Theos-Talk Archives (November 1999 Message tl00356)

In a message dated 11/28/99 12:51:11 PM Central Standard Time, dalval@nwc.net
writes:

> Perhaps my line of thinking is slightly different from yours, so
>  let me offer:
>
>
>  I am thinking of the threefold power that every human has in one
>  or other degree of usage and aptitude:
>
>  1.  to THINK independently.

Part of my post was to ask what is thinking.  I suggest that
thought is itself something that takes on its true nature as
it evolves.  In essence, finite thought, finite meaning, and finite
intelligibility are incomplete and indefinite fragments of one
complete infinite thought.  So, what we may mean by "thinking"
may not at all be obvious but is also part of the puzzle to be
explored.
>
>  2.  to make comparisons, and

Again, comparisons, I would argue, presuppose a network of
thoughts, meanings, and intelligibilities.  For example, if we
decide that one experience was not veridical or we decide that
a thought was not true, it has to be in comparison to either
another experience or another thought.  In Vedanta and Buddhism,
this process is called "subration."  But it in principle tacitly appeals
to an infinity of thoughts/experiences.  Science proceeds accumulatively
as growth of knowledge by comparing earlier incomplete models within
larger models (just like a sentence is equivocal until given context but
all finite contexts are equivocal until infinity).
>
>  3.  to extrapolate conclusions or potential results according to
>  whatever capacity he may have developed to apprehend the
>  operative Laws of nature and his own position in regard to the
>  totality of his environment.

Two points: first laws of nature to a finite mind always appear
in a perspective.  But what that law may be in itself may appear
very different in the end.  Pretend you live in a two-dimensional
universe.  A three dimensional body would be something other
than it first appears to be.  For example, if you moved across
a surface of a three dimensional body that seemed perpendicular
to the spatial surface of your two-dimensional world, the succession
would seem like time (as third dimension to your two spatial ones).
But from a higher perspective (3D world), you are merely transversing
the surface of a solid on a perpendicular from what in 2D world is space.
And if a three-D object such as a three legged stool touched
a surface in two-D world, it would appear to be a strange idea if someone
suggested that the three spots were really "one."  Now the point
is not to get too caught up in the geometry analogy but to say
that there are good reasons to believe that something similar
applies to finite states.  So, a complementarity may exist between
your version of a post-mortem state and Jerry's (or Alan's).
Second point, we never see the totality of our environment.  What
usually happens is we metaphorically take some part of reality
or an experience as a model for the whole (as argued by Kant,
James, Dorothy Emmett, and recently, Quine).  We have not even see
the whole of our own life let alone that of the universe.  We are in
our life but have not seen our life as a whole.  So, what we usually
do is take some finite experience that is only a part of our life and
metaphorically make it a paradigm for what we take life as a whole
to be like.  So, abused children take their experience (a part) to
be what life (the whole) is like.  Happy children do the same.
A finite amount of experience (part) becomes our metaphorical
model for our whole life.  What our whole life is like is unknown
to us even in one life.  And thus, what it is to be whole is
unknown to us.  But again, as new experiences come (just
as context is provided for a sentence or finite bit of meaning),
new light might be thrown on the old experiences that we
took to be paradigms of the nature of life as a whole.  So,
if their meaning is altered, so is our sense of what life is like
as a whole altered.  But still, life as a whole (our life in just one
life) has never been seen.  We have experiences of chairs
(where, even in perspective, we still can take the chair in "whole")
and other objects but we have no experience of our life as
one whole at once.  So, there must be a degree on indefiniteness
to us and to our theories, even HPB's.

>  Being possessed of these tools (faculties) I still ask and say
>  WHO AM I ?

To follow the analogy above, one may have a very different sense
of self if one gives oneself a 2D answer rather than a 3D answer.
Usually, our sense of self, our feeling of being I, I suggest, is taken
from those experiences we take as a paradigmatic model (part)
for life (the whole).  So, our ordinary sense of I is based on
our inner identification with our metaphorical paradigms by which
we get our feeling of self.  But if the self is the authentic centre
of our life as a integral whole, then we have no experience of
I in its fullness.  We experience fragments of I-hood.  And the
meanings we draw about life and self from these fragments
of taking this or that bit of experience as "me" or as "I" may
not good pointers to what an I is.  If our existence, if our
sense of being I, our identities are so indefinite in this life,
where the body gives us some tangibility, then it seems that
the after-life might be even more indefinite.  Aspects of it
might fit both you and Jerry's views.  The Dzog chen idea,
using the spatial analogy, is that there really isn't past and
future lives along a timeline.  Rather, from the enlightened
view, they are not successive but simultaneous modes of
a higher identity just as my left side and my right side, while
under certain conditions where first one is seen and then another
seen in succession, really exist simultaneously.  So, in Dzog chen,
the life review is also a trap into a next life.  Why?  Because
any response to a whole based on a part will at some
point display malfunctioning behaviour.  In one life, if
early experience is such that I apply it to everyone I
meet, it will lead to bad karma eventually.  Life review,
as a process of learning what life is about (as a whole,
a moral whole) continues the process of applying finite
models to infinite experiences.  Eventually, our part that
we use as a guide to the whole will lead us wrong.  So,
Dzog chen says, the life review process that breaks this
cycle is the one that realizes this one tiny life cannot
be used as a model/dispositional readiness for the next
life or life as a whole AND realizes that we ARE NOW
all our past and futures lives together in a higher present.
That who I am, is what all these lives are together now as
aspects of a single self and not successive lives.  But if
this is the case, then Jerry's view rounds out and complements
what you present as the normative or standard Theosophical
view of reincarnation.  It is like one party looking at first
the left foot stepping forward and then the right foot stepping forward
(and thinks these are successive manifestations of one self)
whereas another party sees the whole body that both legs
belong to at the same time (thinks they are two limbs
simultaneously possessed by one self).

>
> I  OBSERVE THAT I AM THE ONE  WHO CHOOSES.

Who is that I?  Is it the whole I or somepart of it that feels like
it is the I?  People seem to be contradictory bundles or complexes
of identifications that as fragments "choose this" then another "chooses
that" and so, who chooses and what is choice?  Paul speaks of the
conflict of the outer worldly fragments of the true I with the inner whole
and true I in Romans where he says that which he would do, he does not, but
instead, he does that which he hates.  He is speaking about the bondage
of the will, that there is no ONE WILL, no authentic and integral CHOICE,
if there is not a full and integral chooser who is the whole I or Self (with
big
S).  Part of the process of spiritual evolution is where a master, in effect,
morally sets you up for a fall.  The purpose is to show the indefinite and
shifting nature of our sense of being I, and thus, the indefinite and shifting
nature of any "choice."  Real choice can only be made by the real I, and such
as we are, I suggest that we are incapable of the first because in our
identifications, that is, drawing our sense of self or sense of I from
fragments
of a life made into a paradigm for the whole life, we are fragments of the
real
I.  Since a fragment chooses for us, but a fragment is not the whole nor has
control over the whole, the whole is not behind any choice we make or we
are ambivalently not wholly behind any choice we make.  We are the indefinite
men out of contact with being our whole Self.  Doesn't the indefiniteness
of our existence need to be explored first so we know the raw
material, so to speak, we have to work with no matter how
impoverished?  Part of the Buddhist doctrine of no-self is a message
of moral failure to be the SELF.  And since our understandings
and interpretations of even a set of ideas that are designed to guide
us, such as HPB's, will invariably be colored by our personalities
(i.e. paradigmatic experiences of fragmentation that make up
our 'character" because we draw our sense of identity from them -
that is all a personality is), can we take them literally (i.e. take
our interpretation of them literally).  And, if HPB was cognizant
of this fact about the ordinary human pysche, might she have
not created blinds and baffles for a literal attitude to her finite
model?  Maybe the truth is not all in her ideas but in us as
we give them flesh and reality (we become an avatar of
theosophy).  Her ideas being more like a yeast or catalyst
than a complete picture of the way it is.  A yeast or catalyst
for different kinds and directions of self-exploration that is
partly self-defining.  Ever play the game where someone
starts a story, it is passed on to another to add to, then
another to add to.  The story, while having an authorial
source, takes on its full shape by the subsequent tellers
of it.  Maybe her ideas are something like plot lines to
be developed into stories.  Maybe there is no othodoxy.
Just leading suggestions by a seductress luring us
into a journey of self-becoming.  That is the underlying
theme in these two posts of mine.  Its like physics.
Physics is not the models, theories, or formulas.  It
is these within a thick operational context of exploration
(research).  And their meanings and implications are
not definite.  Rather, they are catalysts for competing
and alternative interpretations of what these theories
mean.  And adding this context shows that (1) on their
own they are equivocal in meaning and may mean a
number of things (even if some options are ruled out)
because they are incomplete alone, and (2) what any
theory means has to be worked out in the process of
research that often borders on creation rather than
discovery.  So, theories in physics may gain in
definiteness not by discovering their meaning but
by creating it just like a story that is fiction even
while taking on a semi-independent life of its own
that the author has to obey if the narratival coherence
isn't violated. The theory is like the first author's
beginning of a story that is to be continued by others.
HPB's ideas may be something similar.  Or like
DNA.  Life is not just DNA and such.  It is DNA
within a larger living whole that includes an
environment.  So forms of life evolve that are
not viable but many different forms of life evolve
that are "programmed" by practically the same
DNA sequence.  Like biological life, the ideas
of HPB may be like DNA where the spiritual
evolution of beings with basically the same ideas/DNA
takes a richly diverse and radically different tranjectories.
A few basic principles in nature can take on many
different guises.  Perhaps a few basic principles,
ideas of HPB, when alive, takes on many different
guises.  So, except at infinity, there is not literally
one theosophy.

Grigor