Version: October 10, 2004
We have before us a new year, a new century, a new opportunity to re-ensoul our lives with the presence of God. In fourteenth-century England, the mystic Julian of Norwich said, "The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything." This is a universal truth, as applicable today as seven hundred years ago, that we can use to make our lives in this "new" time more nurturing, more joyful, more caring and meaningful.
Such a simple tool, combined with active practice of the Golden Rule, gives us the power to change the world overnight. A very wise lady once told me, "Think of how much of our living is done on the horizontal, going, doing, adjusting, shuttling back and forth between foresight and hindsight, forgetting to 'look within', forgetting even the reason for all this hectic activity. How too bad. It is sort of like dehydrating our life experience. Could we not shift the reluctant gears of habit and change our direction so that our actions would be prefaced by an inward look? If we could achieve this, think of how many false steps we would save ourselves and how much richness we could bring to the pattern of our daily lives."
These are small steps - beholding God in everything, putting The Golden Rule into practice, and looking within ourselves - but necessary ones as we daily create our future.
- Eleanor L. Shumway
Guardian in Chief
Put together all the tenderest Love you know of, the deepest you have ever felt, the strongest that has ever been poured out upon you, and heap upon it all the Love of all the loving human hearts in the world, and then multiply it by Infinity, and you will begin perhaps to have some faint glimpse of what the Love of God is.
Well, here we are with a new year, a new century, a new millennium, wanting new directions, new words, new resolutions, new interpretations, new, new, new. And we want it now, not realizing we have all of those - now!
Actually, we have had these directions, words, resolutions and interpretations since the beginning of time. During each time of need in humanity's unfoldment, someone has come forward to restate these truths in words in the vernacular directing us, the humanity of the time, to look at universal principles in words we could hopefully understand. Like a dog worrying a large bone, we would work on those principles until something else came along to distract us, precipitate us into crisis, require a new banner bearer. Then the process would begin again.
Nevertheless, humanity has moved forward and we again have a new banner bearer who has inspired countless other banner bearers to hold high the Truth in its myriad expressions. Here in the Temple we are privileged to have come into being under that so-called "new" teacher, Helena P. Blavatsky. When you look at the shelves full of her writings you might wonder if she wrote twenty-four hours a day, especially since all of it was produced with pen and paper. She was followed by William Quan Judge who was nearly as prolific. Then we have eight hard-bound books of Temple Teachings, plus much unpublished material. I am frequently told, "Well, yes, all those books have the truth, but the language is archaic, the examples dated, and besides, that was then, this is now. Things are different." From a temporal point of view, this is true. However, it is up to us to find the key.
Through the years I have come to see that the key to everything we aspire to is Self-Responsibility. The time is long passed when it was appropriate for us to be told what to do. Besides, we seldom did it anyway. We are at the point in our evolution when we must decide, based on universal principles, what it is that we must do, and then how we will go about it. Not only that, we must decide and do in the company of all of humanity. We cannot go alone; we must all evolve together. With the amazing advances in the fields of information dissemination and communication, we may feel as if we are in an impenetrable jungle of words with no guide and many pitfalls. We say that God spoke to men and women in the olden days. They listened and were blessed. But now, when times are particularly dark and we need Him, God no longer speaks and we are cursed. Oh, how foolish can we be? God has never stopped speaking to us. We have stopped listening, destroying our true sense of hearing by listening too intently to the muffled thunder of the sound waves of human passion pounding against our inner ear. We call out to God, to the Masters, to anyone who seems to know their way or professes to see into the future, to lead us through all of this seeming darkness to a "promised land" where all will be clear, all will be peaceful, and where we will all be able to rest forever.
Nonsense! There is a portion of our self that knows we each must be our own guide, but there is always the testing force looming larger than life, pushing us to look for the easy way out. We spend hours, days, even lifetimes, lost in the beguiling maze of the mental world, hypnotized by words, ideas, theories, and philosophies. Here in Halcyon we have two classes a week to study the teachings. We read at home; we write or listen to talks here in the Temple; we have long or short discussions with friends and neighbors. Too much of this can lead us in divergent directions away from our true path. We might feel we know it all and sit complacently by, or we might be blinded by all the words, or we might become intoxicated by those same words and want more, more, and still more. One begins to understand the feelings of Eliza Dolittle, in My Fair Lady, when she sings, "Words, words, words, all day long all I hear are words. Is that all you blighters can do? Don't give me words, SHOW ME!" How do we find the true direction, the true balance between head and heart, between the darkness and the light, between truly doing and truly being?
Did I mention Self-Responsibility? Again and yet again! Well, what does that mean? As I sat thinking about it, I thought about all the tools we have been given to help us in our lifelong task of growing and transforming. I had a picture of Chris or Jerry leaving town to go to work in a van filled with tools for carpentry, masonry, electrical work, etc. The next picture that flashed into my mind was one of my father fifty years ago, as a general contractor, leaving town in his pickup truck, with a wooden box he could carry himself, filled with hand tools in the back to do much the same kind of work as Chris or Jerry. Using this analogy, Self-responsible occult students might well ask themselves just what basic tools they really need for this job of growth and transformation?
If you ask fifty sincere Temple students for a list of ten basic tools, I am reasonably sure that you might very well get three or four hundred different tools, each list reflecting the unique point of view of the student. There would be some overlap of course. I would suggest that those that overlap might very well include the following tools. First would be the Ten Rules of Discipleship, which can be summarized in the following manner.
1. Love God, your neighbor and yourself with a love that is absolutely unconditional.
2. Obey the laws of life in all their expression.
3. Be especially careful of the sacred Creative Fire contained with you.
4. Hold all life sacred.
5. Do not speak falsely, unnecessarily or critically about anyone. When you do, the sound put into action rebounds against you with double the force.
6. Never forget that everything and everyone is a part of God and act accordingly.
7. In the morning and in the evening set aside a time to talk to God with all your heart and soul, speaking in words that hold all you know of purity, thanksgiving and unselfishness.
8. Give from your abundance to the poor. Give your selfishness and lower desires to the Great Mother, that through her love she can help you to overcome those qualities.
9. Respect all aspects of Matter, Force, and Consciousness including your own self, having faith beyond any doubt that we are in the right place, at the right time, doing and saying the right thing.
10. Divine Love, expressing itself through karma, has brought us to the place where we can begin to see the path that leads to spiritual illumination. We must keep the path clear for ourselves and others and obey the Master.
These ten Rules embody all the truth and universal principles that humanity can use at this time. Until we can put each one into daily and hourly practice all the time, we are not ready for anything "new". We need to practice dispassionate, loving but firm self-examination of our obedience to these Rules. Each small step in our understanding, acceptance, and use is an important one. Remember that old saying: "The only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time."
Another basic tool would be the three volumes, From The Mountain Top. "Wait a minute!" I can hear some of you insisting, "The books of the Teachings are the most important." It is true they are important, but the passages in From The Mountain Top speak to the intuition, providing the vital balance to the busy brain that sets up such a deafening noise that we miss the quiet, still voice of truth. We are told this very point in a Mountain Top message entitled "Simplicity" which says we are so busy clothing the simple thoughts of God in too many words, too much rhetoric, that we miss the precious vital spark, which is the truth contained in those simple thoughts. This truth might well feed and warm a hungry shivering multitude whose hands are lifted to us in wordless supplication!
We are so busy gathering others of our kind to listen to an ever-flowing stream of extravagant exaggeration and senseless phrasing that we are missing the fact that the simple unclothed truth pleads silently to us for simple mantling. If we would listen with the spirit ear we might hear and, hearing, gladly pass the living word to deadened ears.
- Edwin Eberman
"The simple things, the simple words, the simple deeds of daily, hourly life, hold treasures vast beyond computing, for in these treasures lie the first faint shadowing, the first beginnings of the seed of all the flowers of spirit, the seed of life eternal."
OK, I'll pay attention to the simple things, words, and deeds and that will be easy, right? Not possible, not even desirable. Real growth and insight come another way, as outlined in "The Path is Hard" from the first volume of From the Mountain Top. Filled with truth and Love it says, "In a sense we may say it is the same path that the Master Jesus followed. There is no other path, no other way to find the true self, save through effort and suffering. When we think of it from an earthly standpoint, it seems pitiful that poor, weak, human beings should have apparently so little light to guide them on the way, so little of the comfort that it would seem might be theirs; but those of you who have had an opportunity of watching the wealthy or the so-called 'well-to-do', those who seem to enjoy all the good things of this life, know that they are often 'of all men or women most miserable.' They are using the gauds of earth to dress up their scarred and tainted carcasses, while their souls are often naked and hungry; and that would show you how little the soul can gain from worldly wealth. It is the strain, the stress, the exercise of power, that gives the final victory."
The Master goes on to tell us that if there were any other way, He would have told us, but we are as He is, of God, and only through the strength of the God within ourselves and the power that we can gain over these adverse conditions through endurance and courage will we be enabled to meet and overcome what will be before us in this and in many lives. Anyone who tries to make us believe that we can gain spiritual growth without passing through 'Golgotha' is wrong. But there is no reason why we should not see the beauty, the good, the glory there is in life. It is around us on every side, it is ours to take and use as it seems best to us, always in the right spirit. He would not have us look at the hells of life, but at the heavens which also lie about us.
The third tool that I would suggest is that of a truly open mind. This is so important in our use of the first two and any other tools that we would choose to add to this list. An open mind does not judge, it listens with empathy and sees beyond the facade that each of us build so carefully. That famous and often quoted author, Anonymous, once wrote:
PLEASE HEAR WHAT I'M SAYING
Don't be fooled by me.
Don't be fooled by the face I wear.
For I wear a mask, a thousand masks,
masks that I'm afraid to take off,
and none of them are me.
Pretending is an art that's second nature with me,
but don't be fooled, for God's sake,
don't be fooled.
I give you the impression that I'm secure,
that all is sunny and unruffled with me,
within as well as without,
that confidence is my name
and coolness is my game,
that the water's calm and I'm in command,
and that I need no one.
But don't believe me.
Please.
My surface may seem smooth, but my surface is my mask,
my ever-varying and ever-concealing mask.
Beneath lies no smugness, no complacence.
Beneath dwells the real me in confusion, in fear, in aloneness.
That's why I frantically create a mask to hide behind,
a nonchalant, sophisticated facade,
to help me pretend,
to shield me from the glance that knows.
But such a glance is precisely my salvation.
And I know it.
That is if it's followed by acceptance, if it's followed by love.
It's the only thing that can liberate me, from myself,
from my own self-built prison walls,
from the barriers that I so painstakingly erect.
It's the only thing that will assure me of what I can't assure myself,
that I'm really worth something.
But I don't tell you this. I don't care to. I'm afraid to.
I'm afraid your glance won't be followed by acceptance and love.
I'm afraid that deep down I'm nothing,
that I'm just no good,
and that you will see this and reject me.
But you've got to hold out your hand
even when that's the last thing I seem to want, or need.
Only you can call me to aliveness.
Only you can wipe away from my eyes the blank stare of the breathing dead.
Each time you're kind and gentle, and encouraging,
each time you try to understand because you really care,
my heart begins to grow wings, very small wings,
very feeble wings, but wings.
I want you to know how important you are to me,
how you can be a creator of the person that is me if you choose to.
Please choose to.
It will not be easy for you.
A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls,
The nearer you approach me, the blinder I may strike back.
It's irrational, but despite what the books may say about man, I am irrational.
I fight against the very thing that I cry out for.
But I am told that love is stronger than strong walls, and in this lies my hope.
My only hope.
Who am I, you may wonder? I am someone you know very well.
For I am every man you meet and I am every woman you meet.
As we stand here on the threshold of a new year, let us resolve to express with open arms, hearts and minds our willingness to do and to be. If in our resolutions we use such phrases as "I should," "I must" or "I must not," we set up barriers for ourselves. We create the necessity to try to see what we can get away with, to figure out how we can get around the conditions we have set up for ourselves. God in action has expression through our thoughts, words, and deeds; insofar as these are in harmony with our ideals we will be in harmony with God. This is not a miraculous process, not a quick fix: "if I get it right I can have instant whatever-it-is-that-Iwant gratification." This is a process of discovery, of learning from our failures, of practice of using those tools we discover to be right for us. I would suggest we need to ensoul our resolutions, our ideals, in words that allow us to flow, even in small steps, toward those ideals, thereby becoming much closer to the reality of God in Action. These words include "I will, I feel, I honor, I allow, I believe, I am."
Alexander Schindler said that when we allow the inflow of God's Love into our lives, "We realize that though our lives are finite, our deeds on earth weave a timeless pattern. Life is never just a being. It is a becoming, a relentless flowing on. Our parents live on through us, and we will live on through our children. The institutions we build endure, and we will endure through them. The beauty that we fashion cannot be dimmed by death. Our flesh may perish, our hands will wither, but that which they create in beauty and goodness and truth lives on for all time to come."
So, we come to the new year, the new century, the new millennium, with the tools of old and tried directions, words, resolutions, and interpretations with which to tackle life. With enthusiasm, with renewed commitment and insight, we can say, "Play it again, Sam."
- Eleanor L. Shumway
- Edwin Eberman
Through the senses, we contact the different grades of universal substance, material and spiritual. By the material senses, we contact the material world. By the spiritual senses we contact the spiritual world. Therefore by contact of the polarities, these "pairs of opposites" we sense pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat, all of which impart what is called experience. By experience, we arrive at knowledge, by knowledge we win the power to discriminate between good and evil. We enter into the light of Wisdom. To strike another key, in the beginning the evolving pilgrim soul posses the innocence of ignorance. Then at the end by traveling the Path, which is our self, and by contacting its shine and shadows, we evolve through the gateway of Experience to the innocence of Wisdom. We have consciously identified with the Highest Good, which is another name for God.
- Teachings of the Temple, Volume 2
Here and there from amidst the toilers of the world, from those whose lives are one perpetual struggle against inhibiting conditions, a head is momentarily lifted from its hard task, eyes are raised to the stars, or a hand stretched out in pleading to some fellow being for more Light. Here and there a book or paper is opened and the reader thereof finds his heart warming toward the author and his brain responding to the call of another. Here and there a cry arises from closed lips, "Oh, that someone would show me the way out of these life-destroying conditions."
Such a cry is never left unanswered, although too often the answer falls unheeded on an ear untrained to hear aright. But however or wherever it is heard, it is embodied in the one word - Love. Whether the lesson to be learned is one of cold stern endurance, of fiery pain, or of pleasure, Love is ever the Teacher. Love is ever molding a Soul strong, birth, and enduring enough to shine as a sun over all the dark and hidden places of human nature. Love is building a creator of worlds out of every normal human being, and using the cold and the heat, the pain and the pleasure to test each part of the structure now under way.
The Golden Rule as taught in ten of the world's great religions:
Christianity: "_All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them _"
Confucianism: "Do not unto others what you would not they should do unto you."
Buddhism: "In five ways should a clansman minister to his friends and familiars: by generosity, courtesy and benevolence, by treating them as he treats himself, and by being as good as his word."
Hinduism: "Do not to others, which if done to thee, would cause thee pain."
Islam: "No one of you is a believer until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself."
Sikhism: "As thou deemest thyself so deem others. Then shalt thou become a partner in heaven."
Judaism: "What is hurtful to yourself, do not to your fellow man."
Jainism: "In happiness and suffering, in joy and grief, we should regard all creatures as we regard our own self."
Zoroastrianism: "That nature only is good when it shall not do unto another whatever is not good for its own self."
Taoism: "Regard your neighbor's gain as your own gain and regard your neighbor's loss as your own loss."
There was a day I dreamed I had a body
All wrapped up with skin and bone
Within the same density I dreamed a place that I could reside
With trees and sky and land and sea
I dreamed my days, all full of wonder -touching and laughing
with my dreams things.
By night I watched myself flow out with my light body to realms
of more ethereal harmonies and translucence.
Slowly my days became reality and more solid that I found it difficult to fly. As time wore on in my dream I started to wonder where were my dreams and where were my days? Were trees just made of the bark that I could touch, was the sea only the water I could feel on my skin? Was the air only the breeze I could smell and taste the sensation of? Was the earth only the handfuls I could hold in my hands?
I remembered that my childhood body was now a dream to me
And today wasn't real?
And today is a dream but the moment is real.
I remembered the love of my past friends and animals, the bodies long
gone, the memories fading, but something remaining _
The dream of life came back to me as I wondered through the
photographs of past experiences
The individual and personal loves of each person, situations,
experiences, conversations, realities started to blend together
The dream started to lose its hold about me in separated form
And I became involved with the clearness of the view before me
I became immersed in the energy of stillness
I absorbed myself into the realm of all that is and will ever be perfect
And all I could say was "I love you."
- Elaine Wight
This paper is adapted from a talk and demonstration presented to the London Temple group.
A seed lies in my hand, shriveled and lined
Such humble home for cosmic mystery;
Yet, deep within this scrap of dust we find
The essence of a world. If limits free
It can extend its scope to cedar's span
Or etch the subtle beauties of a rose.
But, analyze the seed, it yields no plan.
Where wait the colors that the artist knows?
Where waits the scent that rides the summer breeze?
Are they but whispers waiting on a breath
Whose potent magic activates and frees
This wrinkled granule from the dreams of death?
Know you, small seed, the seed that knows us all;
Still point of our creation and recall.
- Mary Spain
We need to see the seed as a tiny world, a microcosm of the macrocosm. When teaching biology, it is the experience of investigation that is foremost in the teacher's mind. Facts will be better understood when students investigate the living things themselves. So too, is it with our deeper studies. As we investigate, we experience together within a group, or alone, but our studies all add up to a fuller understanding of life, we hope. What, unfortunately, as a teacher I cannot do in school is to say, "Look at the seed in two ways, physically and spiritually." And wouldn't it be nice to be able to lead the class into a gentle mediation on the beauty they are observing in front of them? I believe the Rudolph Steiner schools are teaching somewhere along those lines. Perhaps if the young could be taught in a more fulfilling way and not just learn the facts for examinations, we may all be the beneficiaries of a new society to come.
Let us begin with imagining a seed and let us meditate as we seek inside the beauty that is contained therein. "Always look for the spirit behind all form. Become en rapport with the spiritual God in everything you see - cultivate the inner growth; it will create harmony in yourselves and beauty in your lives," said White Eagle Lodge. Seeds come in so many sizes, from minute to very large. We have all seen diagrams of broad beans in most biology textbooks and we use them in school. In fact, if you were to soak such seeds at home for 24 hours you could open them up to reveal their inner mysteries.
I must add that, on doing this practical work with eleven-year-olds for the first time, they are thrilled and get quite excited at what they find inside. They find it especially interesting that a seed contains an embryo and that the word is the same as that used for the one they have been familiar with for years, that is the human embryo. Let us think, then, of the seed, and meditate on its real meaning. As H. P. Blavatsky says, "People are always in the habit of judging things by their appearance, rather than their meaning." In your mind's eye open up the seed, as my class would have done, and see that this seed has two seed leaves inside - cotyledons - and they are rich in the food store which is starch. I am sure many of you are familiar with all this from your school days!
Let us go through the parts of the seed, identifying, investigating and experiencing the inner parts as well as contemplating perhaps the inner meaning of the structures before us. When the starch in the seed is stained black with iodine, the embryo does not go black, but shines out amidst the starch, creamy white with tiny root or radicle and tiny hooked shoot or plumule. Why hooked? Because here lies the growing region which could be damaged as it pushes up through the soil and growth would be prevented. The shoot will only straighten after it has emerged above the soil; to bathe in and obtain maximum sunlight it must be upright. Does this sound familiar? The sun (fire) together with the raw products, or simpler inorganic chemicals, carbon dioxide and water, aid the green shoot to make food substances like starch and glucose.
In Stanza II of The Secret Doctrine we read that Padma the water-lily of India, the Lotus, is the product of fire (masculine) and water (feminine) vapour or ether. We can say this for every sentient being, e.g., eggs and sperms. Fire in every philosophical and religious system stands for the Spirit of Deity. In biology we talk of the male nucleus in the pollen grain fusing at fertilization with the female nucleus, the egg cell, deep inside the ovary of the flower. The female cell waits passively, while the pollen grain moves and grows a tube down towards it. The egg cell makes no move in any direction, yet within itself is much activity. It has its own energy, etheric and watery, for inside nutrients will flow for the survival of the embryo. The male cell's energy is of fire, as the stanza says, and we can perhaps interpret this as the energy in its movement. So, passiveness is not a lack of energy. It is just a different type; in essence, it is a principle from which, the stanza tells us, everything in this universe emanated.
In biology, we understand from physical evidence and of course from hypotheses, that life in the physical sense began in water. From the sea came forth the precursors of terrestrial mammals. All life begins in a watery pond. The human fetus in its amniotic fluid, and at an early stage all vertebrates, have the vestiges of gills. At a very early stage in embryonic life all vertebrates are indistinguishable from each other: a very unifying if not humbling thought.
- Edwin Eberman
Back to our seed now. We read in the same stanza, "The mother had not yet swollen." Just imagine the unsoaked, dry, shriveled, dormant seed before us, and now think of the one that has taken up the water of life and is swollen, ready with this life force. But, was not the dry sunken-looking seed full of life source, only asleep for awhile, lying dormant and waiting, to be ready when the right conditions arrive for its development? So many analogies can be made and my mind was teeming with thoughts as I wrote this. I will just refer perhaps to one of these and that is the deep seed within us, the dormant spirit that is awaiting the sun, the conditions that will bring about its fulfillment as it awaits ever ready and upright just as the stem of the tiny seedling awaits the sun. Before that, whilst in the darkness of the embryo, it awaited the warmth of soil and air and water, which were to release it from its dormancy and inactive state - the human spirit awaits here on mother earth just like the seed.
It may be of interest to see exactly what goes on inside a seed as it takes up water from its surroundings. The process is the same for all seeds, i.e. the water brings about a chemical process known as hydrolysis. Without this process enzymes (biological catalysts) cannot start to make the insoluble carbohydrate-starch into soluble glucose, which can then move throughout the cells of the seed to supply the energy for growth. So we have a change in the state of matter from solid to liquid.
Thus there is a flow of chemical/food energy throughout the seed, bringing the dormant, potential life within into manifestation as a growing, developing seedling. So here we have this small structure with everything required for an adult plant in miniature - a prototype for what is to be. In The Secret Doctrine we read that there is a spiritual prototype of all things which exists in the immaterial world before it becomes manifested in the material world on earth. What, I wonder, is the spiritual prototype of the seed?
The Zohar tries to explain in words that I'll come to shortly. The Zohar, or Books of Splendor, is the fundamental work of the Spanish Kabbalah, taking the form of a commentary on the Pentateuch and providing a significant textbook on Jewish mediaeval mysticism. As the seed begins to respire the food now made available to it inside its secret home, it will lose mass before it gains mass. This is due to the breaking down of the glucose as it is respired. The energy thus made is used to make new cells and true growth is underway. In Teachings of the Temple, Vol. I, we read, in Lesson 118, "The Place of Power", "You watch the growth of man, of a crystal, you see constant changes take place - disintegration of mass molecule by molecule. You watch the new life spring from the apparently dead seed (dormant) and the great mystery appalls you. You cannot perceive what is evident to a great Seer, the marriage of the spiritual basis of the seed, with the universal spirit which surrounds and penetrates it, the reunion of the separated life with the Universal life, the contact of individual love with cosmic love, the overshadowing of the separated ray of light by the great spiritual Sun of light _"
Let us imagine our seed again. Is it not evident that the action of higher law is here? The botanical and chemical details of this seed are governed by that which is unseen by the physical eye - as is all life. In The Zohar we read of the "sacred seed" in the section on Genesis - Bereshit. Reshit means the creative utterance - the starting point of all. "This beginning extended and made for itself a palace of honor and glory. There it sowed a sacred seed." This seed was to germinate for the benefit of the universe to which may be applied the Scriptural words (1s o. 13.), "The holy seed is the stock thereof."
"There was a brightness," says The Zohar - in that it sowed a seed for its glory. "It" refers to The Most Mysterious, says The Zohar.
A beginning is referred to in both Genesis and the First Stanza of Dzyan, a beginning, just as a seed is a beginning of a life. The Zohar answers the question, "What is this seed?" by an explanation of the graven letters, the sacred source of the Torah, which issued from the first point - the point sowed in the palace - a certain three vowels: holem-he, shuraq-thou, tireq-I. I am that I am. They combined to form a unity - that is to say, The VOICE, which issued from their union. As The Zohar is steeped in symbolism and the mystery of numbers and letters, each one having a deep meaning which can be traced back to deity and "heavenly" beings, it is beyond the scope of this talk to dwell too long here. Suffice it to say that we find a similar vein in all mystical treatises including the aforementioned stanzas, The Secret Doctrine and Theogenesis. Our studies are complicated further, for the lay reader, by veils, so these works are life-long or, more accurately, lives-long studies.
The term "seed" has been used in a general sense to mean or represent a number of things, all usually related to the start or beginning of something: a germ as in a grain of wheat or similar crop; spawn; offspring; race; descendants; a first principle; semen; that which is sown; spermatozoa; and a small bubble in glass. The word seed comes from the Old English word sa‚d which can be compared with s wan meaning to sow. The biological definition of a seed is a multi-cellular structure by which flowering plants and cone bearing plants reproduce. As you have seen, a seed consists of an embryo, a food store and a seed coat.
True seeds have always developed from a fertilized ovule. Sperms and eggs are always single cells and therefore not true seeds in the biological sense. In Teachings of the Temple, Vol. 2, we read in the section, "The Bodies of Christ," "_ A seed is a doorway between two planes of matter _ it contains a nucleus," (obviously not a biological seed which has thousands of cells each one containing its own nucleus.) However, it continues _ "A nucleus is the eternal life spark, the Father-Mother _ that can manifest in or on each world."
So we have now in our seed the possibility of thousands upon thousands of manifestations of sentient lives all encompassed in a seed. "Nature forces, guided by evolutionary law, may develop and bring to birth the matter collected and revivified by the life sparks within the seed _ etc." The doorway between two planes is made manifest in the physical representation of the seedling at germination, as the shoot grows above towards the light and the root grows down towards gravity and water and is in the darkness which is of the divine fire, as stated in a number of works already mentioned.
Also in Teachings of The Temple, Vol. 2, "Easter Day," it is stated,"The little life in the buried seed, burnt its sheath and shoots up into a first incarnation to what is to it a new world." What a lovely, simple way to describe re-creation, or a new Manvantara. So, we can see perhaps, whether it is in the reading of the Zohar, The Secret Doctrine, Theogenesis or Teachings of The Temple, re-creation lends itself to a description of something familiar to us all - the tiny seed.
When earlier civilizations worked the land in order to survive, knowledge of the basic importance of grain or seed was vital and we of later times depend on this too, for all staple diets of the world are of plant origin and of the type that bears seed. So it is innate in us to regard the seed as an important life force in the physical sense. How clever, to use this small structure as a symbol on which life in the fuller sense is to be understood. The little seed becomes a microcosm of the macrocosm and we come again to the understanding that there are really "no little things." "Where was the germ and where was now darkness?" (fire), says The Secret Doctrine. It continues, "The germ is that and that is light; the brilliant son of the hidden father." This is the "strongest fire" in the Zohar. These words indicate things imperceptible to our physical senses - more real, more permanent.
In the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Sogyal Rinpoche writes, "Dzogen" (ancient and direct stream of wisdom - source of the bardo teachings) "and the bardo teachings, represent the heart essence, the innermost visionary and practical seed, out of which a vast tree of interconnected realizations have flowered and will go on to flower in ways that cannot now be imagined as humanity continues to evolve."
It is estimated, using carbon dating techniques, that seeds have evolved during 100 million years or more. They have contributed to the success of flowering plants because of their protective powers to fend off predators by producing foul-tasting alkaloids and to protect the embryo from cold, drought and in some cases animal digestion. Seeds can respond to changes in the environment, estimate rainfall and depth of soil, and all this while remaining dormant. Seeds found in Egyptian tombs have germinated after years of dormancy once provided with the right conditions.
How is that for proof of the lasting eternal life energy hidden, unseen, but potentially viable? A new plant grows and evolves, a new world, a Manvantara be-comes, evolves after dormancy is broken and the right environment ensues. The Lotus is the oldest seed known and has been found embedded in peat of an ancient lake in Manchuria. It was still viable after 2000 years. In Teachings of the Temple, Vol. I, we read, "A minute seed becomes a mighty tree. A single thought has overturned a dynasty. An invisible point of light may become a soul, a race, or a world of lives. There are no little things."
I'd like to end as I began, with a poem, so often more succinct than prose:
The seed's brief home, deep within the flower
An then for a while it gains the power
To rest, then swell, in mother earth below,
Warm and dark, fire, for the embryo.
Shoot grows above, green, from fires of sun,
Energies recreate the hidden ONE
Into new form, a new world begins - bright!
- Helen Gordon
THOU who knowest that all life is ever ceaseless pulsing motion!
Thou who knowest that the sun must rise and set each day, and that every heart-beat is in perfect time and rhythm!
Thou who knowest that the food of yesterday will not sustain thy body for the morrow's toil!
Thinkest thou the cyclic law, immutable, will be repealed for thee, in that each day will bring thee nourishment for soul, unasked for an unsought by thee, or asked amiss?
Ah, No! A full supply of Christly bread awaits thine asking, but thou must ask each day, and ask in faith, or suffer in thy Soul as now thy body suffers from the lack of food when thou dost not provide.
- From The Mountain Top
- Edwin Eberman
Shall we sing the song of yesterday,
With its light and shade, with its joys and tears?
Shall we sing of scenes that have passed away,
And breathe the dust of the vanished years?
Not so, when the pale, dim past appears,
From the fond illusion we'll turn away,
And sing the song that forever cheers,
And scatter the ghosts of yesterday:
The song of Now,
The eternal Now.
Shall we sing the song of a future, bright
With the flower of vague, sweet dreams we dream;
Where the swift-winged birds of our thought alight
In a land with rose-hued rays agleam?
No, rather trust to the calm, white beam
That soothes our hearts with its peace tonight.
While we float on Life's low-murmuring stream,
Let us sing the glory within our sight:
The song of Now,
The eternal Now.
- Elmer Hedin
Through the holiday season there was much coming and going here at the Center. Early in December Eugenia Velichko, a member of the editorial staff of Delphis magazine in Moscow, visited us. She was accompanied by her daughter, Olga Fedosova. They returned during February with Olga's son, Alex.
Festivities in Hiawatha Lodge during Thanksgiving and Christmas included a theosophical view of the nativity play with a cast of thousands - well, maybe a couple of dozen - and enjoyed by all, potluck dinners, music, laughter, and good fellowship. In the Temple the evening Feast of Fulfillment on Christmas Eve, and a special midnight Meditation on New Year's Eve, added a spiritual dimension.
Visitors during the Christmas/New Year holidays included Sergey and Rita Moiseyev and children from Novato; Elena Pletneva and Igor Veller and children from Sacramento, and Elena's parents Oleg and Tamara Pletnev from Moscow; Margarita Bulgakova, her mother Zoya Bulgakova, and Boris Liechtenstein from Long Beach; Yolanta Pisareva and Marina Yurovsky from New York; Damian, Juel and baby Zoe Rollison from Virginia; Nils, April and Bjorn Thyrring from San Francisco; Susie and Chance Dahl from Everett, Washington; Natasha Rykman and Raisa Goltsin from Miami, Florida; Barbie Clark from Boulder, Colorado; Dick and Diana Lentz and kids from Gilroy; Debra Rowlands from Tracy; Brian and Beverly Hitchcock from Los Angeles; and Ivan Ulz from New York. Mike and Janet Schussman, now living in Oregon, stopped for a visit with old friends here at the Center.
In an effort to help the lovely redwood tree at the edge of the Temple lawn which is suffering from a fungus infection, all the surrounding undergrowth has been cleared and extra nutrition applied. We are all thrilled by the unexpected benefit of the lovely view of the Temple and University Center together, and the redwood tree seems grander and happier.
In December, Alex Rollison spent a week in Spain with friends, and Kaety Rollison moved back to Halcyon. Ron and Nashoma Carlson spent Christmas with family in Southern California. Eleanor Shumway officiated at the Memorial Service for her aunt in Ukiah in January. Will and Annie Dunbar arrived back from Sequoia to spend six months at the Center. Jenny and John Foremaster moved into their new home on the Mesa. The children are happy to have so much space for play.
Special announcement: The Temple of the People has a new web site. Visit us at
Temple groups: There are groups in New York City and London, England, as well as several in locations in Germany, Lithuania, Russia, and Ukraine who meet regularly to study and discuss the Temple Teachings. Anyone wishing more information about these groups can contact the Temple offices in Halcyon.
William Quan Judge Library serves Temple members, residents of Halcyon, and friends with an interest in Theosophy, or who are doing research involving some of our special collections. Our library is staffed by volunteers; hours are Mondays, 9-11 a.m. and 6-8 p.m., and Fridays, 9 a.m.-12 noon. Other hours are by appointment through the Temple office.
The University Center Gallery is open by appointment. Please call the Temple office at (805) 489-2822 for information. This year the exhibition consists of paintings by Harold E. Forgostein, fourth Guardian in Chief of the Temple. This exhibit, "The Song of Hiawatha," features 12 of the series of 24 four-by-four-foot oils depicting the life and legends of Hiawatha and the League of Six Nations, along with their working watercolor sketches. The sketches give the viewers a glimpse of the creative process Forgostein experienced as he developed the final compositions for the larger paintings. Also on display are many interesting articles and artifacts accumulated through Temple history.
The Temple Healing Service is held at 12:00 noon each day in the Temple. All are welcome to attend. A Meditation Meeting is held in the Temple on Sunday evening from 7 to 7:30.
Study Classes under the auspices of Temple Officers and various Temple Orders are held regularly in the University Center on Tuesdays and Fridays at 5:30 p.m. Everyone is welcome to attend.
Sunday Services are held at 10:30 a.m. in the Temple. The Feast of Fulfillment (the Communion Service of the Temple) is celebrated on the first Sunday of each month. The last Sunday of each month is a prayer and meditation meeting. Other Sundays are speakers meetings. The public is cordially invited to all services.
Speakers in the Sunday services were: November 21, Linda Rollison: What is Truth?; December 12, Eleanor Shumway: Facing the Challenge; January 9, Eleanor Shumway: Play it Again, Sam; January 16, Ivan Ulz: From The Heart; January 23, Willy Gommel: Upon My Words, Take 2; February 13, Eleanor Shumway: Feast of Fulfillment, A True Valentine; February 20, Dick Lentz: The Value of People in The Temple of The People.
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