Theos-Talk Archives (February 1995 Message tl00058)

Eight Various Comments -- Eldon Tucker

(To Dr. Bain, Elisabeth T., Nicholas W., Paul Gillingwater,
Lewis L., Jerry Hejka-Ekins, Keith Price, and Liesel D.)

Dr. Bain:

If I remember right, the original purpose of the T.S., as an
organization, was to bring Eastern philosophy to the west.
The three objects were formulated later. Early on, there was
much talk of the Masters and their work. After the false
charges against the T.S. and the now-debunked SPR Report on
faking phenomena at Adyar, HPB was compelled to keep a low
profile, and the E.S. was formed to allow her to continue
her work in the T.S. in a more underground form. This was
all in the 1880's.

The T.S. was but one project by two Masters, intended to do
a specific work to affect Western thought. The other work
that they might do, and the work of all the other Masters,
is another matter. As a specific project, it can be changed
at any time to keep responsive to its primary need. I'd say
that the primary need is not in the three objects, per se,
and the objects don't establish a fixed blueprint for its
operation. I'd say the primary need that the T.S. fulfills
is the greater good, which may change over the years since
it was founded.

The T.S. can have its importance overstated at times. I
would not put it on the level of the guiding impulse for
this 2,160 year period, the "Age of Aquarius," but rather
consider it is one of many participants in that impulse. The
impulse exists, regardless of what the T.S. may do, but the
T.S. can help fulfill it, if its membership doesn't become
too self-centered.

----

You may be right when you say that we speak in the west of
God as "he" because of our bias to think as men being
naturally the ones in charge. In other languages, like
Sanskrit, there are numerous terms for deity, each giving a
different perspective. Some views mainly involve traits that
are masculine in nature, others feminine. I'd say we use a
term with a specific gender, and not a gender-neutral term,
when we want to depict masculine or feminine
characteristics.

Elisabeth T.:

I didn't notice it before, but we both have the same
initials. It's probably best that we not label our
paragraphs as "ET". If we were writing each other, how would
we tell the comments apart!

----

You mention "Please understand it if I do not participate in
any more discussions on the Board." We're all limited by
time constraints. The sentence can be interpreted different
ways. I hope you don't mean that you're quitting the "theos-
l lodge", but rather that you mean that you're active
participation in the near future is extremely limited, so we
won't see you write much yourself.

Nicholas:

Thanks for typing in the long note from David Reigle. His
project is certainly deserving of our support.

Paul Gillingwater:

You're probably right that most organizations would have
difficulty having us as one of their lodges. There's too
much freedom and diversity of ideas. Every group would find
things said that they would find outrageous. How many groups
tolerate the "outrageous" within their own organizations?

At this point, I think the time has come where we could
confer upon ourselves the honorary title of a lodge. Perhaps
we would start calling ourselves the "theos-l lodge"!

Lewis:

If I remember my reading of Jungian psychology, there's talk
of two kinds of dream symbolism. One is personal, from the
personal unconscious, and is understood by free association
with personal connotations to the dream images. The second
is universal, from the collective unconscious, and is
understood by a study of the mythology of society, by the
study of the grand symbolism of the ages.

Jerry Hejka-Ekins:

Thanks for the additional information regarding theosophical
archives. I'm hopeful that a spirit of openness may exist
among the theosophical groups, allowing scholars such as you
and Paul Johnson free access to the historic treasures that
they safeguard.

Keith Price:

I'd agree with Jerry Schueler that the goal is not to get
rid of feelings, but to sublimate them. Our goal is to raise
our *seat of consciousness* from a lower principle to a
higher one, and then yet higher within. We don't kill out
the lower principles, but rather make our central focus, our
point of self-origination, our seat of motivation to be in
Manas, rather than Kama. Kama and the lower principles are
not killed out, but domesticated, cultured, tamed, brought
under the control rather than allowed to run wild. The term
"kill out desire" should be replaced with "take the
leadership role away from desire, and assume it yourself!"

----

In one sense, we drop from spiritual realms into the
material to gain consciousness. In another sense, we're
already conscious, but are seeking increased *self*-
consciousness. (Jerry Schueler has said of this that we do
it for the pure sense of adventure.) I'd put it a third way.
There's a deep part of us that transcends time, and does not
participate in the cyclic dip into matter and evolution; it
is uniquely us and acts as a *motivating force* to
everything in us below it. Just below it is ourselves, as
perfected through the evolutionary drama, through
participation in countless Maha-Manvantaras. This part is
our karmic treasury, our Auric Egg, our repository of our
self-becoming, as of this particular moment in time. This
lower part, in seeking the higher, is ever striving, ever
compelled to participate in cyclic evolution in its attempt
to reach up to the higher part, our Ideal Nature. Both these
parts of us are beyond existence, beyond manifestation, and
overshadow our seven principles, as we clothe ourselves in
the fabric of consciousness and participate in life in the
world.

----

Regarding something that unifies all the levels, there's a
good quote in "The Mahatma Letters" where we are told that
to become a Mahatma, we unify Kama, Manas, Atman, and the
rest of the principles in Buddhi. Buddhi is spoken of as the
unifying principle in our constitution.

----

When we speak of "The Secret Doctrine" as the synthesis of
philosophy, science, and religion, we don't mean that it is
composed of diverse areas of study, somehow glued together.
What we have is an approach at primordial knowledge, an
approach that leads us to an area of study that transcends
any particular area of thought as we know it. Fields like
philosophy, science, art, religion, psychology, healing,
etc.--these are all specialized areas of study. Some are
more generalized than others, but they all involve making
artificial distinctions. We can find art in everything else;
we can find philosophy in every area of thought; we have
science in all subjects. The primordial wisdom which our
theosophical literature taps is not culture-specific, and is
not limited to any category of thought as we know it. The
basic question is not "is there Art in Theosophy," but
rather "how do we find the Radiant Mind in all things?"

Liesel:

Sometimes, in telling stories of things that have happened,
we are also, in an indirect way, writing on philosophy as
well. The experiences that we have, and our reactions to
things, when retold, communicate something of value. It's
certainly a way of sharing that others can't disagree with!

We start to wonder about life at quite an early age. Brenda
mentioned yesterday that our daughter, Galina, 5, asked two
days in a row, while being driven to Montessori School, the
questions: "Who are we really? Why are we alive?" Galina's
understanding, suited to her age, is that we start off in
our mothers' tummies, then we come out and are born. When we
die, we are ghosts for a while, then we end up in some other
mothers' tummies, where we start over again, on our way to
being born into another family. When Galina gets a bit
older, she can learn more about reincarnation, karma, and
the after-death states. She'll hear what is easy for her to
understand, responsive to the questions that she asks;
nothing will, hopefully, be forced prematurely on her.