Quest Magazine

Blessed by Mysterious Grace

Ravi Ravindra
Adyar, Theosophical Publishing House, 2023. vii + 400 pp., paper, $30.

On a Sunday afternoon, sitting at a restaurant overlooking the Ojai mountains, I laughed out loud. It was a hearty laugh, which drew attention to me. Aware of this, I tried to contain myself, but to no avail: I kept laughing and smiling. I was reading and relishing Ravi Ravindra’s latest inspiring book—surprisingly an autobiography, Blessed by Mysterious Grace—-and came across a passage where he describes his early days at the university, when even then the other students called him  “Who am I Ravindra.”

Fellow seekers who are familiar with Ravindra’s scholarly works on the traditional sacred literature of both Eastern and Western traditions (often building a bridge between the two) and his many papers on science, or who may have been fortunate enough to attend his courses on philosophy, comparative religious studies, or science, will have a chuckle too.

Seldom do we have a scholar in so many important academic fields who has written an autobiography revealing so much of his own personal journey, his doubts, fears, questions, and philosophical ideas. It is also inspiring because it points not only to higher truths but to different levels of subtle perception.

Ravindra’s readers will be grateful for this book, because in my humble opinion, I do not think anyone else could do justice to the complex man, his talent, and profound understanding of what it means to be human and honor the divine spark in our souls: “You need to work to relate the higher with the lower. That is the purpose of human existence.” There is no distance between his life and his work; they are perpetually intertwined, evolving in depth.

In one chapter, Ravindra refers to a saying in the Gospels: “From him to whom much is given, much is demanded” (Luke 12:48). He states that “there was no question” that much had been given to him, even though an objective observer would say that Ravindra worked hard, made many sacrifices, and took on responsibilities to earn what he did receive. The next line is profoundly important: “It cannot be only for my sake. My own self is too small to have any worthwhile purpose of its own. It must serve something higher.”

One does not have to read between the lines to see that serving something more important, higher, and bigger than ourselves is a theme that runs through Ravindra’s book—and life. That is why reading his book is elevating, putting us on a higher level of consciousness as we think and ponder life’s biggest philosophical questions: why am I here, and what is the purpose of my life?

At some juncture in Ravindra’s life, he found himself in turmoil: “I knew I needed a different kind of knowledge and education than I had obtained in the many schools and universities I had attended. I had become sadder and sadder the closer I was to finishing my Ph.D. The more I was certified as an educated man by the world, the clearer I was about my ignorance of myself.”

As we follow the author on the paths he explored, we see that the people he chose to seek out and study with were those who had a higher purpose in life, and he knew he could learn something from them. An encounter with J. Krishnamurti led to a touching friendship with the modern-day sage, which lasted from 1965 until Krishnamurti’s death in 1986. Ravindra evokes a gentle, kind man with a “doe-like frailty,” a characteristic not always observed by others who have written about him. He shares important conversations, humorous moments from some incidents with Krishnamurti that were unlike occurrences in an average person’s day-to-day life, as well as some of his personal frustrations because he was not able to meet Krishnamurti at the same level of clarity.

Ravindra writes of a mysterious meeting—which seemed almost accidental—in a remote village with a Korean Zen master, Chullong Sunim. After the master had spent days in meditation with Ravindra, he gave him a 1500-year-old Buddha statue from the Silla dynasty. When Ravindra tried to refuse such a valuable gift, Chullong Sunim told him he was repaying a debt to him from a past life, and proceeded to write to the customs people asking them to allow the antique to leave the country. Master Sunim said: “Maybe I took a lot from you before birth. You had done something for me in a previous life.”

Readers who have been attracted to G.I. Gurdjieff’s ideas will appreciate Ravindra’s meticulous recording of his work with Jeanne de Salzmann, a disciple of Gurdjieff’s, and his own challenges in looking objectively at himself.

The author’s association with the Theosophical Society has spanned more than four decades. He is regularly invited to teach at the School of Wisdom at Adyar and the Krotona School of Theosophy in Ojai for weeks at a time. He sums up why the TS makes a difference in the world: it’s “a unifying force which brings together all the great traditions of the world, deepening spiritual search and understanding.”

Without ever suggesting or advising, Ravindra points to the same higher truths and insights that sages have talked about throughout the ages. Nevertheless, he emphasizes, each of us must find our own way, take our own journey: no one else can do that for us: “It was clear to me that for me to approach any serious question a radical transformation of the whole of my being was needed. Nobody else, even the Buddha or Christ can answer my question; it has to be my own journey.”

This book will leave you much wiser about yourself, the human heart, and humanity. Maybe Ravindra followed a path that was “created” for him before he was born, but he has done everything he could to honor that divine spark in him.

Adelle Chabelski

The reviewer, a translator, writer, and human rights advocate, was consultant and interviewer for two award-winning documentaries, one on the former Soviet Union and the other, produced by Steven Spielberg, on the Holocaust. She teaches at the Krotona School of Theosophy and has served as president of the TS in the Ojai Valley.

Modern Occultism: History, Theory, and Practice

Mitch Horowitz
New York, G&D Media, 2023; 440 pp., paper, $24.95.

Right from the start, Modern Occultism, Mitch Horowitz’s wonderfully comprehensive and challenging new synthesis of occult history, makes its project quite clear:

The idea, simple in concept yet seismic in impact, is that there exist unseen dimensions or intersections of time, all possessed of their own events, causes, intelligences, and perhaps iterations of ourselves; the influence of these realms is felt on and through us without meditation by any religion or doctrine. (Emphasis Horowitz’s.)

Or as the author more simply puts it a few pages later, “the secret of human development is discovering the psyche’s causative dimensions and the expansion to which they point . . . within the cosmic framework you occupy, you, too, are capable of thought causation.”

People fall into two general camps. One holds that mind never interacts with matter at a distance and only exists as an epiphenomenon of an embodied animal’s brain, and that time and causation are necessarily only forward-moving. The other camp knows that these propositions are simply not true, or certainly not complete.

This book is the thousands-of-years-old history of those who not only knew the falsehood or limitations of materialistic propositions, but who—within cultural milieus as old as ancient Egypt and earlier—passionately and astutely practiced the arts and sciences of nonbounded, nonlinear, mental causation.

Horowitz tells us that the book aims to make use of the “vocabulary, outlook, and sense of possibility that emerged from the birth, rebirth, and winding path of occult spirituality.” We learn that the word occult comes from the Latin word occultus, which means secret or hidden. But what exactly counts as the “occult”? And for purposes of the book, which specific figures and places merit inclusion?  

In contrast to “esoteric” or “inner” teachings, which have existed throughout the world in Vedic, Buddhist, animist, Taoist, Confucian, and shamanic traditions, Horowitz informs us that “the occult rose from the West’s rupture with its own religious past during the rise of the Abrahamic religions, Christianity in particular.” While esoteric traditions represent the inner core of a traditional religion to which they corresponded, the occult “is independent of religion while not necessarily rejecting of it.”

According to Horowitz, the occult in this sense arose within a bounded geographic area, “territories occupied first by the Greek armies of Alexander the Great . . . and later by the Roman Empire, extending from Ancient Egypt and Constantinople to the Mediterranean Basin, Persia, and much of Europe, as well as colonial and migratory offshoots, including the Americas.”

From the ancient world to modernity, the book “explores the roots, people, ideas, aesthetics, and practices that have shaped our conception of the occult, as we have been shaped by them.” Horowitz’s metaphor is that there is an “obsidian thread” of occult history, knowledge, and traditions. His aim is tracing that thread’s “origin, entanglements, key figures, and catalytic role in modern life.”

These entanglements of so many threads of spiritual teachings necessarily broaden the book’s reach. By the time we get to the later chapters covering the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, the narrative touches upon a much wider range of practices and personages, from modern Eastern teachers to those who have led the (latest) New Age revival.

As for science, we are treated to a thoughtful consideration of the implications of quantum physics, as well as a review of where things stand on psi, or parapsychology research, versus standard science. As Horowitz masterfully conveys, we have known for at least a hundred years that according to the most stringent scientific methodological requirements, psi phenomena (such as precognition, clairvoyance, telepathy, and telekinesis) are unquestionably real.

Any real science—and not the kind of science that psychologist Charles Tart has labeled “scientism”—must accept the implications of the data that it gathers, which has unquestionably shown that sometimes mind affects matter at a distance and that sometimes time does not function linearly. 

The book is challenging in three ways. First, even to attempt this kind of history was a very challenging task—which Horowitz ably and amazingly pulls off. He fluidly weaves in the origins, personal histories, and real-world impacts of those who founded and propounded New Thought and Theosophy, and treats figures like Aleister Crowley, G.I. Gurdjieff, Jack Parsons, and Henry A. Wallace with erudition and great care.

Second, for readers, the book can be challenging not just because so many people and historical occurrences are covered, but because of the sheer amount of detail needed to bring together so many threads of history, people, and practices. But let me tell you: it was worth it, and so gratifying.

As a result of this big picture of occult history and its many players laid out in one place, all sorts of people, places, ideas, and phrases (like “thoughts become things”) that were only a little bit familiar (or completely unknown) to this reviewer now make sense. They have come into focus and interlocked to form a glorious historical mosaic that won’t soon be forgotten.

That brings us to the book’s third challenging aspect: the clarity of this exquisite picture, woven with an obsidian thread, invites each of us to transcend and transform. We are challenged by the book’s subject matter to go beyond previous personal limitations, to allow ourselves to access the occult framework, knowledge, and abilities we are capable of bringing to bear in our own lives—today.

All we have to do is remember the many times we have personally experienced the nonlinearity of time, the interactivity of mind and matter, or the unquestionable real-world impacts of a ritual or magical act, and everything can shift in an instant forever. As Horowitz challenges the reader in the book’s last word, sentence, and paragraph—try.

            Jordan Gruber

Jordan Gruber is coauthor (with James Fadiman) of Your Symphony of Selves (reviewed in Quest, winter 2021) and of a work in progress on microdosing psychedelics with St. Martin’s Press.

Printed in the  Winter 2024 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Keene, Douglas "Is There Sacrifice in Service?" Quest 112:1, pg 10-11

By Douglas Keene 
National President

We may ask ourselves whether we need to sacrifice something to be of service to others. This depends, of course, on how we define both service and sacrifice in personal terms. An activity in service to humanity may represent a sacrifice for one person, but not for another.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines sacrifice as “to suffer loss of, give up, renounce, injure, or destroy especially for an ideal, belief, or end.” What is lost or given up would depend on the situation. It may be time, effort, resources, reputation, or other commodities which might be of value. This implies a detour from our established path. But if our goal is to be of service to our brothers and sisters, as well as other sentient beings, then altruistic service is not a deviation from the path but is the path itself. In this case, the concept of sacrifice seems less applicable.

One quote attributed to Mahatma Gandhi says, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” This suggests that finding yourself means understanding your true nature and allowing your inner divinity to express itself in our world.

Work can be joyful, particularly when it is selfless. This is much easier when it is not seen as a sacrifice but an active choice. In his book Sadhana: The Realisation of Life, the poet Rabindranath Tagore writes, “The most important lesson that a man [or woman] can learn from life, is that there is pain in this world, but that it is possible for him [or her] to transmute it into joy.”

This does not imply that service is easy. It may in fact be quite challenging physically, emotionally, and mentally. The joy comes in following a purpose that is uplifting. If we can recognize the true motivation behind the service and feel that it is genuine and a reflection of our inner nature, then the work becomes lighter.

George S. Arundale, the third international president of the Theosophical Society, writes in his 1913 book The Way of Service: “There are two aspects of the unity which those that would serve must understand: The aspect of pain and the aspect of joy. The one teaches of a common struggle which all must share, while the other proclaims a common goal toward which all are bound.” We must recognize the pain and suffering in the world and decide how we may best address it. Will we ignore it and try to avoid it as much as possible? Will we decide that it is someone else’s problem and pursue our own worldly desires? Or will we take steps to ease it, however limited our contribution? Sometimes it is as simple as supplying compassion and support for a loved one. Some people develop skills that allow greater intervention, such as feeding the poor or healing the sick. In any event, it requires treating others with kindness and respect.

There is ample opportunity for anyone so inclined to contribute to uplifting others. Annie Besant said, rather starkly, “Better remain silent, better not even think, if you are not prepared to act.”

We may not realize the unseen benefit of acting virtuously. We may not even witness the result of our work, but this is not critical. Tangible results are not always equated with success in a spiritual sense. We are told repeatedly that it is intention that matters, not outcome. Furthermore, beyond any direct effects, we may be observed and serve as an inspiration to others, modeling selfless behavior. Author Marianne Williamson has noted, “As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.” We need not concern ourselves with all the ripples that service can provide, for we must focus only on our own intentions and our own efforts. Selfless behavior reflects the divine, incorporated in each human heart, longing for an opportunity to manifest.

As we recognize the unity of all life, we must realize that service to others is essentially service to the whole of which we are part. This principle is stated in the first fundamental proposition of The Secret Doctrine as expressed by Damodar K. Mavalankar, an early writer and member of the Theosophical Society: “We must consider the whole mankind as one brotherhood for the whole creation has emanated from that eternally Divine Principle which is everywhere, is in everything and in which is everything and is therefore the source of all. We should therefore do all we can to do good to humanity.” It is in this light of unity that we should dwell. We are part of humanity, a drop in the ocean perhaps, but one universal entity all the same. Whatever good or evil we perform affects not only ourselves but all of the living, vibrant whole.

When we begin to look, we see many opportunities for service. How do we determine the one that is most essential? This is a challenge for each of us, and the answer will vary by individual. The process may begin with small steps. One apparently insignificant decision leads to an opportunity; a decision there leads to another. We gradually follow a path that would not have been available to us had we made other choices.

We may have a passion for a particular training. We may be thrust into a situation where a particular act of service is necessary, such as caring for a disabled loved one, or sudden new responsibilities, such as raising children as a single parent. In any case, we can be assured that our life circumstances place us in situations where we may grow if we choose that opportunity. Even a rejection of that opportunity will have consequences, enabling us to choose differently if similar situations arise in the future.

H.P. Blavatsky writes, “Each individual must learn for himself, through trial and suffering, to discriminate what is beneficial to Humanity; and in proportion as he develops spiritually, i.e., conquers all selfishness, his mind will open to receive the guidance of the Divine Monad within him, his Higher Self, for which there is no Past or Future, but only an eternal Now.”

This process can be imagined as a cycle. As we act selflessly in service, we begin to unfold spiritually. As we unfold spiritually, we develop deeper insights into our own purpose and pathway. As we see this purpose more clearly, we will better understand how to apply our energies. Over time, this spiral will turn, ever increasing in strength and clarity. What greater opportunity could we receive than this?

Printed in the  Winter 2024 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Greenfield, Ginger "Sri Lankan Embassy Commemorates Olcott" Quest 112:1, pg 8

Napoleon Hill’s 1937 best seller Think and Grow Rich is one of the most influential works published in America in the twentieth century.

To me, the title evokes the image of a guy lounging in a hammock imagining his way to wealth, but this picture is rather misleading.

In fact, the title was an afterthought. By his own account, Hill struggled enormously to come up with one, even up to the printing date. Finally, his publisher called and said, “Tomorrow morning, I’ve got to have that title, and if you don’t have one, I have one that’s a humdinger.”

“What is it?” said Hill.

“We’re going to call it Use Your Noodle and Get the Boodle.”

Thus motivated, Hill came up with the final title after a night of sweating and laboring. He regarded it as a result of inspiration, but it’s nothing more than the publisher’s joke title recast in concise and serious form.

 In any case, Think and Grow Rich is an intelligent and thorough guide to success. Many millionaires have credited their wealth to this book.

The most relevant part of the book here is its central point. To succeed, you must have what Hill calls a “Definite Chief Aim.” You must formulate it clearly and concisely and repeat it to yourself every day, if not every hour, but you are not to reveal it to anybody else except to your “Master Mind” group, which you have assembled to work toward this purpose. You then take intelligent and concrete steps to manifest it.

Most people who have worked with Hill’s method probably set their Definite Chief Aim as wealth. If your aim is to accumulate $1 million, you at least have a clear and quantifiable objective: it is clear whether you have reached it or not.

If you succeed, what then? Usually, push reset: now make your goal $10 million, and on and on. Since after a certain point wealth compounds unless it is actively mismanaged, you can accumulate a great deal very fast. When you have eaten up enough of the earth, you start thinking about philanthropy. (Whether such philanthropy does anyone any good is a question I will not broach.)

But to quote Mr. Bernstein, chairman of the board in Citizen Kane, “It’s no trick to make a lot of money—if all you want is to make a lot of money.” At some point, this Definite Chief Aim may start to seem irrelevant. Hence all of the disillusionments with wealth that we have heard about back to Ecclesiastes.

It would seem that a Definite Chief Aim, if it is to have any legitimacy, has to be more fundamental to an individual’s being and identity—the purpose for which, as the Kabbalists would put it, you were “called forth, created, formed, and made.”

As you may know, I am currently writing a course entitled “Exoteric and Esoteric Psychology” for the National Lodge. In the second lesson, I deal with the question of meaning and purpose. Without attempting to summarize the whole thing here, I might draw attention to a couple of key points.

Some thinkers, such as Viktor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning, assert that meaning and purpose are crucial to life—in extreme circumstances, even to survival—but he regards this purpose as a matter of free individual choice. Frankl’s thought comes very close to existentialism, even though he does not use that term in that book.

Another great psychologist from the middle of the last century, Ira Progoff, agrees about the centrality of meaning and purpose, but he regards them as much more organically rooted in the life process itself. In his book The Symbolic and the Real, he even observes that “the human being does not fulfill even its essential biological functions when it does not feel a framework of meaning.” Moreover, “in its essence, the psyche is the directive principle in the human being which guides its growth from the moment of conception forward.” Progoff also says, “The essence of the psyche is that it is the directive principle by means of which meaning unfolds in the individual’s existence.”

In short, the pursuit of meaning continues the process of organic growth from conception on. If this process is stymied, it results in neurosis.

I find myself more in accord with Progoff’s view. If it is to be authentic, a Definite Chief Aim runs much more deeply than a mere career choice, although it may well be—and no doubt usually is—closely connected with the work that one does in the world. It is less of a choice than a recognition.

The Bhagavad Gita appears to agree. The Sanskrit term for one’s organic purpose, which is also one’s duty, is dharma. The text says: “One’s own dharma, though imperfect, is better than the dharma of another well discharged. Better death in one’s dharma; the dharma of another is full of fear” (3:35).

In other words, it is better to do your own job badly than to do someone else’s well.

Richard Smoley