Theos-Talk Archives (May 1996 Message tl00790)

Michelle,

>>Second is false, but sincerely-held beliefs, beliefs that
>>are wrong regardless of how flexibly they are held. Both
>>are cause for our concern, in both ourselves and others
>>that we deal with.

>It is so much a matter of perspective isn't it - whether to
>participate in the duality of right and wrong or to see everything
>as part of the whole, perfect at any moment a mixture of both aspects
>of duality. I don't think that any ones beliefs are wrong from that
>persons point of view, at the time they hold them. They may in
>retrospect change and see the earlier way as no longer appropriate.

 From the standpoint of a person's unique perception of life,
you're correct. Beliefs are subjective, dependent upon the
individual, and may be quite different from one person to the
next, yet equally valuable.

In my posting that you are referring to, I was talking about
two problems to our progress. These tie back to quotes I gave
from "The Mahatma Letters" a few days earlier.

One problem is rigidity of mind, being inflexible in thought,
not allowing for any room for change and growth in one's
thought. This is something that we need to continually work
on, like always trying to do stretches and warmups along with
periods of physical exercise.

The second problem, which my quote about refers to is simply
that regardless of how flexible we may try to be, there may
be some ideas that are simply wrong, and get in the way of
our progress.

Ideas about the nature of life and the way that the world
works can be shown to be correct as far as they go: like the
earth seems flat and an ordinary person's experience of life
confirms this. But with further knowledge and training and
experimentation one can see that the earth is a sphere. The
previous idea, even though validated by personal experience
and agreed to by a majority of people at one time -- that
idea is simply wrong, and not an equally valid opinion.

>So sorry Eldon - I don't agree with you, while a belief might not be
>in agreement with another's (either alive or dead) views that doesn't
>make it wrong.I don't think any of us can claim to be the holders of
>the Truth for everyone, rather only for ourselves at that time.

Our mystical ideas about the nature of life would fall in
the category that you describe. One person's poetry and
another person's essay may try to describe the same inner
awareness, yet sound completely different. Sounding different,
we could not readily say that one of the two is right, and
the other is wrong.

Here, though, I'd make an important distinction between two
people expressing the same thing in their own personal way,
and between, say, one person saying the moon is a planetary
body, and the other saying that it is made of green cheese.
It's possible, in this case, to tell one is right and the
other wrong.

When we get to difficult, deeper aspects of life, like the
theosophical doctrines, it's no longer as easy to distinguish
what is correct from the incorrect.

Is it important for someone to know the "right" ideas? I'd
say yes, that a growing understanding of the Mysteries is
an important aspect of progressing on the Path.

Can someone readily step forward and start telling people
who's right and who's wrong in what they say? Not really.
For the deeper ideas, they're either inexpressible in
plain, written language, or perhaps considered secret.

On the other hand, for the simpler, basic ideas, we can
readily recognize and state them. The theosophical form of
them is what we'd find in good introductory books.

In either case, I don't think that if someone presented
their materials in the form of "I'm right and you're not"
that they would get far. This would not even be the way
I'd expect a Guru to teach his disciples. The Guru (if
a good one) would establish the proper conditions where
the student would discover the important truths *from
within*, and not simply come out and tell the student
things.

I'd agree with your idea on the truth, to the individual,
of subjective, personal views. I'd still say, though,
that there is *something more*, and that any of us could
approach it. And that one of the places where this
*something more* can be found is in the theosophical
doctrines.

There is, though, a necessary state of readiness for
inner light, before someone starts looking for the
Mysteries. And until that readiness has been reached,
until that hunger for *reality* arises within one,
a person will be chasing shadows. Until the person is
ready, we're wasting our time taking about things that
go beyond the everyday world of surface appearances.

-- Eldon