Theos-Talk Archives (May 2011 Message tt00139)

> This provokes the question, what kind of presentation 
> aught to be created today so to reach a wider audience?
> It must be a quite important question, if one really consider 
> altruism and wisdom to be very important, and not just 
> something trivial or similar.



M. Sufilight,


I think the presentation must reduce mysticism -- I mean, for example, ideas with referrent to common experience must be so termed, and those with remote referrents must be made clear that they are (i.e., put in quotes, etc.). The idea of Vitvan is that we always be aware that language itself distorts perception of reality, and that we are capable to percieving a deeper degree of truth by clear thinking. I also think that we must find illustration of the Ancient Teachings in our experiences today (both personal and scientific) and less rely on myths handed down from remote ages. The reason for this is that the ancient people were endowed with atavistic clairvoyance with which they percieved supersensible realities, but this is almost completely extinguished today in exchange for our increasing capability for individual thinking. I'm not capable of personally verifying this change in the capability of our race, but in view of Evolution which Theosophy consistently teaches, it appears that this is our path and we must make use of it. One wonderful example use of this faculty can be seen in Rudolf Steiner's "Theosophy". He makes the reader deduce, from experience and thinking faculty, the existence of the subtle bodies and necessity of reincarnation -- the most basic teachings of Theosophy. I think, such is the path that we must take. I don't think that this is abandoning Theosophy -- instead, we are taking it to the New Age. We have lost the "automatic" clairvoyance to see the reality behind the myths -- and we have lost it for our faculty to think as individuals -- but thinking will in the future replace this clairvoyance . This is according to Rudolf Steiner, but even now if we contemplate on it, we can see that present thinking is a basic degree of clairvoyance but with the additional element of Self-consciousness -- if by clairvoyance we mean the ability to derive knowledge from a single "idea" or "concept" etc.