Theos-Talk Archives (August 1995 Message tl00369)

>Dainel:
>Is there any room for objective reality in Theosophy?

I'd say yes, but perhaps not in the since that you'd think. One form of
"objective" means accepting what is commonly thought to be true in popular
thought, where any deviation from the norm is considered untrue. This is
often found in the scientific community. Theosophy deals with things that
go beyond the current accepted view of things, and would be rejected on
this account.

Another form of "objective" may deal with external physical things. Something
is considered objective if anyone can observe it and it always appears the
same. It is objective if one's personal views cannot change its outcome.
At the quantum level, the act of observation changes what is observed. At
the psychological level, in the experience of life, the personality acts as
a filter that interprets (and changes) what is observed according to its
own particular bias. On this plane of existence, the nature of the world we
are on also addes a bias to what we experience, it is not totally objective.

Complete objectivity is impossible, I'd suggest, as we might deduce from
the Buddhist idea of the interdependence of life. All that lives is interrelated
in a vast web of life. Nothing exists apart and separate. There can be no
sense of objectivity, since we cannot exist apart from what we observe. We
collectively co-create the world from one moment to the next.

When we try to understand the inner laws of nature, we are really trying to
understand the behavior of *living beings*, and we are in relation to those
beings. We could not exist without that sense of relationship with them.

It would not be possible to come up with, I'd think, a series of
mathematical equations that would describe in an objective manner, the
inner nature of life. This is due to both the interdependent nature of
life, and due to the fact that many systems may be in a turbulent state,
under the influence of strange attractors, and not subject to normal
predictability in either time and/or space. Is Theosophy objective? It
can be as far as such is possible, but there are serious limits on what
can be known and be "objective". Theosophy goes much further in dealing
with the reality of life that the popular scientific methodology, which
stops short with its narrow definition of "provability." There's much
more to be known in life that can be accounted for in a proper scientific
experiment, and that knowledge is available for any of us who undertake
the Search.

-- Eldon