Jan
5
Written by:
Miami
1/5/2009 2:32 PM
Going through the TAT Journal Archives a few days ago I was struck by how good some of the old writing was - and also struck by how little acquainted with the material I had been. I still have the dusty magazines in a box somewhere and remember skimming through the articles more than 25 years ago, but the glaring fact was my lack of mastery of the material.
At contrast was the difference in focus and effort between the person who wrote one or more of those great articles and the person (me) who had skimmed through them. I don't fault myself for digging through income tax regulations while other people were digesting Blavatsky. That was my path. My brain found it easy to wrap itself around concepts applicable to the material world but I didn't have the firepower at the time to apply the intellect to philosophical matters.
Something I've struggled with since adolescence has been intuition vs. intellect. Reading a few pages by some great teacher would open my mind immediately to entirely new ways of seeing things. But after a few additional pages my brain would rapidly turn to mush. Some people can absorb detail and move from there to the whole. My mind works the opposite; it won't accept the detail without a purpose, the purpose being its relation to the whole. But once the whole in seen, the detail seems to be inconsequential and can be easily ignored or forgotten.
This sounds pretty vague, so what am I getting at? A couple weeks ago I picked up Crack in the Cosmic Egg again, some 35 years after I first read it. Son-of-a-gun it now makes perfect sense. On the original read it had seemed like nothing more than a flight of fancy, some intellectual tour de force with no other significance.
Nisargadatta supposedly said (if I have the source right) that the concept of maturation doesn't apply to enlightenment. But speaking from personal experience, as for mental comprehension there are many things I understand now that were once way beyond my reach.
Back to the TAT archives: Working on this website has brought me to face a number of important principles and questions, and rather than beating around the bush further let me just lay some of them out:
1. In the early days a lot of effort was made in specific directions under the guidance of RR.
2. In fact, these efforts were continuation of work RR had begun himself, such as outlined in the Transmission Papers and in his recorded talks (energy, magic, hypnosis, and esoteric science in general).
3. It's an open question, based on the path and the inner constitution of the person asking the question, whether value can be obtained by incorporating some of these studies into his personal work.
4. If there are enough people in the group who perceive value in doing so, can we find ways to work individually and together in mastering this science?
Of course, my constant companion the devil's advocate is now speaking to me. He asks, "Isn't it just a diversion to think of these things rather than to focus on pure awareness?"
How do you read it?
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