Theos-Talk Archives (January 2009 Message tt00327)

My views are:

Allright here are some words to consider.


I am not a member of any physical theosophical group. If you need to call me something it would be better for us all if you would use the terms: "One who lives in the world, but who is not of it."

When I talk about the importance of The Key to Theosophy, I am not referring to it as a book needed, but as the content of it being needed to be followed. This can be done using more than one method.



HPB said in the Key to Theosophy:
"Individuals in every age have more or less clearly apprehended the Theosophical doctrines and wrought them into the fabric of their lives. These doctrines belong exclusively to no religion, and are confined to no society or time. They are the birthright of every human soul. Such a thing as orthodoxy must be wrought out by each individual according to his nature and his needs, and according to his varying experience. This may explain why those who have imagined Theosophy to be a new religion have hunted in vain for its creed and its ritual. Its creed is Loyalty to Truth, and its ritual 'To honour every truth by use.' "



Somehow I felt that the following might, ... might be useful to you or others.


>>> About Imitation<<<
If we can do anything about the imitation, it is to spread information of the Real. But our doing this depends upon the audience being prepared. The preparation involves a wideness of their horizon and the intelligent use of the clear thinking methods, which are already current in all present-day societies, though only lately coming into use in our area of interest.

False gold only exists, because there is such a thing as the real.

In the winter you will seek out warm clothes to wear. And in the summer you have no time for them. So it is with imitators of  real teachings. Just like the clothes the imitators will cleave to cults (perhaps theosophically-named ones) and imitations because these things - suits them - and respond to somthing within them which calls for cults and imitations.
 At the same time they of course imagine all sorts of things, that they are genuine, sincere, unconcerned about themselves and concerned about others or about truth.

Metaphysicians, no less than market researchers, monitor the condition and receptivity of the minds with which they are trying to communicate.
The main difference between the activities of, say, the sociologists and those of the spiritual workers is that the results of the latter are not widely published,  publicised, employed in academic treatises. They are used in supplying verification material for trainees who would otherwise find it impossible to credit the facts about humanity.

Some of the facts about humanity:
You may have something to teach, and yet be unable to teach it because the people who 'want to learn it' effectively prevent themselves from learning; at the same time protesting that they 'want to learn', or 'cannot understand'. Such people reason unconsciously, that if they protest you will keep your attention upon them. In this way they gain your attention (or hope to do so). In any ohter way they might loose it.

Of course, if you try to point this out, you will find that the answer - again preventing progress - will be 'this man is excusing himself', or 'he is mistaken.'

It is for this reason that it is traditional to confine ones teachings to a small rather than a large group: those who really are prepared to learn.

If you speak or write in the above vein, a certain proportion of the would-be elect will protest that you are insensitive, or even that you are not teaching metaphysics at all. This is because they have been accustomed to a belief that real teaching is something which they will themselves  instantly recogise.

Now it is a matter of almost daily verification in real esoteric classes that, it is easy to become established as a 'true metaphysician' in the eyes of the self-styles students of higher thought. What do you have to do? Nothing more or less than make them feel emotionally aroused. All you have to do is to make sure that you use what they 'regard' as spiritual terminology.
(And that has to be thought out.)

But say the above words or publish them, and you will, in all likelihood, immediately be accused of being superficial, unaware of the 'real values', and so on.

It is little wonder, that many sensible people will have nothing at all to do with the people known as 'spiritual'.

Few organised communities and doctrinally-aligned movements realise, that they inhabit a ghetto. (That is something which have never been widely published.)

- You may have to associate your self litterally for years before the facts penetrates into the minds that you are not a monster, not a mahatma, but maybe a man trying first of all to teach them the basic tools of their own possible learning process, which should have been in their posseion years before.

- And more. Primitive thought depends strongly upon regularity, upon rythm, upon reassurance. This is perpetuated in our time in the atavism whereby people have been encouraged to believe that they must be thought at a certain time - for instance the same time each day or week. Tell the that this belongs to children.

If you do the reverse: giving them authority figures, canonical literature, hierarchies of authority, symbols, chants and costumes, and they will worship you and believe that you are on the 'right lines', whether they are or not; whether or not you have made up the cult the day before.

The receptivity of man to theosophical ideas is sometimes clouded by the demand for 'being given' something. I say, clouded because there are really three conditions which have to be looked at. First, there is the potential of the human being, - the endowment which he already has; Second there is the intervention of the teaching function; Lastly there is the effort which the individual makes in accepting the teaching and preserving the endowment.
The last one is important to understand and contemplate, because the would-be student is not often recognising it..

- - -
Mahatma KH wrote - 1882 about Hume:
"I read his three essays or chapters on God (?) cosmogony and glimpses of the origin of things in general, and had to cross out nearly all. He makes of us Agnostics!! We do not believe in God because so far, we have no proof, etc. This is preposterously ridiculous: if he publishes what I read, I will have H.P.B. or Djual Khool deny the whole thing; as I cannot permit our sacred philosophy to be so disfigured. He says that people will not accept the whole truth; that unless we humour them with a hope that there may be a "loving Father and creator of all in heaven" our philosophy will be rejected a priori. In such a case the less such idiots hear of our doctrines the better for both. If they do not want the whole truth and nothing but the truth, they are welcome. But never will they find us -- (at any rate) -- compromising with, and pandering to public prejudices."

- - -

The following joke from the Nasrudin corpus have something of importance to tell the ernest Seekers of the Wisdom Teachings:

The editor of the local newspaper was beside himself. He said to Mulla Nasrudin in the theosophical teahouse: "What are we going to do for our front page tonight? Nothing scandalous has happened in town for almost twenty-four hours!" "TAKE IT EASY " said Nasrudin. "SOMETHING WILL HAPPEN. YOU SHOULDN'T LOSE FAITH IN HUMAN NATURE, SIR." 


The headline could be a few words on what HPB called the opposition: 
"Was the psychic Blavatsky really right about the Catholic Church?"





M. Sufilight

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