Theos-Talk Archives (March 1999 Message tl00006)

>> There is, of course, need for great discrimination, as all
>> knowledge is not for those who are ethically known to be
>> unworthy."  I mean to stress the idea of "ethically," because
>> there is always the potential for a person to selfishly abuse
>> knowledge.  And if a teacher unwisely gives information, the
>> moral burden descends on that "teacher" who so unwisely gives
>> information to the "wrong" person.
>
>I do have a problem with that argument. I have heard it
>befor: it is one of the arguments for secrecy in the E.S..
>My objection to the idea is that the information involved
>is not really ours in the sense that we could have
>discovered it ourselves. We were given the information by
>H.P.B. and others and then extract those portions that we
>understand. If we suppose (which is most likely) that we
>are not so different from our fellowmen/women, morally
>speaking, then why should we try and judge wether or not
>they are morally ready to receive the information.

Exactly right. Its the height of arrogance to think that the ES possesses
anything other than the published writings of HPB. The continual babbling
about "secrets" that seems to fill occult circles looks increasingly
ridiculous in this day and age. My own opinion is that there *are* no
"secrets" that can be written down. The "hidden knowledge" can't just be
written down for the "ethically corrupt" to steal and misuse. A person needs
to have arrived at some level of interior development before a "secret"
would even make any sense. If someone's intent is truly evil, they sure as
hell don't need occultism - there are a thousand different and much easier
means of doing evil in the modern age. Why spend (for instance) ten years
learing how to gain control of another person's will by "occult" means when
one can just slip a tiny drug into someone else's drink? The whole thing
reminds me of something Crowley said when speaking of his first induction
into the Golden Dawn ... "They swore me to secrecy with terrible oaths and
threats of death, and then revealed to me the Hebrew alphabet ...".

The *hint* that one has secret information of some sort has long been used
by people with god complexes to elevate their own self-importance, and to
control people they've brought into their organization. The further hint
that *theosophists* somehow need to be "careful" about who they give their
precious "knowledge" to would be an enormous joke, if that thought wasn't so
widespread, and wasn't doing so much to *ruin* modern theosophy.

There probably *are* occult secrets, but the *inner state of awareness*
required to even begin to understand them means the people who possess them
1) are *not* gonna go around trumpeting the fact that they have "secrets" to
the world, and worrying endlessly (and publically) about whether others are
"ethically" ready to receive them; and 2) that the people who *do* that not
only most assuredly *don't* have any secrets, but probably wouldn't
recognize one if it came up to them and bit them in the ass.

Tee Hee, -JRC