Theos-Talk Archives (September 1998 Message tt00185)

Nicholas Weeks <> am455@lafn.org <> Los Angeles quoted from the Secret Doctrine:
>
>No true theosophist, from the most ignorant up to the most learned,
>ought to claim infallibility for anything he may say or write upon
>occult matters.  The chief point is to admit that, in many a way,
>in the classification of either cosmic or human principles, in
>addition to mistakes in the order of evolution, and especially on
>metaphysical questions, those of us who pretend to teach others
>more ignorant than ourselves -- are all liable to err.  Thus
>mistakes have been made in "Isis Unveiled," in "Esoteric
>Buddhism"... and more than one mistake is likely to be found in the
>present work.  This cannot be helped.  For a large or even a small
>work on such abstruse subjects to be entirely exempt from error and
>blunder, it would have to be written from its first to its last
>page by a great adept, if not by an Avatar.  Then only should we
>say, "This is verily a work without sin or blemish in it!"  But, so
>long as the artist is imperfect, how can his work be perfect?
>"Endless is the search for truth!"  Let us love it and aspire to it
>for its own sake, and not for the glory or benefit a minute portion
>of its revelation may confer on us.  For who of us can presume to
>have the *whole* truth at his fingers' ends, even upon on minor
>teaching of Occultism?
>
>SD II 640

Thanks for writing it out in full.

"...as an old proverb based on daily experience has it - "Error runs down an
inclined plane, while Truth has to laboriously climb its way up hill.""
First paragraph of the INTRODUCTORY to the SD.

Perhaps some more can be added.

Tony