Theos-Talk Archives (December 2006 Message tt00718)

Friends,

After a few decades studying Theosophy as formulated by HPB, and doing that with some degree of attachment to the literal texts, there may emerge a crossroads in one’s life, or in the life of the movement. 

But why such attachment to the literal aspect of texts? 

Two reasons. One, for a sense of loyalty. Two, for an absence of a wider and firmer horizon which, for one to have it, should have come from previous lifetime experiences. 

What is the crossroads one has to face,  then? The crossroads consists of three possibilities. 

One: you can build a dogma around HPB’s texts, repeating them to yourself in closed circuit in your collective search for security. 

Two: you can widen your horizons, gradually including in them philosophers, sages and theosophers of all times and cultures. In this case your mental laziness --  as your attachment to pet words and favourite books -- will have to be dealt with. 

Three: you can also open your doors to all kinds of sophists, would-be theosophists, recent novelties, fashionable  pseudo-thinkers and so on, and you will be able to do so in the name of liberty, as under the beautiful motto of 'fighting dogma' . This possibility also offers you the cozy comfort of not having to think by yourself. 

In the first option, you do not have to search, you just have to believe. In the third option, you do not have to think, for you can look like intelligent in t he eyes of others by adopting skepticism and fashionable doubts. 

The second option, the middle way, is no superstition or dogma, on one hand; and it is no abandonment of the esoteric philosophy, on the other hand. It consists of going beyond dead letter and into the essence of things. 

It leads you to make a living relationhip of Theosophy with all that concerns life, especially your own life and the life of all beings in this planet. 

In the recent history of the theosophical movement, public characters like John Algeo, David Green, Terry Hobbes and other followers of notable sophists like Henry Sidgwick and ancient Prothagoras are in fact but representatives of the third choice, the second extreme. 

They choose to adopt comfortable, short-term sophisms. For them “there are no facts, there are versions of facts”. They navigate in falsehood and are good swimmers in it too. 

They prefer fashionable, pseudo-scientific and short-term marketable ideas, as opposed to any dogmatization of the authentic writings. In a way, one must admit, this Neo-Sophistic wave of pseudothinkers we now see in the movement is but the natural Karma of some previous dogmatization which must have occurred in the movement, probably under the motto of “loyalty to HPB” ; or “loyalty to Adyar”, as the case may be. 

If you have a blind lack of flexibility, then you will have to harvest a blind flexibility as a natural reaction to it ; but blindness and ignorance will persist anyway. 

The middle way, the balanced and wise way, is going into the heart of the doctrine, or the Heart Doctrine. For that, though, you should be connected to your own heart as much as you can. 

Of course, the study of the dialogues “Prothagoras” and “Sophist” , by Plato, will be useful in understanding some minor recent phenomena as 'Terry Hobbes', 'David Green' and John Algeo’s editorial policy at the USA-TPH, among others. 

The main issue, though, is that if you plant dogmatism, you harvest skepticism and falsehood, which John Algeo and “David Green” kindly exemplify to us all. 

Or else, what could be the cause for such a harvesting in the last few years? We should infer that the movement must deserve it somehow. 

At this point, one question remains unanswered. Where could we locate blind dogmatism in the movement, that is, the cause — so that, as an effect, and as an equally blind but natural and understandable reaction to it, the “Children of Prothagoras” could not grow and multiply like toxic mushrooms after the rainfall ? 

If we are not talking about dogmas in the Adyar TS only, then the question is rather difficult and complex, and it may imply some self-criticism. 

Regards, Carlos Cardoso Aveline. 


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