Theos-Talk Archives (June 2001 Message tt00062)

Dear Marc:

I am not scared, or I would not tackle any answering here. But I
am extremely cautious.

And when I am give a warning double underlined, first I want to
know all I can about it, and then decide what risks are
legitimate.

I am also not too curious about experimenting and going to places
for which I have no data. Before leaping I want to know if the
landing will be soft, resilient, steady, and above all is the
energy necessary and useful. If so, to whom ?

The health or otherwise of an emotion is based on the limit to
which it can be allowed to move action. If any action is of
abuse of power or the hurting of another however small or
insignificant, then ,why to on understanding control or abort
such action?

Tell me, we all have emotions and desires - they engage the mind
in reverie and fancy - "What ifs ? -- and of what use are those
in the long run?

How would you set about defining pleasure, ease, amusement,
etc... are they emotions or are they thoughts?

When has any emotion detached from the mind faculties ever warned
you of danger if pursued? Or if so warned, has it ever provided
a "safety-net?"

Outside of desire, passion and emotion there is plenty of room to
develop and maneuver and do useful things. Are useful things
tedious?

Anyway, we all live our lives to some purpose, and the value of
deciding how is the cumulative experience of each person, each
INDIVIDUAL and finally the whole earth and UNIVERSE. We cannot
escape each other.

I am pretty sure this does not answer fully or well your points,
but thought I would set done some of those that concern me.

Best wishes,

Dal


-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Kusek [mailto:mark@withoutwalls.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2001 3:57 AM
To: Theosophy Study List
Subject: re: direct experience

Dallas,

I'm truly amazed that poetry elicited this response from you.

You sound so scared and afraid of any real conscious encounter or
acceptance of your own life: bound to the printed word already
dead one
hundred years. Do I misunderstand?

Can you allow an emotion or unconscious eruption to be acceptable
as an
honest, healthy and authentic human expression of your
own psyche?

If you don't accept it, how can you hope to make any real
progress? Are
you already super-human? You seem afraid of your own
humanity.

One cannot converse on this list except if you use it as an
apparatus to
do so. If you reject it in, then where are you? If you choose to
reject it how can you expect to maintain psychic equilibrium and
stability? Who or what would do the rejection? Would this
rejection not
just be an ego inflation?

With what do you identify?. Do you classify yourself as a human
being or
not?

Do you have any opinion at all about the Jungian notion of
"shadow" vis
a vis theosophy?

You seem so disdainful of actual human nature.

Are you a "Reimbodying Ego" or a "Monad" or an "Upper Triad" or a
"Logoic Emanation?" Please declare yourself.

I am assuming that you are a human being. Am I wrong to do so?

Where do you posit yourself?

If you are not a human being, then what accommodation can you
possibly
make of an astral body, or normal human emotions or the
authentic encounter with your own acceptable and/or unacceptable
desires? Do you ever get horny? Do you ever get mad? Do you
have passionate feelings? Do you ever get glad? Do you
accommodate
creativity into your waking life? Do you have any relation to
your unconscious?

These are astral experiences, did you know that?

You sound like a repressed Victorian to me. More so, you sound
like a
book dependent, biased, literal, theosophic fundamentalist.
Terribly afraid of any actual encounter with s/Self, more
amenable to
quote what Blavatsky had to say about it then to directly
experience it for yourself. How dare you recommend caution
against the
experience of the god within? Shame on you.

Will you ever venture into the Mystery of your own Being if you
choose
to depend on the mere centennially dead letter of someone
else's "law", content to flirt only with the periphery of
identity and
remain bound in fear to never venture or enter into the actual
spirit? What about the "law" of your own being? If you throw away
Blavatsky's books, would you be completely lost and unfamiliar in
your
own skin? How uncomfortable that would seem.

Go somewhere and burn all of your books in a fire. Sit really
still
until either you or the "Blavatsky" in your mind, or both
disappear.

(NOTE: ie, when you actually turn within, you'll have to
encounter your
own shadow, your contra-sexuality and your repressed
emotions, among other things, let alone your own true nature.
Expect a
bumpy but exhilarating ride. Bring your faith and your
courage.)

Do you or do you not trust the God within you?

Do you trust it more than Blavatsky books?

Does God have or have not a shadow?

Is God OK with the human kingdom or not?

Is God OK with your "Dallas-ness" or is it threatened by it? Are
you OK
with it?

Is God OK with my "Mark-ness?"

Can you or can you not exist as a human being and yet hold the
tension
of opposites? ( Note: ie, be "good" but also "bad.")

Do you or do you not believe that evolution requires one to
accept the
human kingdom as a proper, perfectly acceptable and
necessary stage to be experienced and identified with?

Or do you somehow expect to discount your way from humanity and
rather
leap directly from the animal to some more acceptable
"impersonal and universal" post-human state far from the
trajectory of
the humanity you so apparently disdain?

I'm really curious.

Would a mineral skip the vegetable kingdom?

Your quotes reveal a marked anti-human bias.

I am a conventional humanist.

Seriously curious.

-- M

PS. Do you think poetry or creative human expression is a
"precariously
dangerous state of psychic consciousness" to be avoided by
Theosophists
in good standing? Your choice of quotes suggests you do, or do I
misunderstand? Should I check my poems against your
interpretation of
Blavatsky before I commit them to paper?

Wouldn't that be inflationary. How sad.

Were the Rishis wrong to write their poetry?

Were the Vedics?

Were the Byzantine icon painters wrong to intuit their visions
into
mineral colors and beaten gold?

Are the Tibetan mandalists off their rockers for sprinkling
coloured
sand?

Were the Medieval guildsmen blowing smoke up their own chimneys?

Were the Sufi geometric ornamentalists fooling themselves with
their
amusing mathematics?

Were the Freemasons just an excuse for grown men to wear aprons?

Do innovations in art come from above downward (ie. within
individuals)
or from the collective (ie, masses) outward? Is theosophy the
McDonalds
of esotericism or the true province of living revelation?

Is theosophy what Blavatsky said or what God within you says?

Should individuals be afraid of encountering their true selves
and cling
instead to your presentation and interpretation of Blavatsky
quotes?

Pray tell.

You seem like someone who looks in a Blavatsky book for every
justification of living and is therefore not really alive, IMHO.
How
does the actual encounter of your own living being hope to stand
up to
your egoic dependence on the published works of H. P.
Blavatsky?

How can you consciously ever encounter it? Does your inner soul
vision
look Victorian or have a turban or big bug eyes? Is there perhaps
a part
of your own psyche that you project onto the notion of H.P.B?

Being such a literalist, you must have some very interesting
dreams.

And Dallas ... "Hello" ... you are a literalist.

Do you even give the True God within yourself any deference or
supremacy... or does the image of HPB get all of your devotion?
That would be OK in and of itself, but the real Tibetan Buddhists
would
call that Guru Yoga and have lots to say about it that you
might benefit from.

The Taoist in me asks:

Do you eat when you are hungry?

Do you sleep when you are tired?

Do you defecate when you need to... or do you have to consult the
Secret Doctrine first?
[I prefer the Zirkoff edition for softness myself]

What does HPB say about defecation anyway?

Is shit a venerable thing with her or what?

What MOTIVE does she ascribe to such a "desire"?

Is "holy shit" a bad thing ... or a revelation to you?

This very body!!!!!!

This very body!!!!!!



As you quote: "Are we equipped to understand the difference in
perceptive powers that may pertain to such altered states?
What perceptive powers can be gained by adventuring within those
?"

I guess you don't know.

Is it shit in the bowl or is it a coiled rope?

Is Dallas a convention of the mind or a inherently existing
individual?

Do you never then get excited by anything? Are you purposely
pretending
to be an automaton reciting Blavatsky ad nauseum and
never venturing to face your own experience as a human being for
fear
that it won't measure up? Or is it a posture you adopt for the
benefit
of those on these lists?

Do you have such a "rash on your soul" that you can't feel
anything
except what some old dead lady said a hundred years ago?

Has there been no valid revelation since then? ... or from
within?

Did it all die with Blavatsky?

If it isn't in the BCW Index, do you even bother?

Is anything that comes from within summarily discounted by you if
she
didn't say something about it first?

If so, what a denial of the God within you. (Shame.)

(God within you has it all over Blavatsky or her Masters)

Namaste.

Is there no progressive revelation? No valid contribution from
your own
insight? ...your own experience? From mine? Did the revelation
of the
"word of God" be and end with the death of Madame Blavatsky. Is
it the
"word of God to you?"

"Full stop on our humanity and damn the consequences" you
apparently
would have her say. "Do only what I say and find every
justification to
end it all on my word!" she seems, by your interpretation, to
extoll.

If I could find a precipitated letter that said just that in the
British
Museum would you scoop your own brains out?

Crossing the street can be dangerous. Do you therefore depend
only upon
the theosophical safety patrol?"

You attitudes are totally "ker-flooey" to me.

Your own authentic feelings must scare you to death. God forbid
you ever
have to experience yourself getting randy, sad, glad or scared,
... let
alone pissed off.

I just don't understand you, Dallas, your motive, your intention
in the
incessant parroting of Blavatsky quotes or your denial of the
experiential god within us.

--------------------

Dallas wrote:

> H.P.B. and Theosophy (and also the Masters in the MAHATMA
LETTERS)
will be found to give a word of caution on
adventuring into the realm of the Psychic which is a field of
varied
consciousness.
>
> This dialog will be found printed in TRANSACTIONS OF THE
BLAVATSKY
LODGE. The sleeping states and the dreaming
states and the dialog that occurs nightly between the Spiritual
EGO and
the mortal brain-mind ego of the Waking Man are made clear
by a series of careful explanations.
>
> Why not consider what H.P.B. offers us as a line for individual
progress, and something to be mediated on ? Are we equipped to
understand the differences in perceptive powers that may pertain
to such
altered states? What can be gained by adventuring within
those ?
>
> She carefully warns us about the allure of the psychic world
and the
astral world.
>
> There are always to be found rash souls in search of excitement
to
whom the keen edge of danger is life's blood. They like
Farragut might exclaim "Full steam ahead, and damn the
consequences."



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