Theos-Talk Archives (April 1995 Message tl00097)

Well, Well,

This list seems to have, of late, developed into the spiritual
equivilent of that group that "exposes" psychics.  Both Carl
Sagan and Penn & Teller would be pleased.  Seems like even the
mention of a heroic figure, be it of past or present age, is sure
to unleash the voices of "pure historical research" to remind us
with a cautionary waggling finger that these people were/are
"just human" ...  lest we get carried away into a hopeless
delusion that causes our hearts to soar and minds to elevate at
the thought of the magnificence of souls who have become
something more than human minds can even comprehend.  Armloads of
personal credentials and buckets of footnotes are spread lavishly
as the legitimatizing icing on these bitter cakes of "truth";
victimization and martyrdom are then often claimed should anyone
go after the authors with even half the intensity and focus the
authors have gone after the subjects of their "study".

It is, I suppose, the very spirit of our age ...  and it is
perhaps too much to hope that this list should escape it.

My own two cents comes backed with absolutely no credentials,
titles, nor the claim to be anything other than one that has
looked inside and found therein a pure and insistant sensation
that whispers to me, continually, the possibility that lying
dormant, as a seed, within my tiny human awareness, lurks the
potential to give birth to a being far grander than I can
conceive of into a world far richer than I am currently aware of.
Now and then, as my awareness looks outward into human
civilization, it will stumble across a person, or an idea, that
causes that quiet inner sensation to light up, to begin to
vibrate because of harmonic resonance ...  as the striking of a C
note on a piano causes the C on octaves above and below to
vibrate.  I understand that there are others who not only have
felt the same potential within themselves, but who have already
discovered how to take that possibility from latency into
activity ...  have already become that possible inconceivable
being and are already living in that far richer world.  That some
of them maintain a presence in the constricted world my human
awareness can grasp...and my dim knowledge of how great a
sacrifice this is...is the fuel that drives my quest, the love
that drives whatever small service I can accomplish, the standard
that perhaps someday in a distant future I'll finally aquire the
magnificence to match.

I don't know why some people and ideas are those that cause the
"resonance".  Some are well-known figures of past and present,
others relatively obscure.  The standards of measurement of the
world seem to make no difference in the evaluation.  But, the
reason, the sole reason, I am attracted to Theosophy is because
in it are people and ideas that strike that chord.  It is because
of this alone that I love HPB, and CWL, and HSO, and Besant, and
Bailey, and KH, Morya, and DK.  And the Dalai Lama.  That they
can be "debunked" is no suprise to me ...  in fact if my own
limited experience is in any way true, one of the first effects
of the desire to step onto the path is that one often becomes a
difficult, royal pain in the ass.  All hidden glitches, all
buried densities, every personal frailty from aeons of
incarnations is thrust to the surface to be battled.  The
personality is subject to forces that will, eventually, dissolve
it completely.  People hover around the philosophy of the path
for a long time before being capable of actually withstanding its
pure and terrible intensity.  Philosophy can be controlled, and
ages of wonderful discourse about the nuances of how the steps
articulated by tradition X differ from those of tradition Y is
still not the actual travelling.  The only ones capable of
judging the actions and behaviour of the real travellers are
those who have themselves withstood the unleashing of all the
darknesses within themselves...and I suspect few who have
undergone such a thing would have any interest in such
judgements.

Envision a large group of people who have been in prison so long
as to have forgotten that any other world exists.  A few, by
virtue of exceptional qualities, discover a way out, and discover
that the prison has always been surrounded by a beautiful forest.
Imagine that they then, out of a compassion almost beyond
understanding, decide to voluntarily come back into the prison,
to subject themselves to the pain and constrictions of prison
life ...  for no reason but to speak to those few capable of
hearing them about the forest and to deliver maps of the path one
must follow to get there.  Tell me, how much of the "truth" of
these people can be discovered by the rational intellect ...  the
organ that is perhaps itself the principle architect of the
prison in the first place? And what "historical truth" can be
discovered? *The only history one who is still a prison dweller
can write is the history of someone's movements within the
prison.* If the largest part of the Theosophical movement and the
lives of its founders and its Masters takes place in an inner
realm beyond the capacity of the mind to understand, how relevent
is "research" conducted within the mode of the western
intellectual tradition? If someone stretches a hand out to a
drowning man, and that man launches into a detailed critique of
the warts on the hand that is offered ...  is he not missing the
point just a tad...even if his analysis of the warts is
absolutely and completely "correct"?

The last couple months of critiquing and debunking has done
nothing but cause me to feel a bit sad.  I do not mean, with this
post, to cause rancor or to in any way belittle anyone's own path
to the eternal...but I would ask those who have been cutting our
race's great ones "down to size" to perhaps consider whether the
very brilliance of the light of their minds may be hurting them
very deeply.

I go often into the Montana wilderness ...  a good place to enter
the Silence ...  and I notice that if in the middle of a
cloudless night I stand right next to my own campfire, and look
upward, almost no stars are visible...their light rendered hidden
by the glare of my fire...while if I walk but a few feet away,
the heavens again appear ablaze with enough stars to choke a
moose.

I by no means wish to degrade the light of clear reason ...  and
in fact am a scientist currently trying to apply complexity
theory to macroeconomics.  Human thought is a supurb tool to
understand and serve within the confines of the prison walls ...
but truth exists at many scales, and the human mind is only an
agent of truth on a limited number of those scales...and it is my
belief that the scale upon which the "truth" of the great ones of
our race exists is not one that the mind can perceive in anything
other than a vague and shadowy way.

       With love and respect to my fellow travellers,   -JRC