Quest Magazine

Originally printed in the November-December 2000  issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Baum, Frank. "The Wizard of Oz on Theosophy." Quest  88.6 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2000): pg 223.

Originally printed in the November-December 2000 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Conwell, Allistair. "Depriving Death  of its Victim." Quest  88.6 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2000): pg 234-235.

By Alistair Conwell

So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men: and Death once dead, there's no more dying then.
--William Shakespeare

When the Lord of Death beckons, will you go kicking, screaming and biting? Or will you calmly accept the fact that your sojourn on this physical plane has ended--for the time being at least? If the first scenario is more apt, take heart because the vast majority of people in the Western world harbor a grotesque fear of death. The medical profession has even coined the word thanatophobia, which is derived from the Greek word thanatos meaning "death," for this universal phobia.

Many people, when asked, may say they do not fear death at all, but instead fear the painful or frightening circumstances that may result in death. Articulating such a view, the comedian Woody Allen said, "I'm not afraid of death, I just don't want to be there when it happens." But consider this: the mind cannot easily conceive of its own mortality. Sigmund Freud believed that, in our unconscious, every one of us is convinced of our own immortality (Reanney 1995).

Psychologist Gregory Zilboorg elucidates further, "If this fear [of death] were as constantly conscious, we should not be able to function normally. It must be properly repressed to keep us living with any modicum of comfort. . . . We may take it for granted that the fear of death is always present in our mental functioning. . . . No one is free of the fear of death" (Reanney 1995).

So whether one is capable of acknowledging one's fear of death or not, arriving at some understanding of this fear is important for two reasons. Firstly, all fear, without exception, is based on ignorance; and secondly, the way we approach death is directly related with how we approach life. As Russian Orthodox bishop, Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh asserts, "Death is the touchstone of our attitude to life. . . . If we are afraid of death we will never be prepared to take ultimate risks; we will spend our life in a cowardly, careful, and timid manner. It is only if we can face death, make sense of it, determine its place and our place in regard to it, that we will be able to live in a fearless way and to the fullness of our ability" (Cohn-Sherbok and Lewis 1995).

So where does our fear of death stem from?

Some scholars contend that it is something that we are taught as children. Such a view was presented in an essay entitled "Education in Thanatology," coauthored by Gary J. Grad from Columbia University and Sir Stephen V. Gullo, who wrote, "We are not born with a fear of death; we learn it from the taboos of silence and fear transmitted by our families and society as a whole" (Rogo 1990).

This view is shared by author and parapsychologist D. Scott Rogo, who writes, "Most people in Western societies fear death with a phobic terror. This lamentable situation isn't strange since we live in a death-denying culture where death is constantly divorced from the everyday realities of life. Popular illustrations of this widespread denial don't seem difficult to find. Death is a subject most people refuse to discuss in polite conversation, while the dying are usually shunted off to hospitals or rest homes, conveniently out of sight and out of mind from the standpoint of their relatives. We even try to shield our children from the simple reality of death on the misguided premise that we're doing them a favor" (Rogo 1990).

Our fear of death may be linked with the concept we have of our selves, our ego-self. The late Darryl Reanney believed that three of our most common fears (vertigo, a fear of falling from a height; claustrophobia, a fear of closed spaces; and agoraphobia, a fear of open spaces) are all metaphors for our fear of death. Many thanatologists agree that the basis of our fear of death is a fear of losing our ego-self. Although some people may say that what they fear is the pain associated with death, or the indignity from a terminal illness, or the "final judgment," or losing their friends and relatives, or even the unknown, all these reasons involve a strong sense of ego-self.

Our fear of death and our denial of that fear are deeply rooted in the human psyche. Astronomer-physicist David Darling sums up this point when he observes, "We fear death for many reasons. We fear the possibility of pain because we see it in the faces of others, the agony and angst of terminal cancer. We fear death's unpredictability, its awesome power to bring in an instant an end to everything we have lived and worked for. We fear the death of loved ones--parents, spouses and children. But above all else we fear the loss of ourselves" (Darling 1995).

So, if the basis of our thanatophobia is a fear of losing ourselves, we need to be clear about what the self really is. And, moreover, we need to understand what it is about the self that we are so terrified to part with.

The "self" referred to here is the "little" self or I-centered awareness, which is ultimately illusory and ephemeral. It is not the deathless Great Self, or the spark of the Divine inherent in all beings. This little self, in fact, creates the biggest problems for us in terms of our spiritual progress because it is this self that succeeds in blanketing the Divine Spark in a thick, seemingly impenetrable veil of darkness born of ignorance.

"I am this. I am that," we often say. But really what is that "I"? On close reflection, we find that the "I" is really no more than a collection of attachments to the experiences of life. For it is only through this "I," functioning in the physical body with its five senses, that we can experience sensual life. The "I" becomes attached to the physical body and those pleasant experiences, which it soon begins to crave. And equally soon, the "I" is repulsed by unpleasant experiences that it has endured. But these habit-forming attachments succeed in separating us from the total cosmic experience.

We are, without doubt, creatures of habit. Just reflect for a moment on all that you have done so far today, or yesterday, and it is certain that you will find that many of the things you did, said, and thought were a result of habit. Habits dictate what we eat, what we drink, where we go, how we speak, what clothes we wear, what time we go to sleep, what time we wake up, and so on. Our habits, or our attachments, are ultimately the basis for our concept of "I." And it is these attachments that bind us to the physical body. Naturally, the prospect of losing the body at death, which we have become so attached to over the course of a lifetime, must elicit fear because we will no longer have the means to feed our entrenched habits.

Asceticism is no solution to the problem of habit. A normally functioning sense of self is necessary to perform everyday duties in our homes and workplaces. But while we perform our duties to employers, families, and friends, the challenge is not to become chained to these relationships. Once chained by the bonds of attachment, we become a slave to the ego-self. And while we remain slaves of the ego-self, we will continue to harbor a fear of death.

If we can succeed in negating the ego-self, we have the opportunity to experience consciousness as it really is--not as an individualistic, selfish experience but rather as a holistic and unified awareness of inherently interdependent spiritual entities of pure consciousness. It is with this understanding and knowing that we can begin to plumb the depths of the concept of spiritual Love.

All ancient spiritual traditions emphasize the importance of Love. In the Indian tradition Love is expressed as ahimsa, or nonviolence, not only toward other humans but also toward all other creatures we share this planet with. Similarly, Jesus' quintessential message was "Love thy neighbor." Unconditional love is perhaps the most selfless action we can perform because, while we unconditionally love something, we forget the self. And when there is no self, there is nothing that can die.

This is a message that has echoed through all religions and all ages. It is advice that many have heard but few have successfully assimilated. If it can be assimilated into our lives, then we will be truly liberated from the clutches of death. As David Darling aptly summarizes, "The message is clear: if we can learn to see through the illusion of self now, in this life, then the 'I' who can die no longer exists. Death is deprived of its victim, so that the basis for fear and sorrow of death is undermined. We become part of a much larger process--the totality of being--that has no start or end."

References

Cohn-Sherbok, Daniel, and Christopher Lewis, eds. 1995. Beyond Death: Theological and Philosophical Reflections on Life after Death. New York: St. Martin's.

Darling, David J. 1995. After Life: In Search of Cosmic Consciousness. London: Fourth Estate.

Reanney, Darryl C. 1995. After Death: A New Future for Human Consciousness. New York: Morrow.

Rogo, D. Scott. 1990. Beyond Reality: The Role Unseen Dimensions Play in Our Lives. San Francisco: Thorsons.

---

Born in India, Alistair Conwell grew up in Perth, Australia, where he lives and is writing a book on the spiritual importance of death. His articles have been published in Yoga International and several Australian journals.

Originally printed in the November-December 2000  issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Ellwood, Robert. "Christian Ritual in Theosophical Perspective." Quest  88.6 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2000): pg 225-227.

Originally printed in the November - December  2002 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Quinn, William W."Harry Potter and Maximizing Cyclic Opportunities." Quest  90.5 (NOVEMBER - DECEMBER  2002):226-231.

By William W. Quinn

Who is Cassandra Vablatsky, and what is the content of her book, Unfogging the Future? On a purely literary level, Cassandra Vablatsky is the author of the textbook Unfogging the Future used in a course in divination at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, whose best known student is the young wizard in training Harry Potter. But what lies behind this fictional author and her fictional book?

One suspects the title of the book has to do with lifting the veil of Isis but, as these are a fictional character and a fictional work both undeveloped by the real author of the Harry Potter stories, there is no dispositive answer to either part of the question. One may, however, speculate, based on the full context of the four existing works of fiction by J. K. Rowling, which follow the exploits of the gifted young wizard, Harry Potter, and in the third of which we encounter the reference to Vablatsky's book. Within the larger context that contains both the fictional Unfogging the Future and its probable referent, the future to be "unfogged" is not based on any empirical notion of time in a progressive, rectilinear sense, but rather of temporal duration as that occurs in cycles, both microcosmic and macrocosmic as the polar extremes of the principle of periodicity.

It has been asserted by numerous, authoritative expositors of the philosophia perennis, as well as in various prophecies in the West during the last half of the previous millennium, that the world or humanity is fast approaching the end stage of a massive cycle. Since roughly the beginning of the nineteenth century, certain of these metaphysicians began to utilize the growing body of Indic exposition of cycles and duration. This utilization was based on the increased circulation and availability of the Sanskrit texts and their translations in which these matters were treated. So at present, meaningful discourse on these subjects relies in large part on the traditional concept of the yuga and the Sanskrit lexicon of time and duration.

The concept has various subthemes, but as it relates to the cosmogonic duration of our world, a yuga is a system of four ages said to represent kalpa, a process that traces the decline from dharma at the beginning (the krita yuga) to adharma at the end (the kali yuga) or, in other words, a process that traces the disintegration of the human social (and spiritual) order from law to lawlessness and chaos, in which the expression of truth is inverted, and whereby the first shall be last.

At certain junctures in this cyclic process, opportunities present themselves for the increased infusion of light into a darkening world. Often these opportunities are subtle, but for those who are sufficiently sensitive and alert to the signs, the chance to assist in the promulgation of more light is extraordinary. Many people are familiar with the great infusions brought by the renowned light bearers, such as the scriptures revealed by Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad; the written legacy of the Socratic academy in Attic Greece, and the teachings of the Buddha and Lao-tzu, all of which occurred at specific times in our recorded history (assuming one accepts their historicity). In the most recent arc of our present cycle, these events of revelation were all spaced at roughly five-hundred-year intervals, and for those who understood the significance of these infusions at the time, the opportunity to maximize their purpose was exceptional. Such was the role and work of the disciples, arhats, and companions of the great light bearers.

In addition to these greater infusions or revelations, many of which were the genesis of world religions that serve as the bases for traditional cultures, there were (and are) other lesser points of opportunity for the infusion of light into the obscurity of material existence. One such opportunity occurred in New York in 1875, with the founding of the Theosophical Society; another related opportunity occurred several years later in India taking the form of a remarkable correspondence involving a resident British government official and journalist, both events being subsequently described as "experiments" by their originators, who were facilitating (by virtue of their sensitivity and vision) the opportunity then available because appropriate circumstances had coalesced at a point in the cycle. Roughly a hundred years later, another sizeable infusion of light came in the form of the hundreds of thousands of spiritually oriented youths of the 1960s (in contrast to the more numerous political activists and fun seekers), whose music, art, and practice were immediate expressions of certain principles of the primordial tradition, the religio perennis.

Finally, there is today a new and conspicuously overt expression of the esoteric, whose principal characteristic, while related to that of the 1960s, is even greater—because it has unparalleled breadth and scope across the planet. This new opportunity is the receptivity of the newest generation of our new millennium to teaching of a higher order that is related to, but more than, the dramatic occult powers and divination taught at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and exhibited by young Mr. Potter in both his apprenticeship and his exploits against the malevolent Voldemort.

Though possibly ephemeral, one needs to consider whether the Harry Potter phenomenon may be an "experiment" of the present age—another opportunity for the infusion of light. The substantial difference between this infusion and its predecessors is an enhanced receptivity for more light by literally millions of children and early teenagers in every corner of the planet who have consumed the books of J. K. Rowling (and the films made from them) with virtually unsurpassed thirst and enthusiasm. Yet this experiment, if indeed it is that, is only half completed at this point. As the next logical step in sequential order, the other and more significant half of the experiment would be to bridge the occultism of Harry Potter's world to the sacred science of higher metaphysics.

The current works of Rowling do not, in fact, teach or otherwise convey in any clear terms the higher principles of the philosophia perennis, but one can conclude that was never the objective of the books. The books convey a wonderful and interesting fictional story of the education and maturing of a young wizard who undergoes the tribulations of learning his art at Hogwarts. To the extent that this was the primary objective of the books, the author has achieved an admirable degree of success. But the books also convey other, secondary objectives, whether by the author's design or not, and they are key for the proper assimilation of esoteric knowledge.

Chief among the secondary objectives is an elucidation of the principle of the pairs of opposites—good and evil, light and darkness, selfishness and sacrifice. It may be said that this principle is common and can be found in abundant supply in the world's great myths, folktales, and fairy tales—and that is certainly true. Furthermore, one may point out that, together with ample presence of the magical and fantastic, this principle also inheres in other classics for the young (in body or heart), such as J. R. R. Tolkien's stories The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and C. S. Lewis's seven-volume Chronicles of Narnia.

However, what distinguishes J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books from these others is the clear, express, and unambiguous notion of the potential for development of the latent powers in human beings—even in Muggles. What is needed for that development is sufficient discipline and determination, set within the context of a nonempirical educational and developmental process that is based on metaphysical laws of nature and the elements. While these latent powers may be on the lower reaches of the vertical axis of higher metaphysical principles and the philosophia perennis, they are nonetheless an integral aspect of that vertical axis.

The understanding or even acceptance of such occult subjects among young readers, by virtue of the author's treatment of them in a sympathetic and gently humorous manner, is nearly always a precondition whose fulfillment may lead to further development along this path. Indeed, it may ultimately lead to understanding the higher suprarational metaphysical principles as a consequence of growth and maturity. In short, Rowling's books illustrate the graphic and undisguised conflict between what is commonly referred to as white magic and black magic, in their own terms. For many, including the world's youth, recognizing this conflict is a necessary realization before undertaking the long and arduous path to liberation from the pairs of opposites. The pairs of opposites are represented by the "outer man" and the "inner man," whose resolution occurs within at the point where these opposites coincide.

One may theorize that Rowling's reference to Cassandra Vablatsky hints at the author's understanding of a need for further and higher education for her readers. That being the case—unless Rowling herself undertakes this higher education in future works, in which she might have the graduate Harry Potter undertake the disciplines and mysteries of meditation and the study of the santana dharma while developing the suprarational faculty of intellection—it may be left to others to seize this opportunity. This, of course, is not to suggest that anyone produce a book under the fraud of a modern pseudepigrapha, but someone intent on maximizing this opportunity may well find a legitimate and suitable bridge to carry these millions of loyal followers of the exploits of Harry Potter to a new and higher metaphysical destination. In particular, associations of people who profess and promulgate the philosophia perennis need to be aware of such opportunities and to maximize them.

The overwhelming success of J. K. Rowling's work, both in print and in film, testifies to the fact that the positive response to her works is enormous, is world-wide, and numbers in the millions of readers and viewers. To state this is not to endorse a purely quantitative standard for the ultimate significance of the Harry Potter phenomenon, for unless the ground prepared by Rowling's books is planted with a commensurably qualitative spiritual influence from the center, and is subsequently nurtured by those willing to cooperate and assist in this endeavor, the phenomenon will have been only an ephemeral entertainment. The possibility of such a planting and nurturing for bringing more light to humanity, and thereby maximizing this cyclic opportunity, should be obvious. A failure to benefit the eager young audience of these books by further education in the first principles of the philosophia perennis that will lead to a higher understanding would be a missed opportunity. Not all such opportunities are taken, however, or even perceived.

For individuals who do perceive them, any effort undertaken toward maximizing these opportunities does nothing less than lend support to the work of certain bodhisattvas and all who actively assist them in their work. For maximizing opportunities inherent in cycles is in large part what that work is, examples being that which was done in 1875 and again nearly 100 years later. Those who undertake and guide this work always remain vigilant for the next such opportunity of the cyclic dynamic to appear and are neither sentimental nor conformist in the expenditure of their energies in taking the fullest advantage of the hour, for they have no energy to waste.

The new and emergent form arising from such an opportunity will invariably seem unlikely and may at first appear bizarre or foolish or trivial, but that is because we are comfortable with what we know and with what is generally acceptable. New seed sprouts and grows in the decay of the old, each on a corresponding and coequal but opposite mission. Where the new sprout promises to generate more light in the obscurity of darkness, in addition to all other consequences, that light will also serve to unfog the future.

William W. Quinn is a resident of Phoenix, Arizona, where he practices law. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1981. His doctoral dissertation, which dealt with the philosophia perennis and its relation to traditional culture, was published as The Only Tradition by SUNY Press in 1997.