Theos-Talk Archives (February 2006 Message tt00218)

Hallo all,

Here is another lump to the needy...

An minor excerpt from the below about the magazine Lucifer:
"No true Theosophist, in fact, would consent to become the fetish of a fashionable doctrine, any more than he would make himself the slave of a decaying dead-letter system, the spirit from which has disappeared for ever."


An excerpt from
"The Dual Aspect of Wisdom", written by H.P. Blavatsky - 1890

"Shall it be then regarded as too far fetched, if, basing our words on a life-long observation and experience, we venture to offer our ideas as to the quickest and most efficient means of obtaining our present World's universal respect and becoming an "authority"? Show the tender regard for the corns of every party's hobbies, and offer yourself as the chief executioner, the hangman, of the reputations of men and things regarded as unpopular. Learn, that the great secret of power consists in the art of pandering to popular prejudices, to the World's likes and dislikes. Once this principal condition complied with, he who practices it is certain of attracting to himself the educated and their satellites--the less educated--they whose rule it is to place themselves invariably on the safe side of public opinion. This will lead to a perfect harmony or simultaneous action. For, while the favorite attitude of the cultured is to hide behind the intellectual bulwarks of the favorite leaders of scientific thought, and jurare in verba magistri, that of the less cultured is to transform themselves into the faithful, mechanical telephones of their superiors, and to repeat like well-trained parrots the dicta of their immediate leaders The now aphoristical precept of Mr. Artemus Ward, the showman of famous memory--"Scratch my back, Mr. Editor, and I will scratch yours"--proves immortally true. The "rising Star," whether he be a theologian, a politician, an author, a scientist, or a journalist--has to begin scratching the back of public tastes and prejudices--a hypnotic method as old as human vanity. Gradually the hypnotized masses begin to purr, they are ready for "suggestion." Suggest whatever you want them to believe, and forthwith they will begin to return your caresses, and purr now to your hobbies, and pander in their turn to anything suggested by theologian, politician, author, scientist, or journalist. Such is the simple secret of blossoming into an "authority" or a "leader of men"; and such is the secret of our modern-day wisdom. 
And this is also the "secret" and the true reason of the unpopularity of Lucifer and of the ostracism practiced by this same modern world on the Theosophical Society: for neither Lucifer, nor the Society it belongs to, has ever followed Mr. Artemus Ward's golden precept. No true Theosophist, in fact, would consent to become the fetish of a fashionable doctrine, any more than he would make himself the slave of a decaying dead-letter system, the spirit from which has disappeared for ever. Neither would he pander to anyone or anything, and therefore would always decline to show belief in that in which he does not, nor can he believe, which is lying to his own soul. Therefore there, where others see "the beauty and graces of modern culture," the Theosophist sees only moral ugliness and the somersaults of the clowns of the so-called cultured centres. For him nothing applies better to modern fashionable society than Sydney Smith's description of Popish ritualism: "Posture and imposture, flections and genuflections, bowing to the right, curtsying to the left, and an immense amount of male (and especially female) millinery." There may be, no doubt, for some worldly minds, a great charm in modern civilization; but for the Theosophist all its bounties can hardly repay for the evils it has brought on the world. These are so many, that it is not within the limits of this article to enumerate these offspring of culture and of the progress of physical science, whose latest achievements begin with vivisection and end in improved murder by electricity. 

Our answer, we have no doubt, is not calculated to make us more friends than enemies, but this can be hardly helped. Our magazine may be looked upon as "pessimistic," but no one can charge it with publishing slanders or lies, or, in fact, anything but that which we honestly believe to be true. Be it as it may, however, we hope never to lack moral courage in the expression of our opinions or in defense of Theosophy and its Society. Let then nine-tenths of every population arise in arms against the Theosophical Society wherever it appears--they will never be able to suppress the truths it utters. Let the masses of growing Materialism, the hosts of Spiritualism, all the Church-going congregations, bigots and iconoclasts, Grundy-worshippers, aping-followers and blind disciples, let them slander, abuse, lie, denounce, and publish every falsehood about us under the sun-- they will not uproot Theosophy, nor even upset her Society, if only its members hold together. Let even such friends and advisers as he who is now answered, turn away in disgust from those whom he addresses in vain--it matters not, for our two paths in life run diametrically opposite. Let him keep to his "terrestrial" wisdom: we will keep to that pure ray "that comes from above," from the light of the "Ancient." 

What indeed, has WISDOM, Theosophia--the Wisdom "full of mercy and good fruits, without wrangling or partiality and without hypocrisy" (James iii, 17)--to do with our cruel, selfish, crafty, and hypocritical world? What is there in common between divine Sophia and the improvements of modern civilization and science; between spirit and the letter that killeth? The more so as at this stage of evolution the wisest man on earth, according to the wise Carlyle, is but a clever infant spelling letters from a hieroglyphical, prophetic book, the lexicon of which lies in eternity." 

Lucifer, September, I890"
http://www.blavatsky.net/blavatsky/arts/DualAspectOfWisdom.htm





from
M. Sufilight with a smile...


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