mysticism: Spirituality; the pursuit of direct spiritual or religious experience. Spiritual discipline aimed at union or communion with Ultimate Reality or God through deep meditation or trance-like contemplation. From the Greek mystikos, "of mysteries."

Characterized by the belief that Truth transcends intellectual processes and must be attained through transcendent means.

See: mysticism, occultism, clairaudient, clairvoyance, psychic, trance.psychic abilities, siddhi.

(See also: Mysticism , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

Islam and Hinduism: Symbiotic Mysticism In Devotional Poems

Few have heard of the mystic poems Brahma Prakash or Dasa Avatar by the mediaeval Muslim saint Pir Shams. Both are famous ginans of South Asia's Ismaili community, sometimes also known as Khojas or Aga Khanis in popular parlance.

Ginans are hymn-like poems of spiritual import. They are revered by the faithful in deep veneration as repositories of wisdom and spiritual knowledge, and as transmitting the essential teachings of the Holy Qur'an in the vernacular. Composed in Sindhi, Gujarati, Hindustani and Punjabi among other subcontinental languages, the oldest are ascribed to the pirs or saints who first preached Ismaili Islam in India nearly 1,000 years ago.

Read more here: » Islam and Hinduism: Symbiotic Mysticism In Devotional Poems

A Theosophical definition of Yuga :

Yuga

(Sanskrit) A word meaning an "age," a period of time. A yuga is a period of mundane time, and four of these periods are usually enumerated in "divine years":

1. Krita or Satya Yuga. . . . . . . 4,000

Sandhya. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . .  400

Sandhyamsa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400

Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . ..  . . . 4,800

2. Treta Yuga. . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 3,000

Sandhya. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300

Sandhyamsa. . . . . . . . . . . . .  .  . 300

Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 3,600

3. Dvapara Yuga. . . . . . . . .  . . 2,000

Sandhya. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . .200

Sandhyamsa. . . . . . . . . . . . . ..  . 200

Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2,400

4. Kali Yuga. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1,000

Sandhya. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

Sandhyamsa. . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .  100

Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . 1,200

TOTAL . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . .  . . 12,000

This rendered in years of mortals equals:

4,800 x 360 = 1,728,000

3,600 x 360 = 1,296,000

2,400 x 360 = 864,000

1,200 x 360 = 432,000

. . . . . .Total 4,320,000

Of these four yugas, our present racial period is the fourth or kali yuga, often called the "iron age" or the "black age." It is stated to have commenced at the moment of Krishna's death, usually given as 3,102 years before the Christian era. There is a very important point of the teaching in connection with the yugas which must not be forgotten. It is the following: The four yugas as above outlined refer to what modern theosophical philosophy calls a root-race, although indeed a root-race from its individual beginning to its individual ending is about double the length of the composite yuga above set forth in columnar form. The racial yugas, however, overlap because each new great race is born at about the middle period of the parent race, although the individual length of any one race is as above stated. Thus it is that by the overlapping of the races, a race and its succeeding race may for a long time be contemporaneous on the face of the globe.

As the four yugas are a reflection in human history of what takes place in the evolution of the earth itself and of the planetary chain, therefore the same scheme of yugas applies also on a cosmic scale  - there exist the four series of satya yuga, treta yuga, dvapara yuga, and kali yuga, in the evolution of the earth, and on a still larger scale in the evolution of a planetary chain. Of course these cosmic yugas are very much longer than the racial yugas, but the same general scheme of 4, 3, 2 applies throughout. For further details of the teaching concerning the yugas, the student should consult H. P. Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, and the work by the present author, Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy.

See also: Yuga , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

A Theosophical definition of Brahma :

Brahma

(Sanskrit) A word of which the root, brih, means "expansion." It stands for the spiritual energy-consciousness side of our solar universe, i.e., our solar system, and the Egg of Brahma is that solar system.

A Day of Brahma or a maha-manvantara is composed of seven rounds, a period of 4,320,000,000 terrestrial years; this period is also called a kalpa. A Night of Brahma, the planetary rest period, which is also called the parinirvanic period, is of equal length.

Seven Days of Brahma make one solar kalpa; or, in other words, seven planetary cycles, each cycle consisting of seven rounds (or seven planetary manvantaras), form one solar manvantara.

One Year of Brahma consists of 360 Divine Days, each day being the duration of a planet's life, i.e., of a planetary chain of seven globes. The Life of Brahma (or the life of the universal system) consists of one hundred Divine Years, i.e., 4,320,000,000 years times 36,000 x 2.

The Life of Brahma is half ended: that is, fifty of his years are gone  - a period of 155,520,000,000,000 of our years have passed away since our solar system, with its sun, first began its manvantaric course. There remain, therefore, fifty more such Years of Brahma before the system sinks into rest or pralaya. As only half of the evolutionary journey is accomplished, we are, therefore, at the bottom of the kosmic cycle, i.e., on the lowest plane.

See also: Brahma , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

A Theosophical definition of Avalokitesvara :

Avalokitesvara

(Sanskrit) A compound word: avalokita, "perceived," "seen"; Isvara, "lord"; hence "the Lord who is perceived or cognized," i.e., the spiritual entity, whether in the kosmos or in the human being, whose influence is perceived and felt; the higher self.

This is a term commonly employed in Buddhism, and concerning which a number of intricate and not easily understood teachings exist. The esoteric or occult interpretation, however, sees in Avalokitesvara what Occidental philosophy calls the Third Logos, both celestial and human. In the solar system it is the Third Logos thereof; and in the human being it is the higher self, a direct and active ray of the divine monad.

Technically Avalokitesvara is the dhyani-bodhisattva of Amitabha-Buddha  - Amitabha-Buddha is the kosmic divine monad of which the dhyani-bodhisattva is the individualized spiritual ray, and of this latter again the manushya-buddha or human buddha is a ray or offspring.

See also: Avalokitesvara , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

Mysticism:

(1) The doctrine or belief that direct knowledge of the God(s), o spiritual truth, of ultimate reality, or of comparable matters is attainable through immediate intuition, insight or illumination and in a way differing from ordinary sense perception or conscious thought.

(2) The concepts and theories behind the theurgical approach to occultism.

(See also: Mysticism , Pagan, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

MYSTICISM -

1. communication that God makes of his or her spiritual light of the depths of the human heart. (Dhu’n-Nun Misri)

2. absolute (Evelyn Underhill)

3. states characterized by ineffability, that of knowledge (William James)

4. feeling of union with all life.

5. awareness of a dazzling light that fills the mind and heart.

6. experience of being bathed in emotions of joy, awe, wonder.

7 intuitive flashes of awareness and understanding of the universe.

8. merging with the creation, creator, nature.

9. feeling of transcendental love and compassion for all living things.

10. renewed sense of energy and vitality and health.

11. sudden vanishing of suffering and fear of death.

12. enhanced appreciation of art and beauty and less attachment to material things.

13. appearance of ESP and enhanced intellect, gifts and powers.

14. renewed sense of purpose and mission in life.

15. Change in personality and inner radiance. (NAD)

(See also: MYSTICISM , Wiccan Pagan, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

A Theosophical definition of Monad :

Monad

A spiritual entity which to us humans is indivisible; it is a divine-spiritual life-atom, but indivisible because its essential characteristic, as we humans conceive it, is homogeneity; while that of the physical atom, above which our consciousness soars, is divisible, is a composite heterogeneous particle.

Monads are eternal, unitary, individual life-centers, conscious-ness-centers, deathless during any solar manvantara, therefore ageless, unborn, undying. Consequently, each one such  - and their number is infinite  - is the center of the All, for the divine or the All is THAT which has its center everywhere, and its circumference or limiting boundary nowhere.

Monads are spiritual-substantial entities, self-motivated, self-impelled, self-conscious, in infinitely varying degrees, the ultimate elements of the universe. These monads engender other monads as one seed will produce multitudes of other seeds; so up from each such monad springs a host of living entities in the course of illimitable time, each such monad being the fountainhead or parent, in which all others are involved, and from which they spring.

Every monad is a seed, wherein the sum total of powers appertaining to its divine origin are latent, that is to say unmanifested; and evolution consists in the growth and development of all these seeds or children monads, whereby the universal life expresses itself in innumerable beings.

As the monad descends into matter, or rather as its ray  - one of other innumerable rays proceeding from it  - is propelled into matter, it secretes from itself and then excretes on each one of the seven planes through which it passes, its various vehicles, all overshadowed by the self, the same self in you and in me, in plants and in animals, in fact in all that is and belongs to that hierarchy. This is the one self, the supreme self or paramatman of the hierarchy. It illumines and follows each individual monad and all the latter's hosts of rays  - or children monads. Each such monad is a spiritual seed from the previous manvantara, which manifests as a monad in this manvantara; and this monad through its rays throws out from itself by secretion and then excretion all its vehicles. These vehicles are, first, the spiritual ego, the reflection or copy in miniature of the monad itself, but individualized through the manvantaric evolution, "bearing" or "carrying" as a vehicle the monadic ray. The latter cannot directly contact the lower planes, because it is of the monadic essence itself, the latter a still higher ray of the infinite Boundless composed of infinite multiplicity in unity. (See also Individuality)

See also: Monad , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

Mysticism

A word originally derived from the Greek and having a wide range of meaning in modern religion and philosophy. A mystic may be said to be someone who has intuitions or intimations of the existence of inner and superior worlds, and who attempts to achieve conscious communion with them and the beings inhabiting these inner and invisible worlds.

From the theosophical or occult point of view, a mystic is one who has inner convictions often based on inner vision and knowledge of the existence of spiritual and ethereal worlds of which our outer physical world is but a manifestation; and who has some inner knowledge that these worlds or planes or spheres, with their hosts of inhabitants, are intimately connected with the origin, destiny, and even present nature of the world which surrounds us.

The average mystic, however, is one who lacks the direct guidance derived from personal teaching received from a master or spiritual superior.

(See also: Mysticism , New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

The New Age movement is hardly novel! Its philosophy is rooted in ancient traditions, often based on mystical experiences, each within a different context.

Part I of II, written by Michael Rogge

Read more here: » New Age Spirituality: The roots of the New Age Movement � Part I

Ananta is Sanskrit for infinity. It is equated with the Supreme Brahman - infinitely powerful and so infinitely free. It is bigger than any quantity that can be imagined; it is bigger than any finite number. Infinity is one of the fundamental axioms upon which contemporary mathematics is based.

Sanskrit grammar and interpretation in ancient India were closely linked to the handling of high value numbers. Studies relating to poetry and metrics initiated sastragnaas or scientists to both arithmetic and grammar. Grammarians were just as competent at calculations as professional mathematicians. Indian sastragnaas or scientists, philosophers, astronomers and cosmographers - in order to develop their arithmetical, metaphysical and cosmological speculations concerning ever higher numbers - became at once mathematicians, grammarians and poets.

(See also: Infinity , God and Religion, Peace on Earth, Peace of Mind, Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

Why Wicca is Not Celtic Paganism

There are many out there who believe that Wicca and its related forms of NeoPagism are a type of Celtic Paganism (and vice versa),  but this is simply not true. The following article is meant to be a comparison of Wicca and Celtic Paganism in order to demonstrate this, and to educate the public about Celtic Paganism. While Wicca certainly contains elements of Celtic mythology, folk magic and religious belief, its basic tenets and beliefs are radically different from those of Celtic Pagans.

Read more here: » Wicca and Celtic Paganism: Why Wicca is Not Celtic Paganism

A Theosophical definition of Atman :

Atman

(Sanskrit) The root of atman is hardly known; its origin is uncertain, but the general meaning is that of "self." The highest part of man  - self, pure consciousness per se. The essential and radical power or faculty in man which gives to him, and indeed to every other entity or thing, its knowledge or sentient consciousness of selfhood. This is not the ego.

This principle (atman) is a universal one; but during incarnations its lowest parts take on attributes, because it is linked with the buddhi, as the buddhi is linked with the manas, as the manas is linked to the kama, and so on down the scale.

Atman is also sometimes used of the universal self or spirit which is called in the Sanskrit writings Brahman (neuter), and the Brahman or universal spirit is also called the paramatman.

Man is rooted in the kosmos surrounding him by three principles, which can hardly be said to be above the first or atman, but are, so to say, that same atman's highest and most glorious parts.

The inmost link with the Unutterable was called in ancient India by the term ``self,'' which has often been mistranslated "soul." The Sanskrit word is atman and applies, in psychology, to the human entity. The upper end of the link, so to speak, was called paramatman, or the ``self beyond,'' i.e., the permanent SELF  - words which describe neatly and clearly to those who have studied this wonderful philosophy, somewhat of the nature and essence of the being which man is, and the source from which, in beginningless and endless duration, he sprang. Child of earth and child of heaven, he contains both in himself.

We say that the atman is universal, and so it is. It is the universal selfhood, that feeling or consciousness of selfhood which is the same in every human being, and even in all the inferior beings of the hierarchy, even in those of the beast kingdom under us, and dimly perceptible in the plant world, and which is latent even in the minerals. This is the pure cognition, the abstract idea, of self. It differs not at all throughout the hierarchy, except in degree of self-recognition. Though universal, it belongs (so far as we are concerned in our present stage of evolution) to the fourth kosmic plane, though it is our seventh principle counting upwards.

See also: Atman , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

A Theosophical definition of Devachan :

Devachan

[Tibetan, bde-ba-can, pronounced de-wa-chen] A translation of the Sanskrit sukhavati, the "happy place" or god-land. It is the state between earth-lives into which the human entity, the human monad, enters and there rests in bliss and repose.

When the second death after that of the physical body takes place  - and there are many deaths, that is to say many changes of the vehicles of the ego  - the higher part of the human entity withdraws into itself all that aspires towards it, and takes that "all" with it into the devachan; and the atman, with the buddhi and with the higher part of the manas, become thereupon the spiritual monad of man. Devachan as a state applies not to the highest or heavenly or divine monad, but only to the middle principles of man, to the personal ego or the personal soul in man, overshadowed by atma-buddhi. There are many degrees in devachan: the highest, the intermediate, and the lowest. Yet devachan is not a locality, it is a state, a state of the beings in that spiritual condition.

Devachan is the fulfilling of all the unfulfilled spiritual hopes of the past incarnation, and an efflorescence of all the spiritual and intellectual yearnings of the past incarnation which in that past incarnation have not had an opportunity for fulfillment. It is a period of unspeakable bliss and peace for the human soul, until it has finished its rest time and stage of recuperation of its own energies.

In the devachanic state, the reincarnating ego remains in the bosom of the monad (or of the monadic essence) in a state of the most perfect and utter bliss and peace, reviewing and constantly reviewing, and improving upon in its own blissful imagination, all the unfulfilled spiritual and intellectual possibilities of the life just closed that its naturally creative faculties automatically suggest to the devachanic entity.

Man here is no longer a quaternary of substance-principles (for the second death has taken place), but is now reduced to the monad with the reincarnating ego sleeping in its bosom, and is therefore a spiritual triad. (See also Death, Reincarnating Ego)

See also: Devachan , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

Mysticism: The direct personal contact with one's concept of God, the Divine, or the Ground of Being.

Natal Chart: Your natal (birth) chart, or horoscope, is drawn from calculations based upon the date, time, and place of your birth. Every element of the horoscope (which, if it’s like most Western horoscopes, will be drawn on a circular wheel) is expressed symbolically. Each symbol in the chart represents a celestial body, sign, house, or aspect.

(See also: Mysticism , Magic, Shamanism, Paganism, Wicca)

A Theosophical definition of Evolution :

Evolution

As the word is used in theosophy it means the "unwrapping," "unfolding," "rolling out" of latent powers and faculties native to and inherent in the entity itself, its own essential characteristics, or more generally speaking, the powers and faculties of its own character: the Sanskrit word for this last conception is svabhava. Evolution, therefore, does not mean merely that brick is added to brick, or experience merely topped by another experience, or that variation is superadded on other variations  - not at all; for this would make of man and of other entities mere aggregates of incoherent and unwelded parts, without an essential unity or indeed any unifying principle.

In theosophy evolution means that man has in him (as indeed have all other evolving entities) everything that the cosmos has because he is an inseparable part of it. He is its child; one cannot separate man from the universe. Everything that is in the universe is in him, latent or active, and evolution is the bringing forth of what is within; and, furthermore, what we call the surrounding milieu, circumstances  - nature, to use the popular word  - is merely the field of action on and in which these inherent qualities function, upon which they act and from which they receive the corresponding reaction, which action and reaction invariably become a stimulus or spur to further manifestations of energy on the part of the evolving entity.

There are no limits in any direction where evolution can be said to begin, or where we can conceive of it as ending; for evolution in the theosophical conception is but the process followed by the centers of consciousness or monads as they pass from eternity to eternity, so to say, in a beginningless and endless course of unceasing growth.

Growth is the key to the real meaning of the theosophical teaching of evolution, for growth is but the expression in detail of the general process of the unfolding of faculty and organ, which the usual word evolution includes. The only difference between evolution and growth is that the former is a general term, and the latter is a specific and particular phase of this procedure of nature.

Evolution is one of the oldest concepts and teachings of the archaic wisdom, although in ancient days the concept was usually expressed by the word emanation. There is indeed a distinction, and an important one, to be drawn between these two words, but it is a distinction arising rather in viewpoint than in any actual fundamental difference. Emanation is a distinctly more accurate and descriptive word for theosophists to use than evolution is, but unfortunately emanation is so ill-understood in the Occident, that perforce the accepted term is used to describe the process of interior growth expanding into and manifesting itself in the varying phases of the developing entity.

Theosophists, therefore, are, strictly speaking, rather emanationists than evolutionists; and from this remark it becomes immediately obvious that the theosophist is not a Darwinist, although admitting that in certain secondary or tertiary senses and details there is a modicum of truth in Charles Darwin's theory adopted and adapted from the Frenchman Lamarck. The key to the meaning of evolution, therefore, in theosophy is the following: the core of every organic entity is a divine monad or spirit, expressing its faculties and powers through the ages in various vehicles which change by improving as the ages pass. These vehicles are not physical bodies alone, but also the interior sheaths of consciousness which together form man's entire constitution extending from the divine monad through the intermediate ranges of consciousness to the physical body. The evolving entity can become or show itself to be only what it already essentially is in itself  - therefore evolution is a bringing out or unfolding of what already preexists, active or latent, within. (See also Involution)

See also: Evolution , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

A Theosophical definition of Daiviprakriti :

Daiviprakriti

(Sanskrit) A compound signifying "divine" or "original evolver," or "original source," of the universe or of any self-contained or hierarchical portion of such universe, such as a solar system. Briefly, therefore, daiviprakriti may be called "divine matter," matter here being used in its original sense of "divine mother-evolver" or "divine original substance."

Now, as original substance manifests itself in the kosmic spaces as primordial kosmic light  - light in occult esoteric theosophical philosophy being a form of original matter or substance  - many mystics have referred to daiviprakriti under the phrase "the Light of the Logos." Daiviprakriti is, in fact, the first veil or sheath or ethereal body surrounding the Logos, as pradhana or prakriti surrounds Purusha or Brahman in the Sankhya philosophy, and as, on a scale incomparably more vast, mulaprakriti surrounds parabrahman. As daiviprakriti, therefore, is elemental matter, or matter in its sixth and seventh stages counting from physical matter upwards or, what comes to the same thing, matter in its first and second stages of its evolution from above, we may accurately enough speak of those filmy ethereal wisps of light seen in the midnight skies as a physical manifestation of daiviprakriti, because when they are not actually resolvable nebulae, they are worlds, or rather systems of worlds, in the making.

When daiviprakriti has reached a certain state or condition of evolutionary manifestation, we may properly speak of it under the term fohat. Fohat, in H. P. Blavatsky's words, is

"The essence of cosmic electricity. An occult Tibetan term for Daivi-prakriti, primordial light: and in the universe of manifestation the ever-present electrical energy and ceaseless destructive and formative power. Esoterically, it is the same, Fohat being the universal propelling Vital Force, at once the propeller and the resultant."  - Theosophical Glossary, p. 121

All this is extremely well put, but it must be remembered that although fohat is the energizing power working in and upon manifested daiviprakriti, or primordial substance, as the rider rides the steed, it is the kosmic intelligence, or kosmic monad as Pythagoras would say, working through both daiviprakriti and its differentiated energy called fohat, which is the guiding and controlling principle, not only in the kosmos but in every one of the subordinate elements and beings of the hosts of multitudes of them infilling the kosmos. The heart or essence of the sun is daiviprakriti working as itself, and also in its manifestation called fohat, but through the daiviprakriti and the fohatic aspect of it runs the all-permeant and directive intelligence of the solar divinity. The student should never make the mistake, however, of divorcing this guiding solar intelligence from its veils or vehicles, one of the highest of which is daiviprakriti-fohat.

See also: Daiviprakriti , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

A Theosophical definition of Round :

Round

The doctrine concerning our planetary chain commonly called that of the seven rounds means that the life cycle or life-wave begins its evolutionary course on globe A, the first of the series of seven (or ten) globes; then, completing its cycles there, runs down to globe B, and then to globe C, and then to globe D, our earth; and then, on the ascending arc, to globe E, then to globe F, and then to globe G. These are the manifest seven globes of the planetary chain. This is one planetary round. After the planetary round there ensues a planetary or chain nirvana, until the second round begins in the same way, but in a more "advanced" degree of evolution than was the first round.

A globe round is one of the seven passages of a life-wave during its planetary round, on any one (and therefore on and through each) of the globes. When the life-wave has passed through globe D, for instance, and ends its cycles on globe D, this is the globe round of globe D for that particular planetary round; and so with all the globes respectively. Seven root-races make one globe round. There are seven globe rounds therefore (one globe round for each of the seven globes) in each planetary round.

Seven planetary rounds equal one kalpa or manvantara or Day of Brahma. When seven planetary rounds have been accomplished, which is as much as saying forty-nine globe rounds (or globe manvantaras), there ensues a still higher nirvana than that occurring between globes G and A after each planetary round. This higher nirvana is coincident with what is called a pralaya of that planetary chain, which pralaya lasts until the cycle again returns for a new planetary chain to form, containing the same hosts of living beings as on the preceding chain, and which are now destined to enter upon the new planetary chain, but on and in a higher series of planes or worlds than in the preceding one.

When seven such planetary chains with their various kalpas or manvantaras have passed away, this sevenfold grand cycle is one solar manvantara, and then the solar system sinks into the solar or cosmic pralaya.

There are outer rounds and inner rounds. An inner round comprises the passage of the life-wave in any one planetary chain from globe A to globe G once around, and this takes place seven times in a planetary manvantara.

The outer round comprises the passage of the entirety of a life-wave of a planetary chain along the circulations of the solar system, from one of the seven sacred planets to another; and this for seven (or ten) times.

There is another aspect of the teaching concerning the outer rounds which cannot be elucidated here.

See also: Round , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul