Theos-Talk Archives (November 2004 Message tt00167)

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, Jerry Hejka-Ekins <jjhe@c...> 
wrote:

> Can you give me some examples of absolutistic statements in the SD 
and 
> the Mahatma Letters?

Thanks, Jerry. Here they are:

"Our doctrine knows no compromises. It either affirms or denies, for 
it never teaches but that which it knows to be the truth. Therefore, 
we deny God both as philosophers and as Buddhists. We know there are 
planetary and other spiritual lives, and we know there is in our 
system no such thing as God, either personal or impersonal. Parabrahm 
is not a God, but absolute immutable law, and Iswar is the effect of 
Avidya and Maya, ignorance based upon the great delusion." (ML 88, 
chronological)

HPB seemed to take a less absolutistic stance in The Key:

"ENQUIRER. Then you make of man a God? 
THEOSOPHIST. Please say "God" and not a God. In our sense, the inner 
man is the only God we can have cognizance of. And how can this be 
otherwise? Grant us our postulate that God is a universally diffused, 
infinite principle, and how can man alone escape from being soaked 
through by, and in, the Deity? We call our "Father in heaven" that 
deific essence of which we are cognizant within us, in our heart and 
spiritual consciousness, and which has nothing to do with the 
anthropomorphic conception we may form of it in our physical brain or 
its fancy: "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the 
spirit of (the absolute) God dwelleth in you?" Yet, let no man 
anthropomorphise that essence in us. Let no Theosophist, if he would 
hold to divine, not human truth, say that this "God in secret" 
listens to, or is distinct from, either finite man or the infinite 
essence -- for all are one."


In the SD, for example, we read:

"The Secret Doctrine establishes three fundamental propositions:—
(a) An Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless, and Immutable PRINCIPLE on 
which all speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of 
human conception and could only be dwarfed by any human expression or 
similitude. It is beyond the range and reach of thought—in the words 
of Mandukya, "unthinkable and unspeakable.""

Although I have no qualms with the universal truth expressed in it, 
the statement above seems to suggest that the One Reality is beyond 
the field of human experience. This seems to contradict, for example, 
one of the Mahavakyas ("Great Utterances") of the Upanishads which 
says that Atman is Brahman. This utterance suggests that when one 
reaches the knowledge of one's true Self (Atman), one realises one's 
identity with the Supreme Reality, for the two are really one.

My above comments are tentative, very tentative.

Warm regards,


Pedro