Theos-Talk Archives (August 1995 Message tl00259)

Rich,

The Teachings of "Initiates" always vary, when seen through the
mayavic eyes of their followers. Neither the Buddha nor Jesus
wrote down anything, & in Christianity you even have the
variations of the gospels, as written down by various
disciples. When I took experimental psychology, I had to read a
paragraph to one of my friends, have her write down what she'd
heard, tell that to another friend, & repeat this procedure 10
times. These were all fairly alert college kids. The story I
ended up with was completely different from the one I'd started
with. Inevitably, different people perceive differently, and
stories handed down change with the telling (Maybe Patanjali is
an exception. I don't know.) There is no way we today can be
sure of what either The Buddha nor Jesus said or did. But what
is written, the concepts, the stories, may have meaning for us
today, even though our perception must be quite different, and
that's what keeps them alive, that they still have meaning.
Just for instance we'll go fishing in a motor boat, and our
fishing rods & lures aren't the same as they were in biblical
times.. also our loaves were probably baked in an electric
oven, or a gas one, and look & taste quite different than the
ones Jesus gave to the multitude. The underlying story of the
loaves & the fishes still strike a responsive chord in us, &
it's that which makes the story - which can be interpreted in
different ways - still valid for us. It still tells us
something ... at least some of us. To me, the viability of
HPB's writings is that people can read them today, and find
nuggets of wisdom which they can apply to their way of living
today, can improve their spiritual, physical, or points
inbetween being right now, even if in the intervening 100 years
our perception has changed. It now includes cars, planes,
atomic bombs and computers, & everything these signify in our
lives.
As long as the writings of HPB have significance to the people,
of today (whenever this "today" happens to be) that long will
they be worth studying. So far, they seem to have in them
enough pliability to appeal to people with differing points of
view alive today. If the writings of HPB ever fail to stir
people's imagination/intuition in future times, nobody will
want to read her anymore. I think this applies to other writers
as well. Some writings last & seem timeless, some are soon
forgotten.