Theos-Talk Archives (August 2002 Message tt00039)

Hi all of you,

The following could be given to students at Theosophical Schools - if they will benefit from it.

Here is something on 

"*** Organisations, Books and superficial readings ***


People read books, which affect them in various ways. They will admit that they cannot get the best out of a book if, say they are too young or inexperienced to know the words, or to understand what the author is talking about. But once they are adult, and accustomed to reading books, they will assume that they must be able to profit by the text in exactly the way in which the author intended. This is not bourne out of experience, and it is even unsound otherwise, being based upon an assuption for which there is NO proof.
The way in which some books are written, and the purpose for which they are written, is only half understood by most people. The idea, for instance, that a book is designed to be read under certain circumstances, or different stages of development, is not well know to current cultures. If a book appears to be understandable, the reader will take it that it means just what he or she has been able to deduce it means. This is not, of course a correct assumption. Books of real developmental value can be read only under their own conditions. The teacher explains the way in which the book is to be read, and other things necessary for the current position of the student. Poeple very often recommend books to each other to read, without knowing about the inner content of the book or the fact that the book may in fact be highly technical contrivance, simply looking like an ordinary book. A book of abstruse philosophy, and in the East we have many, may merely cloak directions for carrying on various essential exercises, which are infinitely more precious thanthe intellectual content of the book. Again, people who are recommended books not infrequently are greatly moved by them emotionally.
Experiment will readily show that a book on religion, given to someone who does not know how to read it for its specific directions, will merely move that person emotionally; either because the words or the phrases are such as to evoke emotion, or because of the person who gave them the book or the recommendation. These reactions are superficial, though they may appear to the ungenerate reader to be deep.
Since the Middel Ages, when books minus the knowledge of how to use them became more plentiful, this problem has existed, and become more acute. The amusing thing is that we now have millions of books, in some of whose texts there is lurking the knowledge, the REAL knowledge, which the academician does not suspect.
It is as if we had a rhymed telephone directory, thinking that the rhyme was the point, without knowing that at a certain time and place this book is of inestimable other, practical, value."

(Almost taken verbatim from "The Commanding Self" by Idries Shah, d.1996. The same goes for the previous email on "Writing").


Now one could compare the above with Theosophical books, their content. Other books than what we more ordinarily call Theosophcial could or should of course also be considered.



from
M. Sufilight with peace and love....and the time, the place, the people, the situation....


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