Quest Magazine

By John Welwood

WHY IS IT SO EASY to see the value of psychological work for Western people, yet so hard to imagine traditional Asian people utilizing the services of a psychotherapist? And why do most of the Eastern spiritual teachers I know have so much difficulty understanding psychological work and its potential value fora spiritual practitioner? What accounts for this disparity?

In presenting my hypotheses about this, I am not trying to advance a full-blown anthropological theory. Nor do I wish to idealize the societies of ancient India or Tibet, which certainly have many serious problems of their own. Rather, my intention is to point out some (admittedly generalized) social and cultural differences that may help us consider how we in the West may have a somewhat different course of psycho spiritual development to follow than people in the traditional cultures where the great meditative practices first arose and flourished.

Some would argue that psychotherapy is a sign of how spoiled or narcissistic Westerners are--that we can afford the luxury of delving into our psyches and fiddling with our personal problems while Rome burns all around. Yet though industrial society has alleviated many of the grosser forms of physical pain, it has also created difficult kinds of personal and social fragmentation that were unknown in premodern societies, generating a new kind of psychological suffering that led to the development of modern psychotherapy.

Traditional Asian culture did not engender the pronounced split between mind and body that we in the West know so well. In giving priority to the welfare of the collective, Asian societies also did not foster the division between self and other, individual and society, that is endemic to the Westernmind. There was neither a generation gap nor the pervasive social alienation that has become a hallmark of modern life.

In this sense, the villages and extended families of traditional India or Tibet actually seem to have built sturdier ego structures, not so debilitated by the inner divisions--between mind and body, individual and society, parent and child, or weak ego and harsh, punishing superego--characteristic of the modern self. The "upper stories" of spiritual development in Asian culture could be built on a more stable and cohesive "ground floor" human foundation.

Early child-rearing practices in some traditional Asian cultures, while often far from ideal, were in some ways more wholesome than in the modern West. Asian mothers often had a strong dedication to providing their children with strong, sustained early bonding. Young Indian and Tibetan children, for instance, are continually held, often sharing their parents' bed for their first two or three years. As Alan Roland, a psychoanalyst who spent many years studying cross-cultural differences in Asian and Western self-development, describes Indian child rearing:

Intense, prolonged maternal involvement in the first four or five years with the young child, with adoration of the young child to the extent of treating him or her as godlike, develops a central core of heightened well-being in the child. Mothers, grandmothers, aunts, servants, older sisters and cousin-sisters are all involved in the pervasive mirroring that is incorporated into an inner core of extremely high feelings of esteem. . . . Indian childrearing and the inner structuralization of heightened esteem are profoundly psychologically congruent with the basic Hindu concept that the individual soul is essentially the godhead (atman-brahman). A heightened sense of inner regard and the premise that a person can strive to become godlike are strongly connected. . . . This is in contrast to the Western Christian premise of original sin.

According to Roland, this nurturing quality of the Indian extended family helps the child develop an ego structure whose boundaries are "on the whole more flexible and permeable than in most Westerners," and "less rigorously drawn."(One telling sign of the difference between child rearing influences East and West is that Tibetan teachers, who traditionally begin compassion practices by instructing students to regard all sentient beings as their mothers, have been surprised and dismayed by the difficulty many American students have in using their mothers as a starting point for developing compassion.)

Growing up in extended families, Asian children are also exposed to a wide variety of role models and sources of nurturance, even if the primary parents are not very available. Tibetan tribal villages, for instance, usually regarded the children as belonging to everyone, and everyone's responsibility. Extended families mitigate the parents' tendency to possess their children psychologically. By contrast, parents in nuclear families often have more investment in "This is my child; my child is an extension of me"--which contributes to narcissistic injury and intense fixations on parents that persist for many Westerners throughout their lives.

Certain developmental psychologists have argued that children with deficient parenting hold on to the internalized traces of their parents more rigidly inside themselves. This might explain why the Tibetans I know do not seem to suffer from the heavy parental fixations that many Westerners have. Their self/other (object relational) complexes would not be as tight or conflicted as for Westerners who lack good early bonding and who spend their first eighteen years in an isolated nuclear family with one or two adults, who themselves are alienated from both folk wisdom and spiritual understanding. Asian children would be less burdened by the emotional plague of modern civilization: ego weakness, the lack of a grounded, confident sense of oneself and one's capacities.

In addition to fostering strong mother-infant bonding, intact extended families, and a life attuned to the rhythms of the natural world, traditional Asian societies maintained the sacred at the center of social life. A culture that provides individuals with shared myths, meanings, religious values, and rituals provides a source of support and guidance that helps people make sense of their lives. In all these ways, a traditional Asian child would likely grow up more nurtured by what pediatrician and psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott called the "holding environment"--a context of love, support, belonging, and meaning that contributes to a basic sense of confidence and to healthy psychological development in general. By contrast, children today who grow up in fragmented families, glued to television sets that continually transmit images of a spiritually lost, fragmented, and narcissistic world, lack a meaningful context in which to situate their lives.

One way these differences manifest is in how people inhabit their bodies. In observing Tibetans, I am often struck by how centered they are in the lower half of the body and how powerfully they are connected to the ground beneath their feet. Tibetans naturally seem to possess a great deal of hara--grounded presence in the belly--which is no doubt a result of the factors mentioned above.Westerners, by contrast, are generally more centered in the upper half of their body and weak in their connection to the lower half.

Hara, the vital center or earth center, is connected with issues of confidence, power, will, groundedness, trust, support, and equanimity. The child-rearing deficiencies, disconnection from the earth, and over emphasis on rational intellect in Western culture all contribute to loss of hara. To compensate for the lack of a sense of support and trust in the belly, Westerners often try to achieve security and control by going "upstairs"--trying to control life with their mind. But behind the ego's attempts to control reality with the mind lies a pervasive sense of fear, anxiety, and insecurity.

Another difference that has important consequences for psycho-spiritual development is the greater value traditional Asian cultures place on being, in contrast to Western cultures, which put more emphasis on doing. Winnicott in particular stressed the importance of allowing a young child to remain in unstructured states of being: "The mother's nondemanding presence makes the experience of formlessness and comfortable solitude possible, and this capacity becomes a central feature in the development of a stable and personal self. . . . This makes it possible for the infant to experience . . . a state of 'going-on-being' out of which . . . spontaneous gestures emerge."

Winnicott used the term impingement to describe a parent's tendency to interrupt these formless moments, forcing children to separate abruptly from the continuity of their "going-on-being." The child is "wrenched from his quiescent state and forced to respond . . . and to mold himself to what is provided for him. The major consequence of prolonged impingement is fragmentation of the infant's experience. Out of necessity he becomes prematurely and compulsively attuned to the claims of others. . . . He loses touch with his own spontaneous needs and gestures . . . [and develops] a false self on a compliant basis."

Traditional Asian families often give the young child plenty of room and permission just to be, in an unstructured way, free from the pressures to respond and perform that Western parents often place on their children at a nearly age. Allowed to be in that way, these children would be more comfortable with emptiness, which we could define here as unstructured being.

But in our culture, which emphasizes doing, having, and achieving at the expense of simply being, emptiness can seem quite alien, threatening, and terrifying. In a family or society that does not recognize or value being,children are more likely to interpret their own unstructured being as some kind of deficiency, as failure to measure up, as an inadequacy or lack. Thus the Western ego structure seems to form in a more rigid and defended way, in part toward off a terrifying sense of deficiency born out of fear of the open,unstructured nature of one's very being.

As a result of this brittle ego having to work overtime to compensate for a lack of inner trust and confidence, many Western seekers find that they are not ready, willing, or able to let go of their ego defenses, despite all their spiritual practice and realization. On a deep, subconscious level, it is too threatening to let go of the little security that their shaky ego structure provides. That is why it can also be helpful for Westerners to work on dismantling their defensive personality structure in a more gradual and deliberate way, through psychological inquiry--examining, understanding, and dissolving all their false self-images, their self-deceptions, their distorted projections, and their habitual emotional reactions, one by one--and developing a fuller, richer connection with themselves in the process.

In sum, to the extent that traditional Asian children grew up supported by a nurturing holding environment, they would be more likely to receive more of what Winnicott defined as the two essential elements of parenting in early childhood: sustained emotional bonding and space to be, to rest in unstructured being. As are sult, these children would tend to grow up with a more stable, grounded sense of confidence and well-being--what we call in the West "ego strength"--in contrast to the self-hatred, insecurity, and shaky sense of self that modern Western people often suffer from.

In discussing Asian child development here, I am speaking of influences in the first few years of childhood, when the ego structure first starts to coalesce. In later childhood, many Asian parents become much more controlling, exerting strong pressure on children to conform and to subordinate their individuality to collective rules and roles. Thus Roland notes that most neurotic conflicts among modern Asians are found in the area of family enmeshment and difficulties with self-differentiation. Indeed, while Eastern culture more generally values and understands being and emptiness, as well as interconnectedness, the West values and has a deeper appreciation of individuation.

Cultivating one's own individual vision, qualities, and potentials is of much greater significance in the West than in traditional Asia, where spiritual development could more easily coexist alongside a low level of individuation.Here is where psychological work may serve another important function forWesterners, by helping them to individuate--to listen to and trust their own experience, to develop an authentic personal vision and sense of direction, and to clear up the psychological conflicts that prevent them from authentically being themselves.

Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman has argued that since Buddhism is a path of individuation, it is inaccurate to characterize this tradition as not promoting individual development. Certainly the Buddha gave birth to a new vision that encouraged individuals to pursue their own spiritual development, instead of depending on conventional religious rituals. In that broad sense, Buddhism can be regarded as a path of individuation. But this is a different model of individuation from the one that has developed in the West. As Roland notes, individuation in Asian cultures was usually limited to the arena of spiritual practice, rather than supported as a general norm.

The Western notion of individuation involves finding one's own unique calling, vision, and path, and embodying these in the way one lives. To become oneself in this sense often involves innovation, experimentation, and the questioning of received knowledge. As Buddhist scholar Anne Klein notes:"Tibetans, like many Asians who have grown up outside Western influence, do not cultivate this sense of individuality."

In traditional Asia, the teachings of liberation were geared toward people who were, if anything, too earthbound, too involved in family roles and social obligations. The highest, non-dual teachings of Buddhism and Hinduism--which show that who you really are is absolute reality, beyond you--provided a way out of the social maze, helping people discover the trans-human absolute that lies beyond all worldly concerns and entanglements. Yet these teachings rest on and presume a rich underpinning of human community, religious customs, and moral values, like a mountain arising out of a network of foothills and valleys below.The soulful social and religious customs of traditional India and Tibet provided a firm human base out of which spiritual aspirations for a transhuman absolute, beyond human relationships and human society, could arise.

Because the traditional Asian's sense of self is embedded in a soulful culture rich in tradition, ritual, and close-knit family and community life, people in these cultures did not lose themselves or become alienated from their own humanness in the way that Westerners have. And since soul--the deep, rich,colorful qualities of our humanness--permeated the whole culture, the need to develop individuated soul qualities never assumed the importance that it has in the West. Never having lost their soul, traditional Asians never had to develop any consciousness about how to find it--that is, how to individuate in a distinctly personal way.

In the modern West, it is quite common to feel alienated from the larger social whole--whose public spaces and architecture, celebrations, institutions,family life, and even food are lacking in nourishing soul qualities that allow people to feel deeply connected to these aspects of life, as well as to one another. The good news, however, is that the soullessness of our culture is forcing us to develop a new consciousness about forging an individuated soul--an authentic inner source of personal vision, meaning, and purpose. One important out growth of this is a refined and sophisticated capacity for nuanced personal awareness, personal sensitivity, and personal presence.

This is not something the Asian traditions can teach us much about. If the great gift of the East is its focus on absolute true nature--impersonal and shared by all alike--the gift of the West is the impetus it provides to develop an individuated expression of true nature--which we could also call soul or personal presence. Individuated true nature is the unique way that each of us can serve as a vehicle for embodying the suprapersonal wisdom, compassion, and truth of absolute true nature.

We in the West clearly have much to learn from the Eastern contemplative teachings. But if we only try to adhere to the Eastern focus on the transhuman,or suprapersonal, while failing to develop a grounded, personal way of relating to life, we may have a hard time integrating our larger nature into the way we actually live.

John Welwood, associate editor of the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, is a clinical psychologist and a thirty-year student of Tibetan Buddhism. His article "The Play of the Mind" appeared in the September-October 2000 Quest magazine. This article is excerpted from his recent book, Toward a Psychology of Awakening: Buddhism, Psychotherapy, and the Path of Personal and Spiritual Transformation (Shambhala, 2000).

Originally printed in the November - December 2003 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Bland, Betty. "Letting Go to Receive." Quest  91.6 (NOVEMBER - DECEMBER 2003):202.

By Betty Bland

It may be a simple thing for those who do not have the same fixed Taurus nature that I have, but for me moving is the most odious task of a lifetime—and I ought to know since I have made many major moves. While I am writing this there are boxes and chaos all around me. The upheaval calls to mind the importance of being able to let go.

First there is the issue of selling the house. It is difficult to guess how this ordeal will proceed. The right buyer has to be found. Price and timing have to work. But there is also an inner side to the process. When we moved from Kentucky where our children had grown up, I was most reluctant to leave. I said I was ready to go, and I made all the right efforts, but my heart of hearts was just not in it. Part of me was still clinging to our home and garden spot, which we had built and created for ourselves. It took us a full year to sell that house. Reflecting back on it, I realize that my unwillingness to let go actually created an inhibiting energy. I was unconsciously blocking the process.

There is a tradition that if one cannot sell a house, a statue of St. Joseph should be buried upside down in the back yard. In fact rumor has it that in some areas where this tradition is strong, one can tell how many times a house has been sold just by digging up the back yard and seeing how many St. Joseph statues there are. A realtor friend of mine told me that she had to replace the Joseph in her nativity set several times before she bought some cheap St. Joseph statues and began retrieving them from the back yard of a house after it had been sold.

We do not know a whole lot about Joseph, the carpenter and earthly father of Jesus, except that he was obedient to God and a dutiful husband. Perhaps as the model householder, he is the guardian of a stable home. By burying him upside down, one might break that pattern of stability and be free to move on.

I thought about that recently when we were trying to sell the house in Pennsylvania. I had delayed jumping into the real estate market all spring, until I realized I was holding a resistant attitude. After a good talking to myself, my release was sufficient enough to effect a quick sale. Thereafter, however, I was confronted further with the tearing down and packing up process—another letting go. Life is the great teacher and will continually provide these little lessons until we get it. In every area of life we need to be able to let go of old circumstances in order to make way for the new. This not-so-easy discipline is a cornerstone for the spiritual life. The second Fundamental Proposition of the Secret Doctrine says that there is a constant movement, a cyclicity of all forces in nature. If our lives, as part of that flux, are in a continuous state of change, then one of the most painful things we can do for ourselves is to try to hold on to things as unchangeable, in avoidance of the inevitable. We have to be able to let go of possessions, habits, and patterns, as we encounter change from moment to moment.

An aspiring student had the privilege of being invited by a Zen master to a tea ceremony. The anxious would-be student put on fine clothing and best manners for the auspicious occasion. After properly performing the ritual, the master asked the student to hold out the cup. The master carefully poured the cup full, and then kept pouring and pouring until the cup ran over into the saucer and spilled over onto the floor. In response to the student's puzzled inquiry, the master said, "It is clear that a full cup cannot be a vessel for more tea, just as a mind that is full of its own self-importance cannot receive new teachings. When you have digested what you know, and are an empty vessel, come back and I will pour out for you new understanding."

Many areas of our lives can benefit from an attitude of greater openness. On the physical level we might be more ready to move, or relinquish cherished possessions. On the emotional level we might cling less tightly to the compulsion to have things our way, to be the center of attention and adulation, or to be so possessive of loved ones. On the mental level, we might be able to recognize our most precious ideas as tentative hypotheses open to expanded horizons of understanding. And on the deepest levels of spirit we can be open to the wonder and magic of consciousness, especially as it reveals to us our unity with all of life. This kind of openness is a gift that enfolds us and those we encounter within a universal atmosphere of loving-kindness.

So I suggest that we all perform the imaginary ritual of burying St. Joseph in our mental backyards as a way of committing to being more open to the many gifts of life. We can let go of our prized possessions and attachments in order to receive the greatest gift of all—love.

VOLUME 91, NUMBER 6

Content

Letting Go to Receive
By Betty Bland

Karma and Dharma: Twin Keys to the Heroic Journey
By Joy Mills

The Matrix as the Hero's Journey
By Chris Richardson

Flowers in the Sky
By John P. O'Grady

Legends of the Grail: The Chivalric Vision
By Karen Ralls

Originally printed in the November - December 2003 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Mills, Joy. "Karma and Dharma: Twin Keys to the Heroic Journey." Quest  91.6 (NOVEMBER - DECEMBER 2003):204-209, 227.

By Joy Mills

In Letter 16 of The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, a letter dealing principally with answers to questions put by Sinnett concerning Devachan, the Mahatma K. H. writes:

You can do nothing better than to study the two doctrines—of Karma and Nirvana—as profoundly as you can. Unless you are thoroughly well acquainted with the two tenets the double key to the metaphysics of Abidharma—you will always find yourself at sea in trying to comprehend the rest. We have several sorts of Karma and Nirvana in their various applications.

Such a statement deserves deep consideration, although there may be a tendency to dismiss it as simply abstruse Buddhist metaphysics, without a great deal of relevance to the more basic theosophical principles to which we have become accustomed. Karma, yes, an essential concept inherent in the theosophical worldview, necessary as a guide in our lives, but Nirvana? No, not really relevant. And if I dare to suggest, as indeed I propose to do, that the concept of Nirvana is related to, if not identical with, that less familiar principle known as dharma, there may be considerable skepticism regarding my placement of these two ideas in a central position within the theosophical framework.

Yet precisely because the human state is central to the entire metaphysic of theosophy—for that metaphysic is rooted in the proposition that Reality is realizable and is possible only through consciousness, or, more precisely, self-consciousness—it is therefore in reference to the human condition that we must seek the fundamentals of the theosophical worldview and the principles that can guide us today. Such a proposition indicates the coherence, the inner integrity, and the holistic nature of that worldview. This does not exclude paradox; indeed there is paradox and there is mystery, forever leading us onward in our quest for the realizability of the Ultimate.

To make a beginning, let us recognize that we, all humankind along with all sentient beings, are engaged in a journey, a great adventure. Whether we perceive that journey as simply a progress, a pilgrimage, through the years that separate our birthing from our dying or, on a grander scale, through all the cycles that include the numerous incarnations from our unconscious beginnings to our conscious perfectiveness, the pattern of the adventure is the same. And it is that pattern, that ordering, which we may discover and which, I suggest, constitutes one of the most exciting—if not the most challenging—concept inherent in the theosophical worldview. For the pattern is one of beauty, of the perfect proportion of all things, the essential rightness of creation itself. And we participate in that; we are held by that; we move in accordance with that divinely appointed ordering; and ultimately we are one with that, the Truth of our being, the Supreme Order whose very heart is bliss and peace.

What is the heroic journey? Is it not to live each day, each hour, each moment in full and conscious awareness of the underlying order, that cosmic harmony, in which we are rooted? Is it not to live in accordance with the law of our own best being? To live always beyond ourselves and to act in such a manner that our every action mirrors in its spontaneous rightness the cosmic act of creation itself? The heroic journey, the great adventure on which we are embarked, is the journey of the soul through our humanity to the realm of the gods; it is the journey from the bondage of nonknowing to the nirvanic freedom of luminous wisdom; it is the adventure of the spirit involving both a descent into hell and the ascent into heaven, stages symbolized in all the mystery schools and reexperienced in our lives as the painful and the happy moments produced by our own thoughts, feelings, and actions. And the twin keys to this heroic journey, the journey in which each one of us is the hero of his or her own story, are those great ideas to which many names in many traditions have been given: karma and dharma. Karma is that "one eternal Law in nature," as H. P. Blavatsky defined it, that law which she said "always tends to adjust contraries and to produce final harmony," and dharma, from which conceptually karma cannot be separated, and which has been translated in so many ways, but which as righteousness, as duty, as that which upholds, sustains, and nourishes our very being, is indeed the essence of our being: These two, karma and dharma, are but aspects of that one cosmic principle known in the Vedas as rta.

The journey may be more simply expressed: It is the way we all must take, the way from nonknowing (avidya) to knowing (vidya), from nonseeing to seeing, from nonhearing to hearing, from karma to nirvana.

St. Paul spoke of the way when he wrote to the Galatians: "Stand fast in the liberty where with Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. . . . For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty. . . .Walk in the Spirit. . . . the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law." Words full of mystical meaning, indeed, when read in the light of the concepts we are here considering: To stand fast in liberty is to become one with one's dharma, to be established in that state in which one is identified with the Christ principle that animates us and therefore to be no longer subject to that outer law that has buffeted us about for so long because we have been ignorant of its nature. To walk the world in that knowledge is to know what St. Paul called "the fruit of the spirit," that love, joy, peace, goodness, which is to realize nirvana, the extinction of the personal self, the bliss of the One Self, here and now. It is to know, as Nagarjuna, the great Buddhist sage, said, "Nirvana is samsara; samsara is nirvana; between the two there is no difference."

To come to the knowing, which is wisdom, and to answer what St. Paul termed the call to liberty, which is enlightenment or spiritual illumination, means simply, in the theosophical context, to enter upon the way or path that leads to the realization of the essential unity of life. "Who can here declare what pathway leads on to the gods?" asked the Rig Veda seer. It is that pathway which we all must take, either in full awareness of the task before us or unconsciously driven onward by the inexorable laws that govern all manifested existence.

"Man was created for the sake of choice," declares a Hebrew proverb, and choice in the way of our going is surely the most priceless of our human rights, even when our choices appear to be wrong. For the wrongness lies only in the continued experience of disequilibrium, the sense of conflict and suffering, which we all too often attribute to karma. We fail to see that karma is merely the lawfulness of existence itself and therefore productive only of what is in harmony with the causes we ourselves set in motion.

H. P. Blavatsky has pointed out that "Karma is a word of many meanings," a statement echoed in the comment by the Mahatma K.H. concerning the "several sorts of Karma." Further commenting on this concept, H. P. B. has stated that "it is owing to this law of spiritual development superseding the physical and purely intellectual, that mankind will become freed from its false gods, and find itself finally SELF-REDEEMED" (The Secret Doctrine, 2:420).

In The Theosophical Glossary, attributed to H. P. B., the term is equated with "ethical causation," and the further explication is given:

Karma neither punishes nor rewards, it is simply the one Universal Law which guides unerringly and, so to say, blindly, all other laws productive of certain effects along the grooves of their respective causations. When Buddhism teaches that "Karma is that moral kernel (of any being) which alone survives death and continues in transmigration" or reincarnation, it simply means that there remains nought after each Personality but the causes produced by it; causes which are undying, i.e., which cannot be eliminated from the Universe until replaced by their legitimate effects, and wiped out by them, so to speak, and such causes—unless compensated during the life of the person who produced them with adequate effects, will follow the reincarnated Ego, and reach it in its subsequent reincarnation until a harmony between effects and causes is fully reestablished.

But karma is only one half of the key that unlocks the meaning of existence as we travel the pathway that leads on to the gods. It is not enough to eliminate the causes we ourselves have set in motion and from which we all too often seek escape simply by generating further and still worse effects; within the context of achieving the aim of the human quest, we have an obligation to undertake our dharmic responsibility to travel the pathway that leads onward to the redemption of ourselves and the world. For we are destined to be world-redeemers, as the Self-redeemed of the world.

So dharma is the other half of the key that unlocks the meaning and purpose of existence. As the contemporary Indian philosopher S. Radhakrishnan points out in his book Indian Philosophy (1:52), dharma is the most important concept in Indian thought. This is so, as Radhakrishnan states, not as a matter of chance but as the necessary consequence of the basic postulate of an Ultimate Reality that is both immanent and transcendent. Ultimately and ideally there is, as the theosophical worldview postulates, no duality between Brahman and the universe; one is the mirror image of the other. Consequently our duty, as Radhakrishnan expresses it, is "to return from the plurality into the One" through our experiences with the plurality. As the law of morality, dharma is an invitation to perform just this task. It is the work of "becoming perfect" as the Christian scripture states; it is the task that the alchemists called the opus contra naturam, which is that work against the downward and outward flow of nature into diversity. Dharma then is the law of our best being, inspired by the one reality pervading and penetrating the entire universe, and to act according to dharma is desirable, fundamentally moral, and conducive to the fulfillment of our human state. Hence, too, dharma (from the Sanskrit root dhr, which means "to hold together, to support, to nourish") also means the characteristic nature of a thing, and the dharma of an individual is consequently the essential quality of a human being in terms of his or her moral obligations, since to be human is to be a moral or ethical entity. Krishna emphasized this fact to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita (18:48), when he enjoined him in no uncertain terms that he had to act, even though every action carries with it its own burden of consequences: "All undertakings indeed are clouded by defects as fire by smoke." There is always karma, yet "Better is one's own duty though destitute of merit than the well-executed duty of another. He who doeth the duty (dharma) laid down by his own nature incurreth not sin" (18:47).

Here is truly the royal secret communicated by Krishna to Arjuna, as it has been communicated by every teacher to his disciples from time immemorial. We had it already noted in the words of St. Paul, although in different phraseology: "Walk in the Spirit . . . against such there is no law."

How are we to achieve that condition in which karma and dharma are unified? In the yogic literature, the path is by means of tapas, the burning away or eliminating all that is nonessential; in Buddhism, the aspirant is asked to engage in upaya, skillful means, action that reflects both wisdom (prajna) and compassion (karuna); in the Gnostic tradition, the principle of self-discipline, the regulation of one's actions in accord with one's dharma, was known as askesis, or spiritual skill, a term from which we derive our English word "asceticism."

To understand fully the concept of dharma is as difficult as to understand fully the idea of karma, although the latter has often seemed much simpler because of our tendency to give it a very simplistic definition. As the Mahatma K. H. pointed out to Sinnett, "We have several sorts of Karma and Nirvana in their various applications . . ."; as already noted, I am suggesting that Nirvana in that context—the snuffing-out of the personal, egoistic self—is nearly synonymous, or at least correlate, with the concept of dharma as the fulfillment of one's nature, a fulfillment in which the personal, egoistic desire-self is altogether dissolved. Dharma has been defined in a number of different ways in the various Sanskrit works, from the Vedas to the Dharma-shastra literature.

In terms of the individual, dharma may be said to refer to our moral obligations; in terms of society, dharma is often defined as social solidarity; while in the context of religion, dharma has been called beatitude, since that is said to characterize the essential nature of religion itself; in the context of law, dharma represents its essential property as justice. In every category, however, it represents what we may call the imperative necessity of the mundane order to reflect the cosmic order, while at the same time it also represents the potential for further growth and transformation since the dynamism of process is the characteristic feature of the cosmos.

Nowhere are these twin concepts of karma and dharma more beautifully described as characteristics of the original cosmic order than in those glorious hymns of ancient India, the Vedas, and most particularly the Rig Veda. A full examination of the Vedic concept of rta, or cosmic order, would take us far afield, but even a cursory summary may be useful in establishing the importance of recognizing that the two principles—karma and dharma—are not only intimately related but are essentially one as aspects of the fundamental structure of the universe in which we as human beings are active participants.

To understand the significance of the concept of rta in the Vedic tradition, we must turn briefly to the subject of cosmic origins as expounded in the Rig Veda. The rishis responsible for the great Vedic hymns thought of the origin of the universe as a projection into manifestation, through a process we can only call divine contemplation, of all that lies latent within the One, the Eternal That, an unfoldment from within without, as The Secret Doctrine so aptly describes it. This emanative process moves through three different stages, implying three levels or world orders. The first may be termed the primordial or transcendental level, the original emergence from the One, manifesting the cosmic order, rta, as the blueprint for all successive emanations. It is the emergence of the gods, who are, as Jeanine Miller defines them in her work on The Vedas: "personified agents of rta or cosmic order or harmony whose ordinances shine through rta, that eternal foundation of all that exists. . . . This rta implies that perfect harmony existing between the essence of being, sat, and its activity, i.e., between the inner and the outer, the latter being but the effect and in some sense, the mirror of the former."

The blueprint is thus established and the scene is prepared for that cosmic action which is in accordance with the inherent lawfulness (rta) of the entire process. As Miller states, "It implies also the spontaneous rightness observable in the majestic movement of the stars, the recurrence of the seasons, the unswerving alternation of day and night, the unerring rhythm of birth, growth, death of each form of life, that rhythm which is the very breath of the divine action."

So at the primordial level, rta expresses itself as the differentiating principle whereby the One becomes the two poles of manifestation, the two become the three, and the three the many. The constant transformation points to a law of becoming, of change, and adjustment, to which all creation, all successive emanations will be subject, all being subservient to the one law of transformation or harmony (rta), that law which reveals the ordered course of the universal pattern. As the Rig Veda puts it: "By law (rta) the herds of the universe (i.e. the stars) have entered the cosmic orbit. Firmly fixed are the foundations of rta shining in beauty, manifold are its beauteous forms" (4:23).

In the natural process of emanation, then, the first level gives rise to the second, the intermediate level, where the gods themselves manifest and function. Here the universal law, rta, provides the dynamics for the unfolding in every realm of activity throughout the entire manifested system, each god or deva performing his task in perfect harmony: "one-minded, one-intentioned, unerringly move together to the one purposeful accomplishment" (Rig Veda 6:9).

Such is the beautiful description of the action of the intelligent forces in the universe; their solidarity, their essential righteousness, their concerted activity are the unique features of their manifestation, marking them as agents of the law of harmony, by which, through which, and in which they live and perform their various tasks:

One is the mighty godhood of the shining-ones. (Rig Veda 3:55)

Denizens of heaven, flame-tongued, thriving through the law, they abide brooding in the womb of law. (Rig Veda 10:65)

True observers of the law, faithful to the law, righteous leaders, bounteous to every man. (Rig Veda 5:67)

Law abiding, born in law, sublime fosterers of law . . . (Rig Veda 7:66)

Herdsmen of the supreme law, whose decrees are truth. (Rig Veda 10:63)

So the gods, intelligent agents of the law—not to be anthropomorphized at their loftiest levels and yet to be seen as the products of former systems who have won their immortality through past eonic cycles—reveal rta, the cosmic order, embodying it in their very being, since they are established in that nirvanic state in which their nature is both compassion and truth, bliss and knowledge.

Finally then, as a natural emanation through the cosmic action of the gods, there arises the phenomenal world where the individual rules and by virtue of his or her freedom disrupts the divine equilibrium, shatters the original cosmic harmony underlying all things, and suffers the consequences (karma) in their progress along the pathway of return, that pathway that leads on to the gods, enlightenment, and illumination.

What is known as rta or cosmic order exhibits itself in the transcendental and intermediate realms as dharma, the law of becoming in accordance with the rightness of one's being, the inner obedience to that duty which marks one's place in the cosmic scheme; there, in those inner realms, a certain state that has been called "karmalessness" obtains, a state of nirvana since there is the extinction of all sense of separateness, of a personal self, in that "oneminded, one-intentioned" harmonious action which accords with truth (satya). Yet because of rta, cosmic order, there is that aspect of the law which we experience in this phenomenal universe, which we call karma, failing to recognize that the term itself simply means action, although too often, since our actions disrupt the harmony of the universal order, we attribute to karma the concept values of goodness and badness.

While we have grossly oversimplified the great Vedic tradition and have necessarily omitted from so brief a survey other and equally important aspects of the entire process of the emanation of a manifested universe (this in itself the subject matter of the entire first volume ofThe Secret Doctrine), I suggest we begin to see the magnificence and splendor of the theosophic vision in terms of its relevance for us who are embarked on the human phase of the journey that leads onward to . . . what shall we call that unknown goal toward which all creation moves? How shall we define a culmination still unknown to us, and yet which we dimly sense and in our profounder moments of insight know in some mysterious manner is both in the distant "there" and in the very present "here" of our existence?

To live in accord with the cosmic order, to travel onward in harmony with the law of our inmost being—these are the consequences of rta in terms of karma and dharma, twin keys to the heroic journey of our humanity. These are the self-imposed demands inherent in the phenomenal world because of the very nature of the transcendent realm of which the phenomenal world is an emanation.

As we turn to our journey in the realm of the phenomenal, in the worlds of manifestation, we may gain a new appreciation for the concepts of karma and dharma, perceiving in them both challenge and opportunity to move more quickly on our heroic way. For a certain heroism is called for, a bravery of the spirit to accept the challenge of the pathway that leads onward, a soul-courage to take up the opportunity that is our human birthright, the opportunity to win our immortality and join the gods, if I may put it thus, in their eonic labors.

It is truly the great adventure of the spirit in which we are engaged, and the very word "adventure" is rich in meanings we have forgotten or overlooked. It is a word that appears frequently in the legends that arose in Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, legends telling of the quest for the Holy Grail. Some scholars, translating those legends from the medieval French, particularly Pauline Matarasso, have pointed out that the French word aventure, from the old French aventiure in Middle High German, both from the Latin adventura, translated into modern English as "adventure," raises problems both linguistic and interpretive, simply because it contains such a wealth of meaning that we have today no single word to comprehend. In essence, it meant both karma and dharma; and when, in the Grail stories, Perceval or Parzifal was told, "Go where adventure leads you," it is clear that the directive was intended as a command to the hero to act in accordance with the pattern established by his own past (what we would call karma) and also to fulfill his particular mission or destiny (what we would call his dharma). So, as Matarasso points out in her commentary of The Quest of the Holy Grail, the anonymous work attributed to the Cistercian monks:

The adventure . . . is the challenge which causes man to measure himself against standards more than human . . . the adventure is above all God working and manifesting himself in the physical world. To accept an adventure is to accept an encounter with a force which is in the proper sense of the word supernatural, an encounter which is always perilous for the sinner or the man of little faith and much presumption.

She adds, "I think it is true to say that the author of The Quest uses the concept of the adventure asa symbol of providence just as precisely and consistently as he uses the Holy Grail as a symbol of mystical experience." In her translation of the legend, therefore, she has used a variety of words,commenting, "I feel . . . bound to stress that beneath the multiplicity of terms there runs through the story like an unbroken thread the idea of providential guidance which man can either accept, refuse, or simply fail to see."

One could illustrate this idea by numerous references to the Grail legends as they appeared in Europe during that turbulent period of the early Middle Ages, a period not very different from our own, when new values were arising and a new consciousness coming to birth. Joseph Campbell comments at some length on the use of the term "adventure" in the Grail legends in reference both to the new values coming to birth at that time in Europe and to the changing perspectives of our modern age. In his work Creative Mythology (the fourth volume in his series Masks of God), Campbell points out in his discussion of the term "adventure" in connection with the Grail legends that it had reference to the fact that "the casual, chance, fragmentary events of an apparently undistinguished life disclose the form and dimension of a classic epic of destiny when the cosmic mirror is applied, and our own scattered lives today, as well, are then seen, also, as anamorphoses."

The use of the term "anamorphosis," by the way, is most interesting, since the word (from theGreek, "to form again or anew") often refers to a distorted image, taking us back to the Vedic concept of this phenomenal realm as an image, too often distorted by our perception, of the transcendental sphere of the gods.

All of this is an interesting study in itself, and of course it is closely related to a deeper study of karma as a central concept in understanding human destiny.

However, what I have sought to emphasize is that by following the advice of the Master K. H. as to the importance of a study of "Karma and Nirvana," we may derive a new understanding of the manner in which these principles may serve to guide us today. We may come to recognize that in meeting all that is appropriate to us as a result of our past—that which we call our karma—and in accepting the challenge of our inevitable destiny, the rightness of our self becoming nature—that which we call our dharma—we will have made clear the pathway that leads on to the gods. This is the nirvanic pathway, if you like, for it is essentially the way of bliss in which the separate self is extinguished in favor of that greater light of the Universal Self.

From the Vedic seers and rishis to St. Paul onward to the Gnostics, the alchemists, and those who penned the Grail legends, the story has been told of the human—the heroic—journey. The patterns of events in our lives, when we have eyes to see the patterning, reveal that, as Joseph Campbell puts it, "Beneath the surface effects of this world sit . . . the gods." For here we may learn to mirror that cosmic harmony that holds the stars in their orbits and reveals itself in the rhythms of tides and seasons.

In The Voice of the Silence, reference is made to a stage when "once thy foot hath pressed the bed of the Nirvanic stream." Then is asked the question: "What see'st thou before thine eye, O aspirant to god-like Wisdom?" And the traveler replies: "I see the PATH; its foot in mire, its summits lost in glorious light Nirvanic. And now I see the ever narrowing Portals on the hard, the thorny way to Jnana."

Hard and thorny it may appear to be, the road to jnana, knowing, to Gnosis or Sophia-Wisdom, but our destiny is no other than to walk onward, for

The way to final freedom is within thy SELF.
That way begins and ends outside of Self.

Joy Mills, MA, has been a student of Theosophy for over sixty years. She has held numerous positions within the Society, including president of the American and Australian sections, international vice president, and director of the Krotona School of Theosophy. She is the author of several books as well as articles that have appeared in Theosophical journals throughout the world.