Theos-Talk Archives (October 1995 Message tl00222)

To Jerry S. and Lewis:

>> Murray:< When the
>> <searchlight shines into the basement window, you soon see what you're
>> <entitled to by way of understanding and experience, and what is framework
>> <adopted from someone else.
>> <
>> <Some people in that particular test, lose faith in their religious
>> <concept set, never to regain it.
>>
>> Jerry S.: Well said. This is how I lost my faith in
>> Christianity.
>
>Lewis: Curious about the nature of this event. I have often found
>people have had some trumatic experience which led them into a search
>for answers and thereby to the TS. However, there are also those who
>seem to have been born with some sort of "divine discontent" that has
>driven them throughout their life on this search and arrived at the
>TS's doorstep that way.
>
>Jerry S to Lewis:
>Actually, the two are one and the same. What is "trumatic" to one, is
>often no problem at all for another. The incident that I found trumatic
>enough to leave Christianity, merely made members of my family
>even stronger in their Christian faith.

In my case, I had been seeking from a fairly early age, and had known
theosophy for about 16 years when my wife's illness came to a head and
she died.

I used a metaphor of a searchlight in the basement window to describe the
way all the foundations of my theosophical "knowledge" were revealed in
stark simplicity. I was faced with the question "What do I really know,
here?" The pain was only partially alleviated by knowing the theos.
ideas of continuation of life, the astral & higher planes etc etc, as
they themselves were under the spotlight.

Along with this was the feeling that my personal consciousness was such
a small, dark space. The old brain box, the place of the skull, thinking
of resonances with Golgotha.

It's interesting, that though knowledge felt as if it was stripped away
and the main "sensation" was of darkness, that that in itself implies an
innate memory or intuition of light. Similarly with feeling the brain
consciousness to be so small. Maybe that's what guides us all through
the valley of the shadow etc.

That experience reorganised the way I hold theosophy, making it more
essence-oriented and vibrant, and less form-oriented. This took a couple
of years to emerge, as the pain softened.

Maybe Jerry's experience could be seen as a breaking of a form
(Christianity as he held it) followed by expansion into a larger space,
theosophy etc.

Reminds me of something George Bernard Shaw said that, as he looked back
on his life, whenever he was feeling pain, he was learning something.

Murray