Theos-Talk Archives (March 1995 Message tl00068)

I just finished reading the Mahatma letter and I am not awfully
impressed, it might be a lack of historical background but I
wanted to breifly speak of my reaction.  First of, I found the
document awfully culturally and historically bound there are a
lot of rationalist and reductionistic tonalities throughout.
Sinnet, since I doubt enlightened beings would speak so
limitedly, must have a very strong emotional response to historic
Christianity and Judaism.  I am not fond of the worst aspects of
those perspectives, which have enough intolerances of their own
but Sinnet or whoever wrote this letter is not far from the
intolerance they criticize.  I think this brings me to the second
big reaction and that is that Theosophy is supposed to be
trans-religious not anti-any particular religion.  I agree with
much of the letter in way for instance on the ambiguity of the
God image presented in the Scriptures, which is a hermeneutic
problem not a problem of the best of monotheisim.  The
anthropomorphism of the Scriptures needs to be considered
symbolically or metaphorically.  I think that since their is a
teleological purposefulness in the universe a personal metaphor
for the Process might not be totally naive as Sinnet suggests.

I am still willing to read and craft my view given my total
ignorance of the letters and their means of production.
Nonetheless these are my first impressions.

Must be Getting Better,

Art