Theos-Talk Archives (April 1996 Message tl01227)

JRC writes>
>	Say ... have you, anywhere, laid out in relatively comprehensive
>form (e.g., a book) this model of "psychogenesis" you speak of?
>								-JRC

Richard Ihle writes>
Hi, John.   I am tempted to suggest my WISDOM TEACHING (1984); however, this
was an ill-advised attempt to combine a book on education with a book on my
nascent psychogenesist perspective on theosophy.   The result was
double-failure.  As I mentioned previously, Eldon's housekeeper has the last
copy I gave out.  I have concluded that I better not give out any more, since
if I ever do any more serious writing on Psychogenesis I would have to fight
too many of WISDOM TEACHING's immature articulations.

At this point I am not sure I will be writing PSYCHOGENESIS or not.  I have
had the project in the back of my mind for a long time, of course, but that
was when I was thinking that there would be at least the outside possiblity
that TPH might be interested in publishing it.  Now, I am sort of disabused.
 If John Algeo and/or other "doctrinal filters" at TPH could reject Paul's
book more on the basis, I believe, of their disagreement with its "thesis,"
(rather than on the basis, for example, of its having substandard
interest/literary quality compared with other TPH books), they would
certainly have no trouble frowning on something which would have the bald
purpose of launching the TS into the Twenty-First Century by starting to look
at doctrinal "T"heosophy from "Inside out."

THE MASTERS REVEALED just wanted to judiciously explore the possibility that
the Masters may have been more corporeal than many believe; by contrast,
PSYCHOGENESIS would just flat-out say that many of the awe-inspiring
components of "Cosmogenesis" and "Anthropogenesis" are
*metaphorical/analogical* creations resulting from adept theosophical
observations of sequential internal states of conscious etc.

The big stumbling block for any prospective PSYCHOGENESIS would be the hasty
assumption by many that Cosmogenesis and Anthropogenesis would therefore not
be valid if it could be shown that these ideas are "merely" derivable by
metaphorical method.  My own point of view is quite the contrary:  indeed, it
is the way that teachings like karma and reincarnation can be returned to
their proper mystical context--i.e., that while it is probably not possible
to ever have solid "proof" for these constructs, it is certainly possible to
have a "growing certainty" about them.  Theosophy *is* religion, after all, I
guess. . . .

What new hellish chaos the psychogenesist perspective might bring to some of
the subjects discussed on Theos-l is hard to imagine.  Take a current topic,
for example:   whether or not the statement "the animals came after humans"
is true as an "anthropological theosophical analog," it is certainly easily
convincing as an simple insight of Psychogenesis:

When a person has "psychomatured" to the point where he or she can egoically
indulge every animating, physical, desire-feeling, desire-mental, and mental
possibility--and then proceeds to wantonly do so--there is every likelihood
that the "Once-removed Vantage" can gradually be lost.  The "licentious
branch" of the old Gnostics *purposefully* set about doing just this so that
they "wouldn't have to return."  In any case, it is thus easy to see how an
individual can indeed be regarded as having lost his or her "human" status
and be living the remaining portion of his or her life as a completely
unSelf-aware "animal."

--So anyway, John, there is no book, and perhaps with lovely notions like the
foregoing in the waiting room, perhaps it is a good thing. . . .

Godspeed,

Richard Ihle