Theos-Talk Archives (December 1995 Message tl00296)

sorry for butting in but...
RI:
>Theosophy is doomed at least in terms of popular appeal if it continues to
>present itself as merely the place where all the grand-but-removed esoteric
>ideas can be studied; its hope is to show how these ideas may also be
>regarded as "metaphors" for some psychological realities which when properly
>understood can be USED by the individual to very great advantage indeed.

Just a humble opinion here but I rather like grand-but-removed
esoteric ideas. I agree with your line of thought here but doesn't "can be
USED by the individual to very great advantage" smack of the dreaded m
word? magic to the uninitiated. This is probably why I like theosophy so
much--it provides a very nice mental framework upon which to build my
magical universe. This makes theosophy useful as a great source of
meaningful archetypal structures or as you say metaphors from which to
construct a viable worldview. It gives firm intellectual foundation to modern
magical experience. For this reason I would suspect that the TS leaderships
would prefer to let theosophy die then wed it to magic and make it useful. In
any case none that I know of are terribly concerned about the current low
memberships opting for quality over quantity.

> The important thing is to keep some "remainder" of
>untransformed Self operative. This unfortunately is not so easy to do with
>semi-Selves forming at the higher levels of consciousnessness; thus a
>meditative practice which can perfect an individual's ability to make
>ever-more subtle discriminations between Self and all the "advanced variants"
>of semi-Self becomes crucial.

Agreed. This reminds me of something James Long once
told me--we should not try to re-unite consciousness with the Self in toto
but rather maintain contact with it in the backs of our minds as an inner
guiding voice that is always available should we need it. There is
nothing wrong with the semi-Self that maintains contact with its inner
Source and uses that Source for inspiration and guidance on an
as-needed basis. It is the semi-Self that loses this contact and sets
itself up as Self that will soon step in deep doodoo.

Jerry S.