Theos-Talk Archives (January 1997 Message tl00891)

Jerry Schueler wrote:

>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?

If I jump off the Grand Canyon, I do not decide that I will fall.  The
law of gravity exists independently of anything I can do and
regardless of whether or not I am aware of it.  If I habitually lie to
people, there is nothing I can do about the fact that they will not
trust me as much.  That tendency exists whether I am aware of it or
not.  I did not create it.


>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.  

The perception of them is real.  They are not.


>The angels that are evoked in magic are very real.  

If they are real, they would be real whether anyone perceived them or
not.


>Hallucinations are actually objective reality seen by one person and not by >others--a part of their Not-I that does not overlap.  

If an hallucination is real, the term "mistaken perception" has no
meaning.  If I thought that there was no such thing as the
Theosophical Society, I would be just as truthful as someone else who
thought there was.  The word "truth" would be meaningless.


>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.  

It exists as a perception, but not necessarily as reality.


>What we believe to be real changes as we go through life.

I agree.  Perception changes.  But reality does not necessarily
conform to those changes.


>>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.  

I find the idea that the law of karma changes as my perception of it
changes to be very far-fetched.  That would mean that there is no
objective law of karma.  I believe there is.  


>What is real for you may not be real for me
>because we have difference perceptions.  

If the law of karma is different for you than it is for me, then it is
a non-existent figment of our imagination.  Why wouldn't the law of
gravity work the same way?  Maybe if I do not believe in it, it does
not exist.


>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.  

I infer that you mean that we can escape the consequences of our
actions simply by choosing to do so.  I disagree.


>all Adepts tell us to focus only on the present.

Do they mean to neither plan for the future nor learn from the past?


>	There is always subject and object in dualism.  This business
>only disappears in nonduality

Does this have something to do with recognizing the connection, if not
the identity, between subject and object?