Theos-Talk Archives (October 2003 Message tt00050)

Hi all of you,

Yes. Steve and Mauri.

The following little something...might be helpful to consider as well.


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What a Theosophical Teacher Looks Like


Q: How should a teacher appear to the students according to
the Theosophists?

A: This question, like so many others which assume that they
can be carefully answered in a few words, reminds me of a story
about the funny spiritual joker Mulla Nasrudin. Someone asked
him what his house was like, basically.
In reply he brought this man a brick, saying: 'It is
just a collection of these.' What the fool may do without realising
it is foolish, the wise man may have to do or say in order to
show how unthinking the question is.
How can you say what a teacher should look like? The most
one can do is to make a few remarks about it.
What is so perplexing to conditioned attitudes about the Theosophists
is that, unlike teachers of other kinds, they refuse to stick to one
kind of appearance. As an example, if you go to see an Initiated
Theosophist,
he may not look, talk or act like a mystical master at all. This is
because he says either: 'You can teach only by the method
indicated for each pupil, and you may have to teach by what
seems to him unlikely'; or else because he says: 'There is time
and a place and certain company. According to these, we will
teach. When it is a time to be serious, we will be serious. When it
is a time to work through what looks like ordinary things, we
have to do so'.
So important is this lesson that it can be said to go before all
others: in the sense that failure to know this can prevent you
from learning more - and can leave you attached to the externals
of hypocrites. This includes, of course, unconscious hypocrites.
If the Theosophists are right in their claim that time affects behaviour,
and that personal appearance should change (and even temperament)
then obviously all the people who cultivate a reverend appearance,
and all those who acquire it, mistaking this for spirituality,
are wrong.

It is this unspoken contradiction which makes it almost impossible
for people who want continuity and easily identifiable
teaching figures, to accept the change in circumstances and attitudes
which the Theosophical Way demands.
These people, of course, will not have thought it out like this.
All they know is that 'A holy man must seem holy to me'; or 'If
he always behaves in the same manner, or always exhorts me to the
same things, I believe that he may be right'.
The other problem is that the observer is confusing, as he is
bound to confuse without having understood, continuity and consistency
with reliability or truth. Because butter always tastes the same when
it looks the same, he expects a similar 'reliability' in his spiritual
teacher. He is, of course, self-deceived in this assumption.
The genesis of the attitude adopted by the people of externals
is that their inward drive is for finding tidiness, order. This is not
a spiritual activity, it is perhaps, rather, therapeutic one. Order
is essential for disordered people. Looking for it as a major factor
in 'esoteric' directions is the mistake.
In trying to make what - for them - is order out of what they
imagine to be the disorder of the Theosophical tradition, they have to
oversimplify. They ignore parts of the teaching and succeed only in
creating an imitation of Theosophy.
Because so many people desire order so strongly, you will find
more imitations than reality. One cannot blame anyone for this.
But pointing out facts can help.

What a teacher should be

Ibn Arabi's dictum on this matter has not been bettered:

'People think that a teacher should display miracles and manifest
illumination. But the requirement in a teacher is that he
should possess all that the disciple needs.'

Which of course not always is what the disciple wants.



BEYOND APPEARANCES

In order to possess what a disciple needs, the Teacher must be
one who has gone beyond appearances and has realised his innermost
self, after transcending the barriers imposed by attachment
to secondary factors. He really exists and is aware of this
existence. As Ibn Arabi says: 'Absolute existence is the source of
all existence.'
Hallaj put it this way, indicating the peculiarity of the
realised individual:
'I am the Real, for I have not ceased to be real - through the
Real.'
Theosophical Teachers who have reached stages where strange
things happen in their vicinity, generally called miracles and wonders,
due to actions other than any attempt to impress, have to try to compensate
for this. Otherwise people are attracted to them or to the Theosophists
in general because of craving for wonders.




THE ONION SHOP

One example of this is when the great woman Theosophist and Sufi Rabia
had no vegetables in the house, and mentioned it. Suddenly a string of
onions fell from the sky, it seemed, and people cried out that this
was a proof of divine blessing.
Conversions through miracles, Rabia realised, are only emotional
happenings and have no essential spiritual reality. So she
said, in a famous phrase:
'A miracle, you say? What, does my Lord therefore keep an
onion shop?'

******


from
M. Sufilight with peace and love...




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mauri" <mhart@idirect.ca>
To: <theos-talk@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, October 05, 2003 3:15 AM
Subject: Theos-World re New Age/Theosophy


> Steve wrote: << Obviously an open forum
> such "Theos talk" is the place to have open
> discussion. I guess I am just being
> conservative and trying to be careful we
> don't become just another New Age group which
> has taken Theosophical Teaching for
> granted-Steve>>
>
> Okay, but I suspect that there might be
> people who might tend to gravitate toward New
> Age material or toward something "more
> dramatic," for whatever reason, and, having
> had enough of it, (possibly, at some point?),
> might then find, in retrospect, that it all
> had it's use as introductory fare, as a
> stepping stone leading to something more
> meaningful, spiritual, "higher," etc
>
> Speculatively,
> Mauri
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>