Theos-Talk Archives (August 1998 Message tt00349)

Paul writes:

>....you cannot automatically assume that everyone who goes into deep
>trance is channeling something negative,
======================
      Yes, right.  Cayce didn't seem to be channeling anything necessarily
nasty, much of the material is pretty "white" from what I remember, although
how accurate who can say.   Blavatsky or Purucker  says that the Purity or
level of purity of the medium determines what they get, and Cayce seemed a
pretty pure-minded person, and pretty unique among mediums.   Unfortunately,
mediumship is also supposedly to normally lead to a degradation of character,
as the medium is an open door for whatever forces might influence the person,
and become more so as more actively mediumistic, some more and some less it
would seem.  As a side,  people with big psychological problems are mediums
too, I think, like obsessive criminals and addicts.
==============================================

>I can't see your
>mediator/medium distinction as having much validity.  You say
>that "the mediator is fully self-conscious and in full control
>and possession of their faculties" and make HPB an example of
>this.  But we of course cannot know that this was true of her, as
>an awful lot of her behavior seems to me *not* fully self-conscious
>or in full control and possession of her faculties.  I mean by
>this the personality traits that brought her into near-constant
>conflict with people around her.
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        I was referring to being "fully self-conscious and in full control and
possession of their faculties"  WHILE being in the state of "mediating" - like
when Blavatsky was writing or being shown and copying from the astral light.
Blavatsky supposedly had a "missing principle" or sub-principle (to insure she
wouldn't reveal certain things esoterically she knew under the pressures of
being in the worldly-world), and this is held to be the occult explanation for
her erratic temperament. I don't see why an irrascible temperament necessarily
indicates a lower state of consciousness.   I don't particularly like gooey-
positive people myself.   I doubt this issue could be treated one way or
another from a scholarly perspective.
     Personally I like her personality and when she did such things as when
asked at table to pass the butter to the Indian with the child-bride say:
"Here! And I hope you grease your soul to hell with it!" With her chain-
smoking, she wouldn't be even able to sit in at a Theosophical meeting today!
          You're a good Theosophical Historian for a Christian, but there is a
lot of material on "Mediator" vs. "Medium"  in Blavatsky and Purucker's
philosophic writings,  and it is a pretty clear philosophic concept.
         I don't know what Cayce was "channeling."  Anyone else have any idea?
                -  Jake J.