Theos-Talk Archives (July 1996 Message tl00527)

On Sun, 21 Jul 1996, Jerry Schueler wrote:

> >I belong to the school of thought in theosophy that believes that first 
> >things should come first. First contact with one's Higher Self, and 
> >then--as a natural outcome of the contact--a lot of wonderful things like 
> >intuition, siddhis, and so forth.
> 	Been there.  Done that.  Its not as easy as you suggest.

I did not suggest it's easy. What I insisted on is that it's unavoidable: 
one cannot bypass the Higher Self. However, we do not need to treat this 
subject in too simplistic a manner by imaginig the Higher Self as something
unusual. I guess 50% to 80% population of this planet receive 
occasional revelations or directions from their Selves; 10 million to 50 
million people are guided (mostly unconsciously) by their Selves (I do 
not include those who are guided by some astral entities). If I'm right 
the situation is not so hopeless.

> 
> >So for me and for some others in the theosophical movement the main 
> >criterion to judge wheter or not a TS yoga exists, is to see if 
> >theosophy offers any means of making the contact. 
> 	Theosophy does not offer such a means.  At least, it never
> offered me one.  It does tell us that such a thing exists, which is a good 
> start.  But I had to figure out how to contact my Higher Self on my own.

Same in my case.

> >This perspective on TS yoga elevates the whole issue to the level where 
> >it properly belongs.
> 	This sounds very "core-ish" but doesn't make much sense.
> You seem to be saying that we have a Higher Self, and that we must 
> contact it first before we can practice yogic techniques that we can use 
> to contact our Higher Self .  This is an obvious Catch 22.  If you think
> that you can contact your Higher Self with karma yoga and altruism
> (which is what the TSs offer us) then you are in for a rude shock.

No, I was not saying that. I was suggesting doing concentration and 
meditation with the purpose of making contact with the Self rather with 
the purpose of doing concentration and meditation.   

In the final analysis, everybody finds his/her own unique way to 
realization--for some it is working in the office, for others doing 
business or science, for still others pursuing quest in the area of core 
theosophy or process theosophy, New Age, Christianity, and so forth... The 
incredible and irreducible variety of threads woven together! Sometimes 
they resonate in tune with each other, sometimes they don't. So if what I 
had to say did not make much sense for you, please ignore it.


Max