Theos-Talk Archives (October 1993 Message tl00138)

The importance of impersonality is stressed in theosophical literature.
But what is it? It is not *non-personality*, it does not make one cold,
distant, aloof, disinterested, non-related to other people.

We can be as warm, friendly, out-going, connected to other people as
anyone else, but be impersonal at the same time. Impersonality is not to
be achieved by trying to wipe out the personal in life, it is not
created by *negation*. It is rather a higher form of awareness that we
can be in, it's a matter of awareness, of focus, of where within we are
centered, not of doing away with the lower and replacing it with the
higher.

One method of training that we are taught is to avoid self-defense, to
avoid self-justification, to not respond to attacks on us. This is
because to respond from the standpoint of the personality, which is the
part of us that feels hurt, offended, mistreated, is to continue in the
habit of centering our consciousness in it.

A sign of functioning in the impersonal is to be unaware of your
personal benefit, your reward or gain, as you make decisions in life.
Always thinking of what is right in the overall sense, it just would not
occur to you to act and choose things to your benefit at the cost of
others.

The general sense of what is right and true in a situation is
all you think of; you do not self-consciously view things from the
standpoint of yourself seeking benefit from an external world, what is
seen is just the situation and your participation in it.

Your standpoint is from the higher triad, Atman-Buddhi-Manas, a
formless point of view, where you see and interact with the situation
that you are in, but the fact that you are also acting in and through a
personality, through a form on a plane of forms, does not drive your
decision-making, is not your primary focus of consciousness, is a form
of perpherial awareness rather than the part of you that is center
stage.

It would just not occur to you to get mad when someone cuts you off in
traffic. It would not occur to you to keep quiet about something, in
selling your house, that you should tell the buyer, because it would be
right, but would cause the sell to be called off. And it would not occur
to you to respond in anger, or to counterattack someone, should you be
called a stupid fool!

It's not that you tell yourself to be good, to be unselfish, to not
feel anger when you do, it's rather that you are in an entirely
different place within where you do not respond from that part of you,
where your reaction to the world, your seat of consciousness, your
karmic response to life, is a step removed.

Taken from this standpoint, the good of the whole is what you
naturally see, and it is what interests you, what captures your
attention, what you interact with in the world. You live a life of
service because you see the great benefit to others that you can
provide. And you are naturally a selfless, impersonal server, a
benefactor of humanity. It's the natural thing to do.

                                     Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com)