Theos-Talk Archives (March 1995 Message tl00077)

> It seems that human beings need some sort of a belief framework
> in which to operate.  You can go inside or outside your framework
> with your ideas, as the occasion warrants, you can change around
> your framework when you come across an idea somewhere that suits
> you better.  Christianity is such a framework, as are all
> religions.

Liesel,

This is the wisdom that I wished the writer of Mahatma #10 had
when discussing G-d.  We are within our relative frameworks.  Yet
as I thin about what Murray and Paul said I concluded that the
relative framework of this author's comments have to be honored
as well.  If there was not possible for the lettter writer or
receiver to speak in terms of the radical relativity that we are
in in our Post-Modern times.  But like the feminists who itch and
scratch when they hear about Mankind I get rubbed when I
encounter "exclusivism and intolerance" in culturally limited
situations.  I recall when studying the Hebrew Scriptures how the
concept of the "chosen people" whether applied to Torah followers
of Christ followers urked me.  I was rattled when I read in greek
the patriarchy of Paul, including his advocation of slavery,
which left me wondering how the Risen Christ could possibily be
encountered in the writings of a bigot.  Later I realized that
that there was a context of Paul's ( The Apostle) comments and
there were limitations.  So I get a chance to do the same with
these letters, reading them contextually.  What happened when I
did that is that I came to understand Paul and even see the
fledgling seeds of liberation within his ideas couched though
they were in limited language.  The chosen nation status of
Israel can be read likewise- that all become chosen in the seed
of liberation found in the Torah.  So the Mahatma letter must be
read contextually in view of the seed of liberation within.  Read
this way I see another picture or image emerging, I will
contemplate that for a while and get back when I can.

> Different people have different needs as to what belief system
> suits them best.  It depends on the culture you've come out of,
> and also on you as a person.  This goes for different
> Theosophists as well, as DePurucker will tell Geoffrey Hodson.
> My own belief system is eclectic.  I started out adopting many
> Buddhist views, (mostly Christmas Humphreys', & lateron Lama
> Govinda's) but over the years, these views have become modified
> by beliefs I've picked up here & there as they made sense to me.
> I look for a system that is useful for me to live by, & since
> things have a habit of changing a lot (an idea I got from the
> Buddhists) I try to make my belief system versatile & flexible
> (an idea I got from Harry VG, a Dutch -Indonesian Theosophist,
> reinforced by Serge King, a Hawaiian Kahuna).  These 2 have also
> taught me something about forgiveness, about which I didn't learn
> anything as I was growing up, that concept being reinforced by
> "Hate the deed, but love the doer" of Martin Luther King Jr.  As
> I said, my own belief system is eclectic.

I like that sort of eclectism.  I think that it bespeaks an
honoring of traditions while transcending them at the same time.
To use the metaphor then when up against the edge of mystery be
willing to sacrifice it for the larger truth.  To slightly
paraphrase, There is no religion bigger than the truth.

> What I'm coming to is that I think we should read the ML in just
> that spirit.  Take out of it whatever wisdom appeals to us, &
> leave the rest.  I didn't answer Arthur Paul yesterday, because I
> thought Murray did very adequately.  This AM ( always after I've
> slept on it), I want to tell Art that I perceive letter #10 as
> being very slanted towards Buddhism.  Doesn't bother me, because
> I tend to go that way anyhow.  But I can see how what KH says
> would bother an ex Menonite Christian Minister.  Paul, I know, by
> now, something about your Christian beliefs, and I think they're
> just as beautiful & useful & valid as my
> Buddhist/Kahuna/Jewish/Christian etc etc ones.  Matter of fact,
> they often coincide, expressed, perhaps, in different terms.

Liesel you are completely right about being influenced by my
Mennonite training and experience however much I am not in it
right now.  I do think, I should say pray and hope, that my
relationship to modern spirituality of the Jungian or and
Psychoanalytic traditions has served to form me as well.  I think
my critical thought came from studying higher critical thought in
university which had the best of humanist thinking in it.  I may
not be as thoroughly eclectic as some of the list but I believe
my pilgrimage is leading me to the same eclectic syncretism that
is reflected in your writing, Liesel.  My main hope however is
not to have the theory figured out but to grow into a
compassionate person who honors others and yet stays true to
their own lights.

> It talks of God from a different angle.  It starts out with the
> voluntary & the involuntary parts of our brain/nervous system, &
> expounds on "as below, so above".

As I was waiting of my wife Bev to come out from here work place
I read an article by Sri Ashish and was awakened by the sentence.

It was in non-inclusive language so excuse this, "Man is at one
with the universe; and that is the same as saying that man is at
one with God.Man is God, or God is Man; it makes little
difference which way one looks at it.  Nor is it a blank
impersonal power, for what is blank and impersonal could not give
birth to the full personality of man.  But to say that divine
power encompasses personality does not mean that there is a
personal God, for hte univerally diffused awareness does not
discriminate between the bliss of one individual or the suffering
of another.

While this quote appears contradictory it is a marvellous, in my
estimate, statement of the paradox that the Mystery is
unutterable in the last analysis.  It is beyond both impersonal
category and personal ones beyond language itself.  I think it
can only be found in the existential experience of being alive
whether sick or healthy, poor or rich, with all limitation.
Whatever is beyond us is that which we are utterly dependent upon
- as Tillich called it the Ground of Being.  I want to
acknowledge that Ground and perhaps love my way into a fuller
knowledge of it.  Augustine put it really well when he said:
"This is Thou; and this is not Thou" Herein is the affirmation of
images and the negation of the same images.

under the Mercy,

Art