Theos-Talk Archives (September 1995 Message tl01047)

JRC:

>Some actually believe that at least some "psychic readings" are a tad
>more than "tossing the dice" - I have a friend (for instance) that three
>years ago went to one of those "psychics" to ask about a relationship
>problem. The "psychic", upon looking at the person's system, identified a
>very dense region that seemed to connect to the physical body; the
>person, on the advice of the psychic, went to a medical doctor ... and
>the cancer was caught early enough to treat. Fortunately for this woman
>(who didn't have the faintest suspicion that she had medical problems)
>she hadn't run into a Theosophical Lodge that would have encouraged her
>to avoid such things.

The value of the "readings" depends upon the faculties of the reader.
The quality of readings that we might get from someone hanging a
"Psychic" sign outside their house may be a bit less than with someone
with genuine, natural-born faculties.

Granted, it was fortunate for the woman to have been warned about her
cancer. Could she have been warned in other ways? Perhaps. Should we
all seek out psychics to diagnose medical problems, act as psychologists,
tell us future trends, etc.? As a general rule, I'd say no, but you
could probably provide me with more examples where there would have
to be exceptions.

My comment that if we try to do numerology based upon arbitrary numbers,
numbers that aren't based upon real attributes of the person, we're
just doing a psychic reading. Your response is to provide an example
where a psychic reading turned out to be a very good thing. Perhaps you're
being a bit defensive, responding to my word "merely" in "merely a
psychic reading", and feeling a call to defend the use of psychical
facuilties.

>Second, I'm inclined to agree with Brenda about how numerology
>and other such tools work - *none* of them define things, but are rather
>more like a means of inducing a particular state of mind

If Brenda means that, then the three of us agree with regard to popular
numerology. The numbers are like a crystal ball, an astrological chart,
or a tarot reading; they are a means to focus our awareness on a particular
subject.

>ultimately it is
>something far more than the math that they use to actually reach their
>conclusions - it is *intuition* ... but using the tools somehow seems to
>help the intuition to speak its voice.

My original posting on popular numerology is that it is primarily based
upon "being a means of inducing a particular state of mind", because the
numbers themselves are not *real* attributes of the person we are considering.

When we get to real attributes, rather than artifacts like arbitrary
street numbers, we have something that is directly correlated to the
individual, like with palmistry, where the lines on the hand are not
an arbitrary convention but can simply be observed.

Working with something that is a real attribute, we can know about the
person, because a part is inseperable from the whole. That attribute or
part of the individual reveals, through correlation, the unseen nature
of the individual.

-- Eldon