Theos-Talk Archives (March 1995 Message tl00377)

Some comments on recent postings:

Lewis: <To look at it from another point of view, that conduct
is not something that is just "adopted" by an reluctant
personality, but is the result of the development of principles
based on laws in nature. Laws which are benign in intent, aiming
at developing individuals "latent" powers of compassion, love,
and a lucid understanding of how to nurture these qualities in
others.>

Yes!  One of these laws that I am especially fond of is "love is
the law."  In fact, I use it on all of my formal correspondences
as part of my letterhead.  It helps to remind me that we should
love one another, not because of any possible reward or
recognition, but because it is a universal law that we should do
so.  To love is to act in accordance with our True Self, Higher
Self, Individuality, inner god, or whatever we want to call our
inner divine essence.

Nancy: <Re: HPB (or anyone else) telling lies -->

Nancy, I for one do not believe that HPB ever told an outright
lie to anyone.  However, she did occassionally tell slight
distortions of truth with an intent to mislead, which she called
'fibs.'  When the subject was occultism, she called them
'blinds.'  Now in a very real sense, these are not lies so much
as partial truths or carefully couched truth with the intention
to mislead.  They were done, I believe, because in some cases
she could not reveal the whole truth for one reason or another,
and in some cases because her sense of humor simply got the
better of her (i.e., where the results of fibbing were not
karmically burdensome).

There are also occassional differences between exoteric and
esoteric knowledge, and what one gives out will quite often
depend on one's audience at the time.  For example, to one
audience I can say that I believe in reincarnation and that I
know that I have had many past lives.  To another audience I can
say that I believe the ego is a social fiction, and that where
we go after death is like asking where my fist goes after I open
my hand.  Is one a lie and the other a truth?  In a very real
sense they are both valid statements that I can make, but on the
surface (i.e., to an uninitiate) they seem like flat
contradictions, and if given on different days to different
audiences, an astute historian could accuse me of telling
falsehoods.

It is all very nice to believe that Truth is One and all else is
false (I was there once myself) but unfortunately such a naive
worldview will someday come crashing down around one's ears,
because Truth is much too complicated (I almost want to say
illusive) for such a naive worldview to hold up for very long.
It was James Long who told me that Truth simply could not be put
into pretty boxes tied up with colored ribbons (which is exactly
what I had been doing).  After my Dark Night of the Soul, I came
to learn that he was right.

ps. I know well that I am preaching to the choire with you, but
I am scandalously using your posting as an excuse to write this
for some others.
Please forgive.

Paul J: < So will gladly forward the brief list upon request.>

I am not even close to a historian, but would like to give it a
shot. Please forward.

Re Channeling:  There has been some discussion lately on the
subject of channeling, and what and how this sort of thing
works, some of it negative, but some rather inspiring.  I am one
of those weird fringe people who thinks that everyone in this
particular human lifewave on Globe D is telepathically connected
together via the collective unconscious.  Each and every one of
us is continuously being bombarded by the thoughts of others.
The surface of our aura serves as a screen or filter, so that
only a select number of these come through into our personal
unconscious, and then only a very few of these ever pop into
consciousness.  When they do, we often think that the thought is
our own.  This happens all the time.  All 'channeling' really
does is to allow us to open up our filter, and let more of these
thoughts in so that the number that pop into consciousness
increases.  In this sense, we all channel.  It is the source of
such channeled thoughts that gives everyone the real problem.
We know, for example, that many new scientific ideas have come
from different people in separate countries in very close to the
same time period, such that one is sometimes accused of stealing
another's ideas.  Determining the source of the thoughts that
pop into our consciousness is the tricky part.  Channeling
itself is childishly easy.  I agree with someone's recent
posting (my, haven't there been just a few!) that if we claim a
specific source, then the thoughts themselves should dovetail
with the spirit and previous teachings of that source.  In
short, if we think that we are channeling KH, then we should
expect to see KH's style and worldview, and so on, in the
thoughts that come to us.  All of HPB's Masters are still around
somewhere, embodied or disembodied, and if we listen closely, we
can surely hear them speaking to us.  So "the ability to
translate diverse qualities of waves of astral light into
consciousness" as stated in ML (the quote given by NW is from ML
#XL, not #31), is available to all of us, and we all do it every
minute of every day.  Doing it consciously, whenever we want to,
which was likely M's intent, now that is another story.  When M
says, "Unless regularly initiated and trained...no self-tutored
seer or clairaudient ever saw *quite* correctly" I think is
being a bit hard-nosed except he did, in fact, italicize the
word 'quite' which gives us some allowances.  I think "Very few
self-tutored seers..." instead of the flat "no..." would have
been clearer.  It is possible, just darn improbable.

        Jerry S.