Theos-Talk Archives (November 1994 Message tl00067)

This is by Eldon Tucker

       Between getting sick, looking for a new job, and
having a new baby in the house, I've not been able to
keep up with all the activity on 'theos-l' the past
couple of weeks. I'd like to jump back in with a handful
of reponses to various comments made.

Jerry Hejka-Ekins:

1.     When you say that private schools "empty the
schools of everyone but the minorities and the
underprivileged" you're making a good argument for the
voucher system, where the public dollars that minorities
are entitled to can be used to "vote" which schools are
best. Privatization has often produced reduced costs and
increased benefits to the public in other areas, why not
also in education? Has the existence of private
universities like Stanford or Harvard hurt public
universities like UC Berkeley or UCLA?

2.     I agree when you say that ethical decision making
has more to do with gaining insight into our own actions
and decisions, as well as those of others. But I would
also say that the important insight is the clarity of
the moment as the decisions are made, and not merely one
of retrospect.

3.     Your mention of the "return good for good, justice
for evil" passage from the Mahatma Letters was good. The
important thing with justice to remember is that it is
what is right in the sense of the overall good, and not
a pseudonym for personal vengeance.

4.     Regarding focus groups and Pete Wilson, the idea of
focus groups is not new. I learned about it as one of
several empirical research methods when studying for my
MBA in the early 1970's. The intent is to interview a
small number of "typical" people in depth, as a group,
to uncover information that you may not have thought of
otherwise. When doing something like a questionnaire,
you're limited to what questions you choose in advance,
and there's not a lot of interaction with the people
polled, even if you first do a trial questionnaire
before the primary one. This technique is used in
advertising, politics, and even, I'm sure, by defense
lawyers.

5.     When you speak of the current inactivity of
Theosophists as compared to its past, I think we first
need to define what is theosophical activity, and where
and how it is being done. Is there anything special or
different that Theosophists should be doing, or are they
just supposed to be "mysteriously wise" people doing
ordinary activities of the day, including education,
social reform, business, healing, science, etc.?

Martin Euser & Aki Korhonen:

1.     I'm also interested in what you call sacred
geometry. I'm involved in Point Loma Publications, and
we publish all of Gordon Plummer's books on the subject.
(TPH sold the remaining stock of "The Mathematics of the
Cosmic Mind" to us.)  Some of his books are illustrated
with hand-drawings of the Lessor Maze, based on all the
platonic solids being formed within the icosahedron. I'd
like to nicely render and produce as postscript figures
some illustrations of the Lessor Maze for future
reprints. Last year, I posted to the 'theos-l' archives
the definition of the Lessor Maze in IGES format, and it
could be rotated and drawn with the suitable CAD
program. Do either of you have time to look at it
sometime?

Paul Johnson:

1.     Regarding meditation, the Zen Buddhist approach
seems particularly good to me. You meditate with your
eyes half-open. The world is included in the meditation.
The higher faculties are awakened while you are still
rooted in the world. There is no sense of "going
somewhere else for treasures and taking them back here"
but rather of "the descent of divinity". The emphasis is
on a rootedness of outer and inner life, rather than a
duality of "that place" and "this place". And I feel the
result is a more solid foundation of spiritual
consciousness in ones everyday life.

2.     You mention the "chicken and egg" problem of
enlightenment and loving deeds. Whenever there is a
cyclic situation, where each part of the cycle depends
on the other parts of the cycle, you cannot "break into"
the cycle by starting it at any particular point. The
cycle must be stepped into, as though through a laya-
center, where it is simply engaged in its entirety.
Because by definition you cannot be the "egg" if not the
"chicken", and the "chicken" if not the "egg", you have
to *already be, but not yet realize it.* If (a) you
cannot be enlightened without loving deeds nor able to
do loving deeds unless enlightened, and (b) you will
attain that state, then (c) you must already have the
state, but just not realize it.

Arthur Patterson & Astrea:

1.     Arthur mentions being sick of narcissism and Astrea
of our disdain for physical work and armchair Theosophy.
We come to an important, recurring question regarding
Theosophy: What is it good for? What do we do as
Theosophists to benefit the world? Does someone outside
ourselves have a social agenda that we must follow or be
branded apathetic, or do we each seek our own way to
make a unique contribution to the world? Does a flower
do good to simply grow in a meadow and look beautiful,
or is it wrong for not doing something more? I would say
that we come back to a question of ethics. The question
would be are we doing what is right with our time and
energy? To really benefit the world, we need to fully
manifest our own unique contributions to life, and not
be pawns in someone else's agenda.

Jerry Schueler:

1.     You mention that having a strong sense of ethics
may lead to someone becoming judgmental. While I agree
that the judgmental element is generally wrong, we may
need to qualify it. There could be gratuitous judgments,
and those that are a necessary part of conducting life.
If you are a hiring manager, you may have to judge
applicants based on honesty, intelligence, and
capability; you certainly don't need to judge strangers
on the street accordingly. A judgment is saying how that
other person relates to oneself, to one's life, and not
whom and what that person is in himself.

2.     I would consider ethics as a form of consciousness,
that starts off as monotone (unconscious), then with
harsh, rigid rules (black-and-white), then with
increasing refinement of shades of gray. The shades of
gray come from the exercise of ethical awareness in
situations, and not from passing judgment on others.
Comparing ethical consciousness to thought, the monotone
phase is having no idea on a subject, the black-and-
white phase is having a rigid opinion, and the shades-
of-gray is having subtle thoughts about a subject. We
can freshly rethink our ideas anew with each situation
just as we can our ethical rules. Our ethics need be no
more rigid that our opinions.

3.     I agree that there is many key ideas found in the
subject of chaos that could add new symbolic richness to
theosophical thought. There are a lot of pure, simple
yet deep symbols, like the bifurcation curve, that
enrich our simpler symbols like the circle, PI, the dot
in the circle, etc. We need to remember, though, that we
are still dealing with mathematics and mathematical
symbolism, and not the living things themselves. A
particular Monad, coming into being in a certain way,
takes on attributes, subject to mathematical measurement
and quantification. These attributes did not create that
Monad, but are simply those that the Monad is utilizing
in manifesting itself. Nonlinear systems and mathematics
that accounts for feedback provides an excellent way to
model certain aspects of life better that other
mathematical tools at hand, but this modeling is
descriptive and not causative.

4.     I agree that although the planes of consciousness
are continuous, there are discrete places on them to
visit, the Globes, and that a "quantum jump" is
necessary through a laya-center to go from one to the
next. I wonder though about you speaking of "HPB's Gupta
Vidya Model". My impression from earlier discussions was
that the Gupta Vidya Model was yours, based upon HPB but
taken further in your own way, according to your
experiences and insights. (In a different way that I'd
myself take the Globe-Chain Model.) Are you now saying
that everything in the GV Model is strictly based upon
HPB (and/or GDP), or does it include some of your own
thought as well?