Theos-Talk Archives (July 2003 Message tt00037)

Hi Morton. I have read your recent email to me. I will comment the best can, You are trying to present certain material, which you perceive to be important, to some theosophists. You are saying that first they need to know how to learn. when to learn, and what to learn, and apparently you are not lumping yourself in with this bunch.The way I see it, learning is an individual matter. It starts with an inner question, or at least with an open curiosity, even if it is only a five year old with a receptivity to the alphabet. The mind is fresh and there are no preconceptions. To present new material to people whose minds are made up is very difficult. Why would a person want to do this when there are so many places on the internet where minds are not made up and people are more open and curious? My guess is that you (or I or whoever) have a vested interest. If it involves a conscious aim, it is between each person and his "God," but if it is a matter of personality, this is something, admittedly very hard to see, which we need to look at. I have learned a lot from attempting to communicate on here. One thing I have learned about myself is that I am a person who tends to idealize people and situations. It is a form of optimism that is not always reality based in that it is a movement away from grieving. 

Quite honestly, though you have some good ideas, I cannot relate to your material. It is too confusing. I do not think you yourself know , as you have put it, "how to learn, when to learn, and what to learn." Of course this is just one person's opinion. I do not believe you understand how to present new material in such a way that it can be appropriately assimilated or even know enough to know which material to present and when, and all of this is assuming that you know something important that others on here do not. Personally I have seen no evidence of this. In any case, when you tell people they do not know how to learn, I have no evidence that this helps them learn. For instance, when I tell you that what you said applies to yourself, what do you learn from this? 

Where there is learning, there is inspiration. Is there inspiration on theos-talk? Yes there is, as I personally, at times, am an inspired human being, and I believe that at times for fractions of a second, or seconds, there are others. (This makes me w want to investigate why I am only inspired on rare occasion and the prospect of following this question to the end fills me with great joy). My sense is, though, that nothing we say or do on this list is going to have that much effect on theosophists as a whole, but maybe it will effect a few who will go on and do interesting work. .

Re a few questions and comments in your message: I was referring to the second article you gave a link to. Re Katinka, she was doing a form of cross-talking, which is not that great, though we all do it on occasion, but since she was saying something favorable about Bart, it was no big deal and not the way you painted it. Bart is a straight forward person with his feet on the ground, who is not going to go floating up in the clouds or get lost there and is also not going to make false accusations against people. There is a tone of grandiosity to your messages, in my opinion, and he pointed this out to you. If you put NEW material into what you write, in such a way that people's curiosity is stimulated and real learning begins to occur, people will be too interested to criticize you, in that they will not care if you sound like a mahatma or not.

One last comment on your writings on the two links you posted. To my mind, they are very mixed up and you should erase them. If I had time, I would criticize them point by point, but I do not. I am trying to write emails on here that can in some way be beneficial to a whole bunch of people. To conclude, you have some good ideas, but you do not, in my opinion, know how to present them. In general, your "knowledge" is immature and ridiculously incomplete. You are prone to floating away into intoxicating states, not bad in itself, if your feet could stay connected to the ground, but they cannot and do not and you end up floating away into the nether and taking others with you. Because of you, I may have to leave this list for a while, as this is turning out to be a waste of time. Sincerely, Wry


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