Theos-Talk Archives (June 2000 Message tt00102)

Dear Bart:

Your communication guives me an opportunity for reflectioning about why a
theosophist studier walks on the Path trough Theosophical Society, Books of HBP
(and others).  And, as there has been a lot of missunderstanding about the
what-does-theosophy-mean-discussion, much of it being merely a matter of simply
words, as I said previously, I will have to make many precisions.

I will analyze no biografical, psichologhical or sociological explanation of why
people finds interesting the Theosophical methapysic.  I donīt search for the
individual explanations of their behavior about Theosophy.  I am searching for a
justification.

Explanation and Justification are differentes, of course, as it is understood in
Theory of Argumentation.  In the first case, we look for identifying the
causes-effects about a point.  In the second case, we look for an argumentation
(reasons, not causes) that may leave us to support a conclusion.

There may be two conclusions that require a justification:

1) the moral valuation that one can have about the activities or purposes of the
TS.  The justification would put us in a moral argument.

I donīt look for that.

2) the idea that HPBīs writings contains very probably truths.

(Please: donīt say that thruth is a state of awareness ..., because I know that,
but I am using the term in its common meaning.  Understand me in such a meaning).

So, if we (not Masters, not clairvoyant, merely studiers) had to make an argument
concluding that HPB's writings contanis very probably truths, ŋwhat would we say?

Letīs remember:

>
> > DAVID: If we were sceptic at all, would we be seriosuly interested in
> > esoterism?  Would we be seriously interested in reading, for example,
> > The Mahatma Letters? Who can guive enough proofs of the existence and
> > identity of the so called Masters of the White Broterhood, if the
> > matter were discussed in a court?
>
> BART:        What does one have to do with the other? The Mahatmas themselves
> said
> that it was up to us to judge the rightness and wrongness of what they
> wrote, and we were not to take what they said as true based on faith.

I think that Mahatmas really want that we verify what they say by ourselves.  That
denies a blind faith.  But the same Mahatmas and Blavatsky made what a non studier
could call "miracles" (as we can see in The Occult World, of Sinnet), because (I
think) they wanted to create in us not a blind faith but a honest trust in the
possibility of what they were saying.  The same kind of trust that Buddha
recommended to have in relation with his teachings.  That is not a blind faith: it
is trust, and it is not demonstration.

I think that may be you are interpreting their claim for self-verification, too
rationalist.

If we had to eliminate even the trust, as not important, and we (not Masters,
merely studiers) try to confirm the teachings: would we confirm them?

For example:

>
> DAVID: > Why do we consider seriously, for example, the hyphotesis of the Seven
> > Root Races?  Because HPB thaught that?  No.  Because she said she
> > learned it from the Masters.
>
> BART:        Not me. And if that is true for you, you are going against what the
> Mahatmas themselves said.
>

Bart, if I interpreted your words literally, as what they appearantly and
ingenuously want to mean, I'd have to think that it is not important for you, on
the Seven Root Races idea, the trust on Mahatmas.  If it were so, and if you take
seriously that Idea, Iīd have to ask you if you are clairvoyant.  Because if it
were not like that (as I assume), then you couldnīt take seriously that hypothesis.

And if you answered me that actually there are scientifical reasons to think that:
man lived on earth in the time of dynosauries, that primitive man was really giant,
that primitive man was hermafrodite, that in really ancient times Venus had its
humanity, and so on (just to talk about the theosophical anthropogenesis), then it
would be evident that, in our time, you would be making bad science fiction, or
that you would be believing in a dream of scientifical non-sense.

If you are not a clairvoyant, and you take seriously the theosophical teachings I
have just referred, how do you do that?  I woudntīd understand.

See:

>
> > DAVID:And, so, we consider seriously this
> > theory, against ALL actual reputated antrophology and archeology .
> > Certainly, the existence of man since 300,000 years or more, and even
> > much, much, much before also in the previous Rond, is a dream of non
> > sense from the scientific point of view.
>
> BART:        Possibly. Or perhaps we are misinterpreting Blavatsky, the
> scientific
> evidence, or both.

Ahhh, that is another possibility.  That you think HPB did not taught that ideas
that I mentioned.  But clearly it is not so. She did it, and I donīt quote the
hundreds of places where she doe it, because I think that is obvious.

That we are misinterpreting the scientific evidence?  May be.  Science is not
synonymous of truth.  Just Gnosis is Truth.  Moreover, scientifical theories change
almost every year in many cases.  May be in fifty years science will say that
primitive man was hermafrodite, and so on.

But, again, if you say (actually) that it is not important the trust on Masters,
how could you seriously consider those teachings, if we are living on actual
science, and not in a fictional fifty-years-after science?


>
> DAVID: > So, will we say, if we want to be honest with our positions, that
> > finding a Masters is not important, very important ... and even more?
>

It seems to me (nor a Master, not a clairvoyant, not an arhat-born) quite false or
even proud to say, then, that finding a Master is not very important.

Why is theosophist a theosophist? Because he was borned like that? Because science
guided him there? Or because he trusts on a message from those he believes are the
Masters?

Friendly,

DAVID C.




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