Astral
Bodies
David
Pratt – Februar 2017
1. Three astral bodies
William
Quan Judge highlights the imprecision of the term ‘astral body’: As we use in English
very loose terms, some confusion is inevitable. ‘Astral body’ is made to cover
too much ... (Echoes 3:385)
The astral body is a term which must some day be given up.
But it stands, for the present, for the whole of the ethereal inner person.
(Echoes 3:444) Three main types of astral body are distinguished in
theosophical literature. A general description of them is given in the
quotations below. ‘Astral’ literally means ‘relating to the stars’. The reason
this name was given to the more ethereal level of reality just beyond the
physical plane is because the matter of the astral plane (or ‘astral light’)
appears self-luminous to sensitives and seers, rather like the luminous nebulae
or comets seen in the night sky (Dialogues 3:425-6).
http://davidpratt.info/astral.htm
Chakras
into the west: Early Theosophical Sources – I
Phil
Hine -
September 30th 2016
In the first post in
this occasional series I took a brief look at the rather novel mapping of the
chakras on to the Book of Revelation as done by Theosophist James Morgan Pryse.
Prsyse’s book The Apocalypse Unsealed was first published in 1910 – the same
year as C.W. Leadbeater’s The Inner Life within which is Leadbeater’s first
treatment of the ‘force-centres’ or ‘chakrams’. I’ll take a closer look at both
The Inner Life and Leadbeater’s 1927 book The Chakras another time, but for now
I want to highlight two key questions that have been bothering me for some
time. Firstly, what were the sources for the Theosophical treatments of the
chakras, and secondly, at what point (and by who) did the chakras first become
identified with nerve plexuses and so forth?
http://enfolding.org/chakras-into-the-west-early-theosophical-sources-i/
http://enfolding.org/chakras-into-the-west-early-theosophical-sources-ii/
Book
Review: Rainbow Body
Phil
Hine -
December 23rd 2016
Beginning with a chakra-critical essay by one Bipin
Behari Shom in 1849, and ending, more-or-less with Barbara Brennan’s Hands of
Light in 1986, Leland has done an amazing job of bringing together the various
concepts and personalities which have contributed in various ways, towards
contemporary Western representations of the chakras. All the major Theosophical
figures are here – from Madame Blavatsky, Annie Besant, Rudolf Steiner, Charles
Leadbeater, and less well-known personages such as James Morgan Pryse (see this post).
http://enfolding.org/book-review-rainbow-body/
Karl Baier - Annotations on the
Appropriation of the Cakras in Early Theosophy
Karl Baier’s chapter
reveals the Theosophical Society to have been a significant influence in the popularization of the cakras from the
latenineteenth century onwards. Baier considers the earliest and most intense
period in the history of the appropriation of the cakras by the Society. He
discusses pre-modern conceptualization of the cakras, demonstrating the
differences between these complex and historically contingent Asian systems and
the modern, recognizable depiction of the cakras, which
derives largely from the Íatcakraniru¯pan³a (Description of the Six Centers) by the sixteenth-century
Bengali tantric, Pu¯rna¯nanda, first published in Sanskrit and Bengali in 1858.
https://www.academia.edu/14024830/Theosophical_Orientalism_and_the_Structures_of_Intercultural_Transfer_Annotations_on_the_Appropriation_of_the_Cakras_in_Early_Theosophy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4Rsjq0BdUI
Roberto
Assagioli: Synthesis of the Kundalini Ascent
Rene
Wadlow - 2017-02-27
However, if one knows something about
the founding and early period of the Theosophic Society founded by Helena
Blavatsky (1831 – 1891) and the important place that teaching about the role of
chakras played in the early days of the Society, one can easily see how the
mother of Roberto Assagioli passed on to her son the chakra teachings which
form the structure of psychosynthesis. One can also see why, if one
wants to be taken seriously within the scientific milieu, one would not stress
the chakras and kundalini as the heart of one's approach. To start
with, it is not clear if the chakras are within the physical body or are energy
centers outside the body but closely related – an energy body separate but very
close to the physical body.
http://www.mediaforfreedom.com/content/roberto-assagioli-synthesis-kundalini-ascent
