From: jdavis@netlink.cts.com (James Davis)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.eastern
Subject: Soul Questions Jim/Kish (part 2)
Date: 5 Sep 92 01:36:55 GMT
Article-I.D.: qiclab.1992Sep7.103856.18683
Organization: NetLink Online Communications, San Diego CA

>Can you really have it both ways?  If there is essential-change
>going on, then is that-which-endures anything else but the
>result of conditions and causes?

The atoms of the body I had as a child have danced to elsewhere,
but I persist.  I picture it this way:  The atoms of the bodies I
had in other lives have danced to elsewhere, but I persist.  I am
an individual and a universal.  I am a vastness and an infinite
that in no way conflicts with the individual.  And when body is
no longer required, I persist. 

"Is that-which-endures anything other than..."   Yes.  
Concepts of conditions and causes are evolved from intellect and
external experience of the world.  When intellect draws its 
sustenance from worldly experience, it gets hints and pointers
but not definitive answers.  

"Merging into the waves of the Infinite, we may be compared to
flowers torn away by a storm.  How shall we find ourselves
transfigured in the ocean of the Infinite?  It would be unwise to
send out a boat without a rudder.  But the Pilot is predestined
and the creation of the heart will not be precipitated into the
abyss."          (Agni Yoga)

>...then the universes which wake and sleep will become like
>dreams which can't be remembered, instead of being
>things-as-they-are.

The memories of childhood return, and the souls of those
memories; they return with a force as vivid as this moment.  And
the memories of lives thousands of years gone, and the souls of
those memories, are not less vivid than the life of yesterday.

>...to achieve godhood (and beyond ?).

If the word "godhood" is to be taken in any way as a limited or
prejudicial concept then add "beyond." 

>...it is a denial of death and impermanence.

Yes it is.  I do deny death and impermanence, not as a defense
mechanism but as an affirmation of a truth that flashes out like
a diamond.  I celebrate death and impermanence as the ordained
characteristic of external life, but not as the foundation of
Life, of reality.  And knowing a little of how communication
works, I can not imagine that Buddha or Christ place much value
on what remains of their teaching.  I do not think that the
Eastern concept of impermanence is correctly understood, just as
I do not believe that Christian concept of salvation is correctly
understood.  Religions are full of the rubbish of human
conceptions.  Death and impermanence are close to harried human
imagination as is the desire for rest and escape to unrealistic
heavens.
Let me conclude with a passage that I thinks comes much closer to
expressing the truth and is related to your question "Can you
have it both ways?," and also to your question of "Evolution
towards what ? And for who ?"

------------------
  "The consciousness of the initiate is of so lofty a nature that
it can only be described in terms of release, of negation, and
through the emphasis of that which is not.  It is a state of 
No-thing and Non-ego...It is a state of non-individuality, yet
with the subconscious knowledge and gains of the individual
experience....
  "Nevertheless, though the consciousness is other than all that
has hitherto been known, and though it can only be expressed in
terms of negation, the truth must be borne constantly in mind
that the greater awareness must always include the lesser
awareness.  Consequently all possible actions and reactions and
all focussings, awareness and contacts...approaches and
withdrawals, and all possible expressions of the divine activity
and qualities, phenomenal and non-phenomenal, are included in the
state of Being which is now the natural state of the liberated
and enlightened spiritual Existence.  All are possible of
recovery through the will or in response to a need, but the
spiritual Being is no longer held by them or identified with
them...But at the same time, nothing is lost of capacity, or
quality or of sentient awareness...."

[At this point the text quotes another text as follows:]

"The quality of life fades out.  It flickers and is gone.  Yet
the Blessed Ones reveal at will that quality.  The color pure
remains...They are, and then are not.  All is and all is not. 
But the Blessed Ones at any time can sweep forth into manifested
light.  They carry then the potencies of the spirit to meet the
need expressed.  Light holds them not; Their purpose is not
imprisoned; Their will is not subdued.  They appear and disappear
at will...

Therefore be full of joy, O pilgrim on the Way towards
enlightened Being, for gain and loss are one; darkness and light
reveal the True; love and desire eternally invoke the Life. 
Naught disappears but pain.  Nothing remains but bliss--the bliss
of knowledge true, of contact real, of light divine, the Way to
God."

>From Esoteric Psychology, Vol. 2, by Alice Bailey (Djwhal Khul)

-----------------------
And my old friend Walt Whitman summarizes for us:

"Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost. 
No birth, identity, form--no object of the world. 
Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing; 
 
Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain. 
Ample are time and space--ample the fields of nature." 

--                    
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