Theos-Talk Archives (June 2005 Message tt00090)

Hallo Anand and all,

My views are:

The following might be helpful in understanding some of the Blavatskians 
better...


- - - A Curriculum of a School - - -


Here is an interesting piece of spiritual teaching taken from the book 
"Learning how to learn" by Idries Shah. The author Sylvia Cranston who was 
behind the biography "HPB" has called Idries Shah an overlooked author.

What do the Theosophical readers and teachers think about the below ? Is it 
Theosophy or not ?



A CURRICULUM OF A SCHOOL


"Q: Could you give us a view of the curriculum of a School, from 'inside the 
School' so to speak?"

"A: In our teaching, we must group correctly these elements: the pupils, the 
teacher and the circumstances of study. Only at the right time and place, 
with the teacher suitable to these, and with the right body of students, can 
our studies be said to be capable of coherent development."

"Does this sound difficult or unreasonable? Let us compare these 
requirements with an analogy of our needs: the ordinary educational 
institution."

"If we are learning, say, physics, we must have a man skilled in physics 
[having successfully completed his own training; able also to teach; and 
with a mandate to teach]; students who want to learn and who have capacity 
and some background for the study; and adequate laboratories and other 
facilities for the studies to take place."

"A physics teacher could not make any real progress with a class of idiots, 
or people who primarily wanted power or fame or gain through physics. These 
factors would be getting in the way of the teaching. A class of brilliant 
students, faced with a man who knew no physics, or who only had a 
smattering, would make little progress. A good teacher, with a student body, 
could do little unless the instruments and equipment, the building and so 
on, were available as and when needed."

"Yet this principle, so well established in conventional studies of all 
kinds, is largely passed over and has fallen into disuse, among 
esotericists. Why? Because they have a primitive and unenlightened attitude 
towards teaching. Like an oaf who has just heard of physics or only seen 
some of its manifestations, the would-be student wants it all *now*. He does 
not care about the necessary presence of other students. He wants to skip 
the curriculum and he sees no connection between the building and the 
subject of physics. So he does not want a laboratory."

"Just observe what happens when people try to carry on learning or teaching 
without the correct grouping of the three essentials:"

"Would-be students always try to operate their studies with only one, or at 
the most two, of the three factors. Teachers try to teach those who are 
unsuitable, because of the difficulties of finding enough people to form a 
class. Students who have no teacher try to teach themselves. Transpose this 
into a group of people trying to learn physics, and you will see some of 
their problems. Others group themselves around the literature and 
methodology of older schools, trying to make the scrap material of someone 
else's physics laboratory work. They formalize rituals, become obsessed by 
principles and slogans, assign disproportionate importance to the elements 
which are only tools, but which they regard as a more significant heritage."

"Anyone can think of several schools, cults, religions, systems of 
psychology or philosophy which fall into the above classifications."

"We must categorically affirm that it is impossible to increase human 
knowledge in the higher field by these methods. The statistical possibility 
of useful gains within a reasonable time is so remote as to be excluded from 
one's calculations."

"Why, then, do people insist on raking over the embers and looking for truth 
when they have little chance of finding it? Simply because they are using 
their conditioning propensity, not their capacity for higher perception, to 
try to follow the path. There is intellectual stimulus and emotional 
attraction in the mere effort to plumb the unknown. When the ordinary human 
mind encounters evidences of a higher state of being, of even when it 
conceives the possibility of them, it will invariably conclude that there is 
some possibility of progress for that mind without the application of the 
factors of teaching-teacher-students-time-and-place which are essentials."

"Man has few alternatives in his search for truth. He may rely upon his 
unaided intellect, and gamble that he is capable of perceiving truth or even 
the way to truth. This is a poor, but an attractive, gamble. Or he can 
gamble upon the claims of an individual or institution which claims to have 
such a way. This gamble, too, is a poor one. Aside from a very few, wo/men 
in general lack a sufficiently developed perception to tell them:"

Not to trust their own unaided mentation; Who or what to trust. "There are, 
in consequence, two main schools of thought in this matter. Some say 'Follow 
your own promptings'; the other says: 'Trust this or that intuition'. Each 
is really useless to the ordinary wo/man. Each will help him use up his 
time."

"The bitter truth is that before man can know his own inadequacy, or the 
competence of another man or institution, he must first learn something 
which will enable him to perceive both. Note well that his perception itself 
is a product of right study; not of instinct or emotional attraction to the 
individual, nor yet of desiring to 'go it alone'. This is 'Learning How To 
Learn."

"All this means, of course, that we are postulating here the need for 
preparatory study before school work takes place. We deny that a man can 
study and properly benefit from school work until he is equipped for it: any 
more than a person can study space-navigation unless he has a grasp of 
mathematics."

"This is not to say that a man (or a woman) cannot have a sensation of 
truth. But the unorganized and fragmented mind which is most people's 
heritage tends to distort the quality and quantity of this sensation, 
leading to almost completely false conclusions about what can or should be 
done."

"This is not to say, either, that man cannot take part in studies and 
activities which impinge upon that portion of him which is connected with a 
higher life and cognition. But the mere application of special techniques 
[often to everyone, regardless of their current state and requirements] will 
not transform that man's consciousness. It will only feed into, and disturb, 
more or less permanently, centers of thought and feeling where it does not 
belong. Thus it is that something which should be a blessing becomes a 
curse. Sugar, shall we say, for a normal person is nutritionally useful. To 
a diabetic, it can be poison."

"Therefore, before the techniques of study and development are made 
available to the student, he must be enabled to profit by them in the 
direction in which they are supposed to lead, not in short-term indulgence."

"Thus our curriculum takes two parts: the first is in the providing of 
materials of a preparatory nature, in order to equip the individual to 
become a student. The second is the development itself."

"If we, or anybody else, supply such study or preparatory material 
prematurely, it will only operate on a lower level than it could. The result 
will be harmless at best. At worst, it will condition, train, the mind of 
the individual to think and behave in patterns which are nothing less than 
automatic. In this latter way one can make what seem to be converts, 
unwittingly play upon emotions, on lesser desires and the conditioning 
propensity; train people to loyalty to individuals, found and maintain 
institutions which seem more or less serious or constructive. But no real 
progress towards knowledge of the human being and the other dimension in 
which he partly lives will in fact be made..."



Is this what the different theosophical branches are doing today ?
If not, then why not ?

It could be to your advantage to read the text more than one time.




*******


M. Sufilight




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Anand Gholap" <AnandGholap@AnandGholap.org>
To: <theos-talk@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, June 03, 2005 1:59 PM
Subject: Theos-World Hypocrisy of Blavatskians


> Blavatskians always refer Blavatsky's statements to know truth.
> According to Blavatsky religions are given by Great Teachers from the
> Occult Hierarchy for guiding people.
> When anybody practices his religion e.g. Christianity, Blavatskians
> criticize him. This is one example of hypocrisy of Blavatkians.
>
>
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