TheosophySanDiego

I went down to St. James Infirmary To see my baby there, She was lyin' on a long white table, So sweet, so cool, so fair. Went up to see the doctor, "She's very low," he said; Went back to see my baby Good God! She's lying there dead. I went down to old Joe's barroom, On the corner by the square They were serving the drinks as usual, And the usual crowd was there. On my left stood old Joe McKennedy, And his eyes were bloodshot red; He turned to the crowd around him, These are the words he said: Let her go, let her go, God bless her; Wherever she may be She may search the wide world over And never find a better man than me. Oh, when I die, please bury me In my ten dollar Stetson hat; Put a twenty-dollar gold piece on my watch chain So my friends'll know I died standin' pat. Get six gamblers to carry my coffin

Six chorus girls to sing me a song .Put a twenty-piece jazz band on my tail gate, To raise Hell as we go along. Now that's the end of my story, Let's have another round of booze, And if anyone should ask you just tell them I've got the St. James Infirmary blues.

¹¹Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter? ¹²Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine, figs? so can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh. ¹³Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? let him shew out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom. ¹⁴But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth. ¹⁵This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. ¹⁶For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work. ¹⁷But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. ¹⁸And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace. – St. James, 3:11-18

The War of the Gods in Addiction, based on the correspondence between Bill W., one of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous and C.G. Jung, proposes an original, groundbreaking, psychodynamic view of addiction which explains both the creation and successful treatment of alcoholism and other addictions. Using insights from Jungian psychology, it demonstrates why the 12 steps of AA really work. It emphasizes the crucial process of neutralizing the Archetypal Shadow / Archetypal Evil, an aspect of all true addictions, and explores this concept extensively through theoretical and clinical material, modern and ancient myths, and fairy tales. The significance of using dreams for diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of addiction is also explained.

St. James, in the quote above, makes reference to the wisdom that is earthly, and the wisdom that is from above: In Theosophic terms, this is the dual nature of Manas: "Its nature becomes dual as soon as it is attached to a body...the animal acts from automatic and so-called instinctual impulses,..the lower, and purely intellectual, is nearest to the principle of Desire, and is thus distinguished from its other side which has affinity for the spiritual principles above." -- The Ocean of Theosophy, ch. VII, p. 54

The author of this book takes the traditional view of the anthropomorphic Devil. Theosophy gives us references to the septenary nature of man, which even western psychology has not yet recognized. Theosophy offers transpersonal psychology from the viewpoint of our septenary nature: Body, Astral Body, Passions/Desires, Manas, Buddhi, Atma. "The desires and passions, therefore, have two aspects, the one being low and the other high. The low is that shown by the constant placing of the consciousness entirely below in the body and the astral body; the high comes from the influence of and aspiration to the trinity above, of Mind, Buddhi, and Spirit". – Ocean of Theosophy, Ch. VI, WQ Judge

Manas, therefore has a dual aspect, which incorporates many aspects, as an automobile consists of many parts. When the car won't run, a mechanic will analyze what parts are inoperative, that is, in regard to Manas, the "aggregates" consist of many aspects, which can be examined in the light of Theosophy. However, when we use the term "Manas" is this a solid, permanent, unchanging aspect? Or, as Buddhism indicates, it is comprised of "aggregates"-- "Here, in regard to the analysis of personal experience into the five aggregates, this is also the case. Modern psychologists and psychiatrists have been particularly interested in this analysis. It has even been suggested that in the Abhidharma and in the analysis of personal experience into the five aggregates, we have a psychological equivalent to the table of elements worked out in modern science. What we have in the Buddhist analysis of personal experience is a very careful inventory and evaluation of the elements of our experience." -- Fundamentals of Buddhism, A BuddhaNet Production, http://www.buddhanet.net/funbud14.htm

The collation below is taken from the article Culture of Concentration by Wm. Q. Judge and from The Ocean of Theosophy, also by Wm. Q. Judge.

The Astral Body.…this nebulous forming body is violently shaken, or pulled apart, or burst into fragments that at once have a tendency to fly back into the body and take on the same entanglement that we spoke of at first. This is caused by anger, and this is why the sages all dwell upon the need of calmness…

Effects of Anger & Envy. But anger may be absent and yet still another thing happen. The ethereal form may have assumed quite a coherence and definiteness. But it is observed that, instead of being pure and clear and fresh, it begins to take on a cloudy and disagreeable color, the precursor of putrefaction, which invades every part and by its effects precludes any further progress, and at last reacts upon the student so that anger again manifests itself. This is the effect of envy. Envy is not a mere trifle that produces no physical result. It has a powerful action, as strong in its own field as that of anger. It not only hinders the further development, but attracts to the student's vicinity thousands of malevolent beings of all classes that precipitate themselves upon him and wake up or bring on every evil passion. Envy, therefore, must be extirpated, and it cannot be got rid of as long as the personal idea is allowed to remain in us.

The Effects of Vanity. Another effect is produced on this ethereal body by vanity. Vanity represents the great illusion of nature. It brings up before the soul all sorts of erroneous or evil pictures, or both, and drags the judgment so away that once more anger or envy will enter, or such course be pursued that violent destruction by outside causes falls upon the being. As in one case related to me. The man had made considerable progress, but at last allowed vanity to rule. This was followed by the presentation to his inner sight of most extraordinary images and ideas, which in their turn so affected him that he attracted to his sphere hordes of elementals seldom known to students and quite indescribable in English. These at last, as is their nature, laid siege to him, and one day produced all about the plane of his astral body an effect similar in some respects to that which follows an explosion of the most powerful explosive known to science. The consequence was, his ethereal form was so suddenly fractured that by repercussion the whole nature of the man was altered, and he soon died in a madhouse after having committed the most awful excesses. – Culture of Concentration, Part I, WQ Judge

The so-called great man, knowing how fatal to reputation it would be to tell how really small is his practical knowledge, prates about "projections and elementals," "philosopher's stone and elixir," but discreetly keeps from his readers the paucity of his acquirements and the insecurity of his own mental state. Let the seeker know, once for all, that the virtues cannot be discarded nor ignored; they must be made a part of our life, and their philosophical basis must be understood. …But it may be asked, if in the culture of concentration we will succeed alone by the practice of virtue. The answer is No, not in this life, but perhaps one day in a later life. The life of virtue accumulates much merit; that merit will at some time cause one to be born in a wise family where the real practice of concentration may perchance begin; or it may cause one to be born in a family of devotees or those far advanced on the Path, as said in Bhagavad-Gita. -- Culture of Concentration, Part II, WQ Judge

FROM THE OCEAN OF THEOSOPHY, CH. VI. Passions and Desires. “During life the emplacement of the desires and passions is, as obtains with the astral body, throughout the entire lower man, and like that ethereal counterpart of our physical person it may be added to or diminished, made weak or increased in strength, debased or purified. …It is the "devil" of the Hindus,...

ROLE OF THE “ELEMENTALS. “This Kamarupa spook is also the enemy of our civilization, which permits us to execute men for crimes committed and thus throw out into the ether the mass of passion and desire free from the weight of the body and liable at any moment to be attracted to any sensitive person. Being thus attracted, the deplorable images of crimes committed and also the picture of the execution and all the accompanying curses and wishes for revenge are implanted in living persons, who, not seeing the evil, are unable to throw it off. …The astral shells together with the still living astral body of the medium, helped by certain forces of nature which the Theosophists call "elementals," produce nearly all the phenomena of non-fraudulent spiritualism…”

ROLE OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS. “…the spirits of living men sometimes, while their bodies are asleep, come to seances and take part therein. But they cannot recollect it, do not know how they do it, and are not distinguished by mediums from the mass of astral corpses. The fact that such things can be done by the inner man and not be recollected proves nothing against these theories, for the child can see without knowing how the eye acts, and the savage who has no knowledge of the complex machinery working in his body still carries on the process of digestion perfectly. And that the latter is unconscious with him is exactly in line with the theory, for these acts and doings of the inner man are the unconscious actions of the subconscious mind. These words "conscious" and "subconscious" are of course used relatively, the unconsciousness being that of the brain only. And hypnotic experiments have conclusively proved all these theories, as on one day not far away will be fully admitted. Besides this, the astral shells of suicides and executed criminals are the most coherent, longest lived, and nearest to us of all the shades of hades, and hence must, out of the necessity of the case, be the real "controls" of the seance room.

TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY

The development of the germs of Mind made man because it constituted the great differentiation. The God within begins with Manas or mind, and it is the struggle between this God and the brute below which Theosophy speaks of and warns about. The lower principle is called bad because by comparison with the higher it is so, but still it is the basis of action. We cannot rise unless self first asserts itself in the desire to do better. In this aspect it is called rajas or the active and bad quality, as distinguished from tamas, or the quality of darkness and indifference. Rising is not possible unless rajas is present to give the impulse, and by the use of this principle of passion all the higher qualities are brought to at last so refine and elevate our desires that they may be continually placed upon truth and spirit. By this Theosophy does not teach that the passions are to be pandered to or satiated, for a more pernicious doctrine was never taught, but the injunction is to make use of the activity given by the fourth principle so as to ever rise and not to fall under the dominion of the dark quality that ends with annihilation, after having begun in selfishness and indifference.

-----