Theos-Talk Archives (September 1995 Message tl00908)

Paul:

>Instead of being alive in
>the present moment to the reality of adepts in myriad
>traditions carrying on the Work in many ways, Theosophists tend
>to live in an imaginary timeless realm where adepts are
>perceived as some great Cosmic Board of Directors.

There are people working for the spiritual in the various
traditions of the world. What status we accord them, what
rank we give them is according to our own way of understanding
Theosophy. If we look about us, there are definite laws of nature
which living men are subject to. We are told:

"(1) An adept -- the highest as the lowest -- is one *only during
the exercise of his occult powers*."
"(2) Whenever these powers are needed, the sovereign will unlocks
the door to the *inner* man (the adept,) who can emerge and act
freely but on condition that his jailer -- the *outer* man --
will be either completely or partially paralyzed as the case
may requre ..." [Mahatma Letters, 3rd ed, p 177]

It is clear from this that they are ordinary men most of the
time, when incarnate in Fourth Round human bodies here on Globe D.
To "paralyze the jailer" implies stepping aside from the human
personality of the present lifetime and functioning in a higher
center of consciousness. It would seem that while alive on earth
as flesh-and-blood men, they are like us. It is just when they
function apart from that human personality, including the
exterior form, that they are something more, something that
we are not.

>It gets crazier and more distorted the further you get from HPB in
>time-- Bailey, Prophet, etc.-- as people are less and less
>interested in human members of adept brotherhoods and more and
>more interested in cosmic supermen.

The problem is in confusing the flesh-and-blood men, which are
the Mahatmas when incarnate as Fourth Round humans, with their
attributes on other globes and planes. They are definitely
much more than what we see and know of them in their outer
personalities. We get in trouble when we attribute to their
human personalities characteristics that are appropriate to
them *when outside their ordinary personalities*.

>That devalues and desacralizes human life on earth while
>exalting some imaginary realm of Mahatmic hegemony.

It's a problem of mixing levels. We are talking about
characteristics of beings on a different plane with the
Mahatmas *as they appear in human life on Globe D*.

-- Eldon