Theos-Talk Archives (February 1996 Message tl00026)

Fred from ULT Sweden wrote,

> Almost any Good American would stand up for the rights of the First
Amendment Right to
> Freedom of Speech.  This is very understandable. Far too many can testify
to
> the pains of restrictions on this freedom, forced by a state upon the
> individual man. But among all cries for The Individual Rights, often the
> aspect of Individual Responsibility is forgotten. Did not HPB rage against
> the media and did she not just hate all the "mental pollution" (my
> expression) distributed by newspapers (and I am more than certain she would

> include any other media operating today) saying that journalists were
> responsible for spreading mental diseases by writing articles in an
> unresponsible manner, and did she not say that the Masters had said there
> would some day in an unspecified future be neccesary to appoint an entirely

> new police force, a "thought police" unit, to defend people against
> destructive thinking?

Boy this is a challenging post, and from a fellow ULT associate to boot!

I am honestly confused by contradicting moral imperatives.

(1) The Masters teach, and I firmly believe, that to interfere with an
individual's free will is black magic and produces awful results every time
for all concerned.

(2) The Masters also teach us to defend people from unjust attacks, to
repudiate hypocrisy, to lead clean, pure, giving, honest, compassionate
lives.

How are we to lead pure lives defending people from harm and injustice, and
yet allow maximum liberty and freedom for each incarnate Monad to grow and
experience and learn as it sees fit?  What to do when these vehicles of body
and prana and lower mind just don't behave the way we want them to?

This is a central legal dilemma in America and in any free nation (Sweden is
among the freest and most permissive, from what I know).  But beyond the
merely legal dilemma, what is the moral imperative here?

Thank you, Fred, for making me and all of us stop and think about these
important issues.

Rich Taylor, U.L.T. San Francisco