Theos-Talk Archives (November 1999 Message tl00209)

> As usual when I get along in a discussion here I soon lose focus of
what is
> even in disagreement.

Yes - this list is just full of superstitous, illogical people incapable
of thinking straight.

> 1.  A person has questions about origins, destiny, the nature of
reality,
> etc.  Needs no proof.
> 2.  It is reasoned that there must be a truth, one truth.  Why?  It is
> logical, fits experience, accounts for the universal order we can see.
>
> All okay so far by me.  These thoughts are also something anybody(even
I)
> could arrive at without any training whatsoever.  Very straight
forward,
> linear, simple(sorry I like these "western" qualities) and necessary
as a
> foundation for any subsequent discussion meant to get anywhere(sorry,
I like
> the prospect of real results I might be able to use for
self-edification and
> to help improve the human condition).

"sorry" - this continual little guilt -tripping, the attitude of "silly
me, I like that dumb old logic" - is a kind of ridiculous rhetorical
trick - attemping to imply that anyone that *doesn't* think in the
strraight lines that you prefer somehow is incapable of gaining any
"real results", anything useful, or improving the human condition. Is it
"logic" that leads you to use it?

> Continuing.  Now it gets hard.
> 3.  Since reason has led me to this point, why not use it to determine
what
> the universal truth is?

If you actually think it is unreasonable to *question* reason - to
consider, given the immensity of the universe, the complexity of
creation, whether reason (or anything else) is a tool sufficient to
approach  something as enormous as that universal truth - then you
simply aren't being reasonable. You claim to want to find this truth,
and improve the lot of humanity, but adamently insist that there is a
single mechanism that you'll use, a single tool, without any regard for,
or even willingness to question, whether that tool is fit for the job.
Why *not* use it? A better question is *why* use it? What justifies that
choice? Its certainly very useful on the physical plane - but simply
because it can design and build a car is hardly evidence that it is
capable of approaching universal truths. Some species of monkeys know
how to put a stick into an anthole, get them to climb on it, then pull
the stick out to eat the ants. To conclude from this that a stick - due
to its ability to deliver "experimental results" and  "practical
utility" - is therefore also the perfect tool with which to discover the
nature of reality is not, er, *logical*.

> 4.  Now just get to it.  Assemble the truths and see what they say.
Maybe
> this will not get too far but it is a safe way to go and will prevent
wasting
> a lot of time on detours(which most of the thousands of religious
beliefs
> are).

Will do no such thing. Who said the search was supposed to be "safe"?
And you actually think it prevents wasting a lot of time on detours?
Good lord, have you *studied* science? Its history is littered with
detours ... in fact virtually every single small scientific truth was
the end result of multiple falsehoods, dozens of trails followed to dead
ends.

> In the alternative to #3, one could go to school under any number of
masters,
>  Tammy Faye Baker,  Jesus(Although who really knows what he even said
Never
> mind that though, learn the language of christology and show some
respect for
> the clergy masters, right?),  Jerry Falwell,  Confucious,
HPB(oops--covers
> head defensively to ward off blows) etc.  We could trust in the great
> intellect of these masters, learn the vocabulary they invent,  not
question
> their foundations, not apply reason(too western), just follow, that's
the
> essential key here.

This is *your* fantasy - you continually try to paint Theosophy as being
the same as any religion, imply it is similar to Tammy Faye, Jerry
Falwell - but this is a concept *you* have, irrationally, decided to
hold - and it simply doesn't fit with the *evidence* you so deeply
cherish. Has anyone on this list asked you to follow anything? Have
they? Told you that they insist that you worship anything? Accept any
belief at all? NO, Randy, they haven't. And they never will.

And so far as the false dichotomy you continually attempt to create -
its bogus. To say that it is a matter of *either* using reductionist
western "reason" *or* being a blind follower - well, this is one of the
extreme biases invented by that very "reason" ... which in its arrogance
believes it reigns supreme, and that anything else is lesser. And guess
what? If you want to explore quantum physics, or medicene ... you are
(gasp) going to have to study under "masters", at first (until you can
understand for yourself how to verify their results) actually (oh no!)
*trust their intellect*, they'll even have the unmitigated gall to
insist that you *learn the vocabulary they invented*, will consider you
(terrible! terrible!) an idiot if you want to question their foundations
before you are even capable of understanding the vocabulary with which
they name them. In short - at least at first, you'll have to be what in
your world you evidently call a "follower".

Has anyone here told you to stop questioning? NO. And they never will.
What people *have* said is before they take *their* time to answer you,
they'd probably prefer some sign that you are something other than a
casual, ego-filled questioner on a lark. This list has seen many of them
... people with agendas - who get their rocks off by using either
"logic" or religion to demonstrate how idiotic Theosophy is. We even had
a couple of Baptist fundamentalists a couple years ago. They were fun to
play with, but soon got tiring - though for some of us it *was* deeply
pleasurable to be called "agents of satan".

You keep asking on this *list* for Theosophical principles to be
explained in simple, introductory terms. Several people have told you to
read various things ... some suggesting specific short, simple books
that contain exactly what you seek. You, of course, apparently decline
to read them. No, you insist upon *personal* attention, want *us* to
deliver the concepts you seek, framed in the terms you define, and
according to the standards of evidence you determine. You conceive of us
as religious followers, and hence expect us to act as though we have
another potential convert that we'll be happy to spend all sorts of time
sucking up to. Go to a Pentacostal church if this is what you want -
they'll be happy to deliver it to you. But you won't get it in
Theosophy. Or, I might add, in *any* field whose students and
specialists spent years of hard work before they even claimed to
understand the basics.

 > You seem to be advocating this later alternative(although I'm sure
you would
> deny you are a follower, that's what your argument distills to) if I
> understand you correctly with my limited linear western mind.

You don't. *Your* argument apparently distills to "people are either
"reasonable", as I define it, or they are followers, and since you
refuse to answer my questions in exactly the fashion I demand, you
obviously must be a follower".

>You also seem
> to be using the tools used by religion through the ages to justify
their
> beliefs, e.g.,  You're an idiot compared to the leaders;

Tell me what science or philosophy *doesn't* think a beginner is an
idiot compared to those who have studied it for years.

> don't ask silly
> proof questions cause even physicists, dealing with chaos,
indeterminacy,
> quarks with their sticky gluons, etas, muons, taus, don't even
understand
> reality

*They* are humble enough to admit they don't. And freely admit that many
of their foundational theories not only are not, but *can* not ever be
proven according the the accepted standards of empirical science.

> (though I must insert they are seeking answers by means of reason, and
> it is reason that got them to where they are-

Completely wrong. In fact the most brilliant scientists of this century
freely admit the limitations of reason that you so clearly don't want to
accept. They view reason as essentially a useful tool for *digestion*,
not for discovery. Its not the ultimate - its merely one of many tools,
useful in some instances, completely useless in others.

> or if not is at least tested by
> it-and much of the reality they discover, though not vector or scalar
at this
> point, is believed reducible to the logic of math.

which ... as Godel showed, will *always* be a closed, self-referential
system. It is a very useful language for thinking about things, but is
incapable of "proving" anything.

> pay the dues of studying a new discipline with all its attendent
vocabulary

And this differs how from from studying medicene? Or studying Hegel?

> and presuppositions and then you will "see"(reminds me of
> brainwashing--that's an eastern thing isn't it?).

An eastern thing? Really? Its actually been used all over the world ...
but in this century was brought to its highest and most effective state
by *scientists*, experimenting on prisoners, and using *logic* to refine
its techniques.

So you actually think that anyone insisting that you study foundational
literature, learn a field's vocabulary, not waste their time answering
your initial questions until you've read at least a few of the
beginner's books that contain most of the answers you seek ... you think
*this* person is encouraging you to be "brainwashed"? No one on this
list has any motive to brainwash you. In fact, no one is trying to get
you to believe or accept anything, are they? This whole massive argument
boils down to you asking basic questions, being specifically given the
names of books where you might find exactly what you are seeking, you
refusing to read the books and claiming you deserve personal attention,
assuming that this is some religion that wants you as a follower and
that hence we should be accomodating your wishes, and even going so far
as to say that the insistance that you at least spend a bit of effort
learning the vocabulary before you'll be worth much time is somehow an
effort to "brainwash" you.

This isn't a religion - no one wants to recruit you. No one has, or will
try. It is a list mostly full of scientists, philosophers, mystics,
psychologists, professors, writers, and artists. We often have
significant disagreements about the very foundational questions you are
demanding clarity about. Probably the only common element is that we are
each, in our own very different ways, pursuing ultimate questions,
seeking to go beyond whatever the science or faith of any single time or
place is, attempting to discover universals ... and open to the idea
that we may need to do arduous and difficult internal work to qualify
ourselves to discover them.

This is a community of scholars, not a fundamentalist revival claiming
simple answers to complex questions, and eager to be accepted and
validated by the general public. In fact, many of us assume we won't be.
If you stay on the list, what you have experienced up to now will only
get much much worse. Expect every cherished assumption you have - be it
the ascendency of "logic" or anything else - to be questioned. Expect no
one to just deliver answers in the form you demand them ... but often to
instead have the form you are demanding them in disected and critiqued.
Curiously enough ... a number of people on the list not only don't find
that to be a downside, but indeed see it as one of the more valuable
aspects. This place is a free-for-all of conflicting paradigms. If you
want neatly packaged answers, if you *want* a cult that will try to
"brainwash" you because its so much fun to fight against, don't waste
any more time here ... your drug of choice is not on this street corner.
If you have *personally*, according to an inner predilection, made to
choice to try to scale the Big Mountain of ultimate answers - you
probably *will* find valuable food for thought in some Theosophical
literature, and *may* find some value in being on a list of people who
are also involved, from drastically different directions and
perspectives, in many different countries, cultures, and religions, in
pursuing a similar quest.

> If theosophy, like any other useful system of thought, has anything of
value
> to say, the  essential  elements must be able to be clearly
articulated with
> common language and the proofs made obvious.  My feeling is that if
you are
> saying that theosophy cannot do this then I am saying it has nothing
of value
> to offer other than mental calisthenics.

You're certainly free to believe this - though I hope you look at
exactly what you are saying: That what, in the relation to the
"universe", is a little spec of temporary dust, tiny even in relation to
the small pebble it lives upon, barely a few millenia out of the swamp,
containing a pound or two of grey matter that was largely formed merely
to keep itself alive, but has clawed its way to the rudiments of what it
calls "reason", and has generated 2 or 3 hundred different languages
capable of naming different aspects of its limited perceptual world with
varying degrees of specificity ... this miniscule being, not even
wanting to use an extended vocabulary, but insisting that only a small
*subset* of its little concept base be used ... this being should
nonetheless be able to frame and understand - in that simplistic
vocabulary set - the "essential elements" of a philosophy that attempts
to address the nature of reality itself, of universal truths that hold
throughout space and time. And if a philosophy *can't* provide this,
then obviously (this being concludes) it can't be anything other than
"mental calesthentics". Seems as though this attitude says far more
about *you* than about Theosophy.

> I find it of interest that we are engaged in this debate using common
> language, attempts at reason while sitting in homes made with the
logic of
> engineering, resting on chairs utilizing the reason of physics,
tapping away
> on computers based on the surety of math and information science,
etc., damn
> all this western linear crap.

So then, this thing that "interests" you - is it grounded in the notion
that because reason and logic are capable of wiring a house, therefore
one can naturally conclude that it is fully capable of approaching the
ultimate questions of life and existence? Because a rusty saw is fully
capable of cutting a log, would you therefore conclude that it is
perfect for heart surgery? What you may find equally of interest is the
fact that long before there was engineering there were homes, inside of
which people sat discussing these very issues. That Theosophy hints at a
*science* that was around long before the arrogance of western reason,
is still developing, and will be around long *after* the need for
computers to commicate this way has disappeared ... due to the
development of latent traits within human beings themselves - that will
eventually permit them to (and already permits a few to) communicate
precisely at a great distance using what current "science" would call
completely illogical and nonexistant abilities. Oh yeah, I forgot.
Shouldn't bring that up - it wouldn't be worth your trouble to read
about it. -JRC