Theos-Talk Archives (April 2004 Message tt00106)

Daniel: "Steve, I wonder if you are still of this opinion or if you 
have changed your mind?"

It still seems reasonable to me. If I am wrong, please show me the 
error in my logic. To this day that comment seems to have been 
unanswered by those who consider the mahatmas to be mere myths, so I 
remain unaware why my reasoning is not good.

John Plummer: "Steve, you may need to read a few more of her books ?? 
as there are HPB and Besant references."

Very interesting. It has been years since I read any of her stuff 
but it struck me as pure GD at the time. Especially SSD and KABALAH.

John Plummer: "CWL also comes up ?? but usually for condemnation, as 
DF had a very dim opinion of what she thought he was doing, 
sexually. (Actually, she felt his sexual activities were magical in 
nature, so would feel gratified at the info revealed in the Tillett 
bio.)

If she saw through Krishnamurti and CWL that speaks well for her 
critical judgement IMO. She wrote an absurd book under the name 
Violet Firth called THE PROBLEM OF PURITY for the instruction of 
those who wanted to be perpetually chaste and get rid of their normal 
desires through prayer, so that could put her distrust of CWL in some 
perspective, even though what he was doing was criminal.

John Plummer: "First, while there is certainly some Golden Dawn 
influence in DF's work, the rituals of the SIL and its descendents 
are *very* different, and hardly constitute any wholesale purloining 
from the GD.

Very interesting. Since her stuff is Kabbalistic I got the 
impression she started her own spinoff of the GD as so many others 
did. I have not seen her bios and derived this impression from her 
books.

John Plummer: "I think you are right to wonder about the results of 
the some of the GD work. In many cases, it clearly led to inflated 
magical personalities, and forms of inner work driven by the 
complexes of the lower self.

So do you see this stuff as purely psychological (as Israel Regardie 
maintained), or is there anything to all this "magical" stuff?

John Plummer: "Both DF and Waite fully acknowledged that, in 
spiritual work, it is a matter of "Thy will be done" *not* "My will 
be done."

Here is a thought for consideration: Max Freedom Long, Serge King, 
and others who have written about the Higher Self all insist that it 
assists but never insists. They claim we have some reason for being 
here (an idea which I find somewhat less than solidly grounded in 
evidence) and the HS will insist that we fulfill this mission, 
whatever it is. But aside from that, it has no "will" per se. 
Socrates said the same thing about his experience in Plato's 
APOLOGY. His inner oracle occasionally forbade him to do this or 
that (which makes it sound like conscience) but never urged him to do 
anything.

I am of course using the word "will" in the sense of AC's "Magical 
will", which is how I assume you are using it, rather than in the 
sense of a ding an sich as Schopenhauer wrote it.

John Plummer: "Actually, it was as a result of seeing some of the 
spiritual train wrecks in the GD which led DF to insist that 
psychological health (including undertaking a course of therapy if 
necessary)

The best I have been able to determine, the psychological risk is 
that latent psychosis will flower into a psychotic break. I am 
doubtful "therapists" are competent enough or even honest enough to 
cure a latent psychosis. (Or with most of them, much of anything 
else.) So the presebce or absence of psychosis in one's family tree 
(the disorder is believed to be genetic) would seem to be the key.

John Plummer: "I tend to think people get carried away with claims 
that this rite, or that square or some magical alphabet is so 
intrinsically dangerous or powerful or whatever.

According to Francis King people who did mess with the magic squares 
from the Abramelin system did have trouble, and this was consistently 
true of all the cases he was familiar with. I have no idea if it is 
true or not, but I saw a documentary years ago in which the claim was 
made that Boleskine House, where AC worked the Abramelin system, is 
still the site of spooky goings on today.

The question is whether any of this stuff affects anything objective 
to the operator or whether it is all self psyching. Chlordane is 
dangerous whether one believes it is or not. If the GD stuff us mere 
self hypnosis and nothing else, then it is either dangerous or not 
depending on how much power one gives it. However, if it affects 
anything in the objective world the case could be otherwise.

K. Paul Johnson: "Multiperpectivalists Unite!"

I cannot even pronounce it, let alone join it. Since W took power 
via the supreme court I have found myself mysteriously unable to 
pronounce "nuclear" without screwing it up and that is only three 
syllables.

Not that it usually comes up in normal conversation.

K. Paul Johnson: "the ES (which has the one true secret path to get 
to the only real Masters, concocted mainly by that poor victim of 
endless slanders, CWL."

Your comment reminds me of something another person said on this list 
one time about how CWL should not be studied too closely in the 
interest of polite consideration for those who consider his writings 
infallible dogma. I have pondered his remarks respectfully and still 
have not been able to come to any conclusion regarding them. There 
seems to be a legitimate conflict here between the search for truth, 
which in my mind has intrnsic value, and the need to be courteous to 
people who find the truth itself and the search for truth to be 
offensive.

He is right that people with dogmatic views do not want to be aware 
that some others see unresolved difficulties in the way of sharing 
their rigid belief systems. But to me an unexamined belief is like 
the unexamined life. Just as the unexamined life is not worth 
living, the unexamined belief is not worth having.

Penetrating as deeply as possible and ruthlessly discarding ideas 
which do not stand up to scrutiny is more satisfying to me than being 
a True Believer who never doubts nor questions anything. You end up 
throwing away an awful lot of drivel, but over time some genuine 
nuggets seem to turn up which are worthy of serious consideration. 
Throwing away the drivel, though, or even recognizing that drivel is 
drivel, creates the risk that people who wish to be unaware that 
drivel is drivel may be displeased.

So what is the best thing to do? Should the search for truth be a 
strictly private thing, unacknowledged in public lest the True 
Believers be annoyed? Or does truth seeking trump the desire to 
avoid offending the truth avoiders? Since True Believers have been 
heretic hunting for thousands of years it appears there is no middle 
way between these two extremes. I cannot imagine becoming a True 
Believer, alhough pretending to be one might be a possibility.

Was CWL really "that poor victim of endless slanders"? I thought 
there was clear evidence of his perfidy.

K. Paul Johnson: "the ULT (which has the one authoritative body of 
scriptures which represents the Masters' teaching.

Don't they cut and paste from the same "scriptures" as the other 
Theosophists do?

And 2 questions yet unanswered: why does the ES exist and how does 
one get into it?