I’ll go straight to your question of how buddhi and manas are interdependent:

Buddhi informs Manas with wisdom - (pure) Manas is necessary for Buddhi to express itself (at least for human beings).

Manas without buddhi is quite possible (not even rare) - but the result is dry knowledge instead of wisdom. I’m always reminded of the wisdom trinity (appropriate for this thread): in Buddhism, but theosophy as well:

Wisdom needs mind and love. Each without the other two is incomplete. Love without mind is not wisdom, and is prone to mistakes out of over enthusiasm. Mind without love is not wisdom either. Wisdom without either love or mind is not conceivable.

I suggest that extremes in pleasure or pain cause degeneration within the cellular tissue, thereby functioning as an age accelerant. Excessive pain causes active cellular degeneration (atrophy) and excessive pleasure causes passive cellular degeneration (atrophy).

Excessive pain may be medically defined as psychological and/or physiological pain which actively inhibits functional bodily activity (such as a toothache, headache, earache, etc. which is so bad that one can’t drive a car, read a book or take showers), whereas excessive pleasure may be medically defined as psychological and/or physiological pleasure which passively inhibits functional bodily activity (such as narcotic usage that inhibits driving a car, reading a book or taking showers).

Pursuers of happiness (over and above sorrow) simply enhance their own predisposition for mental and/or physical illness, insofar as they tend to upset their own natural pain/pleasure cycles through an imbalanced assertion of psychological and/or physiological self-manipulation.

“my pragmatic wife often replies”

she is a Taurus? or am i wrong. sounds like an earth sign person.

Back semi on topic.

In general i don’t think it is all that meaning full to think much about either buddhi or atman, as i think we simply have no clue about them. one of the things i like about the ideas we find in ts writings is that they feel natural to me. we see a structure that has some sort of rationality to them (at least i think so.) One simple thing we can take away from them is that life follows patterns and that we, as individuals, are in no way outside of those patterns. there may be some wiggle room, (created by personal efforts,) but on the whole, we are in this together and are basically in the same states more or less.

if there is truth to this, than i think it is silly to try to jump ahead too much. we are products of nature and are therefore constrained by the situations currently in place. if the earth is in such in such a state, than our state as part of that earthly system is also in a corresponding state- does that make sense. in other words, only when nature has evolved to a certain point will we have first hand experience of atma and buddhi in their fullness. if ts structures are truthful, this will not happen for many, yugas-when we find ourselves in the 6th and 7th rounds of this chain/time period.

Think of it this way: If we are separated individuals at the moment when buddhi manifests, that means that at a very elementary level we are all different. What seems fascinating to me, though, is that although we are all (in)dividuals, we all participate/interact in the in all the same realms of reality. Although different in content, we all have the same constitutional framework. Maybe it’s that familiarity at the meta-level which makes us feel so close to one another when we somewhat lift out of our particularities.

I think the first fundamental question is whether we truly have groups of 3’s here. I’m afraid we’re falling into the problem of the silly adage, “people die in threes” so when one or two people die, we start hunting for a third so as to fit the pattern. So, how do we know when we’ve got, as Chris states, a “true trinity”? I think starting off with making sure we’ve at least got an acceptable set of three is a good first step.

Outside of 19th and early 20th centuries Orientalist scholarship, I have not, to my recollection, ever encountered a reference to the imfamous “trimurti”. I wonder if it was completely fabricated by Orientalists or was fed to them by an informant because they were explicitly asked for it.

Except as a side character in Puranic/mythological accounts, Brahma is pretty much irrelevent in Hindu thought. Brahman, as the Advaita Vedantic gound of all being, is a different matter entirely (except etymologically). Otherwise, there is a long history of often violent sectarian conflict between Vaishnavas (Vishnu/Krishna devotees) and Shaivas-Shaktas (Shiva or Shakti(goddess) devotees–who have a equally long history of teaming up)). So what do you get when you smash together one irrelevent figure with two violently clashing sects? Nothing! Absolutely nothing but a figmentary construction.

And for that matter, I’m sure this whole “creater, sustainer, destroyer” interpretation was either some blithe explanation given to the silly Brits or was an entirely projected interpretation drawn from other Max Muller-esque theories of an solar cult underlying all religions. By my tone, I’m sure you’ve figured out my feelings regaring them.

I find Blavatsky’s defensive positioning quite fascinating, though. She positions herself as being better informed than the Orientalist scholars in saying, “explained quite incorrectly by the Orientalists.” Further, she asserts that these trinities not only have the same symbolic meaning, but that they all derive from one sourse, which is the Esoteric teachings of which she is the sole direct knower. So, all knowledge is derivative of Blavatsky’s secret knowledge…how convenient.

One note I want to make is on Shiva. I take this quote from http://www.shivashakti.com/shiva.htm , but it is a pretty well-established position:

Shiva is fivefold, his five faces being Ishana, Tatpurusha, Aghora, Vamadeva and Sadjyojata, and eightfold (see puja below) as the eight directions.

The FIVE faces is important. According to various tantric schools of Shaivism, they are said to be facing the four cardinal directions and straight up and all be speaking at the same time. Followers of Shiva listening to different faces/mouths found the five major schools of Hindu tantra. This is a way in which some tantric teahers explain the solidarity yet difference among Shaiva tantrikas. So, where this “three faces of shiva” comes from, I don’t know, but I certainly can say it is contested from some strong reasons.

Finally, I want to address the Christian trinity. I have always enjoyed the explanation of the trinity posed by Saint Augustine and later adopted by Simone Weil, that the trinity is like a lover, the beloved and the loving. Take one part out of these three, and the other two lose their identity. In other words, take away the beloved, and the lover is no longer a lover and no longer any loving, etc. What is fascinating to me is that this syllogistic formula is used as the primary argument throughout Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamikakarika (Verses on the Root of the Middle Way). He uses the triplet doer-action-thing acted upon (or maker-making-made) to demonstrate co-dependent origination, or the Buddhist truth that no thing has independent identity, but arises contingently from other contingent things. How would this be applicable to Blavatsky’s esoteric philosophy? We know the manas is dependent on the buddhi to exist, but what if the reverse is also true?