Theos-Talk Archives (July 2004 Message tt00335)

Dear Morten,
You rightly said "The simple answer is that this material is largely time-and-culture-based." 

And that is why text of all religions widely differ.

HPB also wrote much which was suitable to people and conditions at her time. At the time of Annie Besant social and cultural conditions were improved to some extent and so some part of her writing also was suitable for some audience only, still lot of her writing is not dependent on contemporary culture. C.W. Leadbeater successfully wrote on Theosophy in such a way that he ensured that social, cultural change won't make his writing irrelevant. Many writers who came after CWL like CJ, Taimni also could keep writing such that it would not become irrelevant in changed conditions. I have given names of books at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Theosophical 

After reading you will notice that books I chose are not dependent on time and culture based. "Prescription" now required is to give spiritual truths independent of time and culture based like other sciences which expand but don't become irrelevent due to time and cultural change.

Anand Gholap

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Morten N. Olesen 
To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Monday, July 26, 2004 2:21 AM
Subject: Re: Theos-World Critical works


Hallo Anand and all,

My views are:

Allright. But I was thinking that both you and others needed to learn
something.

Try reading this one again:
"There is a vast accumulation of theosophical teachings, much of it in
writings, which would-be students plough through, looking for
theosophy (Wisdom of the Gods), and wondering why it seems,
so often, self-contradictory. The simple answer is that this material
is largely time-and-culture-based. Most of it was prescribed for
specific audiences at certain times and under particular conditions.
Choosing the relevant materials for any time is a specialised task.
To try to make sense of all of it would be like taking a bundle of
medical prescriptions, issued over the years to a variety of people,
and working out one's own therapy from such largely irrelevant
papers - and without a certain specialised knowledge. Theosophical
Teaching is PRESCRIBED."

So the books you recommend - so hastily or carelessly - in the below email
of yours certainly also has some limitations
attached to them. That is some time-and-culture-based limitations.
What mistakes people --- possibly --- did in the past has less
relevance --- right now year 2004.
What should have relevance is how we relate to the present need for
spiritual teachings.
Mind you - carefully taking into account the critics of older books of the
wisdom tradition and how WE relate to such books ourselves.

I think Caldwell are thinking about the time-and-culture-based issues.
Although he sometimes seems to forget that intellectual analyzing are only
intellectual.

Well, these are just some of my views.
What are yours ?



You know...God is here. God is always ready.
Taste and Know.


from
M. Sufilight with peace and love...

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Anand Gholap" <AnandGholap@AnandGholap.org>
To: <theos-talk@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, July 25, 2004 8:09 PM
Subject: Re: Theos-World Critical works


> Dear Morten,
> You wrote exactly what I was thinking
> "The theosophical Teacher, in the first place, has to be someone who has
> experienced all the stages of the Path along which he will
> conduct his disciples. Outward observers are not capeable of
> commenting upon theosophy or The Wisdom Tradition They lack
> both the experience and the capacity to discriminate between
> real and degenerate forms. 'Who tastes, knows' is a theosophical saying.
> Equally, whoever does not taste, does not know. "
> This is the main reason why I always recommend only books of occultists
who had direct experiences like HPB, AB, CWL, C.Jinarajadasa, I.K.Taimni
etc.
> And I don't recommend books of mere intellectual interpreters and critics.
>
> Thanks Morten for writing the important point I was thinking for long
time.
> Anand Gholap
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: Morten N. Olesen
> To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Sunday, July 25, 2004 9:56 PM
> Subject: Re: Theos-World Critical works
>
>
> Hallo Anand and all,
>
> My views are:
>
> ------- Theosophical thought, Experience and Teaching -------
>
> The following could be called an interpretation of theosophy and
> theosophical writings and it intends to show, where some of the problems
> with Theosophy and its related branches are today year 2003.
>
> Thousands of book and monographs have been written on
> theosophy and the theosophists, almost all of them from the point of
view of
> other ways of thinking. The result has been chaos in the litterature,
> and confusion in the reader. Over the centuries, some of
> the world's most eminent scholars have fallen into the trap of
> trying to examine assess or consider the theosophy phenomenon
> through a set of culture-bound preconceptions.
>
> All this may not be as foolish as it looks to us today: after all, it
> is only relatively recently that students, including academics and
> people of the spirit, have begun to realise that their attitudes
> have traditionally been heavily influenced by subjectivity and
> unexanined assumptions. Although the pendulum is slowly
> swinging back, there is still no lack of people - specialists and
> others - who continue to look at anything, including theosophy and
> The Wisdom Tradition, in anything but an objective way.
>
> The main problem is that the most commentators are accustomed
> to thinking of spiritual schools as 'systems', which are more or
> less alike, and which depend upon dogma and ritual: and
> especially upon repetition and the application of continual and
> standardised pressures upon their followers.
> The theosophical path, except in degenerate forms which are not to be
> classified as theosophical, is entirely different from this.
>
> Following closely after the primary misconception is the
> general impression that all spiritual entities must strongly depend
> upon emotion. Indeed, there is a marked confusion, even in
> the most lucid writers, between spirituality and emotionalism.
> Such confusion does not exist in authentic theosophical teaching or
> study.
>
> The misconsecptions of which the above two are typical
> produce in the students a frame of mind through which he or she
> will try to approach the understanding or study of theosophy, with
> predictably useless results. For this reason high quality theosophical
> literature shows a marked rejection of ultra-formalism, of
> mental fetishes, the over-simplifications, which hamper understanding.
>
> The theosophists refer to the action of the mixture of primitive
> emotionality and irrelevant associations, which bedevil outside
> would-be observers as that of the Lower Self.
>
> It is only since the nineteen-fifties, with the discovery of the
> far-reaching effects of conditioning, brain-washing and attitude-
> engineering, that the subjective nature of virtually all
> approaches to knowledge has been perceived to the degree to
> which the theosophists, for centuries has tried to establish.
>
> The theosophists have always taught: 'Examine your assumptions;
> avoid mechanicality; distinguish faith from fixation'.
>
> The theosophical Teacher, in the first place, has to be someone who has
> experienced all the stages of the Path along which he will
> conduct his disciples. Outward observers are not capeable of
> commenting upon theosophy or The Wisdom Tradition They lack
> both the experience and the capacity to discriminate between
> real and degenerate forms. 'Who tastes, knows' is a theosophical saying.
> Equally, whoever does not taste, does not know.
>
> The validity of this concept is, naturally enough, strenously
> opposed by outward observers. But if, in any field, an unqualified
> person, lacking essential experience, decides to 'become an
> expert', it is inevitable that the specialist, the person with the
> experience, will - indeed must - assert the primacy of proper
> knowledge.
>
> It has to be remembered here that the externalists (whether
> people of the spirit or of the pen and tounge) are themselves not
> particularly to blame. Reared on the concept that anyone can, at
> will, examine anything, they are victims of their own culture's
> assumptions. After all, this approach is adequate for a large
> number of disciplines. They have merely apllied a principle
> which holds good in one area to a subject where it does not.
>
> The theosophist unlike the externalist, cannot, and does not, work
> mechanically. The projection of the message and the help which
> is given to the learner, must always vary in conformity with the
> needs of the time, the culture involved and the nature and
> potential of the student.
>
> But as soon as we say this, we can see that the real theosophical
> organisation teaching and learning differ fundamentally from all
> other 'systems'.
>
> The theosophist, in short, is aiming for a development, not to
> produce conditioned reflexes. He or she is teaching, not training.
> He or she intervenes, to provide the right stimulus at the right time
> for the right person. Such an activity is seen as chaotic by those who
> cannot perceive its purposefulness; just as the way of life in
> some open societies feels unbearably disorderly to those who
> have escaped from regimented ones: something which
> frequently happens today.
>
> The tendency to seek reassurance and regularity is common
> to all human beings. This is reflected in their cleaving to
oversimplified
> systems. It explains why many people are drawn to organisations
> which offer authority and certainty. There is nothing wrong
> with order and discipline: indeed, these are essentials to all
> human groupings. But the misuse of this proclivity in areas
> where it does not apply attentuates or delays progress. It results in
> the uncomfortable feeling, even amongst the most regimented,
> that 'there is something else.'
>
> And yet exposure to strong discipline does not itself produce
> as a reaction a necessarily wholesome affinity for truth. It is
> noticeable that coercive, regimented or rigorously intellectualist
> societies throw up weird cults and abborations, providing both
> the supply of and the demand for certain emotions.
>
> There is a vast accumulation of theosophical teachings, much of it in
> writings, which would-be students plough through, looking for
> theosophy (Wisdom of the Gods), and wondering why it seems,
> so often, self-contradictory. The simple answer is that this material
> is largely time-and-culture-based. Most of it was prescribed for
> specific audiences at certain times and under particular conditions.
> Choosing the relevant materials for any time is a specialised task.
> To try to make sense of all of it would be like taking a bundle of
> medical prescriptions, issued over the years to a variety of people,
> and working out one's own therapy from such largely irrelevant
> papers - and without a certain specialised knowledge. Theosophical
> Teaching is PRESCRIBED.
>
> Such parts of the theosophical Classics, stories, and letters
> and lectures and so on which apply to the individual and the group
> today - have to be selected and applied consciously and appropriately,
> by someone who is attuned to certain realities.
>
> This concept is especially irksome to the academic worker, who
> always has a bias towards utillising every scrap of information
> he can find, not towards assessing contemporary applicability.
> He is, in fact, in a different field from the theosophist. His attitude
> influences even general readers.
>
> If the scholar is unwilling to accept this concept, the conventional
> spiritual thinker is equally hampered. He, or she, does not wish
> to face the fact that theosophical activity is often carried out in a
way
> which does not, for the conventionalist, resemble spiritual
> matters at all. The fact that the theosophist has to script and project
his
> teaching in a manner which will work - not in a manner which
> will remind others of spirituality - arouses, if ever perceived,
> feelings of great discomfort in the conditional 'devout' man or
> woman.
>
> Yet the theosophist insists that the adherence to traditional forms is
> not a spiritual activity at all. It is only in recent years that he has
> been able to call upon the insights and experiments of the
> sociologists and psychologists to establish in current terminology,
> and hence in acceptable form, the fact that very many 'people of
> the spirit' are only religious in the sense that they have been
> conditioned to feel certain emotional responses. And that such
> people are, anthrologically speaking, little else than members
> of a tribe. These facts, written down and asserted centuries ago
> by theosophists, are now thought by modern thinkers to be a great
> new discovery.
>
> The supposedly devout are, in theosophical terms (as well as in the
> new understanding of contemporary workers in the social
> sciences) cultists but hardly people of the spirit in the theosophical
> sense.
>
> The use of authorithy figures, canonical litterature, liturgy,
> exercises, special clothes, and similarly standardised elements,
> are now plainly seen as ingredients in trainning systems which
> differ, one from the other, only in the ideas and symbols used.
> Yet, these factors linger and confuse, producing blinkered
> minds.
>
> The deluded 'Theosophists', down the centuries, are those who have
> taken temporary situations, parables and the like and
> strecthed them to apply as perennial 'truths', 'exercises' and the
> like. This kind of development, or hyperthrophy, has taken place
> in other projections than that known as theosophy. Indeed, it is this
> which is responsible for the existence of a large number of cults
> and religious bodies which are generally believed to be authentic
> and authoritathive. In, reality, the fossilization which is represented
> by such groups is the antithesis of a spiritual school.
> Instead of developing people, it imprisons them, as genuine
> theosophists have never tired of pointing out.
>
> So far has this process gone that, in most cultures, the imitation
> has all but driven out the original. The result is that,
> examining certain existing religious cults (some of them involving
> multiple millions of people and possesing great influence)
> nobody could be blamed for believeing this degenration
> to be religion itself.
>
> An fictious example:
> Recently, explaining this attitude to a famous spiritual leader,
> I received the answer; 'But it MUST be true: otherwise so many
> people would not believe it.'
> He had, clearly, not heard of Gresham's Law: 'Bad money
> drives good out.'
> I said, 'There are twice as many adherents of such-and-such a
> religion as there are of your own. By your logic THAT one
> must be true. Its success proves it. Why don't you join that one
> instead of your own?'
> It was at that point that he started shouting at me.
>
> Quality is more important than Quantity when we talk about
> theosophical members.
>
> Among theosophists, the development of Theosophical Organisations
> gives us a conspicuous example of the process which I have been
> describing. Of many of the major 'Paths' among the supposed
> theosophists of today (generally speaking), not a single one or only
very
> very few is
> traceable in its foundation to the man or woman who is named as
> its founder. Each of the 'artificial ones' came into being only after
> the founders death, formulated from some of his specific teachings
> employed for local purposes, and soon truned into a cult.
> 'Theosophical Organisations'are temporary and time-limited. None
> was started by its putative founder. When the teacher died, his
disciples,
> heroically but misguidedly, tried to preserve his teachings. The result
we
> know.
>
> All the distortions - and more - which have persisted in theosophy
> - and other - teachings are due to the presence and activity of the
> Lower Self.
> There is no intention of destroying or undermining the Lower Self. But
> the Theosophical activity and The Wisdom Tradition insists upon
> asking: does is command you, - or do you command it?
>
>
> *******
> I hope this helped you and other readers.
> Helped you and other readers to consider what is authority and what not.
> What is wanted by the Seeker is not always what is spiritually Needed.
>
> Can I learn? If I can, how do I then Learn how to Learn ?
>
>
> from
> M. Sufilight with peace and love.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Anand Gholap" <AnandGholap@AnandGholap.org>
> To: <theos-talk@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Sunday, July 25, 2004 5:11 PM
> Subject: Theos-World Critical works
>
>
> > Members can write a book showing defects in HPB, mistakes in her work,
how
> she was smoker, her short temper etc. Still I would say that it is wrong
to
> write such a book. I disagree with some members who say that such
critical
> works are necessary.
> > Anand Gholap
> >
> >
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> Yahoo! Groups Links
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