Theosophy Northwest View
The Newsletter of the Northwest Branch of the Theosophical Society
April 2005 -- Vol. 8 Issue 2
Multicultural and Interfaith Fair
On Saturday, April 9th, the Northwest Branch will be participating in the Eastside Multicultural and Interfaith Fair held from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm at Bellevue Community College, 3000 Landerholm Circle SE, Bellevue (map on their website at www.interfaithfair.com/directions.htm). The fair will feature music, art projects, crafts, food, and booths centering on the theme "Unifying Our Communities." Their web page states that the event "is organized by local residents of Seattle and Eastside King County, Washington, and students and staff at Bellevue Community College. Our goal is to bring the diverse local spiritual communities together to learn to understand one another, respect one another, and celebrate one another's richness and individuality, while striving to not just co-exist but to flourish in our collective diversity."
Narada TS in Tacoma
On March 13th members of the Northwest Branch spent a very enjoyable afternoon at the Narada Theosophical Society. Associated with the Theosophical Society (Adyar,) this Lodge until 1912 was part of what is now the TS (Pasadena). The President of the Narada Theosophical Society, John Scott, gave a presentation commemorating their 115th anniversary. It centered on the work of the founder of the Lodge, Fred Gordon Plummer, the geologist and surveyor who named most of the features in Rainier National Park, including Narada Falls and Theosophy Ridge at Paradise. Plummer went on to work at the Theosophical Headquarters at Point Loma, California, where he headed the forestation project under Katherine Tingley.
The Narada Lodge is located at 423 N. J Street, Tacoma, and holds meetings Thursdays at 7 pm and Sundays at 2:30 pm. Visitors are welcome. More information is available on their website, www.naradatheosophicalsociety.org.
Light A Single Candle: Depression and Stress
Katherine Tingley's meeting with H. P. Blavatsky's spiritual teacher in the foothills of Darjeeling, India, has much to teach us about coping with the stresses of life. As they spoke together on a hillside overlooking a farmer's field, he suggested the following amongst many other valuable ideas:
- Purity of thought : We may surround ourselves with contemplation on spiritual matters even when our hands are busy with everyday tasks. Further, we should not live in dread of life's experiences, but go cheerfully on our way coping with the tasks at hand rather than being overwhelmed by distant goals.
- Try not to worry : We should fight the tendency to let worries and anxieties of our everyday life weigh us down.
- Live in the Now : Think of the immediate moments and seconds of which the path of our lives is composed. Don't exhaust spiritual energy by worrying about what might be somewhere far along the path.
- Prepare for the day's challenges : In the early and sacred morning hours, we should take a little time to connect with the higher self through holding a beautiful thought in our minds, reminding ourselves of our mission to help others, and pondering on overcoming our most difficult challenges for the day ahead.
- Spend time in natural surroundings : Nature is the great healer when the distractions and stresses of daily life crowd in. If we walk into the silence of the forest, we may free ourselves there "from old trying memories and from all anticipations of trouble," making ourselves "at one with that light in nature." -- Andrew Rooke
Theosophical Book Circle - Newport Way Library
We will continue to read and discuss the Tao Teh Ching by Lao-tzu, starting with verse 47. Feel free to drop in at any meeting!
- When: Thursday, April 7, 7:30 to 8:45 pm
- Where: Newport Way Library, 14250 SE Newport Way, Bellevue (map at www.kcls.org/ npw/direct.cfm)
Open to the public, unsectarian, non-political, no charge
Following meetings (at Newport Way Library):
Thursdays, May 5 and June 2, 2005
Monthly Discussion Group -- Bellevue Regional Library
"Healing Methods: How Can We Choose?" is our topic this month. We will be discussing such questions as: What are the causes and significance of illness? What is the relation among spirit, mind, emotions, and body both in bringing on disease and curing it? What is the rationale behind various healing methods -- Western and non-Western, traditional and New Age? How can ordinary people decide which types are valuable (or unsafe) in a given situation? What role does attitude or faith play in healing? How can illness be prevented? Come and share your ideas!
- When: Thursday, April 21, 7:30 to 8:45 pm
- Where: Bellevue Library, 1111 - 110th Ave NE, Bellevue
Open to the public, unsectarian, non-political, no charge
Upcoming Topics
June 16: Right Livelihood
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The topics for the monthly discussions are chosen by members of the Northwest Branch. If there is a subject that particularly interests you, or if you have ideas or suggestions about the meetings, please do not hesitate to email or mail them to the Branch or to mention them after the meetings.
Theosophical Views
Healing Methods and Karma
by G. de Purucker
All the various forms of healing, apart from regular medical or surgical practice, depend upon the inborn or inherent ability of the healer or practitioner to convey healthy life-force from himself to the diseased person. This is the key to success, or the lack of success, in healing of whatsoever school.
If a person is a natural born magnetizer, as Colonel Olcott was in a small way, or as Mesmer was in a fairly large way, then such a person can cure by magnetic or mesmeric passes by stroking the afflicted organ or part of the body, sometimes without any motion, but with an intense mental concentration to that end.
If the practitioner is not an innately endowed magnetizer, his or her success is either nil or poor. The whole explanation lies in the successful conveying of prana or vitality from his own healthy body to the diseased body or organ or part, which healthy vitality or life-force "expels" or changes the inharmonious vibrations from the afflicted part, and restores harmony therein, thus bringing about health. Such cures can be permanent; usually they are temporary, lasting a few days, a few weeks, months, possibly a year or two or three.
Here you have the key to all the processes, all the successes and failures. If -- and this is important -- the magnetizer is physically healthy, mentally well-balanced and, most important of all, morally and intellectually clean, there is no harm whatsoever in these healings by mesmeric magnetism, but not those by hypnotism; if the practitioner is unclean morally, intellectually unsound, even in his view of right and wrong, or again if the practitioner himself is not properly physically healthy, diseases can even be transplanted or transferred in germ, and even death can be brought about, which last case is plain murder, and very difficult to trace.
But there is nothing wrong in healing sick and ailing people, whether by regular surgical and medical practice, or by a high-minded, healthy, and compassionate vital healer, even if the latter acts in ignorance of the philosophical rationale. This last case is not "damming back karma," because karma already is exhausting itself in the diseased person, and the healing is merely helping nature to bring restoration of health, to re-establish normal conditions in the sufferer.
But karma is dammed back, and therefore the healing of any kind becomes positively pernicious and wrong, in cases where the healer attempts to act upon the will, the con-science, or the moral integrity of the sick person by hypnotizing the mind and willpower and conscience of the sufferer into the belief that sickness does not exist, or that the sufferer is a victim of fate, instead of being the sufferer from his own past thoughts and acts. Thus in this case karma working itself out is dammed at its source, the disease is forced back into the constitution; the body may be benefited, but the disease lies latent, for ultimately all disease originates in wrong thoughts bringing about wrong feelings and wrong actions; and this is what is meant by damming back karma. But the merely vital magnetizer does not do this. He treats the suffering body alone, as the ordinary physician and surgeon does, helps to restore harmony in the pranic currents of the sufferer's body, but does not touch the willpower or moral nature of the sufferer; and consequently his work is not evil.
And finally, the best way of all these drugless healing methods or processes commonly called vital healing, or by some similar term, is the case where the sufferer himself is brought into a state of mind of hope, self-confidence, the higher kind of resignation bringing peace and inner quiet in its train, all of which helps the body back to a condition of harmony, thus aiding the natural healing processes in the sufferer's body itself. This is why some kinds of faith-healing are the best because they do not touch the will or the mind except to bring about inner peace, resignation to the inevitable, and the instilling into the sufferer's mind of a condition of hope, of vital energy, and a happier outlook, all of which tends to help the sufferer's body.
Thus the secret lies in arousing the sufferer's own innate powers of resistance, of vitality, etc., thus making these dominant, and so making the body heal itself; and not in overpowering the sufferer's will, imagination, or moral instincts, resulting in making these recessive, numb, or asleep. The former is good and white, the latter is bad and black.