Theos-Talk Archives (January 1995 Message tl00253)

This is by Eldon Tucker

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Keith Price:

Regarding your question about if Brenda and I did any
spiritual practices, meditations, etc., while having our
recent baby (Geoffrey, born October 26), I'd have to say no.
It was just life as usual for us, except that it was a "at-
risk" pregnancy with Brenda having to go on bed rest for a
few months. Then she had to carefully watch her diet and
take her blood sugar readings a half-dozen times a day; the
doctor wanted her on insulin but she did not want to take
it.

With our first child, Galina, now five, there was one thing
that we--or rather I--did. At or around the time of Galina's
conception, I was thinking of the type of child it would be
nice to have. I thought of a girl similar to what she's
growing up to be. Whether there was some "connection" made
attracting a particular person into birth, or whether my
expectations translated into how I helped bring her up, and
thus were a self-fulfilling prophesy, is a matter of
conjecture.

I'd glad to see your outspoken statements in opposition to
the "politically correct" movement, and other forms of
thought control that our modern society would impose upon
us. The fact that we've made it into Theosophy at all shows
that we've learned, to a degree, to free ourselves of
external attempts to control our thinking! It is wrong to
rewrite our books according to some political agenda; we
certainly don't need censorship.

Although art is as important as science, religion, and
philosophy, we have to be careful about boxing ourselves in
with a small number of tightly-defined categories. I'd give
due respect to any creative, challenging area of study and
activity, and not try to find a magical number of three,
four, or seven activities to categorize everything into.

A few people on this list go to T.S. Pasadena, and they have
a Theosophical Art COOP (called TACO). Perhaps someone
involved with it could tell us what it's about. Are you in
it, Doreen?

Regarding philosophy, I'd describe it not as a search for
meaning, but rather as a love of wisdom. This love leads us
to become seekers, then sources of creativity and teachers
in our own right. I think people get the wrong idea
regarding what philosophy is about, and picture it as an
empty intellectual exercise in logic, where people make
various assertions, then see what logically follows, in
different models of describing life.

A final comment concerns pornography and censorship. While I
don't agree with censorship, I'd want "truth in labeling."
This gives individuals, and parents, the ability to pick and
choose materials by content, and limit their exposure to
materials they'd rather avoid, without the necessity of
censorship. Plato, I'd guess, would disagree with me; he
proposed that society censor unsuitable materials for the
good of the people.

I would not describe, myself, pornography as having a
negative spiritual effect. I'd rather say that it stimulates
various desires and attachments which we then have to work
out. The psychological and psychical energies tapped into
are intense, and may pull us in a different direction in
life that is good for us. If we don't deal with the energies
while alive, we have an extremely frustrated kamaloka before
us; and we're seeding our future karma, predetermining lives
to come. How much of our creativity and life energies and
time do we want to tie up with sexuality in the future?
There are a number of archetypal energies that we can tap
into, each as strong and gripping as the sexual. We don't,
I'd say, lose any of the intensity of life by tapping into
them instead.

The basic energy behind sexuality is the primal urge to have
offspring, to create, to reproduce or express oneself in the
physical plane. The most basic form of self-reproduction is
to have children. There are higher forms, including creating
great works of art, composing deeply-moving music, writing
books that are a font of wisdom, and touching and
brightening the dark, gloomy lives of others about us! The
energy to express the higher on the physical plane comes out
in sexual desire, if that is the only way, but it is not
sexual per se.

I would be against the approach of using sexual practices
for occult purposes. Using sexual arousal to generate
energy, then attempting to convert it to a different form,
would, I'd suggest, not be useful, but would rather tend to
backfire and create unexpected and undesired results. A
better approach is to develop areas of life, activities,
that bring alive the same energy levels, intensity, and
excitement, and allow kundalini to express itself directly
in those other ways. When kundalini comes out in a sexual
form, I'd consider it "tainted," and that coloring would
make it unsuitable for other uses.