Theos-Talk Archives (April 1995 Message tl00047)

To friends and fellow students (by Eldon Tucker):

I'm 10 days behind in my theos-l reading, and further behind
in my comments. It's easy, upon missing a few days, to fall
behind!

Following are a few stray comments.

JRC:

I would not rank HPB as important because of her public
status, because of her obvious influence upon society and
the lives of people. In the realm of the spiritual,
greatness is measured in terms of trueness to one's inner
calling, in terms of one's genuine attempt to express in the
world the otherwise inexpressible. The Masters, working
behind the scenes, may have more influence upon society than
any public figure, HPB included, but that influence, also,
is not a measure of their personal greatness. A flower,
fighting its way to a life of beauty, is as grand as any
lofty god, on its high plane!

You mention that you don't really care if HPB wrote "The
Mahatma Letters", or if she made up the Masters. That's
fine. We're all free to accept whatever we may from the
Teachings, and leave for later what we don't benefit from.
I'd say, though, that for some of us, there may come a time
when something special is seen in the Teachings, and their
reality becomes apparent.

In matters of the spiritual, there are experiences or states
of awareness that are difficult to explain, in words, to
others not having the same experiences. When we meet other
people with differing views, and their views are based upon
experiences they say or imply that they've had, how do we
respond? We can keep an open mind and agree with them that
"Yes, that is what you've experienced." We may have our own
interpretation of what that experience consisted of, and of
the accuracy of their ideas about it. It takes a special
sense of intuition to tell when others' experiences are
valid, or delusional, and we can't always be right.

With regards to the theosophical Teachings, I'd say that the
study of the core concepts can lead to a breakthrough, where
we can go beyond the original words and have new insights.
There is something real and valuable in them, something
special not found in any arbitrary book on New Age
philosophy. How can I prove this? I can't. It is proven by
personal experience, and my personal proofs are not
authoritative to anyone else (unless I were to set myself up
as a Guru, which I'm certainly not in a position to do!).

Dr. Bain:

In "The Mahatma Letters", the writings of Purucker, and
probably those of HPB, there is mention of "the opposition".
I'd not give it a capital "o", because that would dignify
it. We read of the Left-Hand Path, Dark Initiates, Mamo-
Chohans, etc. Purucker, for instance, mentions that whenever
the Lodge sends out a Messenger, to work publicly for the
betterment of humanity, there's a dark counterpart sent out
by the other side. A while back, a lengthy discussion of the
nature of the "Dark Brotherhood" appeared on `theos-l'. I'm
not sure that I want to reopen that thread of discussion,
but I would like to make a comment that there is both a
light side and a dark side to life, and that the dark side
has its place in the metaphysical scheme of things too.

Daniel:

The most-frequent argument I hear made regarding the need to
study history is that "history repeats itself." This implies
that a knowledge of human nature, and history, allows us to
observe what is happening in the present, and to have a
better understanding of how things will go, unless we take
the necessary corrective action.

History is, in a sense, an extra-personal "memory". It
allows us to validate our thoughts about things with
external reality. And we do need reality checks against our
beliefs. Any beliefs not grounded in external life, and in
personal experience, lead to wasted energy, producing more
time in devachanic (and kamalokic) dreams in the afterlife.

There are many false claims to spiritual authority. You're
correct in wanting to keep one foot on the ground when you
reach for the stars in your studies. But I would say that
that "ground" consists of the core concepts of Theosophy,
the central, key ideas upon which the foundation of the
Philosophy is built. We do not find that "ground" in the
personal authority of a person, or in the literal words on a
printed page. We become rooted when a certain inner
connection is made, where we come in firm contact with the
theosophical thought stream (a living connection with
Mahat).

The firm anchor that we seek comes through a direction
perception of Truth, from which we build our own mental
models, using words that we are familiar with. A study of
the core concepts of Theosophy puts us in a receptive state
of contemplation, in which, we may have that perception. And
the words and mental models we are provided with are highly
useful in giving an initial expression to what we see.

We could use an appeal to authority to silence the opinions
of others whom don't have this connectedness. But why? They
are brought no closer to the Truth by being silenced. And we
all feel a strong attraction to genuine Sources of the
Wisdom Tradition when we are ready to know more. There is a
saying that when the student is ready, the teacher will
appear. Do we need to do battle with what we see as false
teachers? I'd say "no".

Jerry Schueler:

You mention that Theosophy consists of a belief in Universal
Brotherhood, and the rest is mental fluff. I think that you
recognize that there's a lot of wisdom to the Teachings, and
share a common appreciation of the goldmine of understanding
to be found in them.

I'd put your statement differently. I'd say: "The highest
ethic is the practice of Universal Brotherhood." This is
really a restatement of the Golden Rule, to treat others as
you'd want to be treated, but even goes further. We do not
see others as different from ourselves, and treat them with
equal respect. Rather, we give up the perception of them as
apart from ourselves, so there is just "me" -- or "us"
singular -- and we value all life equally, as being
ourselves.

There are different kinds of truth. Our ideas provide us
with a model of life. Consider the saying: "The map is not
the territory." We often confuse our ideas about things with
the real, living experience of them. It is more difficult
with the theosophical Teachings than in ordinary studies,
because we have maps of unknown terrain, of areas of life
completely beyond our experience and perhaps our ability to
understand!