Theos-Talk Archives (August 2004 Message tt00486)

Daniel H. Caldwell wrote:
> In a letter I am transcribing for my 
> next book, H.P. Blavatsky writes to
> an aspirant:
>
> ==========================================
>
> There are many things I could tell you but 
> cannot write them; but in looking up to the 
> Mahatmas and aspiring to be their disciple 
> you will have the surest guides and the 
> greater safety – "for those who know the 
> truth of all things will teach you." 
>
> ========================================= 
Sounds reassuring. Still, seems to me 
that one person's Mahatmas and "surest 
guides" could be another person's 
whatever, basically, and that, one way 
or another, any kind Mahatmaic 
teachings would first get interpreted 
individually before being, in some 
sense, "accepted" or taken into 
consideration; and so if a student of 
Theosophy, eg, were to assume that some 
sort of faith ought to be cultivated 
towards something/someone, I don't see 
how such a faith can escape 
interpretation or individual judgement 
in some sense, for better or worse, in 
bottom-line terms. I say all that 
because of having the impression that 
there might be some people who might 
think that "faith" or "intuitive 
knowing" is beyond individual 
intepretation in any kind of sense. I'm 
tending to doubt that. I'm tending to 
see "faith" and "knowing" as synonymous 
aspects that are basically open to 
interpretive variants. Seems as if the 
orthodox churches would disagree with me 
about that, much as they have disagreed 
with the gnostics for many hundreds of 
years, in effect telling people to let 
them (the priests) do the 
thinking/directing for everybody else in 
religious matters, urging people to have 
"faith" in them while discouraging 
individual efforts/thoughts.

Speculatively,
Mauri