Theos-Talk Archives (February 1995 Message tl00219)

Know thyself.  To thine own self be true and thus thou canst not
be false to any man.  (probably misquoted)

Can we ever really know ourselves or others?

This indeed seems to be the real challange.

For instance:

>Hi, Lee,

>Could you please explain to me what a OCR program is? I don't know.
>
> Are you a man or a lady? I used to go by Lee too, because we
> thought Liesel, was too German sounding.  But after I got older,
> & WWII faded into the distance, I went back to Liesel.  In
> Wheaton they still call me Lee.

>Namaste,

>Liesel

-------
To Liesel: I was going to ask you the exact same thing, but
thought it would be too personal, but since you asked someone
first - I will ask you, Liesel, are you a man or a lady? I
thought you were a lady but you made a joke about the "boy scout"
cookies which I took as a joke, but it really confused me too.
It so easy to take others wrong here in CyberSpace because we
don't see each others bodies, for body language and all important
attitude cluse, much less get a gander at their aura :-)

This is a small example of how easily it is to not know others.
It is even harder to know the MOTIVES of oneself or others.  One
of the most difficult problem on the path, for me, is to know my
own motives.  One of the most common human traits is hiding a bad
action under a supposedly good motive.

I was trying to sit back and learn why I was so negative about
the "Mahatma Letters", their percipitation of letters and all the
hocus-pocus that surrounds them.  l think, part of it is a desire
to be a devil's advocate, in some way.  Many people turn away
from theosophy BECAUSE of the percipitated letters and teacups
and various bric-a-brac.  Many inside the society seem to attack
the motive of questioners such as the Coulumbs, the society for
psychical research (could be wrong name) etc.  These people's
attacks are seen as selfishly motivated.  And the objection of
commoners like me are ignored as being uninformed or lacking in
"FAITH".  What theosphist really takes anything on faith, but
this is exactly what we are expected to do and the percipitated
letters only make things worse because one has to take it on
faith that their writings and percipitations weren't faked.

Someone wrote that if the Masters don't exist then "The Secret
Doctive" is a fraud.  Why? BIG, BIG WHY? "The Secret Doctrine"
(IMHO) stands are falls on its own merits and does not need the
Master of the leaves of Kiu-Ti (spelling?) to back it up.  This
is theosophical fundamentalism and is doing more to hold back
theosophy in the largerst since as in the totality of the Ancient
Wisdom and is doing very little to bolster the T.S.  as an
organization (IMHO)

So, I personally, have been suffering an identity crisis in that
I decided not to post until I could post something positive.  I
think that the Masters have a lot more to do with DIVINE
PRINCIPLES than quasi-historical quasi-human beings.  (Is it
pronounced kwa-zi or cwazy, here I like cwazy ;-)

The Masters have been talked about in terms of the 7 rays and 7
levels.  I think this may be more productive to an understanding
in our psychological and phenomenological age.  This of course
will be surpassed as we evolve.  The idea that the Masters spoke
to Sinnett and HPB but the age of miracles is past so we have to
spend our time looking backward to the thesophical scriptures of
the late 19th century, the way fundamentalist Christians look to
the Bible only and Islam to the Koran, strikes me as unhealthy.

Of course I am in no position to judge "The Mahatma Letters" and
I was not trying to.  I was "judging" the dependence on them as
the justification of the T.S.  etc.  I was trying to play devil's
advocate so that when the objections are brought up we will have
thought it through and not just take a superior attitude to the
attackers as in "who are you to judge the Masters?".

Further identity issues: Is it K.  Paul Johson of just Paul? It's
Paul on "In Search of the Masters"?

Is it Jerry or Gerry Scheuler? It's Gerry on my copy of "The
Electric Tarot".  I owe you $20.

Where does Alan's writings on the Kabala belong? I hope he posts
at least one or two here on theos-l as a sample so we can decide
further!

Namsate

Keith Price