Theos-Talk Archives (February 2002 Message tt00712)

<<<<<However to answer the rest of your previous longer mail, everything you brought is exactly Laplacian thinking, including all your charts. As the SD is Laplacian thinking, notting else. You did not provide anything that holds scientificly above water that shows otherwise. Including the chakras, they are imaginary.
I know you and Dallas won't accept anything I say, but why don't you ask Mic Foster if the SD is Laplacian thinking or not, maybe you and 
Dallas will be willing to read him on it.>>>

Brigitte, I believe that I was the one to label Theosophical fundamentalists or literal interpreters of the SD as Laplacian. And they are. And Leon is certainly in that group as are Dallas and many others. However, my position is not that HPB was trapped within Laplacian thinking herself, but that a literal interpretation of the SD is. She gave readers what she thought they could understand. She gave out hints of something more. I do not subscribe to a literal interpretation of the SD, and this mainly BECAUSE science has completely overwritten the Laplacian viewpoint. The world is NOT deterministic. We will NEVER accumulate all the "facts" necessary to know what is really going on. Blavatsky herself tells us that 20th century science would vindicate her work - and 20th century science discovered that the bedrock of our universe is probability and indeterminism. Cosmos is founded on chaos, just like the mythologies of old say. Evolution in terms of linear progression is a dead horse. 

For those interested, the Laplacian view, in a nutshell, is that the universe is like a large mechanical device, all the pieces functioning in harmony together, and all perfectly understandable and deterministic - if we only had all the facts. This is exactly how Blavatsky literally presents her planetary chain of 7 planes and 12 globes. Most Theosophists seem to think that if we knew all the facts, we could fully understand how this planetary chain works and how evolution along the Rounds works. They think that Adepts know this, and they think that Adepts tell these secrets to their Chelas so that they too can become Adepts, thinking that knowledge is the key to Adepthood. This is entirely false thinking, and modern science has demonstrated it over and over again to be worng. It is also false because Adepts do not know all the "facts" and gaining facts will never make anyone an Adept. Blavatsky herself tells us that she knew several advanced yogis who lacked education.

If we look at the SD, and at the Rounds and planes and globes, with modern scientific thinking in mind, we will reach entirely new conclusions about what is really going on. Blavatsky's lifewaves are, for example, statistical populations. Her predictions and associations are probablistic. If we can look at it this way, it all makes a lot of sense. Also, the TM would not look so silly and antiquated in the eyes of the world.

However, I do disagree with you, Brigitte, on the chakras. They are certainly not imaginary, although imagination is used to allow one to initially get in touch with them. They are real, and I know this from my own experience in addition to a great deal of literature, both old and new, including the acceptance of the chakras by modern transpersonal psychology. I agree that the colorful fine details ala the likes of CWL are a bit silly and overdone, but the chakras and nadis themselves are very real.

Hope this helps

Jerry S. 
Bri.

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