The problem, from my perspective anyway, is that I don't know how one can distinguish between a genuine master of the mysteries and a very slick charlatan. That's especially true when the material of the teachings is purported to be channelled from some incorporeal being. I've never been one to close my eyes and open my mouth. Not the trusting type I guess.
Sunny C.,
I have
met some of these "Incorporeal Beings,"
in the flesh. Not all of them are maintained - by Theosophists and Esotericists - as being
Incorporeal ... or at least not
all the time. Many of the Masters, certainly the ones revealed to the world in the past ~125 years,
do inhabit physical bodies.
Some of these bodies are created,
via Kriyashakti, while others are the "natural bodies" in which the Master was born ...
as a 4th Degree Initiate, or Arhat. Once a Master leaves incarnation after having attained the 5th Degree of Initiation, his next manifestation will presumably occur via
Kriyashakti vs. the normal method of Incarnation. He literally
creates his body directly!
Interestingly, Jesus of Nazareth
did not manifest in this manner, nor presumably would have Appollonius of Tyana -
who was Jesus, reincarnated.
Esotericism teachings that the
purity and
degree of evolution of the very
matter of the
lower vehicles (mental body, astral-emotional body, and
etheric body - the physical vehicle of the `vital essence') ... is
so great in the case of an advanced Initiate (4th Degree
Arhat), that if an immediate
rebirth is selected, we may assume that
all of these vehicles accompany the arhat into that new birth. The dispersal of the
atoms would be a tremendously
inefficient waste of energy and effort, otherwise.
Moreover, an
Arhat, such as "Christed" Jesus, will have
parted with the Causal Body (
or Karana Sarira of Hinduism) -
having completed the Work which he has been engaged in throughout his long series of incarnations. He has "completed the Temple of the Living God,"
the Esoteric Temple of Solomon - "not built with human hands."
Christ (or rather,
the Initiate Jesus) spoke of this PLAINLY, but the
exoteric presentation is that he simply "rose from the
DEAD." The thinking Christian will have long ago put together the many
accounts of those who have had NDE's and OOBE's, and realized that
death is not the end of our evolution, or
`life.' It is, as we will all discover, merely the
beginning of another
phase of our life. And indeed,
all people survive physical death,
not just a "chosen few." 
Gandalf says this, to
Peregrin Took, when they believe that
death is upon them near the end of
`Return of the King.' And he smiles, as he tells Peregrin of the
White Shores ... since
he himself [Gandalf] has already
been there, as
`Gandalf the Grey,' after he defeated the Balrog that
killed his earthly body.
Here, Tolkien has depicted
beautifully and wonderfully for us the
Crucifixion, or RENUNCIATION Experience, the 4th Initiation, which has been taught as part of the Ageless Wisdom for
millennia (and by Manly Hall, of course, last Century). Note
that George Lucas also showed us this tranformation ...when Ben (`Obi Wan') Kenobi allowed himself to be "struck down" by Darth Vader - that he could RISE again (hmmmm), being "more powerful than Vader could imagine."
This is what the
Phoenix symbolizes to us, also, in the Harry Potter series (as Dumbledore's pet),
straight out of Mythology. J.K. Rowling does a
marvelous job of re-introducing this generation to the Mysteries, through this vehicle ... and
C.S. Lewis, too, showed us the 4th Initiation, as Aslan the Lion rose after being murdered at the Stone Table.
ALL OF THIS is part of the Mystery Teachings, and has been with Humanity for
thousands of years PRIOR to Christianity's appearing on the scene. The latter
co-opted the former, repackaging various of the
Eastern and Pagan doctrines, even borrowing their very
symbolism, yet
re-branding it ... and claiming it as "a new, unique
Revelation."
An UPDATE, it most certainly was ... but a tree does not put forth its branches
without a TRUNK, and ROOTS.
~+~+~+~+~+~+~
As your quote from Manly Hall demonstrates, Sunny C.,
it has been necessary to show that the very same Wisdom presented via the Christian Message has ALWAYS existed ... as it transcends
form, and is in fact, the very
LIFE, the ensouling Principle, or Essence, of all World Religions.
One cannot
BOX THIS UP, and SELL it. One cannot
CLAIM this Inner Reality as "one's own," save for the degree to which
we all participate in both the
Lesser and the Greater Mysteries. We may as yet - most of us - know almost NOTHING of the latter, as we are even ignorant (clearly so) of much of the former ... yet the
WAY is open to every man, every woman - and
this is what Esotericists are glad to emphasize.
The Spiritual verities are available
not simply to
"the chosen, privileged few," but to ANY man or woman who is willing to
put others before oneself, and is ready to sacrifice
worldly ways in exchange for
righteous living.
And the
Guidebook for what we must DO in order to
reach the Inner, Mystical even Occult awareness (states of being, levels of Consciousness, and eventually conditions of existence) ... has already been presented. IT is the
exoteric portion of the World's Religions -
the Sacred Scriptures, tenets and moral Code of Right Living of every religious tradition. Without this, any
esoteric Reality that may exist would be
essentially meaningless, because
unknown, and unapproachable.
But
every exoteric tradition POINTS TO the Inner, Esoteric Reality, and those who are
quickest to deny its existence, are those
who merely seek to protect the status quo (at any cost, we sometimes see) ... lest they lose temporal and worldly power.
~+~+~+~+~+~+~
An excerpt from `
Visions of the Nazarene' will help speak to
the esoteric portion of the Christian teachings:
And the Master said:
To my first disciples did I teach the eternal verities, and instructed them in the way of Realization and the finding of the mystic Christ. And I taught them of the true nature of man, and of his subtler bodes and of the inner worlds; and of the doctrine of Re-birth, and of Cause and Effect, or Sequence and Consequence, and of other truths and sacred doctrines given only to the chosen and the few.
And after I had passed from their midst, my disciples taught others those same doctrines, so that each genereation of initiates instructed the next, as decade followed decade. And these initiates wrought good works and communed with initiates of other schools, and revelaed more of those doctrines which had hitherto been secret, so that the minds of the nescient should be enlightened, and men should know that Religion was a science and not merely a belief.
But while the lovers of truth sowed the seeds of Divine Wisdom which sprang up and blossomed into beautiful flowers, the enemies of Truth sowed noisome tares which choked those beautiful flowers with the evil growths of greed and cruelty and superstition; and lo, what erewhile had been a garden became as a wilderness; for the flowers of Truth were overgrown and hidden by ugly weeds.
Ah, great indeed was the persecution of my spiritual progeny by the enemies of Truth; and many of them perished as the result. Yet the memory of my name did not perish, and as years pursued their onward course, from traditions and hearsay scribes fashioned stories relating of me and my teachings.
And some of these scribes I sought to inspire with the Light of Truth, but oft-times did they obscure it by the clouds of their own imaginings, so that my Gospels became an admixture of verity and falsehood. Moreover, those inner teachings which I had given to my disciples anent the means and the way to Realization were either omitted or so distorted as to be of no avail.
So did my religion become, as it were, a casket with windows of glass through which many precious jewels might be seen but never obtained, for the key thereof had been hidden away: until finally it came to fulfil alone the needs of the simple-minded and the young of soul and the trusting of heart; while the erudite and the more aged of soul did perforce turn elsewhere in their search for Truth.
After this, the Master speaks of
`The Bridge that was Never Built,' yet those for whom
exoteric Christianty is a
closed book (or at best,
an open Bible, which often amounts
to the same) ... will not be able to imagine what this might suggest.
~+~+~+~+~+~+~
HOW does one determine whether it is
the Master Jesus who speaks in the above passages, or
merely a disciple, even "a charlatan?"
One must use
the Inner Discernment, whose highest function is
Buddhi. And for outward tools, many a sincere and well-motivated
aspirant, or Seeker, has used tools for Divination, such as
the Tarot, Pendulum Dowsing, visits to spiritual mediums, and so forth. The esotericist will forsake these tools, after a certain point, as once the
Intuition has begun to function, such outward means are not nearly as effective and direct. Yet, even as crutches,
they serve a purpose ...
As an example of
discernment, and learning certain things
by error, consider that once upon a time, I was
fascinated by the "I AM" teachings of
Elizabeth Clare Prophet. I was just
delighted that Masters M, KH, etc. had
given out more teachings for me to enjoy. At the time,
I could not discern between fact and fiction, truth and falsity, astral glamour and well-rooted FACT (let alone, Wisdom) ...
I had to become more
mentally polarized in order to move past the
"I AM" stuff, and see that it was a
distortion. Master DK states quite plainly that
upon the astral and lower mental planes, there is a powerful
thoughtform of himself, a
parody, which masquerades as
the real McCoy. Many an unthinking disciple has
received all manner of spurious teachings from that thoughtform, not to mention god-knows-what types of praise, flattery, and so on.
The Masters
are not in the habit of
showering the student with such flattery ... as a word of encouragement,
when received,
goes plenty far. And teachings, which are usually given out
to the Group, will not feature the student
in the spotlight, as it were, which is usually the case as
so-and-so claims to
be "channeling" such-and-such "Ascended Master" ...
The Masters work
by dictation, yet the
number of students who might be receiving dictation, say right now, in 2007,
is very small ...
certainly as compared to the number of books we find in the
New Age section of Borders Books,
claiming to have originated with
x, y, or z "master."
Discernment takes
lifetimes, and students who are first coming to the Work, it can be a difficult road. Word has it, that
assistance will be provided, such that the
'little ones' (as the Elder Brothers refer to us) will receive
every opportunity, under the LAW, to bypass the pitfalls and distractions - and come
straight to the Heart of the Teachings.
~+~+~+~+~+~+~
DO the Elder Brothers, in fact, exist?
That is something we must
each answer, for ourselves, on our own. Perhaps in another thread we can address the Theosophical presentation, and what has been said by other organizations and Messengers in the
20th Century ...
My own decision, upon first coming to such an idea (in this lifetime) some 17+ years ago, was that
certainly there are Masters, or
Mahatmas. Several
dozen of them, in fact, have been VISIBLY, physically OBSERVED, by people of
all varying religious backgrounds, national origin, vocations, social status, etc.
There are even sworn testimonies in which NUMEROUS people were present ... having all WITNESSED things ranging from the mundane to the
apparently miraculous - and these
not only vindicate the Masters'
Messengers from the
false and spurious claims put forth by the disbelievers,they also speak directly to the fact that the
Masters do exist.
When someone says to me (and it is rare),
"I have met such-and-such a Master," my curiosity is certainly piqued, but my
discernment radar is also automatically activated. And while I do not seek to
judge, nor to solicit my
opinion as to the authenticity of the claim, I
am quite interested in hearing
how a given experience has affected or inflenced the life, spirituality, and so forth of the person in question!
I can speak volumes about how this pertains to myself, my own experiences and my own spiritual path, choices, etc. But I think it all comes back to the necessity for
each of us to develop
spiritual discernment (viveka, in the Sanskrit), whose ultimate
authority is the
Principle of Consciousness which Theosophists, and Hindus alike call
`Buddhi.'
We can acknowledge this,
if we choose ... and in so doing, my own preference is to speak of
"the Christ within," and what that
looks like, when it is "functioning," as a
Principle. How, for instance, is
such a person any
different than
the average Joe, someone within whom this faculty
is NOT - at present - functioning, or beginning to awaken?
THAT is something I think would be worth exploring ...
