Hue – the ancient imperial city of Vietnam.

Visit the Imperial Citadel, including the Forbidden Purple City, and an emperor’s tomb.

 

Dragon boat cruise on the Perfume River to visit Thien Mu pagoda, an active Buddhist monastery with its origins dating back to 1601.

 

Bike hike.

Hanoi and Halong Bay - Vietnam

My first visit to a communist country and I must say that I am impressed with the way the people have overcome their hardships experienced during the war. They seem happy with their lot and nobody that I have met was complaining. Of course we find the haves and have-nots but that we find everywhere. The main thing is the people have found their identity and are proud of whom they are. They seem to be very much aware of the fact that they must survive as a group and therefore are nearer to the earth than we tend to be. A lot of people seem to be making a living tilling the soil and working in the rice paddies; a fact that is brought out in their food.

Everywhere we go I find people and places with a history we know nothing about; in some cases the history is older and much more glorious than our own. The land itself is ancient.

AUM, OM, THE WORD, THE VOICE OF SILENCE

HINDU Origin of AUM / OM

Found first in the Vedic scriptures of Hinduism, Aum has been seen as the first manifestation of the unmanifest Brahman (the single Divine Ground of Hinduism) that resulted in the phenomenal universe. Essentially, all the cosmos stems from the vibration of the sound 'Aum' in Hindu cosmology. Indeed, so sacred is it that it is prefixed and suffixed to all Hindu mantras and incantations. It is undoubtedly the most representative symbol of Hinduism.

Use of this sound in rituals, may have originally started by imitating a similar territorial call of the male tiger.

The OM symbol's left part, which is like a figure 3, is also a component of some Devanagari letters, where it means "this syllable has no initial consonant".

A.U.M. replaced by the O.M.

We come now to the consideration of a subject which always proves exceedingly difficult to students:  The nature of the WORD, the A.U.M., and its later developments, the O.M. and the Sound.  Much confusion exists as to its significance or the necessity for its use.  The phase of its recognition through which we are now passing is a purely exoteric one of accustoming the general public to the fact of its existence.  This has been brought about in three ways:

1. Through the constant use in all the Christian Churches of the word "Amen," which is a western corruption of the A.U.M.  The A.U.M. is here the lowest aspect of the originating Sound.

2. Through the emphasis laid in Masonry upon the Lost Word, thus subtly drawing the attention of humanity to the O.M., the Sound of the second aspect, the Soul.

3. Through the growing emphasis laid by the many occult groups throughout the world upon the use of the O.M., its frequent use by these groups in public, and by those intent upon meditation.

The soundest approach is that of the Masonic tradition, because it deals primarily with the world of meaning and [Page 52] with a phase of the esoteric teaching.  The use of the Amen in the ritual of the Christian Church will eventually be discouraged, because it is basically a materialistic affirmation, being usually regarded by the average churchgoer as setting the seal of divine approval upon his demand to the Almighty for protection, or for the supply of his physical necessities; all this is, therefore, related to the life of desire, of aspiration, of dualism and of request.  It involves the attitude of giver and recipient.

The A.U.M. and the Amen are both of them an expression in sound of the principle of active intelligent substance in the divine manifestation, the third aspect, and have served human need in that phase of material and form development.  I refer here also to the development of mind or of the mental form.  The personality as a whole, when perfected and brought under control of the soul, is the "Word made flesh."

The mass of aspirants and of disciples are today learning the meaning of the O.M., which is not the Word made flesh, but the Word released from form, and expressing itself as soul-spirit and not as body-soul-spirit.  It might, therefore, be said that:

1.       The A.U.M. (note that I separate each aspect of this triple sound) brings the soul-spirit aspect down on to the physical plane and anchors it there by the force of its outgoing vibration.  Using a symbol to make my meaning clear, it is like "a strong wind that pins a man against a wall and makes free effort difficult."  It vivifies form; it intensifies the hold of matter upon the soul; it builds around the soul a confining prison—a prison of the senses.  It is the "sound of enchantment," the sound that is the source of glamour and of maya; it is the great beguiling and deceptive energy, the note of the involutionary arc.  In it are hid the secret of evil or matter, the uses of form, first as a prison, then as a training ground and as a field of experience, and finally as the expression for the manifestation of a Son of God.

2.       The O.M. rightly sounded, releases the soul from the realm of glamour and of enchantment.  It is the sound of [Page 53] liberation, the great note of resurrection and of the raising of humanity to the Secret Place of the Most High when all other Words and sounds have failed.  It is not a triple sound as is the A.U.M., but a dual sound, significant of the relation of spirit and soul, and of life and consciousness.  This lost Word, symbolic of the loss in the three worlds (typified by the degrees of the Blue Lodges in Masonry) must be recovered and is in process of discovery today.  The mystics have sought after it; the Masons have preserved the tradition of its existence; the disciples and initiates of the world must demonstrate its possession.

3.       The SOUND is the sole expression of the Ineffable Name, the secret appellation of the One in Whom we live and move and have our being, and Who is known to the Great White Lodge through this name.  Remember always that name and form are synonymous terms in the occult teaching, and these two words hold the secret of manifestation.  The goal of the initiate is identification with all forms of the divine life, so that he can know himself to be an integral part of that Whole and can tune in on all states of divine awareness, knowing for himself (and not just theoretically) that they are also his own states of awareness.  He can then penetrate into the divine arcana of knowledge, share in the divine omnipresence and—at will—express the divine omniscience and prepare himself to manifest in full consciousness the divine omnipotence.

I am using words which are futile to convey the underlying meaning of the Word.  Understanding can only be arrived at when a man lives the Word, hearing its soundless Sound and breathing it forth in a vital life-giving breath to others.

The masses are hearing the sound of the A.U.M. and, in their higher brackets, are finding that A.U.M. the expression of something from which they seek release.  The aspirants and disciples of the World are hearing the O.M. and in their personal lives the A.U.M. and the O.M. are in conflict.  This may represent a new idea to you, but it conveys an idea of an eternal fact.  It may help you to gain an understanding [Page 54] of this phase if I point out for you that for this first group the O.M. can be portrayed in the following symbol as expressing the material M nature whereas the second group can be portrayed by the symbol m expressive of the soul enveloped in matter.  You will see, therefore, how the teaching leads man progressively onward and how the occult science brings man in touch with great mental reversals and divine paradoxes.  For aeons the Word of the soul and the Sound of spiritual reality are lost.  Today, the Word of the soul is being found again, and with that finding the little self is lost in the glory and the radiance of the divine Self.

This discovery is consummated at the time of the third initiation.  The initiate and the Master, along with those of higher rank who are approaching identification with Shamballa, are steadily and ever more clearly hearing the Sound emanating from the Central Spiritual Sun and penetrating all forms of divine life upon our planet—via our Planetary Logos Who hears it with clarity and with understanding—the Sound of the lowest syllable of the Ineffable Name of the One in Whom all the Planetary Logoi live and move and have Their Being, for They are centres in the LIFE which is expressing itself through the medium of a solar system.

You can see how little use there is in my enlarging further upon this.  Its sole usefulness is to give an expanding impulse to the consciousness of the disciple and to stir his imagination (the seed of the intuition), so that even whilst occupied in expressing the M and then the m, he will be reaching out after the Sound.

Earlier I pointed out that the sound of the A.U.M., the sound of the O.M. and the SOUND itself are all related to vibration and to its differing and varied effects.  The secret of the Law of Vibration is progressively revealed as people learn to sound forth the Word in its three aspects.  Students would also do well to ponder on the distinction between the breath and the Sound, between the process of breathing and of creating directed vibratory activity.  The one is related to Time and the other to Space and they are distinct from each other; and (as the Old Commentary puts it) "the Sound, the [Page 55] final and yet initiating Sound, concerns that which is neither Time nor Space; it lies outside the manifested ALL, the Source of all that is and yet is naught." (No thing.  A.A.B.)

There are, therefore, great points of tension from which the Sacred Word, in its major aspects, goes forth.  Let me list them for you:

1.       The creative point of tension—a tension achieved by a planetary Logos when He responds to the Sound of the Ineffable Name and breathes it forth in His turn in three great Sounds which made one Sound on His Own plane of expression, thus creating the manifested world, the impulse towards the unfoldment of consciousness, and the influence of life itself.  This is the Sound.

2.       Seven points of tension on the downward or involutionary arc; these produce the seven planets, the seven states of consciousness, and the expression of the seven ray impulses.  This constitutes the sevenfold A.U.M. of which the Ageless Wisdom takes note.  It is related to the effect of spirit or life upon substance, thus originating form and creating the prison of the divine life.

3.       The A.U.M. itself or the Word made flesh; this creates finally a point of tension in the fourth kingdom in nature, at which point the evolutionary cycle becomes possible and the first dim note of the O.M. can be faintly heard.  In the individual man this point is reached when the personality is an integrated and functioning whole and the soul is beginning to control it.  It is an accumulative tension arrived at through many lives.  This process is expressed in the Masters' Archives as follows:

You must remember that these symbols are an attempt on my part to translate ancient signatures in modern occidental type.  The only one which is the same in all languages is, esoterically, the A.U.M.

4. Then comes a point of tension from which the man eventually achieves liberation from the three worlds and stands as a free soul; he is then a point within the circle—the point indicating the point of tension from which he now works, and the circle the sphere of his self-initiated activity.

I need not carry the story further; from tension to tension the initiate passes just as do all human beings, aspirants, disciples and the lower grades of initiates; from one expansion of consciousness to another they go until the third initiation is undergone and points of tension (qualified by intension and purpose) supersede all previous efforts and the will aspect begins to control.

Here, briefly, is a fresh slant upon the familiar theme of the Word—a theme preserved in some form by all the world religions but a theme which, like all else, has been so materialised that it is the task of the Hierarchy to restore the knowledge of its meaning, of its threefold application and its involutionary and evolutionary significances.  Students would do well to remember that its sounding forth vocally upon the physical plane means little.  The important factors are to sound it silently, inaudibly and within the head; then, having done so, to hear it reverberate there and to recognise that this self-initiated Sound—breathed forth from a point of tension—is a part of the original SOUND as it takes form as a Word.  When a man perfectly expresses the A.U.M., he can then sound the O.M. with effectiveness from progressive points of tension, until the third initiation.  Then the effect of the O.M. is such that the personality as a separate identity disappears, the soul emerges in all its glory, and the first faint sound of the originating SOUND breaks upon the ear of the transfigured initiate.  This is the Voice referred to in the Biblical account of the Transfiguration.  This Voice says, "This is my beloved Son."  The initiate registers the fact that he has been accepted by Shamballa and has made his first contact with the Planetary Logos, the Hierophant, the Initiator at the third initiation, just as the Christ, the Master of all the Masters, is the Initiator and the Hierophant at the first two initiations. [THE RAYS AND THE INITIATIONS, pp. 52-56]

Read more at: http://edgeba.webs.com/aumomtheword.htm

THE DEVIL MYTH

The Devil is the patron genius of theological Christianity. This dogma of the Devil and redemption seems to be based upon two passages on the New Testament: “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the Devil” [1 John 3.5]. “And there was war in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the Dragon; and the Dragon fought, and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great Dragon was cast out, that old serpent called the Devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world” [Revelation 12.7-9]. Let us, then, explore the ancient theogonies, in order to ascertain what was meant by these remarkable expressions.

The first inquiry is whether the term Devil, as here used, actually represents the malignant [evil] deity of the Christians, or an antagonistic, blind force—the dark side of nature. By the latter we are not to understand the manifestation of any evil principle that is malum in se, but only the shadow of the Light, so to say. The theories of the kabbalists treat of it as a force which is antagonistic, but at the same time essential to the vitality, evolution, and vigor of the good principle. Plants would perish in their first state of existence if they were kept exposed to a constant sunlight; the night alternating with the day is essential to their healthy growth and development. Goodness, likewise, would speedily cease to be such, were it not alternated by its opposite. In human nature, evil denotes the antagonism of matter to the spiritual, and each is accordingly purified thereby. In the cosmos, the equilibrium must be preserved; the operation of the two contraries produces harmony, like the centripetal and centrifugal forces, which are necessary to each other, if one is arrested, the action of the other will immediately become destructive.

[Everything that helps your evolution or helps you on in life is good or spiritual to you and everything that obstructs you evolution, or prevents you from going forward in life, is evil to you….Also, “everything is relative” and something that is evil to you might be spiritual to your younger brother because he has to experience something to be able to learn the lesson which you do not want to repeat. When you have learned everything a certain religion can teach you and the time has come for you to learn more of the truth than it will be evil for you to stay trapped in that religion and highly spiritual to move on, but not so for your younger brother. ..E.B.] 

This personification, denominated Satan, is to be contemplated from three different planes: the Old Testament, the Christian Fathers, and the ancient gentile attitude. He is supposed to have been represented by the Serpent in the Garden of Eden; nevertheless, in the Hebrew sacred writings the epithet [description or nickname] of Satan in nowhere applied to that or any other variety of snake.

The temptation, or probation, of Jesus is the most dramatic occasion in which Satan appears. As if to prove the designation of Apollo, Aesculapius, and Bacchus, Diobolos, or son of Zeus, he is also styled Diabolos, or accuser. The scene of the probation was the wilderness. In the desert around the Jordan and Dead Sea were the abodes of the “sons of the prophets” and the Essenes [Pliny, Nat. Hist. 5.16]. These ascetics used to subject their neophytes to probation, [an initiation], analogous to the tortures of the Mithraic rites, and the temptation of Jesus was evidently a scene of this character. But the Diabolos, accuser Devil, is in this instance evidently no malignant principle, but one exercising discipline. In this sense the terms Devil and Satan are repeatedly employed [see 1 corinthians 5.5; 2 corithians 11.14; 1 Timothy 1. 20]. 

The story of Satan in the Book of Job is of a Similar character. He is introduced among the “Sons of God,” presenting themselves before the Lord as in a mystic initiation. The Lord counsels with Satan and gives him carte blanche to test the fidelity of Job. The latter is stripped of his wealth and family and smitten with a loathsome disease. In his extremity, his wife doubts his integrity, and exhorts him to worship God, as he is about to die. His friends all beset him with accusations, and finally the Lord, the chief hierophant Himself, taxes him with the uttering of words in which there is no wisdom and with contending with the Almighty. In all these scenes there is no such malignant diabolism as is supposed to characterize ‘the adversary of souls.”

The allegory of Job, if correctly understood, will give the key to this whole matter of the Devil, his nature and his office and will substantiate our declarations. Let no pious individual take exception to this designation of allegory. Myth was the favourite and universal method of teaching in archaic times. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, [Corinthians 10.11.] declared that the entire story of Moses and the Israelites was Typical, and in his Epistle to the Galatians asserted that the whole story of Abraham, his two wives, and their sons was an allegory. [Galatians 4.22, 24] Indeed, it is a theory amounting to certitude that the historical books of the Old Testament were of the same character. We take no extraordinary liberty with the Book of Job when we give it the same designation which Paul gave the stories of Abraham and Moses.

But perhaps we ought to explain the ancient use of allegory and symbolism. The symbol expressed some abstract quality of Deity which the Laity could easily apprehend. Its higher sense terminated there, and it was employed by the multitude thenceforth as an image in idolatrous rites. But the allegory was reserved for the inner sanctuary, when only the elect were admitted. Hence the rejoinder of Jesus when his disciples interrogated him because he spoke to the multitude in parables. “To you,” said he, “it is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but to them it is not given. For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance; but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath” [Matthew 13.11-12].

The whole allegory of Job is an open book to him who understands the picture language of Egipt as it is recorded in the Book of the Dead…. Initiation into the Mysteries, as every intelligent person knows, was a dramatic representation of scenes in the underworld. [spiritual world] such was the allegory of Job….which is a complete representation of ancient initiation and the trails which generally precede this grandest of all ceremonies…..

It will be perceived from these extended illustrations that the Satan of the Old Testament, the Diabolos or Devil of the Gospels and Apostolic Epistles, were but the antagonistic principle matter, necessarily incident to it, [materialism] and not wicked in the moral sense of the term. The Jews, coming from the Persian country, brought with them the doctrine of two principles. They could not bring the Avesta, for it was not written. But they—we mean the Asidians [Chasidium] and Pharsi—invented Ormazd with the secret name of Jehovah, and Ahriman with the name of the gods of the land, Satan of the Hittites and Diabolos, or rather Diobolos, of the Greeks. The early Church—at least the Pauline part of it—the Gnostics, and their successors further refined their ideas; and the Catholic Church adopted and adapted them, meanwhile putting their promulgators to the sword.
ISIS UNVEILED by Helena p. Blavatsky, pp221-230.

In the last analysis, and from the standpoint of the Hierarchy, the present conflict between the personality of humanity (expressing the material values as the dominating factor in life experience) and the soul of humanity (expressing the spiritual values as the dominating factor in human affairs) is identical with the conflict which takes place within a human being's consciousness when he has reached the stage of discipleship and is faced with the problem of the pairs of opposites. This conflict is expressed in many ways according to the point of view and the background of thought. It can be called the conflict between Christ and anti-Christ but not as those who usually employ those phrases understand them. No one nation is expressive of the spirit of anti-Christ, just as no one nation expresses the spirit of Christ. Christ and anti-Christ are the dualities of spirituality and materialism, both in the individual and in humanity as a whole. Or you can speak of God and the Devil with the same basic implications. For what is man himself but an expression of divinity (God) in a material form (the Devil), and what is matter but the medium through which divinity must eventually manifest in all its glory? But when that takes place, matter will no longer be a controlling factor but simply a medium of expression. [THE EXTERNALISATION OF THE HIERARCHY, P137]

Read more at:  http://edgeba.webs.com/thedevilmyth.htm