Theos-Talk Archives (September 1998 Message tt00014)

Brant:
>A thought on your "byline", "Men must learn to love the truth
>before they thoroughly believe it."  Very deep.
>	my thoughts on it:
>     Learning to love is an experience, gained by doing.  It requires
>commitment and risk,  interaction with the object to be loved, trial and
>error, suffering and triumph [hopefully].   One cannot learn to love in the
>abstract, from reading a book or just talking about it.

Very deep indeed.  Theosophy promotes not only love of virtue for its own
sake, but love of truth too.  Love means selflessness above all.  HPB
wrote:  "So strong is human selfishness, that wherever there is the
smallest personal interest at stake, there men become deaf and blind to
the truth, as often consciously as not... No `wisdom from above' descends
on any one save on the *sine qua non* condition of leaving at the
threshold of the Occult every atom of selfishness, or desire for personal
ends and benefit... Nature gives up her innermost secrets and imparts
*true wisdom* only to him, who seeks truth for its own sake, and who
craves for knowledge in order to confer benefits on others, not on his own
unimportant personality."

B:CW 12, 314, 315 "The Dual Aspect of Wisdom"



--
<> Nicholas Weeks <> am455@lafn.org <> Los Angeles
	"Men must learn to love the truth before they thoroughly believe it."
		Blavatsky