Theos-Talk Archives (June 2003 Message tt00158)

Hi all of you,

Here is a little story about the latest on 'the heroic Giants'.
A need for reading between the lines seems of some importance.

Theosophical discoveries

There are several things to say about Ancient Monuments, temples and wonders 
of the past. Most people know next to nothing about these things. It is necessary 
to realise if the individual is to
benefit by the great works of the past, that they contain valuable
elements greatly in excess of what the 'barabrian' mind can
perceive. In order to convey something of this, I will point out
factors which are probably strange to you. Temples and monuments -
of China, Greece, Egypt, South America - had many
functions. The least of these was to impress, to create 'atmosphere', 
to play upon emotions. Because these places were
used for certain purposes, they acquired a quality which in some
cases still remains with them. Only those who understand the
Work can make use of this substance, which is sometimes called
by a Sufi term 'Baraka'.

Casual and fixated people who think that they have experienced
the wonders of these places are generally only 'sophisticated 
barbarians'. They have been emotionally moved by the
Taj Mahal in the moonlight. Or they are the victims of 'conditioning',
have been told so much about the shrine of the
Buddha's Tooth that they feel, entirely subjectively, that they
have experienced something transcendental when they went
there. With such people we are dealing with emotionalists.

The dimensions and siting of certain buildings is another
matter. A building is sited in a certain way for many reasons, of
which the aestheitic effect may be considered to be least
important for our viewpoint. Agian, the dynamic function in
our sense of a building may have been discharged, a in the case
of most Greek buildings, many centuries ago. It has been superseded
by something else, elsewhere suited to another time.
What remains is the shell, which provides the emotional, intellectual,
mathematical or toher stimuli which mislead the 
refined barbarian into thinking of it as a wonder. It may,
however, now have no meaningful function for the Work and as
far as Wisdom is concerned.

These very important matters are seldom suspected by those
who cannot perceive them directly.
Those who have only heard about them have too often spread
imagnitative and inaccurate theories, further misleading people.
The above sentences are of course only a part of the whole truth
on this matter.

from
M. Sufilight with peace and love...


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