Theos-Talk Archives (January 1999 Message tt00284)

>The above selections are offered as a brief sketch, with many
>details and links omitted (although they are all to be found by
>studying the SECRET DOCTRINE), of the intricate paths of
>evolution we have been through incarnation after incarnation  and
>are pursuing at present.
>
>Comments and questions will be interesting to read and study
>together.
>
>Dallas


Dallas, when we have inner experiences, especially on higher planes,
they have to be recalled and then put into thoughts and then into
words in order to communicate them.  This is exactly the process
that was used with the material given in the SD. It is basically all
esoteric gleaned from the inner experiences (trance, inutition,
spiritual insight, etc) of many people. However, when it is put into
thoughts and then words it becomes very limited and constricted,
and also confusing and subject ot interpretation due to the very
inherent nature of words themselves--and the the esoteric becomes
exoteric.


So what do we have?  We have what today we would call a model;
a universe model as well as an evolutionary model which is possibly
no better or worse than any other model such as the Big Bang and
Darwin's evolution model.  All models have to be taken on faith to
some extent but also on logic and reason as well as our intuition.
I think its fair to say that Theosophists are such because they
prefer Blavatsky's model to Darwins or to the Big Bang or to any
other scientific or religious model around today.  I do too.

So far, maybe so good. But the next step is going to be hard for
Dallas, Leon, and others who want to take Blavatsky's model as the

Gospel truth and nothing but the truth.  To be healthy, and to be
acceptable by intelligent objective people, models have to be
checked against reality and/or experience/observation and tweaked
when needed.  In this way models tend to grow and "improve" and thus
over time become even more representative of what they are attempting
to express.  Sometimes they even have to be scraped--but almost never
until replaced by a better one.  I think that there are a few areas of
the SD that can stand tweaking, and I do not hold to the concept
that the SD is "truth" but rather that it is a model of truth, and a
very
good model at that.  The same could be said for the Bible--it can be
seen as Holy Writ and therefore unchanging truth, or as a model
of man's relationship with divinity and subject to occassional updates.

I think that the model-nature of the SD is clear from all of the poor
attempts to "explain" events in words. The choice of "monad" for
things that are clearly not monadic is just one example.  The basic
idea of a three-pronged evolution is excellent, and makes the SD
model far better than Darwin or any scientific model (Jung also
taught that the mind evolves with the body and so he is one of the
few "scientists" who comes even reasonably close to Blavatsky.