Theos-Talk Archives (March 1998 Message tt00240)

BTW, Dallas, thank you for taking my message in the way in which it
was
intended.

Dallas TenBroeck wrote:

>{much good stuff cut out}

> Take Science.  when I was a lad and went to school certain things
> were advanced to us in the text books as facts, which, subsequently
> have been disproved and altered.  As a lad I trusted those
> presentations, as they were NOT labeled "theory," or "hypothesis."  I
> felt very annoyed at what I could only in my mind term "lies".  Why
> not trust thinking people, and especially the young, with the fact
> that we are all searching for the truth of things, and we each
> participate.  We do not need false "authorities."

    And that is more the fault of the school systems than of the
scientific
community, although both share blame. I was told things in elementary
school
that were clearly and demonstrably untrue, but my teachers would not
except
even solid proof from second graders. Part of my combative personality
comes from the frustration of battling those authority figures, KNOWING I was
right,
to no avail, at such an early age. Even in college, I had a series of
papers
marked by TA's with F's, and upgraded by the professors to A's (one of
whom
recruited me for his company). Take even the satiric Pete Seeger (I
think)
song, "What Did You Learn in School Today", where the child is taught
that
"That Washington never told a lie...that soldiers seldom die...that
everybody's free/ the policeman is my friend...that justice never
ends...that
murderers die for their crimes (even if we make a mistake sometime)/ Our
government must be strong it's always right and never wrong our leaders
are
the finest men and we elect them again and again/ that war is not so
bad...about the great ones we have had; we died in Germany and in France
and
someday I may get my chance...."

    In my Tarot classes, when teaching about the 4 elements, I show how
in
elementary school, we were taught about these "silly people". For
example,
when they adopted the Gregorian calendar in England, the calendar jumped
ahead
13 days. There were riots on the streets, where people screamed "Give us
back
our 13 days!" Such silly people, thinking that a chunk was stolen from
their
life because of a simple change in the calendar. Such silly people, who
were
living hand to mouth, and had to pay a full month's rent and taxes with
two
weeks of salary. Such silly people. Or take the Chinese, who were so
backwards
as to have a pictiograph alphabet, rather than a phonetic alphabet, like
non-silly peole use. Those silly Chinese, whose languages, labeled
"dialects"
by the European scholars, differ far more from each other than the
European
languages do from each other, yet managed to create a language using
visual
rather than auditory symbols, so that people with widely differing
languages
could communicate with each other. Such silly people. Or the silly
Greeks and
Romans, who believed that there were just the 4 elements, earth, air,
fire,
and water. They were so silly, they called the states of matter
"elements",
and knew that energy was a basic state of matter. Such silly people.

    The lesson I learned from this, which has continued to be of great
value,
is that people are basically intelligent, and if they seem to be acting
irrationally, then it is because one does not understand their
motivation.

> As I see it Theosophy claims to be facts certain events in history,
> and certain phenomena in Nature which can be observed by most
> observers who fill the requirements for seeing and observation.
>
> I do not find anything that is upsetting in those concepts, (if
> properly labeled) but, do you ?

    As I stated in the first message, I did believe in what you said,
but
considered it to be belief rather than fact.

> Let us look at the "authority" of the SECRET DOCTRINE.  From the
> outset HPB states that she (and the Mahatmas who co-authored the book
> with her) present tenets from their records, but do not ask anyone to
> accept them without due research and effort.  They present
> propositions, which to them are facts, and to us are 'possibilities.'
>  It is up to us to assure ourselves of the accuracy of the statements
> made, and of the coherency of the whole.  We are never asked to
> "believe" or to have "faith" in any statement she or They make.  I
> admit that for myself, having studied the S D for a long time in this
> incarnation, I have found  it to be very compelling, and insofar as I
> have been able to verify its tenets, it has proved to be accurate.  I
> tend to trust it.

    In general, I trust the Mahatma Letters more than the Secret
Doctrine, the
Secret Doctrine more than the Blavatsky's other writings, Blavatsky more
than
Judge, and Judge more than Leadbeater, Besant, Bailey, et al. In all
cases, if
I have factual knowledge that does not contradict the writings, I will
interpret the writings in the light of the factual knowledge (for
example,
when the Mahatma's discuss potential energy, it is clear, given current
knowledge, that they were using the incorrect term; probably they got
it from Sinnet...

    Bart Lidofsky