Theos-Talk Archives (March 1998 Message tt00265)

Hi Tony,  thankyou for your response.
>
Re:  There are no second-hand adepts!	(Joy Mills.  T.S.)

My byeline results from attending the 100th anniversary of TS in Hamilton NZ in 1996, where
Joy Mills, then the retiring national president of TS Australia (I think) was giving a talk to the
audience.  I had taken a seat directly adjacent to the place from which she spoke, no more than 1
metre away.  During that talk she said, with the force I have come to recognise as deriving from
inspiration of the moment, "there are no second-hand adepts!".  It represented a concluding point
in an argument for acquiring personal experiential knowledge, rather than confining one's
learning to the written representation of someone else's experience (second-hand), or worse still,
because even further removed from direct experience, their description of yet another person's
experience (third-hand).  There are so many layers to any communicative event, that a subsequent
description must be voluminous to do it true justice by eliminating all possibility of confounding,
disrespectful or destructive interpretation.  Her statement was so succinctly representative of my
own experience that I decided to use it as a personal statement reiterated with every email.  I
might add that the communicative event I refer to can just as easily be between two ordinary
mortals as between incarnate and discarnate forms of those same or any other identities.  The
opportunities for confusion when reporting any such exchange to another person are normally
worked through in the ongoing conversation.  The report of a conversation remote in space and
time to any other person even if they are of the same culture  is problematic if precision of
understanding is sought.  I personally feel these aspects are not given due weight in making hasty
judgements about who is doing what concerning mediumship and channelling.
>
>
> Are adepts necessarily Masters or Mahatmas?

I don't believe so, but I certainly can't say for sure. I recently heard a definition of adept as
"technician of the occult", which sounds reasonably appropriate.

>Can adepts be of the right-hand or of the left >hand (and both handed)?

Respectively, and by common terminology, white magician/witch/healing practitioner and black
magician/witch/curser.  (do we cast spells over our machines with our cursor? :-)  I certainly
know some people who use their energy for both positive and negative effect, so I guess they
would be ambidextrous adepts?

> Mahatmas may not be second-hand, but can they be anything but ancient?

 If Mahatmahood can be equated to genius, which according to some opinion is the manifestation
in the present life of skill acquired in the past, then they would have to be ancient.  But then,
aren't we all?  When I meet one, I'll ask!  ;-)

Regards,
Peter R. Calvert			   			| There are no second-hand adepts!
pcalvert@hort.cri.nz		|	Joy Mills.  T.S.