Dear Friends
A correspondent recently wrote about the challenges so many around the globe are facing, one of which is the medical mystery of why the number of adults and children with mental illness has skyrocketed over the past fifty years:
“There are now more than four million people in the United States who receive a government disability check because of a mental illness, and the number continues to soar… What is going on?”
As students of philosophy and psychology – which in ancient times were one – we strive to fit ourselves to be able to read the hearts of man… and to be able to heal and help them. It is the road so many of the Great Sages have taken, to practice the healing arts in both physical medicine and also of the source of many of our physical and mental woes, which lie in the soul. They are healers of mind, soul and body.
Our correspondent suggests the reason for these mental troubles is answered in H.P.Blavatsky’s prediction that, with the end of the Age of Pisces in 1900 (one of the cycles that is “historic and not very long, but very occult, lasting about 2,155 solar years”), would come a period when:
“psychologists will have some extra work to do, and the psychic idiosyncrasies of humanity will enter on a great change.” (from The Esoteric Character of the Gospels by H.P.Blavatsky)
So as the dawn of the new sign of Aquarius leads us to ‘new places’ mentally and psychologically, the lead story in this edition looks at one of the perennial battles man must face, the compulsion and addiction of “the gambler”. In one sense gambling has been the trade mark of 20th c. consumer society, of hoping and pretending the future will never call upon us. Karma is either a compassionate healer (if we listen) or stern Nemesis to those who consistently refuse. Having resolved to ‘listen’ the question becomes “What we can do individually - and for our neighbours collectively - to give the 21st c. a new direction and a brighter aspect?” Perhaps the best way is by teaching the Law of Compassion, Karma, the “law of laws” – after all, isn’t that how we learnt to listen, cutting as short as we can ours and other’s further suffering?
And isn’t this the best reason for us to continue in the search for answers – until we have reached that state where we see the truth and are empowered by it to help others?
In connection with these ideas, we should also announce the commencement of the YahooGroup “E-THEOSOPHY” which was founded on 7th July 2010, one of its aims being to examine similar questions, such as:
“How to create better mechanisms for the transition towards a civilization actually based on the principle of universal brotherhood.”
To join it just email lutbr@terra.com.br - the details and aims are in last month’s AQ – link below:
http://aquariantheosophist.com/2010/05/17/may-2010-aq-new-e-group-for-study-and-research/
Bon courage. Read on, practice the way as best you can, abandoning all personal attachments to the results…
Living a Simple Life ……………………………………….2
‘Artificial life’ breakthrough …………………………….3
The Necessity to Form a United Consciousness …..5
ULT letter 2010 …………………………………………….6
Avaaz Victory saves Whales …………………………….6
Open Letter to Adyar on WQJ Case ……………………7
Your old laptop is needed! ……………………………….7
WQJ & The Adyar TS in London UK ……………………7
WISDOM IN ACTION ……………………………………….8
Druid reduces accidents from 6 to zero ………………8
The AQ Editors
Click to download PDF of magazine
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Rig-Veda On Gambling
The following excellent remarks are probably the oldest in the world upon the vice of gambling. They are found in Rig Veda, X 34. It is admitted that these Vedic hymns are anterior to the time of Homer and Hesiod.
The Hindus claim an antiquity for them which carries us back thousands upon thousands of years prior to the oldest date allowed by European Orientalists. Those who have a theosophical acquaintance with the Vedas will incline to the estimate of the Hindus, inasmuch as European opinion is constantly altering on the subject, and besides has not had quite a century of experience in which to form itself. Muir says these hymns were composed certainly 1,000 years before our era, but that is too ridiculously low an estimate and will have ere long to be revised upon further proofs and discoveries. The present hymn is given as showing what was then thought of gambling.
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“THE tumbling airborne products of the great Vibhidaka tree delight me as they continue to roll upon the diceboard. The exciting dice seem to me like a draught of the soma-plant growing on Mount Miyavat. My wife never quarrelled with me nor despised me; she was kind to me and to my friends. But I for the sake of the partial dice have spurned my devoted spouse. My mother-in-law detests me, my wife rejects me. In my need I find no comforter.
“I cannot discover what is the enjoyment of the gambler any more than I can perceive what is the happiness of a worn-out hack horse. Others pay court to the wife of the man whose wealth is coveted by the impetuous dice. His father, mother, brothers cry out: “We know nothing of him; take him away bound!”
“When I resolve not to be tormented by them because I am abandon
ed by my friends who withdraw from me, yet as soon as the brown dice, when they are thrown, make a rattling sound I hasten to their rendezvous like a woman to her paramour. The gamester comes to the assembly glowing in body, asking himself “Shall I win?”
A 4,500 year old die found in excavations at a Harappan period site (near the Indus Valley), perhaps similar to the ones made from the nut of the Vibhidaka tree?
“The dice inflame his desire by making over his winnings to his opponent. Hooking, piercing, deceitful, vexatious, delighting to torment, the dice dispense transient gifts and again ruin the winner; they appear to the gambler covered with honey. Their troop of fifty-three disports itself, itself disposing men’s destinies like the God Savatri whose ordinances never fail. They bow not before the wrath of the fiercest. The king himself makes obeisance to them. They roll downward, they bound upward. Having no hands they overcome him who has. These celestial coals when thrown on the dice-board scorch the heart though cold themselves.
“The destitute wife of the gamester is distressed, and so too is the mother of a son who goes she knows not whither. In debt and seeking after money the gambler approaches with trepidation the houses of other people at night. It vexes the gamester to see his own wife and then to observe the wives and happy homes of others.
“In the morning he yokes the brown horses – the dice; by the time when the fire goes out he has sunk into a degraded wretch. He who is the general of your board, the first king of your troop, to him I stretch forth my ten fingers to the east in reverence. I do not reject wealth, but I declare that which is right when I say:
“Never play with dice; practice husbandry; rejoice in thy prosperity,
esteeming it sufficient. Be satisfied with thy cattle and thy wife, the god advises.
“O dice, be friendly to us and no more bewitch us powerfully with your influence.
Let your wrath and hostility abate: let others than we be subject to the fetters
of the brown ones, the dice.””
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[Original article by W.Q.Judge, Path, July 1893]
Click to download PDF of magazine
http://aquariantheosophist.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/8-jun-2010-aquarian-theosophist-v1.pdf
July-August ’10 AQ: Plato’s musical code
Dear Friends
After 2,400 years a new musical code has been publically brought to light in Plato’s writings. What he hid and why remains to be answered in the years to come – this great research stands to break new ground and may offer the best insights into Plato since Thomas Taylor.
Why did he use a code? A reason for reticence by Occultists (those of the ‘right-hand path’ at least) not to reveal more than a little is their vow of secrecy and to protect those below their degree from the danger of acquiring too much knowledge before time. This is common sense… do we allow a learner to drive a car unescorted? Surely not, at least until they have first passed a ‘test’. Plato followed this rule by inserting knowledge ‘for those who can read’ in a hidden musical code – read about it on p 1,with a commentary from the Secret Doctrine on p 3.
There is more inside, see especially the account of George Washington’s extraordinary vision of the future of the US, part of which has come about – yet a great battle is to come, on p 4; and on p 13 news of the publication of additional ‘Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge’ by HPB now out in hardback, “The Secret Doctrine Commentaries”, which was announced at the ITC Hague Conference in August, which we also report on.
Monitoring Planet Gaia ……………………………………….. 7
Life Ball 2010 in Vienna ……………………………………….. 10
Dionysus on Battles with Atlanteans in N. Africa ……. 12
The Secret Doctrine Commentaries ……………………… 13
2010 ITC Conference at The Hague …………………….. 13
Yours fraternally,
The AQ editors
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Plato’s musical code revealed after 2,400 years
by a Canadian correspondent
A ground breaking new book has been published on the hidden “Musical Structure of Plato’s Dialogues”, being called “A Quick Guide to the Strongest Evidence”.
As the correspondent said who brought it to the attention of the AQ “it seems that he offers the best understanding since Thomas Taylor.”
It was from the CBS radio show “As it Happens” the discussion was Kennedy’s research on the Music and Math concealed in Plato’s work. He indicated that it was so concealed as to avoid the Greek church dogma at the time.
“But, friend, when you grasp the number and nature of the intervals of sound, from high to low, and the boundaries of those intervals, and how many scales arise from them, which those who came before handed down to us, their followers, to call ‘harmonies,’ and when you grasp the various qualities inhering in the motions of the body, which they said must be measured with numbers and named ‘rhythm’ and ‘metre,’ and when you apprehend that every One and Many should be so investigated, when you have grasped all of that, then you are wise …”
Plato, ‘Philebus’
Let’s see how it was covered in a recent radio broadcast from CBS and then by Dr Kennedy:
“The writings of the Greek philosopher Plato have been credited with providing the foundations for modern Western culture and science.
“And since he stopped his philosophizing about two thousand, three hundred and fifty years ago – right around the time he died – we’ve had plenty of time to go over what he left us.
“Which scholars have done, thoroughly, for centuries, everywhere in the world. So it’s all the more amazing that, despite all that focused attention, a science historian at the University of Manchester (UK) is now saying a significant part of Plato’s writing has been completely ignored. Although, to be fair, that significant part was a bit tough to find.”
Research Scholar Dr. Jay Kennedy says: “there are secret coded messages hidden throughout Plato’s work that will completely transform our understanding of early Western thought and the great scholar himself.”
And luckily for us, Dr. Kennedy has cracked the “Plato code”. No one tell Dan Brown.”
from CBS Radio, to listen again: http://www.cbc.ca/radioshows/AS_IT_HAPPENS/20100707.shtml
go to Part 1, at approx 11 minutes into the show.
In Dr Kennedy’s words from his blog and book:
In antiquity, many of Plato’s followers said, in various ways, that Plato wrote symbolically or allegorically, and that his true philosophy would be found in the layers of meaning underneath the surface stories he tells. In ancient religions, sects, guilds, and fraternities, it was normal to ‘reserve’ knowledge to initiates and Plato, they contended, had used symbols to hide his philosophy within his writings.…
I am a philosopher who specialises in an area called the History and Philosophy of Science. This field was transformed a generation or so ago when it was widely recognised that the study of primitive pseudo-sciences was necessary to understand the birth of our modern sciences. To understand chemistry, it was necessary to study alchemy; to understand astronomy, it was necessary to study astrology. Unusually among Plato scholars, I was therefore familiar with the numerology and music theory which was at the heart of early Pythagoreanism. This interdisciplinary preparation enabled me to see and decipher Plato’s musical symbolism.…
Even for those who are not specialists, these results should be thrilling. Western culture is sometimes said to rest on the twin pillars of Socrates and Jesus, two poor men who wrote nothing. Plato’s teacher Socrates launched philosophical and scientific research in Athens, but we know of him primarily through Plato’s writings. The philosophy and science of Socrates and Plato combined with the religions of the East in the Roman period to create central strands of what became modern European culture. Now our understanding of the birth of that culture will need to be reworked. Plato is sometimes thought of as a cold fish who banished poets and pushed the West toward logic, mathematics, and science. Now we know he was a hidden romantic. The philosophy contained beneath his stories mixes science and mysticism, mathematics and God. By understanding our roots better, we understand ourselves better.
…
Perhaps even more surprisingly, Plato’s positive philosophy shows us how to combine science and religion. Today we hear much of the culture wars between believers and atheists, between those who insist our world is imbued with meaning and value and those who argue for materialism and evolution.
For Plato, music was mathematical and mathematics was musical. In particular, we hear musical notes harmonising with each other when their pitches form simple ratios.
For him, the perception of this beauty in music was at once the perception of a beauty inherent in mathematics. Thus mathematics and the laws governing our universe were imbued with beauty and value: they were divine.
Modern scientists don’t ask where their fundamental laws come from; for Plato, the beauty and order inherent in mathematical law meant its source was divine (a Pythagorean version of modern deism). Plato may light a middle way through today’s culture wars.
Regarding the codes Plato embedded into his writing Dr Kennedy illustrates how this was done:
“… certain patterns of musical symbols are repeated at regular intervals through Plato’s Symposium and mark out the notes of a known musical scale.
“More specifically, the evidence below will show that passages containing subtle constellations of symbols are located at each twelfth of the way through the text of the Symposium. That is, clusters of terms with symbolic meanings are located at one-twelfth, at two-twelfths, and so forth.
“The ancient Pythagoreans reportedly held that the cosmos had an underlying musical or mathematical structure.”
He shows how the analysis of Plato’s dialogues contains these mathematical scales and illustrates them in the texts:
He makes a well-made case for the hidden esoteric meaning in Plato’s works:
The so-called neo-Pythagoreans, also from about the first century BCE, claimed that Pythagorean doctrines were symbolically embedded in Plato’s dialogues. Tarrant summarises the fragmentary remains of these neo-Pythagoreans:
“All this suggests [their] belief that Pythagorean doctrines are hidden in Plato, who for one reason or another is reluctant to reveal them, and that true Pythagoreanism can be teased out of Platonic texts by in-depth interpretation.
“… So it would seem safe to say that something quite esoteric is regularly being detected beneath Plato’s text, concealing details of the allegedly Pythagorean metaphysic that Pythagoreans, almost as a matter of faith, supposed to exist there.”
Full copy of the text from: http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/jay.kennedy/Symp%20Mus%20Book%20pp1-53.271-8.pdf
website http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/jay.kennedy/
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” Plato
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Tagged 2010 ITC Conference at The Hague, American Indians, Battles with Atlanteans in N. Africa, Dionysus, Geo-Planetary Situation, Life Ball 2010 in Vienna, Monitoring Planet Gaia, musical code, Plato, The Secret Doctrine Commentaries, Washington's Vision