Theos-Talk Archives (April 1994 Message tl00036)

Greetings fellow theosophists,

I have recently joined your discussion group and would like to
introduce myself.  My name is John Shafer.  I have been a theosophist
for about four years now.  I am currently living in San Francisco where
I'm taking a sabbatical from my teaching position in Connecticut, and
taking some classes at the Institute of Integral Studies.  I have been
active with the Connecticut Study Center with occassional weekends at
Pumpkin Hollow Farm.  This fall I spent three months at Krotona which
was very enlightening in several different ways.  Besides teaching I'm
also into media and would like to say that I find Chris Moyer's idea of
a theosophical computer game very exciting.

I have been silently monitoring your discussions for a few weeks to try
and become familiar with the topics and I must say I find the level of
discussion in this electronic format more in-depth than any I have
encountered in real life.  I've been gradually becoming familiar with
those of you participating, but I'm wondering if there is a set of bio
files available anywhere so that new people can become acquainted with
you?

As far as my interests and philosophy is concerned I would describe
myself as pretty eclectic.  Over the last year I have been trying to do
a systematic study of all religions both on the exoteric and the
esoteric levels (a daunting task, I know); I use TSD as a supporting
reference for this.  I am also in the middle of reading the Cranston
HPB biography which I find fasinating.  Most recently I've been
studying transpersonal psychology and astrology with Stanislov Grof and
Richard Tarnas.  I like astrology because of it's fundamental
integration of science and metaphysics which is something I believe is
crucial right now.  I've also been doing some research on the UFO
phenomenon and the possibility of artificial objects on Mars.

I definitely believe in a balance between intellectual and experiential
knowledge which I try to balance in my own life as much as possible.  I
practice yoga and meditation regularly and have experimented with many
different techniques for exploring "other realms."

For my first contribution to your forum I'd like to upload a report I
co-wrote about the Inter-Theosophical Dialogue which we are submitting
to various theosophical newsletters.  I think the conference raised
some important issues about the theosophical movement.  I'm going to
load it in the "theos-buds" topic which seems most appropriate for its
content.  I welcome any feeedback you might have.  Several of these
issues will be discussed at the "Post Modern Theosophical Dialogue" to
be held next month organized by April and Jerry H-E.

         John