Theos-Talk Archives (June 1998 Message tt00109)

Some of these digests are just jam packed with interesting stuff
that stimulate the mind and heart.  Others awaken mostly negative
emotions.  But today's was juicy in the positive way, and I have
several comments.

First, about evil and atonement.  I think in a way it is more
dangerous to project all evil onto the Other, and imagine oneself
to be inerrantly good, than vice versa.  But I still think there
is something projective about saying humanity is evil and the
Masters are good, like a mirror image of the former kind of
projection.  Both are unbalanced and therefore misleading.  The
alleged goodness of the Masters would not be perceptible unless
there was goodness within us that resonates to it.  I
happen to have started today reading American Originals: Homemade
Varieties of Christianity, by Paul Conkin (UNC Press 1997.)  Its
intro discusses atonement and the varieties of Catholic,
Calvinist and Arminian approaches to it.  At the beginning of
this section, Conkin sketches what all these have in common:
"Humans in their natural capacity are so alienated from their
personal and masculine god, so full of pride and ego, that they
are incapable of giving their full consent or love to him.  They
are sinful...they cannot so act as to further the will and
purpose of God.  They are therefore doomed to life apart from
God, to some type of hell, unless God is merciful to them.  Only
he can choose to save humans.  His chosen means of salvation is
the atoning Christ.  Through the sacrifice of the Christ and
through the continuing agency of the Holy Spirit, God has
provided, at least for some people, a pathway back to
reconciliation, even though no one deserves such salvation."(p.
xi) This is the gist of what the Catholic Church is upholding in
the forthcoming encyclical, and what it opposes to New Age (i.e.
theosophical) beliefs.  But if for "humans in their natural
capacity" we substitute "humans who are unconscious of their
spiritual oneness with humanity, all life, and the cosmos," and
substitute "the divine essence" for "their personal and masculine
god" then the first statement above makes perfect sense.  And
only the divine essence can save us, through the atoning Christ
(buddhi) which is a universal pathway back to reconciliation with
the source.  I think Christianity ultimately will be heading to
precisely this sort of understanding of *Christ* as atoning
savior.  The relationship of Jesus to that Christ will of course
continue forever to be a subject of debate and discussion.  But
his proclamation of the Kingdom, and his elliptical portrayal of
it, make it seem to me that such reconciliation is an
interior process for which he saw himself as a wayshower, not a unique
exemplar.

About migraines: Cayce says that better elimination can help, and
recommends laxatives or natural changes in diet.  Don't know if
there's anything to this, though.

Yes, Kym and I are definitely friends, despite not having met in
this life on the physical.

Finally, Pam, your comments about HPB and Crowley remind me of
another who was even more explicit about his teachings being a
mixture of truth and fiction-- Gurdjieff.  He made it clear that
this was deliberate, and when he was writing Beelzebub's Tales
would have it read aloud by students in his presence, who then
discussed it with him.  If the meaning was too obvious, he made
it harder to grasp, saying "Must dig dog deeper."  The very
process of sifting through the material was awakening of
discrimination, which can never be awakened by promotion of
material as 100% true and accurate.  HPB, of course, never
claimed any such thing for herself, although others in her wake
have no problem doing so on her behalf.

Cheers,
Paul