Theos-Talk Archives (July 1996 Message tl00139)

Jim,
Gad, there are times when I really wish this mail processor let me cut into
things like the other ones do.
You're right about my little silly sutra line.  Sometimes my sense of fun
gets away with me and I couldn't resist the alliteration.
I have a real problem with things that get practiced for thousands of years.
 They tend to get just a bit ossified.  And there is a significant difference
between the problems of driving and the problem of yoga in that the disasters
that can come from not driving well are real, obvious and very messy.  Now I
can be totally wrong.  It may be that there disasters with yoga that are
equally messy, but I know of no such case, except for a little
hyperventilation and  someone twisting himself into a position he should be
old enough to know better than to try.
I would love to see a study of enlightenment.  The only problem would be
finding enough enlightened people to study and I refuse to be a statistic.
:-)
The whole mess comes down to the fact that we have no real data to go on.
 For every rishi who says one thing, we can find another who says the
opposite.  They may take some digging to find, but they are there.
In the end, it is up to the individual to find his own path and that is how I
view theosophy, as a process by which the path is found and then lived and
there are as many different paths as there are people.
Now about the "fear" matter.  This whole area is one that people get touchy
over.  On the one hand, you have those who say "NEVER!"  On the other hand, I
write books on how to do it.  Who is right?  Both? Neither?  Maybe somewhere
in the middle.  The difficulty with the NEVER folks is not that they are
wrong, as I happen to think they are based on the available evidence, but
that very often they get so damnably dogmatic about it that the only way to
deal with them is to be equally dogmatic in the opposite direction and have a
good screaming match, followed by turning them into toads. (Sorry about that,
it's something I've always wanted to say.)
In any event, it may be that I have lived long enough to have heard too many
scare stories about everything from mastrubation to cholesterol and I am the
sort of person who just naturally rejects warnings out of hand.  I am a risk
taker.  And I have found that a damned good way to live.  Sure something can
go wrong and I might get killed, but what the hell, I'll be back and that
cavalier attitude towards life carries over into my spiritual practice as
well.  It gives me the freedom to pursue things that make angels nervous and
the older I get the more I am convinced that the pursuit is perhaps more
important than the goal.
I don't know if any of this rambling answers your questions, but it was a
try.

Chuck the Heretic