Theos-Talk Archives (November 1999 Message tl00062)

> which has nothing to do with the SD model ......

Ah ... yes. In fact, I've found the TS model to be ornately, even
embarressingly intellectual - but perhaps its main purpose is to train the
mind , to force it to wrestle with concepts that are open ended ... in fact
to spark the development of the "formless" aspects of intellect (to use the
TS model itself). But so far as practical models that - for me - resonated
far more deeply, and at much more than simply an intellectual level, the
Kabalah kicks spiritual butt (as it were). I remember the exact *moment* -
in my early 20's, when I stumbled across that single sentence in Dion
Fortune's classic:

"God is Pressure"

And in a single moment of lucidity, induced by that sentence, caught a
glimpse of the entire scheme behind all the models ... *felt* in the core of
my bones the continual flow of energy from the heart of the Ain Soph Aur,
down into fully manifested physical matter, and its torturous climb back
upwards - felt the single process that was at once universal and personal.
For another decade or so I was pretty intense about trying to find models
that would even hint at articulating everything that was contained in that
moment ... and certainly Theosophy was part of that quest (come now Alan,
don't you recognize precisely where Dallas is? ... did you not at one time
yourself experience the deep pleasure he gets from writing everything he
writes? of *course* virtually no one reads any more than the first couple of
sentences those tomes ... but did you not at one point in your life also
write *to digest*? (-:)).

Ultimately though, all models are things to master and discard. The final
and highest act of magic will always be to toss all magic in the
wastebasket. The map is not the mountain, and deep study of the lines of the
map is not the same thing as the actual climbing of the mountain. But the
people that study the maps *do* stand a chance of one day getting bored and
deciding to find the trailhead (which may, after all, be what the adepts
were aiming at anyway). Omar Khayyam is priceless:

"Myself when young, did eagerly frequent,
doctor and saint and heard great argument,
about it and about, but evermore,
came out by the same door as in I went ..."

Or, as the infamous Richard Nixon (who would have thought *he* was a master
har har har) put it even more succinctly,

"It don't mean nothin' 'till you prove it all night ...".

Alan Bain, you nasty old English wizard, don't be mean to the poor
apprentice! You, who have passed what is now widely recognized amongst
masters as being the final initiation below the Abyss - i.e., disturbing the
official TS leadership badly enough ... by having the balls to actually try
to put theosophy into *practice* with TI ... to be demeaned and lied about
and banished from the Society (an initiation that, despite my best efforts,
I still have not yet quite been able to achieve har har har har har har) ...
come come ... use your secret decoder ring to look a bit into the future for
goodness sake! Can't you see the moment, probably not too far down the road,
when Dallas, in a paradoxical moment of spiritually pure cognitive
dissonance (tee hee) is going to suddenly *see* what he's been doing? And
will start laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing and
laughing ..................................... -JRC