Theos-Talk Archives (October 1995 Message tl00432)

Cont. P.186-7 "Talks on the Path of Occultism"

"In the West there is a tendency to approach things and study them from the
outside, while the Eastern method is rather to consider them from
within. Both methods are necessary at our present state of evolution.
When the buddhic vehicle is developed, and intuition comes down into
the physcial brain from that level, it will give us true wisdom,
perfect knowledge, but in very few people is it yet sufficiently
developed.

"Even if we are able to keep our heads among the clouds, it is
necessary that our feet should rest firmly on the earth, and we must
 treat impressions coming from within with balanced judgement,
just as we apply common sense to the experiences of every day life.
This is necessary, because it is quite easy to mistake impulses,
coming from the astral body, for intuitions which come from the
higher Self. Sometimes it happens, for example,that a dead person
seeing that we are interested in some particular point, offers a
suggestion on the astral plane, and this may come down into the brain
and seem like intuition. Yet, as a matter of fact, that dead person
may be a very incompetent observer on the astral plane, and may
therefore be giving quite wrong information.

"This advice to shun learning is useful not only to those who are on
the Path, but also to every one who is at all studious, if we take it
to mean, as it does, that we should avoid mere learning. A great
amount of study of the mere outside of things often leads to
materialism. Because they see around them great cataclysms,
sacrifice, oppression, sorrow and suffering, and a vast amount of
praying to which no answer seems to be vouchsafed, many people come
to think that conflict and struggle is the law of life, that nature
is not compassionate. But to study the world as fully as
possible, all the time regarding it as a great school for the life
dwelling in its multifarious forms, leads to wisdom, which enables
one to see that all things are moving together for the good. When one
develops astral and higher forms of vision this fact that all is well
is no longer a matter to be understood by careful reasoning; it
leaps to the eyes. No one with such vision could be a materialist."

CWL