Theos-Talk Archives (May 1996 Message tl00071)

Jerry Hejka-Ekins comments to Kim:

>>Kim: But you are quite right that the scope of our discussion would
>>be enormous. But as it is vital it can be as prolongued as you
>>wish.
>
>JHE
>     Yes.  Once before, I took up a more informal exploratory
>discussion with a person interested in Bailey.  He considered
>himself an expert on Bailey (I am far from it), so through
>questions and explorations, I wanted to compare her ideas to HPB
>(more my home ground).  The conversation lasted for six months,
>and I pumped out about two or three twelve page posting per week.
>It was a tremendous amount of work, because I had to both look up
>his references to HPB and follow up on his references to AAB.
>But we seemed to have a terrible language barrier (he was Indian,
>and his grammar suggested that he was still more in that culture
>than in a European one).
>     I bring this up, because my investment of time was enormous
>and very little of value came out of it.  I already know that
>your communication skills are far above my last correspondent.
>But even with the most ideal communication, unless the discussion
>remains carefully structured, it easily gets out of hand and
>becomes counter productive.

I was surprised to read Jerry's comments.  There is naturally some license
in recounting a thread from two years ago, but even so -- Jerry H-E and
Arvind Kumar had (IMO) one of the more instructive threads on theos-l.  *I*
found it to be of value, and I know Arvind did as well.  That's why he kept
it up, and it was as much work for him, I think.  As Jerry remarks, even the
best of intentioned communications can skew up; Arvind and Jerry had several
key points that just didn't ever click, but I don't think it was due to
Arvind's inability with English.  Arvind speaks with less of an accent than
I do, and I suspect he also has a greater command of the language.  Come to
think of it, that could mean either one of two things... but anyway, I
believe the communications problems stemmed from two sharp guys working from
different sets of ground rules, with each thinking they were both in sync.
It was disappointing to see the discussion break off the way it did.
Hopefully, that won't happen with the current thread.

Jim