Thanks Chuck and MKR
I think the reason for HPB's statement may have been because
apolostolic succession is a belief system that has tried to maintain
power and authority by claiming a special spiritual status and power
to 'forgive sins' and bestow 'spiritual grace'.
A concept that is completely anathema to the idea of karma, and the
idea that a priest can have a special spiritual link with the Christ
or Buddhic principle through the exoteric enactment of a ritual is
not only from a theosophical perspective unsustainable but goes
against any sense of justice and lawfulness.
This teaching of priests having special powers is to me a fraud that
needs to be exposed as it has enamored and glamorized people's minds
in to subservience to external authorities rather than recognizing
the internal Christ within that no priest needs to invoke on our
behalf.
Rituals while they can be used as meditations for transformation can
also become crutches.
It can be debated that the church no longer has this power over
peoples minds, however the recent selection of the new Pope in Rome
showed to me how much this sort of subservience people are still very
much prone to giving to assumed authorities.
(The gold and braiding and jewels are still a powerful tool it seems.)
This is not to imply that some clergy are not committed and selfless
workers on social issues and some like Bede Griffiths tried to open
the church up to a more wider view of Christianity and other
religions by taking a more theosophical approach, however still the
above points have been the cause of many burnings and torture
throughout history in order to maintain suppression of freedom of
inquiry and stifle empowerment to the individual.
While people are of course free to believe priests have these special
powers and links it is also the right of those who don't to critique
these beliefs that have entrapped peoples minds for centuries.
HPB in her statement seemed to see this as quite important.
This for me does not imply that a Priest can not be a theosophist but
rather that the belief in priestly power can and should be questioned.
Perry
--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, Drpsionic@a... wrote:
Years ago at Summer School, someone came up a with one of those
bright ideas
that fly like an empty balloon and this one was to have us break up
into
groups and someone would come up with a question for the rest of
the group to
answer.
Well, as luck (or someone else's bad karma) would have it, the
person who
made up the question in our group was some poor fool heavily
involved in the LCC
and his question was what did Theosophy think of "the saving blood
of Jesus."
Well, everyone else in the group was being polite and hemming and
hawing and
then it came to my turn. By that time I was thoroughly disgusted
and I looked
him square in the eye and said, "To quote HPB, 'FLAPDOODLE!'"
Chuck the Heretic
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