger spiritual brother, the Christ, anchored for humanity, Love. Together, this combined spiritual Love-Wisdom is the goal of every human entity to embrace and absorb. This is the very essence of Universal Brotherhood. Myths embrace and embody this Love-Wisdom for the edification and illumination of humanity.
In His Four Noble Truths and His Eightfold Paths, the Buddha simply stated a fragment of these higher Ideas. The first of his eight-fold Paths was Right Beliefs, or Right Knowledge. Myths contain the Right Beliefs and Right knowledge for humanity. Modern day interpretations of ancient ideas fail to enlighten. The problem is due to our current mundane, erroneous and materialistic interpretation of these myths. The godly ideas of old have been replaced by what we have come to accept as a physical world exclusively. For the majority of humanity, there is nothing beyond the physical, materialistic world which also includes our heavens. Some humans adhere to the erroneous belief in a personal God and entertain the concepts of a Heaven and Hell. Science has contributed largely to modern humanity's erroneous concepts of what constitutes the "real world" and what constitutes a human entity. Their every effort to solve the Mysteries of Nature is based on observable, measureable, and empirical ideals. To start with wrong hypotheses is to assuredly end with erroneous conclusions. By the way, it was these Godly emitted myths which were taught to aspirants in the various Mystery Schools of old; those of Egypt, Greece, Rome and India. The mystery school at Crotona, Italy established by Pythagoras is a more familiar one. Pythagoras was an earlier incarnation of one of the Master's of the Wisdom overshadowing the establishment of the Theosophical Society in 1875; by name, Koot Hoomi. The other Master was Lord Morya.
We should each realize that myths contain far more truth than history, which is the recording of so-called facts, and sometimes even these can be and are excessively distorted. A fact, by definition, is a manmade ideal which the majority of any given society or culture accepts as true, nothing more, and this is the basis of empirical research. Only rarely does a fact coincide with a mythical truth. When observed closely, a so-called fact is a lowly thing; a fourth or fifth reflection of the great truths of major spiritual Ideas, as mentioned by Plato. When a great Idea from "on high" is given out to humanity, it flows downward into grosser and grosser spheres of our solar system whereby the original Idea becomes progressively more and more distorted from the original Idea. By the time the Idea reaches the physical plane what remains is only a fragment of the original Idea, and this is what we modern humans refer to as a fact; something that can be interpreted by words and other symbols which can only reflect higher ideas. And it should be remembered that these fragments of an original truth are what we apply as guides in our daily lives and activities. Now, compare these facts with the myths and Ideas of old, which originated in the Spiritual World. And yet, we give such credibility to these so-called facts that determine our thoughts and behaviors and our way of life. It is no wonder that the world is in such a chaotic condition, and the befuddled leaders of the earth's nations so misguided in trying to solve humanly perpetuated problems. A simple way for a modern day befuddled leader to exploit any questionable populace is to adhere to a government based on dictatorship and totalitarianism. Examples would be Libya before the fall of Gaddafi, and Egypt before the ouster of Mubarak, and the current Syria, China, North Korea and many others. Russia, a would-be Communist nation is far from the Idea of True Communism, which would be based on "The greatest good for the greatest number;" a worthy concept based on true brotherhood and not based on a totalitarian manmade ideal of rule. A truly Communist nation has never existed in our time and probably never will. In the United States today the spiritual Idea of Democracy has deteriorated to that of an ideal the "rich rule the nation." Why? Because candidates for our highest office buy the position. An ideal Democracy could be based on "one man, one vote; a plebiscite" which is made ludicrous by the Electoral College. Every vote should be counted and the candidate receiving the majority of votes declared the winner, period. The election of Bush over Gore was an injustice. What is spiritually right for any human entity is right for the whole of humanity.
Today, the Congress of the United States is confronted with ominous prospects regarding our economy which will supposedly result in dire and profound changes in our lives. And, these economic dilemmas are world-wide. The solutions offered by our national leadership to assuage and abate these many social dilemmas, based on misdirected and manmade and materialistic ideals, are grossly illusions. In all honesty, there are no materialistic solutions to our many manmade problems since they are self-perpetuating; only by Spiritual means and a return to the Ideas of old, can these problems be solved. We cannot rely on the same old, same old outworn and inappropriate ideals for solutions. What we need is to apply the Ideas of God based on ancient Myths and the Spiritual Laws of Nature. We need to practice altruism and universal Brotherhood and realize we are each an inseparable aspect of the Whole of the universe. What affects the one affects the All. The spiritual advancement of humanity will be retarded as long as we continue following materialistic manmade ideals. There is only ONE HUMANITY of which we each are a small part.
CONCLUSION:
The Theosophical Society in these modern times embodies the Ancient Wisdom of the Buddha, and the Love of the Christ, and the Ideas of the Avatars of old who established on our planet many worthy ideas and religions. Love-Wisdom based on true Brotherhood is an Idea which has been preserved for us by the few Masters and Avatars from the very inception of humanity on this planet. The importance of Theosophy to modern man is that it does offer to society genuine solutions to any and all of our human problems. Based on ancient Myths and undistorted God-given Ideas, the concepts of the Ancient Wisdom are the only true guides for humanity in its daily affairs. The problem with the so-called scholars and experts, whom we turn to for slicing through the Gordian knot dilemmas of our society, is that they read the wrong books! Unfortunately, they lack the Right Knowledge; the Love-Wisdom and universal Brotherhood offered by the Buddha and the Christ and the Avatars of our ancient past; Ideas long buried through the centuries due to increased beliefs based in Materialism. Thus, these wrongly conceived hypotheses inevitably result in wrongly drawn conclusions. Perhaps our so-called scholars should read more Myths, or at least turn inward to discover the hidden wisdom in their hearts.
