Theos-Talk Archives (March 2006 Message tt01372)

You wrote:

   "<nitpicking>
   Not in the common sense of the word, and, VERY strictly speaking, 
not in the technical sense of the word (that ultimate reality/God is 
unknowable). And, of course, except for agreement with the three 
objects (and not always even then), phrases like "Theosophists are" 
or "Theosophists believe" will virtually always lead to something 
inaccurate.
   </nitpicking>"

I consider myself to be agnostic in the sense that I don't believe 
that the mortal psyche in it's current existential finiteness is 
capable of cognizing a singular cosmological supergod (omniscient, 
omnipotent, omnipresent).  This is because the human psyche itself 
must first be omniscient before it can potentially comprehend an 
omniscient being.  And our minds certainly are not existentially 
omniscient.  It'd be like trying to calculate the size and age of 
the universe, and how many square inches or molecules therein 
reside.  We can make wild guesses, and even adhere to them as 
doctrine, but our best guesses will actually be flagrantly off.

Now can a finite mortal psyche partly know a 'GOD'?  Well I suggest 
that even if our mortal psyches were capable of comprehending 1% of 
the totality of a 'GOD' (or of the universe itself for that matter), 
nonetheless the 99% ignorance which remains within us serves merely 
to inevitably distort the little bit that we may claim to know.  (Of 
course, even a 1% existential knowability of 'GOD' or the universe 
is beyond the current psyche's scope.)  Every god concept that the 
mortal psyche has ever ventured to constuct after it's own creative 
design, being prayed to and worshipped as self-generated god 
concepts commonly are, is and has been invariably flawed beyond 
proportions of which we are even consciously aware.

   "However to answer what I perceive your question to be, the 1st 
fundamental principle of the Secret Doctrine is definitely a 
statement of the strict version of agnosticism."

I'm assuming that you're referring to this statement here, 
apparently from one of Blavatsky's writings:

(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.

http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/invit-sd/invsd-
2.htm#threefundprop

Vince

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, Bart Lidofsky <bartl@...> wrote:
>
> Vincent wrote:
> > So Theosophists are agnostic then?
> 
> <nitpicking>
> 	Not in the common sense of the word, and, VERY strictly 
speaking, not 
> in the technical sense of the word (that ultimate reality/God is 
> unknowable). And, of course, except for agreement with the three 
objects 
> (and not always even then), phrases like "Theosophists are" or 
> "Theosophists believe" will virtually always lead to something 
inaccurate.
> </nitpicking>
> 
> 	However to answer what I perceive your question to be, the 
1st 
> fundamental principle of the Secret Doctrine is definitely a 
statement 
> of the strict version of agnosticism.
> 
> 	Bart
>