Theos-Talk Archives (April 2005 Message tt01338)

Mauri wrote partly:

> Apparenly
> these cults are turning their members
> into mindless zombies (as if "unity 
> with
> God" can be accomplished by a certain
> kind of mindless "faith") who work for
> them for free in isolated cult
> communities after having handed over
> their savings.
In reference to the word "faith" in that 
sentence, what Mauri might've meant, I 
think, might be that he might have a 
tentative or speculative preference in 
some contexts, senses, cases, maybe, for 
some sort of "awareness" or "apparent 
stance" in keeping with whatever 
interest he might think or speculate 
that he might have by way of ... 
whatever. He seems to find the word 
"faith" kind of potentially problematic 
or suspect as it might generally tend to 
get interpreted, apparently thinking 
that one might get oneself into some 
sort of corner if one finds that one's 
"faith-based" directives are lacking in 
"enough foundations," possibly finding 
instead some basically 
imagined-but-unreal "faith." He doesn't 
seem to think that some "faith" could 
exist and cultishly replace one's 
thoughts and interpretive tendencies 
about that "faith." He seems to think 
that there are people who have fooled 
themselves into taking up some kind of 
faith in a faith, as if that were 
somehow "advisable with faith" in some 
sense, but without reference to an 
intermediary mental/interpretive aspect, 
as if the rest of one's self, life, 
karma, mind, background, interpretive 
tendencies, etc, could be "faithfully" 
or unquestioningly replaced not by way 
of such as the Esoteric/Wisdom 
Tradition, but with something that might 
appear to be, in effect, "directly 
faith-based," in contrast to 
"interpreted," as in terms of, in 
effect, an all-consuming, dictatorial 
short-cut (to "God," "Jesus," "Master," 
"Higher Self," "Enlightenment," 
"Liberation" or whatever). I suspect 
that Mauri thinks that such short-cuts 
generally tend to be basically 
unrealistic, in some sense, and 
generally tend to make for "bad karma."
Though I suppose he might've heard about 
something like "sudden enlightenment," 
eg, but he seems to think that, 
generally speaking, cult-based faiths 
and things like "sudden enlightenment" 
might generally tend to be different 
enough in some ways so that some kind of 
differentiating between the two might be 
worthwhile in some sense, in some cases, 
maybe.

Speculatively,
Mauri

PS Yes, my name happens to be Mauri, as 
well. How many Mauri's are there? As 
many as it takes, I guess.