Theos-Talk Archives (December 1995 Message tl00319)

JS
>This makes theosophy useful as a great source of
>meaningful archetypal structures or as you say metaphors from which to
>construct a viable worldview.

RI
Yes Jerry but even I get nervous when I start using terms like *metaphors*
or *analogs* with regard to certain esoteric ideas. Take reincarnation for
example. While it is a useful and pleasant surprise to realize that one can
regard waking up each morning--complete with all the uncorrected personal
tendencies physical emotional and mental consequences of what one has done
the day before ready to greet you etc.--as a type of "reincarnation" it is
difficult if one is a serious meditator to continue to hold the view that
the grander theosophical idea with *skandhas* *karma* etc. is merely the
result of someone making a cosmic metaphor out of the more mundane insight.

No theosophical "metaphors" seem to have a way of slowly and I think
*validly* hypostatizing themselves despite how much one fights against them.

But *slowly* seems to be the operative word here however. Accepting these
colossal theosophical systems in one big fast gulp may be the formula for
passionate desire-mental belief but it is not the recipe for Inner Certainty
about them. Something like true conviction about reincarnation does not
arrive fully clothed in glorious raiment and with the fanfare of a royal
parade; rather it is at first dressed in rags and "lurks" quietly but
persistently around the psyche. Since it will not go away no matter how much
common experience and strict logic is used against it it slowly but
inexorably establishes itself as a theosophical "fact" against which no
argument can henceforth prevail.

Yes Jerry there may be many who say they "believe" in more theosophical
ideas than I do but perhaps not so many who are held so fast by a few. . . .

Best wishes

Richard Ihle