Theos-Talk Archives (April 1996 Message tl00442)

In a message dated 96-04-12 17:23:24 EDT, Jerry S. writes>

>Anyway, I have tried to compare the stages of the
>Path with Kohlberg's moral developmental stages, and will continue
>to do this kind of thing.  There is precious little psychology mentioned
>today in theosophical literature, and yet it is such a rich field.  For
>example, Erickson's developmental stages could be applied to
>the human lifewave as it undergoes the 7 Rounds.

Richard Ihle writes>
Yes, we are on the same wavelength as usual.

Sometimes, however, I wonder whether there will be a future for
*psychogenesis* or not, since people ordinarily think it is primarily
concerned with academic or therapeutic psychology in some way and then often
immediately begin arguing against it on that basis.  Actually, psychogenesis
may be a possible way to partially reclaim the word *psyche* from the
philistines paid according to the fifty-minute-hour.  Isn't it interesting
that *psyche* comes from the Greek root meaning not only "soul" but also
"butterfly"?

However "cosmogenesis" or "anthropogenesis" can be successfully approached,
the understanding of the psychogenetic "heuristic overlay" seems most
dependent upon being a good observer of one's sequentially changing states of
consciousness in meditation.  (I believe that someone with a high Degree of
Self-Awareness could observe exactly the same sequence in the process of
falling asleep.)  The *Theosophical Pattern* is the crucial thing--whether it
is psyche-building, human-building, or cosmos-building.

(I may even be more radical than you, however, since I am convinced that all
the grand theosophical systems which attempt to articulate the latter pair of
overlays were originally developed in a metaphorical manner by individuals
who were first-and-foremost advanced witnesses of their own "internal
scenery"--thus, I cling so strongly to the definition of *theosophy* as
"knowledge which has its base in, or at least originally derives from,
transcendental, mystical, or intuitive insight.")

Perhaps the reason I am going to be the last person on earth to dismiss THE
SECRET DOCTRINE as "largely irrelevant for the new times" is that I came to
the ideas of the Rounds, Chains, etc. *after* I had hastily put together some
of my own meditationally derived ideas about the Pattern in something I
immodestly called "The Doctrine of the Seven-Year Cycles."  Because a crucial
feature of this is that the potential for egoic delusion unfolds in an
orderly manner according to an individual's age and that the characteristics
of the next cycle begins manifesting at the mid-point of the present, I was
dumbfounded one day when I was casually browsing the yet-unread THE SECRET
DOCTRINE and just by chance hit a page where HPB was outlining the exact same
Pattern as it applies to "returning monads" etc.

Anyway, I am not so optimistic at this point that I will live long enough to
see psychogenesis become a respectable idea in the Theosophical world.
 Whenever I have spoken about it in talks, I have generally had the
"interesting-but-not-really-Theosophy" response (thus, my obsessive
discussion with Eldon about the limiting aspects of the capital *T*).  I
wrote the privately printed book WISDOM TEACHING in 1984, but even I think it
is probably a rotten, uninteresting book in most respects except for the
rough suggestion of the Pattern (don't ask for a copy because I have learned
my lesson:  a year or two ago, I sent one to Eldon's wife who gave it to the
housekeeper after a reading a few pages--I don't even trust people to lie and
tell me that they read it and that it was good anymore. . .).

Godspeed, Jerry,

Richard Ihle