Theos-Talk Archives (January 1997 Message tl00839)

Jerry S.:
>> I do not
>>believe that "objective truth" exists per se, except in a relative
>>sense.  
Tom:
>I am not clear what you mean by "except in a relative sense," but this
>seems like pure subjectivism, or what some people call the primacy of
>consciousness over reality, to me.  I infer that you mean that we create
>our own reality and that there is no reality but what we perceive. 
	There is no such thing as "pure subjectivism."  Subject and
object are two sides of a duality, and one can't exist without the other.
What I mean is exactly what you say in the last sentence above.  
Every subjective I has its own objective world or reality around it.
We (the monads in this life wave) do create our own reality, and make
up the rules of life, and agree to abide by them.  Who else?



>... It may take some element of faith either way,
>but I would consider that to be powerful evidence of an objective football
>game.  
	You have obviously not read my Enochian Physics.  Objectivity
is as real as subjectivity.  The only thing to remember is that each
subjective I has its own objective Not-I.  The fact that a lot of people
see the same object is the result of the overlapping of Not-I's.  



>In the Mahatma letter that Doss recently posted, K. H. talked about how 
>paranormal powers were just as subject to law as the simplest physical 
>processes were.  When I think of objective reality, it is these universal
laws 
>that I think of first.
	Yes, and these "laws" are the agreements that we monads made
at the beginning of this life wave through Globe D of the Earth Planetary
Chain.

>His perception would be real, but the pink elephants would not be.
	You are wrong, Tom.  The pink elephants are as real as
the computer that I am typing this on.  They are not physical, like
my computer, but real nonetheless.  What is reality, but that which
we can experience?  Dreams, for example, are very real.  The angels
that are evoked in magic are very real.  Hallucinations are actually
objective reality seen by one person and not by others--a part of their
Not-I that does not overlap.  We all tend to think reality is what is
overlapped (i.e., shared experiences).  My thesis is that anything
the I experiences is real--it has a mayavic (maya in the Buddhist 
sense) reality.  In the sense of maya, everything that we experience
is real.  In a more absolute sense, nothing that we experience
is real.  

>There is a significant difference between seeming to be real and being
>real.
	The only difference is in our minds.  What we believe to be
real changes as we go through life.


>My perception of the law of karma constantly changes, but I do not believe
>it is because the law itself changes.  My perception of what happened last
>year changes, but that does not mean that what happened last year changes.

	Your perception is your reality.  As your perception changes,
so your reality changes.  What is real for you may not be real for me
because we have difference perceptions.  This is the key to overcoming or
extinguishing our past karma.  The past is only as real as we recall it,
and our karma affects us only as long as we allow it to do so.  Karma
is extinquished to the degree that we recognise the unreality of our past.
Thats why all Adepts tell us to focus only on the present.

>Perception cannot take place unless there is something objective to
>perceive.
	There is always subject and object in dualism.  This business
only disappears in nonduality, which few theosophists understand and
none have ever written about.  However, it is true that our experiences
always tend to substantiate our belief system.  Whenever we experience
something that doesn't fit into our belief system, we must either change
our belief system (very difficult) or die (the usual case).  The occult
connection between our subjective self (I) and our objective world (Not-I)
is called Fohat, and this mysterious force is the culprit rersponsible for
our
manifestation in space-time.  It connects the polar sides of duality and
makes non-duality possible.

Jerry S.
Member, TI