Theos-Talk Archives (September 1999 Message tt00029)

In a message dated 9/3/99 2:42:47 AM, dalval@nwc.net writes:

<< Why worry about "modern saints?"  Each one of us is potentially a
"saint."  There is a clue to this in our "Seven-fold Nature -- the
7-Principles"  We are a part of the ONE SPIRIT in our highest nature,
and also being immortals we carry with us all the time in the
principle named Buddhi a memory of all our honorable past. >>

Indeed, why worry about saints, teachers, Masters at all, past, present or 
future?  Let us simply be lamps unto ourselves, radiant babes with crowns of 
thorns!

By the logic indicated above, humanity doesn't need living role models at 
all!  We can just pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps...

The fatal error in this can be plainly seen even through the lens of 
Blavatsky's own writing, let alone modern Theosophical FAILURES.  The S.D. 
assures us that it took the Manasa-putras to light up the fire of mind -- it 
would not have happened on its own.  Later, it took the Elder Brothers to 
coax infant humanity from spiritual latency to operative spiritual insight.  
And it took Masters and their Messenger to bring the Message last century, to 
bring Theosophy out again into (partial) public view.

The sense of finality in Dallas' writings, that we have the last word with 
HPB, and that she somehow "lives" invisibly in the aether about us gives the 
lie to the entire program of the Great Lodge's work.  Agreed, one must work 
on one's own self-induced and self-devised lines of effort, but this does not 
obviate the absolutely ESSENTIAL need for spiritual guidance.

We might as well teach that tiny children should raise themselves, feed, 
clothe, educate themselves!  Certainly, we should all agree that the child 
must direct his/her efforts, must work consciously at learning to walk and 
speak and read, accept or reject moral guidance.  But the role of the parents 
-- ALIVE AND PRESENT is quite clearly indispensable.  Plenty of evidence 
indicates that without a doubt, children who are abused and neglected by 
their parents (one poor girl locked in a closet for ten years) never learn to 
speak, to socialize, to grow into a true adult, whatever form the material 
body may grow into.  Children without direct, living guidance vegetate, or at 
best, remain frozen at the level at which guidance ceased.  This is called in 
psychological jargon "arrested development."  (It is a sad truth that a GREAT 
many adults today are in fact "arrested" in late adolescence and never learn 
to have adult relationships, take responsibility for their actions, learn to 
control anger and fear, etc.)  Unlike ancient societies, or even modern India 
and Tibet, the West has no true SAGES.  We have scientists and doctors and 
businessmen aplenty, all shoveling out droll and mostly useless information.  
But we have no native guides.  And then Theosophists advise us to ignore the 
SAGES that have come to us, at great personal expense, from the East.

More and more I feel that Theosophists falter in their own wake.  HPB was 
such a great personage that Theosophists huddle around her fading auric glow 
and refuse to seek out MORE LIGHT --- absolutely neccessary to have more 
light.

Speaking from experience, meditation without a qualified master is NO 
MEDITATION.  Education without qualified teachers is NO EDUCATION.  And 
spiritual development without qualified guidance is NO DEVELOPMENT.  It is 
all fine and well to point to the Master within, and books that direct us to 
look for such, but how many Theosophists among us have raised themselves to 
true Chela, let alone Adept status?  (Is this reserved only for unimaginably 
distant lives??  What a cop-out.)  The only ones we can be SURE of (outside 
of the founders) are those named by HPB, for example Damodar, Mohini, others 
-- and EACH AND EVERY ONE WAS UNDER DIRECT SUPERVISION OF A MASTER OF WISDOM. 
 

So it is quite a coy doublecross to instruct people now to rely solely on 
themselves and not seek out the spiritual riches that current teachers have 
LABORED and SACRIFICED to provide to us.  In doing so, we turn our backs on 
the very progress that our own tradition has made POSSIBLE in this century.  
For it is because of (limited) Theosophical SUCCESS that the West now has 
direct representatives of umpteen BONA FIDE spiritual traditions from the 
East -- preaching and practicing THE VERY TEXTS HPB INDICATED WE SHOULD STUDY 
!!  And yet we should ignore them, and continue on with our bibliolatry (for 
example, all the calls recently posted to return once again to the study of 
the Key to Theosophy).

If the modern Theosophical movement "arrests" with Blavatsky, then modern 
Theosophy is already dead.

Rich

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