Daily Theosophy

It happened extremely rarely that someone was (temporarily) sent back home because of failure – and Shano never was witness to such a situation.

(147)

(the structure of the holy order)

The lesson now was that everything in the universe was ordered in hierarchies. You need all your intelligence to understand it. Hierarchy means that the more holy, the genuinely wisest would rule over those who had not yet reached the same stage of holiness, insight and wisdom. It is exactly the opposite in what we see in many human societies, where quite often the ruler is the person who shouts loudest, has the most money, or the highest academic degree, or the best weapons. A real hierarch is someone who really understands more of the universe, more of human psychology and lives according to that understanding, and is therefore the most compassionate and wisest person, or even a god, or the god of a god. Such a one is humble or neutral by nature – there is no exception to that – and any spot of haughtiness or pride or self-centeredness will proof that he is not a real hierarch; no pupil will ever for a second doubt the position of a hierarch, because he knows from his own wisdom, inner recognition and experience that the hierarch is the source of all teaching, the love-inspired guide of all pupils, and therefore they respect him in their heart, not artificially, by outer appearance such as by bending one’s knees and putting one’s nose on the ground (unless that happens to be an established habit of the group to which he belongs). Such things are merely a waist of time and tend to hide the pupils hypocrisy. A real hierarch is not interested in the pupil’s nose, but in his mind and his wisdom, and above all the development of his heart. Hierarchs never want anything for themselves – no pomp, no honor, no money, no praise – because they know the emptiness of such things. No heart of a pupil ever fears the hierarch, though his mind may sometimes. If ever such an altruistic person would appear in the world with pomp, it would only to satisfy the expectations of the simple people, and to convey a hint of the real meaning of hierarchy to their simple minds.

In the everyday world we see many inverse hierarchies. There may be a few that try to genuinely imitate or reflect the hierarchy of the heavens – and these often become rather dark or heartless or compassionless power structures, with church authorities, presidents, generals, big business men, spiritual leaders or even terrorist leaders at the top. Of course these are recognizable by that they create psychological fear, misery, poverty, violence or are evoking attractive, but ultimately harmful ideas. The real hierarchy however, the only thing of interest to the students of that monastery, stretched into infinite height beyond the loftiest heavens which can be imagined. There were hierarchs who were merely fully awakened humans, like the Abbot of the monastery, or higher ones who were generally called ‘lords of meditation’, because all of their activity took place within them only, not having to handle physical objects, needing no books, etc. They could find wisdom in the heart of being through meditation, looking into their own essence. Among them too, were hierarchs of hierarchs, the still higher Lords of Meditation, their leaders, supervising large parts of the chain of planets, visible and invisible,  the solar system, and more.

The very highest hierarch is alone. From Him (genderless) all lower hierarchies spring. He has no name, because all names spring forth from Him, and none of these names is adequate for Himself. This Hierarchical Being can be referred to as One. Names refer to finite things, and He is in essence not finite. Even to call this essence Him or Her or It, is wrong. But when we have to refer to ‘Him’ as a concept, we have used, in this ebook, the word Adi. Adi is the highest, purest, loftiest, wisest Being a human being can ever imagine. Yet there are as many ‘Adis’ who are Hierarchs of Universes as there are Universes, and of which we as humans know nothing about. Adi is the Highest of the High, yet the very lowest of still loftier hierarchies. ‘He’ is the highest ever imaginable for us, yet the link to a world or universe or ‘superuniverse’ beyond ours, of which ‘He’ is the lowest entity.

All hierarchies contain the whole universe, all Universes. But they express only one universe for us – the one to which we belong and which we ourselves are. It is the Heart of our heart.

Our mind can not imagine that there would be a limited, finite, number of Universes. Because, then, what would be ‘beyond’? Our mind can also not imagine an infinite number. We humans can only conclude that our very concepts of ‘universe,’ ‘great,’ ‘limited’ ‘unlimited’ or ‘beyond’ are illusions, misconceptions, in themselves. ‘Infinite’ and ‘finite’ are human mental constructions, though they are reflections of Divine Mind. But even Divine Mind is mortal, a temporary aspect of That what we can not imagine, due to of the ‘task of necessity’ assigned to us as humans. It is an illusion, but not untrue: mind is the most crucial principle of our Universe.

Shano also belonged to that hierarchy, like all students and teachers in that monastery, but they formed the one but lowest rung of the ladder, as it were – just above genuinely aspiring people everywhere in the human society. Even if there are people who take this book you read here seriously and feel inside that they would like to belong to that hierarchy, they are already part of it. At least I, the writer of this book, feel myself connected to it, but on the very, very lowest rung. Animals can be no members of this hierarchy of wisdom and conscious compassion, because they can not see it, even though they may have a lot of ‘automatic compassion’ in their species, like caring for their young or dogs helping their owners. But still they belong to the hierarchy of Nature, and are part of the same One Nature as the highest gods. Plants and animals, and mountains, rocks, rivers, seas and dewdrops are not at all aware of belonging to anything; they are also not aware of not belonging to anything. They are just aware, part of the total awareness of the universe, but each in their own way. As you know, plants are giving food and oxygen and shelter, rocks give steadiness, and water makes all life possible. That too is compassion, the compassion of Adi being present in them above their own knowing. People are the worst, and therefore need most attention on this planet. Most people are also not yet aware of that link, they are not aware that their heart is a spark and inseparable part of Adi’s heart. But it will come, don’t worry, if enough people keep working in that direction – all in their own way.

One of the things Shano liked most was just making a walk, a mile or two, three, around the monastery, in between the mountains, sometimes laying on his back, seeing the sky, smelling the short-grown grasses and herbs and sometimes the pleasantly spicy droppings of mountain animals, the platinum bright smells of fresh snows carried down on small breezes from high mountaintops, and he loved looking at the flowers, which were all intensely colored on this height, and listening to the softly zooming wing beats of insects that enriched the silence. There, all the burden of the lessons and duties fell from him, and he just was. He had a clarity of mind to which even the brightest high school kid of the nation would be very envious. He just could penetrate whatever object he directed his attention to.

The lessons about what happens after death also continued, but the time for practical lessons had not yet come. For that he would have to actually die. He was taught something about the second death now, which everyone of us will experience. After the first death, as I told you already, when people leave their physical body, after some time, perhaps a few hours (or days sometimes) they ‘fall asleep’ only to awaken in the astral dream world. Vivid as his dreams may be, they are in most cases just a reflection of the desires they had during their just ended life in their physical body. It just depends on the person, but after some time, some months or years perhaps, (and in some individual cases even centuries), the energy needed to maintain that state which was brought over from physical life, is exhausted. This state is not the ultimate destination for the person who died. His real consciousness center will spend most of the time in a higher realm – if he or she had any good thoughts and aspirations and love for beauty and truth. The better part of the person has to fight a fight against his lower attractions remaining of the earth life he came from, but almost always wins. If not, reincarnation will come rather soon. But normally the dreams fade away, and the person again enters into an unconscious slumber. Whatever remains that belongs to the world of desire, the stardust matter, a little bit of life, a last remnant of desire, will fall off the astral body made of personal desires, and the consciousness of the person awakens with a very beautiful and intense awareness in what you might call ‘the realm of good thoughts.’ Now finally he or she (in fact, you can not say that it was a he or a she, because there are no bodies and connected desires to make the distinction) is free, and they find all their best wishes fulfilled. Because all their good thoughts now show themselves without inhibitions, without obstacles to their consciousness, whatever good thought they think of immediately turn into reality for them. Because their physical body is no more, and their stardust body is no more, and their unpleasant desires and thoughts are no more, they are very free – and this long phase, which usually lasts for centuries, sometimes even millennia, is the most beautiful phase of the cycle of life and death. It is completely relaxed, no tiredness, no worries, no evil exists there, because the people in that state have completely abandoned all these things, and live in their good mind only, for now.

Moreover, every thought is like a seed. A seed of a plant contains the information for a whole lifetime of a plant, and likewise with animals, and thoughts.