Theos-Talk Archives (September 1999 Message tl00131)

In a message dated 9/21/99 11:12:33 PM Central Daylight Time,
ramadoss@eden.com writes:

> It was the *Leadbeaterian* theosophy that postulated ( and believed by
>  many) that to spiritually progress celibacy was important.
>
And that is the problem.  The TS has become a opiate for spiritual couch
potatoes and some want to control the drug and the proceeds from it.  From an
Caucasus perspective, to be celibate is the pre-condition for no progress in
self-knowledge.  The firm and steady foundation of self-knowledge is
knowledge of oneself in light of conscience in the thick of it.  One must
have had the chance to be wrong, tested, and learn one's limitations and
moral mistakes and regrets as well as concretely encountering one's talents,
strengths, and triumphs.  We take our heroes straight, including, lumps,
warts, foul breath, farts, and fleas.  We don't emaciate them by turning
Arjunas of the Gita or Kay Khusrow of the Shahnama into glorified sissys
after image of whimps like Leadbeater.  Nor do we turn our angels into fat
little babies or whispy little girls in Victorian nighties.  Nor is
spirituality the faded blue lodge atmosphere of an old maid aunt society that
would faint with apoplexy over an HPB walking in cussing because the
atmosphere was one of perfumed death such as one finds on cancer ward of old
hospitals (Hemingway's description of the smell of death is actually smell of
cancer).  Spirit is spiritedness.  It is a fierce and vigorous concept and
reality.  We still speak of a horse that has spirit or of esprit de corp.
Spirit is that strong vital bond of life overcoming death.  The word brahman
comes from the old ksatriya word for a powerful true boast that works up
others into a readiness to do battle by overcoming fears through collective
elan and esprit de corp.  It is cognate to the English word brag and Norse
word for poetry, riddles, and divine power.  Brahman is the boast of the
vigor of Being (sat) over the impotence of non-Being (asat).  Next, it was
applied by Vedic priests to those mantras in the Rgveda that were
particularly potent pieces.  Its verbal root means to swell.  Ever see the
super-vigor of a pregnant woman almost smug with the degree of life and
health radiating from her?  That is the swelling that brahman is.  In
Persian, it is Fravahr and is cognate to the English word fierce.  It is the
joyful overabundance of life's immortal defeat of death.  Thumos in Greek
means samething.  Thumos is cognate to English enthusiasm.  What Leadbeater
types call "spiritual" is Victorian weakness, repression, and de-spirited
depression.  It is the "joy" of the opiate addict or hypo-condriac (doctor to
hypocondriac: I have bad news and good news. You are a hypo-condriac and I
can't cure you of it.  Doctor to normal mortal patient:  I have good news and
bad news.  You are not a hypo-condriac.").  What some fainting lillies, poor
specimens of the human race, call "spiritual" is their own glorified
incapacity, hypocrisy, and stench of the spiritually dying, who can only
faint at the sight of a steak, become sick at the smell of a cigar, swoon or
become tipsy after a shot of whiskey or vodka or retsina, and like the
emphemerial mood music that blends with their lilac or lavender incense to
create a heard and smelt haze that suits their faded "spirituality" which is
actually their de-spirited stupor, and who make lodges smell and feel like a
hospital ward for the terminally nostalgic, they recommend celibacy because
they are under-sexed.  Fasting, celibacy, and other such askesis was to
overcome and a sign of growing strength, not of the incapacity of the
Leadbeaters in life.  Judaism, Sufis of Islam, Zoroastrianism, for example,
forbid the monkish life.  Such forms of askesis are temporary.  Being
celibate for 90 days by one who enjoys sex frequently is both more difficult
and more productive than of one who hasn't developed the taste for it and
enthusiasm for it.  Fasting from cognac by one who has never savored it
regularly is worthless.  Because these are supplementary means to strengthen
your mettle for the real test.  For a real man (I do not presume to speak for
women on this matter), to fast from the sex and cognac that he dearly loves,
while an exercising and development of real spiritual strength, is only
preparing for the real battle that is also being set up in the process.
Fasting for a while from something one dearly loves brings out one's
irritability, bad temper, foul mood, and anger very effectively.  That is the
setting up of the inner battle.  THE REAL TEST IS THEN TO USE AND DEVELOP THE
INNER STRENGTH TO GAINED IN FOREGOING SEX AND COGNAC TO NOT IDENTIFY WITH BUT
OVERCOME THE RESULTING IRRITABILITY, BAD TEMPER, FOUL MOOD, AND ANGER that
invariably results in one not yet perfect.  But the real test, fasting
inwardly from all the negativity that arises from fasting outwardly from a
cherished desire, is still only a test.  The reality is to learn to use this
new inner ability and strength in the thick of things, in life, where things
evoke hurt, anger, and bad temper.  The Leadbeaters fast, vegitate, and
celibate in order to avoid this process in the first place.  No real loves,
no real passions, no real angers and animosities, no real addictions, no real
lusts, then nothing real to overcome.  Fasting, vegitarianism, and celibacy
are limited tools for limited times serving other ends.  Leadbeaterites think
they are the end-in-themselves, and thus, stick in their thumb and pull out
their shrivelled plum, and say how spiritual are we when all they are is full
of prunes (those shrivelled plums).

No one is born perfect.  But to become perfect one must have lived a real
life, with real defeats, regrets, real mistakes, blood or dirt on ones hands,
while trying to do good, help, contribute - all that is to learn from as a
picture of who you are and where you are aiming really (are you really aiming
at perfecting evolution or use it as a fancy label to mask your nefarious
goals?)  Self-knowledge for the imperfect (us) is of the bad and the good we
are.  We are angels and wolves.  We have to be looking not only when our
angelic pious Sunday best is in charge (so we can thrill to our piousness)
but also catch ourselves in the act when the wolf is in control.  To look at
the wolf in us takes courage, some spirit that is strong enough to bear
seeing in us what we don't like to see and sometimes have built-up a lifetime
of habits to avoid seeing.  We are deluded if we only look at ourselves when
we are angels and don't allow ourselves to see the wolf and we are mistaken
if we think pupose of seeing the wolf is to eliminate it.  We must not deny
the wolf but find its proper role and place within the larger moral,
spiritual, and cosmic scheme.  So, we must study both wolf and angel in us.
To do that takes courage, tenacity, and dogged stubborness that we will know
the truth of ourselves.  That is spirit, the ability to overcome ourselves.
Leadbeater and company mistakenly took the route of weakening ourselves,
starving the wolf, killing the spiritual muscle, and deludedly called it
spiritual evolution or spiritual self-mastery.  Bull!  To truly be a
character, one must be an outrageous character.  By that I mean we need to
see we are all notorious characters of a questionable past and dubious worth
as well as angels in training to become a tried and tested character, refined
through the fire of life, to become a character that is truly a self-mastered
moral character.  Our imperfections, our impulses, our angel and our wolf, is
the leaden raw material and prima materia for our transmutation.  Leadbeater
wishes to beat the lead into a soft plaint powder whose poisonous effect on
the mind he mistakenly lauds as a higher state.  Bah!

In middle east, the best medium of testing and refining ones mettle is family
and sex and money.  As angel and wolf, how does one deal with these
dimensions of life is thing first to find out as gauge to one's spiritual
worth.  Marriage is good for that.  As it is said in Caucasus, a man is not a
man worth his salt if he hasn't been salted, assaulted, and insulted in holy
wedlock.  Course, marriage is not exclusive measure nor same as sex but
Leadbeaters (we know what his ancestors did, beat lead into spiritual snuff)
who seek to evade involvement in key areas of life have no grist for their
mill.  Its like trying to become world traveler, veteran of adventures and
wars, by watching TV and playing video war games.  Such male-cows are cut out
of herd and killed to insure health of herd in countries where such are
raised.  TS seems to collect them.  Read the books and live a vicarious
spiritual path.  When the fare of even the original books becomes to strong,
feed them the pablum of even a less nourishing vicarious feel good vaguely
about something I didn't experience or live through myself.  TS might as well
advertise itself as cross between a New Thought lecture and a Christian
Science Reading room.  New Thought is feeling good about it instead of
becoming it in fact.

Grigor