Study Group and Bookshop Musings
From Kali Yuga Rag Summer 1999
by John Rau
Changes, changes, changes
The Bookshop Relocates
We moved our business, much of the shelving and fixtures, along with 1800 boxes of books out of the rented space in Grand Rapids in which we have been working for over eight years, and into an older building that we are buying, in a rural location, on a well traveled road near our home. The store is now located on Main street in the Village of Mecosta, Michigan. We closed shop on March 1st. We packed, moved and worked - building, renovating, reassembling, organizing and restocking. Our theosophical and related books are well displayed in a nook of their own. We opened the new location on May 15th. The place looks good. The tin ceiling was painted by an Irish/American Theosophist now hold up in Lansing. Customers are passing through. We are taking at least two days off a week to get this year’s garden put in and weeds knocked down.
Mecosta is a sleepy town surrounded by water and woods and is found on a map between Mount Pleasant (Central Michigan University) and Big Rapids (Ferris State University). In this area we have flower, ethnic and music festivals, main street parades, a strong summer lake crowd and Mecosta is also the home base of the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal. Russell Kirk was a gentle, conservative philosopher and writer.
Those who know me, are probably tired of hearing me mumble parrot like - that the Blavatsky approach to occultism, and/or a philosophical method or thought pattern that stays true to this “type” of approach is a “conservative occultism”. Conservation is strength. Any physician, gardener or realistic thinker knows this to be true, and there is strength in so called “permanent things” as in the so-called laws that govern the various natures in life, as well as in a natural path of conservative and patient approach to the ever unfolding truths that all students of any real wisdom seek on paths of their choice.
New T.S. Branch
Another change involved a trip to California (three of us went out) in April to visit the Theosophical Society International Headquarters in Pasadena. We visited and shared with old friends and new friends - attended Bhagavad Gita discussions, a fine Plato presentation and a theosophical study rooted in Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled. We shared meal times with “the locals” as one might say, toured Huntington Gardens, the Theosophical University Press and the open Library Center where public discussions, studies and presentations are regularly conducted. The weather and sweet smells of foreign foliage and blossoms was quite restful. We slept with windows open. The 3 1/2 days were action packed, and the rides to and from the airport were exciting as well. The focus however, as karma unfolded, was to apply for, have accepted and become a formal Branch of the Theosophical Society - American Section. So, effective 4/18/99, four workers involved in what was known as “West Michigan Theosophical Discussion Group”, a.k.a. “Theosophy in Michigan”, have now been granted through a charter, the power to organize and conduct a Branch now known as the Great Lakes Branch of the Theosophical Society.
Helpers old and new certainly will come forth. This important change is the reason for the choice of our cover article THE HISTORY OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY in this issue, thereby showing what exactly we are a branch of, as well as what we are not. H.P. Blavatsky wrote “Born in the United States of America, the Society was constituted on the model of its Mother Land. The latter, omitting the name of God from it’s constitution lest it should afford a pretext one day to make a state religion, gives absolute equality to all religions in its laws....The Society, modeled upon this constitution, may fairly be termed a ‘Republic of Conscience’”.
New Studies and Discussions to Unfold
You will see a new study/discussion schedule in this issue. This summer, we will conduct a series of informal presentations, on Sunday afternoons, followed by open discussion. The topics are listed in the schedule. These gatherings will meet in the book shop, at 171 West Main, in Mecosta. A book study and discussion of G. de Purucker’s FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY (T.U.P. 2nd & revised edition 1979) will start in September after Labor Day, also on Sundays. This is the book we used in a restaurant meeting room some years ago. These meetings will be conducted in a fashion UNLIKE a class. They will be open to the public and anyone can join in at any time. As always, there is no charge for these gatherings. As always, these gatherings are non-political and non-sectarian.
The book (FUNDAMENTALS) is exactly what it’s title suggests. As a series of studies, it can lay out a personal map of information that throws light on modern theosophical points of view and understanding and can make clear many other aspects of religion, western and eastern philosophy, language, esoteric studies and applications found woven through various ages and cultures. The text can unfold answers to questions we may have had in the past and had forgotten about. Two examples, - when was the last time you students of western astrology encountered in an astrology book why the ancients put the days of the week (named as we know after planets, sun and moon) in the order they are? The answer can be worked out and located elsewhere, but, seldom do you see it anywhere. It has to do with planetary hours, and simple math related to heliocentric transit times. The answer itself makes the question important. The other example - how was the Hebrew Old Testament translated? The author supplies answers in intellectual as well as practical terms, and even delivers an example of the process. G. de Purucker’s FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY is a core textbook for all students of esotericism, comparative religion, philosophy and truth.
More Changes, More Stuff
Changes. For my wife and I - even our cars have changed. New used ones. Now that I think about locomotion, our physical bodies, our cells, according to science, are not even the same ones we had seven years ago when buying our home (excluding, I’m led to believe, brain cells - too bad huh?). It is interesting, that this “cell cycle” is an example (admittedly stretched) of scientific philosophy expressing a new body attached to an oldriver - a form of reimbodiment / reincarnation - as new flesh / old brain.
Science may say my body cells are new, but as a whole, this body does seem to be wearing down (there is a philosophical / theosophical response as to why - but another time), so I decided, as many of us boomers are doing, to subscribe to a famous MD’s newsletter that pushes vitamins and natural therapy. The newsletter is helpful. But most of the junk-mail that followed (did you sell my address, Dr.?), was often quite silly.
With the newsletter, I was promised a free 1999 health guide. I finally found it in my mailbox last week. It’s filled with slick hypnotic ads (that, by the way, make you “add” dollars in your head) and is put out by a leading new age magazine. Changes? Yes. Maybe a more enlightened version of our Aquarian future? Not here I’m afraid. Maybe I’m being too harsh - as many of us “new age types” are now entering the realm of “old age types” this guide is now most certainly geared toward selling health. Look! There’s my doctor over there in an ad pitching health products for my new age dog! I suppose this is change.
I believe the good doctor’s newsletter did help my health this winter. And I will continue to follow his advice that leads to positive change. I see informative articles in this free health guide, and I will read them. But, I also see mixed up in this guide “Aura Video Stations” (your clients will talk about it for days!) and “tachyon technology” for health. What? I thought that was only on STAR TREK and other science fiction. Pyramids and real-estate are huddled together on one page (think about that!)...mail order pills for your teen to put them in an “upbeat” mood...a “Megabestseller” written by God...sex ads and Tarot Magic!
Great colors too. Lots of colors! My favorite is a full page ad featuring a photograph of an attractive baby boomer (with fruit!) whom at least for the moment seems very happy with herself. The ad pitches “tested techniques” that will take “very little time” to “see things as they can be” and these techniques will, if you will just contact them, bring you to a point that - here it is - “in the end, the person with the most highly developed spiritual values wins”. I thought a spiritual path is an approach to selflessness - not competition. The ad ends with “think of the possibilities”. I am!
We, as a life wave, through our individual incarnations, have always faced manipulation from others - at least ever since man acquired “awakened” mind. After all, it is the “mind” that is the target of marketing for good or ill. In a biographical novel I am currently reading (JULIAN, by Gore Vidal), the main character, a young prince, is traveling with assigned guards (or his “jailers” as the young man sees them), during his quest for knowledge, philosophy and the “true”. In these, our early Kali Yuga {*} days, as most of us are not princes with assigned protectors, we must be on personal guard duty for ourselves. We students should think, choose wisely, and be willing to recognize our successful choices alongside our errors and have the courage to change our minds for ourselves, when we see or feel the need, on any issue concerning the truths we seek, while viewing manipulative influences from outside sources with caution. Concerning change, there is no real failure in past choices left behind, for our unfoldment as monads through karma is endless; we have all changed through uncountable events over countless eons. Change is unfoldment of mind. Change is initiation where we should govern and “mind” our own choices. New discoveries and modern technology can help us, but these neoteric events have also made it easier for the manipulators to work their magic.
In Santa Fe last month the television anchor Tom Brokaw spoke to college graduates of technology as a “ugly scar on the face of history”. He referred to our technical ideology as one that has become a “ruthless instrument of oppression”. It can be. However, as we see on television, in slick magazines and movies, and now, through our computers via the world wide web, it can also serve good as well as woe. Police officer and STAR TREK creator Gene Roddenberry is reported to have replied to a television critic who was expounding on television programming being 90 per cent junk with the counter that - yes, correct - but everything is 90 per cent junk. Like representative agents, it is important to keep looking for that 10 per cent. Tom Brokaw, still referring to technology went on to say “It is not enough to wire the world if you short circuit the soul. Technology without heart is not enough”.
{*} KALI YUGA - Sanskrit - Black Age that endures 432,000 years. The shortest of four reoccurring ages - spoken of as an age where righteousness is decreased by 3/4’s leaving only 1/4 good. It is also said that this is a time for great spiritual advancement as our human “essences” progress and unfold more quickly while we struggle and work out our karmas through many changes and reincarnations. It is calculated and believed that we are just over 5100 years into this cycle. (BACK TO TEXT)