Theos-Talk Archives (September 1996 Message tl00125)

Murray writes>
>I hadn't heard of psychogenesis either, until coming across Richard
>Ihle's ideas on it.

Richard Ihle writes>
Thanks to Murray for generous words.

I was also very interested that his computer search for ~psychogenesis~
turned up some instances of its earlier use.  As I mentioned some time back,
the term seems like such a natural and obvious complement to HPB's
~Cosmogenesis~ and ~Anthropogenesis~ that it is highly unlikely that I would
have been the first one to use it to describe the idea that "psyche" may not
be an unchanging static "entity" but that it functions as a sort of
"perpetually travelling mirror" which can at least to some degree reflect the
animating, physical, desire-feeling, desire-mental, mental, Spirit-mental,
and Spiritual (Atma-Buddhic) components of a human incarnation and thus
become "egoically deluded" about its more fundamental and divine nature.

The "Levels" may be seven (or five or whatever), but since each instance of
temporary, partial "Self-forgetting" counts as an "ego-formation" in its own
right, the psyche has countless potential "costumes"--a central feature of
Gurdjieff's work, I believe.  "I am my objective knowledge of the proper
procedure for changing a tire," and "I am my dispassionate understanding of
what HPB probably meant by Fohat" are both examples of the same Fifth-Level
psyche even though they involve different-seeming ego-formations.

Now, the idea that I in my youth once thought I could become famous for was
not psychogenesis itself but rather the "Doctrine of the Seven-Year Cycles."
 That sufficient experience as one type of psyche encourages the "generation"
of the next, higher type of psyche seems to be obvious.  For example, the
"Fourth Level vegetarian" ("I am my non-meat-eating idea which has been
formed because of sympathy for the animals etc.") may naturally progress into
a "Fifth-Level vegetarian" ("I am my non-meat-eating idea which has been
formed by the desire-free logic, science, or personal experience that eating
meat is unhealthy").

No, I thought I could make it big not with psychogenesis, which seems to be
the standard notion underlying all systems of "Spiritual e
Murry S. writes:
In my own piece on theos-roots headed "Psychogenesis and the VOS", I said

>I have just done a search on the Internet for the single word
>"psychogenesis" using the AltaVista engine, and I came up with 42 different
>articles or books that contained the word somewhere. .... Most of the
>titles looked pretty much in the psychological field, excepting for one
>about Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. That one looked deeply fascinating and so
>theosophical in its ideas of unity and brotherhood (sic), that I shall post
>some extracts from it in a later message.

Well, this is the later message. As I said, this appears to be a study
guide, but what grips me is the intuition of unity and connectedness, coming
as it does from a Catholic scientist/priest/mystic.

Beginning of quote -------------------------------------------------------
1.Quotes from "The Activation of Energy" by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Keith:
WOW!
Psychogenesis seems to be presently a coined word with no definite definition.
Quick, RIchard, if I were you I would copyright and trademark it and go on a
tour teaching psychogenesis in ten easy lessons ;)

As used by some, it seems to have a lot in common with Piaget's ideas from
developmental psychology whre a child begins to have ability to learn certain
type of things - concrete reasoning vs abstract - only after a certain stage of
development in the brain takes place.

Kohlberg talks about moral development.   Very young Children  think you
shouldn't still cookies because you will get punished.  Older children think you
shouldn't still cookies because Momma and Daddy say it is bad and they know
everything.  Teenagers think stealing cookies is especially fun, because you
aren' supposed too. Adults seem to realize that you can be punished, but
stealing a cookie now and then is OK if someone;'s  life depended on it and it
didn't really hurt anybody.  Really developed people like Gandhi take the more
developed notion that man does not live by cookies alone etc, but hey, the WHOLE
WORLD really likes cookies, so share your cookies!!!  :)

I think  psychogeneis seems to in the hardware of the brain.  We will learn to
walk and talk at a certian age, because before that the body and brain is not
ready.  Other say I can't walk and talk because my mother didn't love me.
Others say I can know the secrets of the cosmos, but emptying my mind.

Thanks for the web search.  This psychogenesis thing is only a beginning in my
mind!

Namaste
Keith Price