Theos-Talk Archives (January 2005 Message tt00266)

Dear Paul,
Sorry but I musn't have made myself clear, when i referrred to getting to the "marrow" I was talking about, the "marrow of what is a perfected man" - a Master. As like you I have read various descriptions of the Masters ranging from spiritually perfected beings to human perfected beings. That they can come amongst us, but our vibrations are so course, that their bodies are unable to remain in our environment too long, for lack of a better word. That living in the world is like living in pollution for them. They are spiritually psychic. They know the entities existing on all planes. They understand nature and therefore can control it. They are the guardians of mankind against the leftside magicians. They see into the future of mankind and other planetary systems. So, in comparison to me, they are godlike. Unless we know more about the Masters, we will, I am speaking generally here, substitute a Personal God for a Personal Master. 
That's my views anyway
Cass 

kpauljohnson <kpauljohnson@yahoo.com> wrote:


Hey,

Cass wrote that the "marrow" of discussion of Masters is the meaning 
of the term "perfected men." One man's marrow is another's poison; 
I think that this term in particular has had a poisonous effect on 
the Theosophical Movement.

Meaning is descriptive, not prescriptive; that is, the meaning of a 
word or phrase is determined by its use. Multiple uses point to 
multiple meanings. Jerry wrote:

I know of students who will suggest that HPB and the 
> Masters were somehow divinely protected against making such 
errors. That argument, like any other profession of faith, can only 
be answered in silence. 
> 
> Even when the writer is satisfied that the sentence or paragraph 
carries its intended meaning, that is no guarantee that the sentence 
will not have a very different meaning to the reader. Those 
differences of 
> interpretation may arise because of differences of culture, 
education, personal experiences, changes of meaning of words over 
time, being influenced by someone else's interpretation, unconscious 
associations etc. etc.


I googled the term "perfected men" as a quick and dirty method of 
measuring what it means to different users. Although it was used in 
the MLs and writings of HPB, it was one among many roughly 
synonymous terms and was surrounded by disclaimers and qualifiers 
that make it clear HPB never meant "infallible" or "omniscient" 
or "omnipotent." She said that a person encountering a Mahatma 
would have no way of knowing the spiritual status of the person; 
hence that Mahatmas can move freely unrecognized. But 
googling "perfected men" comes up with many hits by Judge, who had 
an entirely different understanding. He wrote that Masters were so 
totally different from ordinary men that their physical bodies were 
unimaginably glorious and regular folks couldn't bear the experience 
of seeing them. Later, Leadbeater and Bailey and the Prophets and a 
host of others were off and running with "perfected men" as ever 
more glorious and inaccessible and authoritative. I don't think HPB 
and Olcott intended to give birth to such occult authoritarianism.

Paul






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