Theos-Talk Archives (August 1995 Message tl00292)

>"Formalize, 'develop' & systematize the teachings", and you're
>a dead duck, in my opinion. If you constrain teachings by
>boxing them in, you create stultified fossils, instead of a
>living breathing doctrine, which can inspire people.
>
>Liesel

Liesel:

I'd say that you're both right and wrong with this. We don't
want to entomb the grand ideas of Theosophy in rigid, fixed
words, so that all there is to Theosophy is the proper quoting
of those words. On the other hand, Theosophy *is* a well-defined
body of Teachings, and it is possible to learn and study it,
and to distinguish it from non-Theosophy. The freedom of belief
that we are afforded in our theosohpical societies is a freedom
to learn and grow and study, not an admission that there's
nothing to Theosophy beyond anything that a member may perfer
to believe. What's important is that we don't get rigid and
fixed in our ideas, but keep an open mind and *freshly rethink*
the ideas that we hold dear to ourselves. With each fresh
review of our cherished ideas and ideals, we have to allow them
to be at risk of coming out different that before, or there's
no real growth and change.

-- Eldon Tucker