Theos-Talk Archives (February 1998 Message tt00202)

>From: "Eldon B Tucker" <eldon@theosophy.com>
>Date: Thursday, February 05, 1998 3:41 PM
>Subject: Re:Excuse me!? On limited number of souls


>Keith and Pam:
>
>Keith asks if spirituality is on the increase in politics,
>society, or art, and indicates that things may be getting bad.
>
>Pam replies with personal examples of how things are getting
>better and suggests that "the coming generation was not born for
>our time, it was born for their own".
>
>Keith then mentions that "what if there really WASN'T a Santa
>Claus?" He warns that we shouldn't "make over a cruel world in the
>phoney baloney image of the namby pamby liberal mush".
>
>As I see it, the world as we know it -- life on the physical plane
>-- is neutral. It's neither good nor bad, awful nor wonderful, but
>like tofu -- it takes on the flavor of whatever you cook it with.
>The external world is like a blank sheet of paper that takes on
>whatever you or I put on it.
>
>This is not to say that behind things, there aren't higher planes,
>and there aren't high spiritual beings that oversee external life,
>providing a sense of natural order to life, and giving an
>underlying basis of compassion to life.
>
>For us as individuals, the world can be a mirror. It'll take on
>whatever face we bring to it. It is rich in content, full of every
>possible imaginable thing, like chaos, but *we draw out* certain
>things into existence about us, we *exteriorize* them.
>
>There are both dark and bright sides to life, and like different
>channels on the TV, we can tune into one or the other. All the
>channels are real, all are happening, but we pick the one that
>we're watching, the one that externally becomes real in our living
>room, our daily life.
>
>In life, the world about us is like that initially blank TV
>screen. We pick the channel, we tune into the type of content and
>set the nature of our experiences. We can pick an awful channel
>and say "life is hell" and see it that way and be correct. Some
>other people can pick wonderful channels and say "life is joyous,
>blissful, simply great!" and see it that way and also be correct.
>
>The important point is that although external life is neutral, it
>isn't cold, heartless, evil, dark unless we paint it that way,
>unless we use our powers of mind to project a worldview that sees
>it that way. The way that we fashion our worldview, and use our
>mind -- we don't just affect our subjective impressions. We become
>a source of the light or darkness that we perceive. Others are
>affected by how we see and experience things. We can become a
>source of light in the world, or a dark cloud and drain on the
>life energies of others. It all depends on which channels we
>watch, on which types of consciousness that we tune into, on how
>we fashion our self-made experience of life.
>
>-- Eldon
>
>-- Keith:  I am a little late responding. I needed to cool down and return
to the middle path myself.  Yes, the middle way between extreme judgement
and extreme mercy has always been suggested as the path of spiritual growth.

Sometimes I feel karma and maya can pop up so strong that we cannot detach.
or at least I cannot yet.  Equanimity is a supposed goal - ie that one
treats triumph and victory on the physical plane with the same steady
spiritual stregth gained from above.

I think I have felt this more and more.  Some talk of faith not as a
leap from the rational to the irrational or a sarcrifice of intellect
(sacrificium intellectualis of Jung) but of a deep guiding warm unseen hand.

Perhaps this was the hand that  guided HPB eyes over the symbols she saw as
she contemplated the sacred gemoetry of the divine language called Senzar.

I can accept on faith that the process was real whether or not there was
ever any physical manuscripts of Kui Ti.  Perhaps she read them as akaschic
records from the astral plane.

No matter, the proof is, is it a repeatable experiment.  Does it have
elegance and robustness.  Does it work?

I think that she is more famous among her detractors who blame her for all
the "evil" of the new age messiness.

But I think many authors have created psuedoepigraphic works to give them
authority until they stood on their own.

Also:  I still wonder about the number of souls.  I think of the world soul
as the LOGOS or flame.  We are small souls or sparks of the flames.  Some
burn brightly and some flicker, but all are only candles except for the
burning fire that doesn't consume, but constructs.

Namaste
Keith