Theos-Talk Archives (January 1997 Message tl00932)

Tom:
>I am not aware of a reason to believe that.  The idea that these laws
>are fixed, universal, and eternal makes the most sense to me, with the
>possibility of a higher being deciding them for us being the second
>most likely.       
	The "law of gravity" is not a law at all.  Einstein demonstrated
that gravity is a characteristic of matter in space, not a thing-in-itself.
There is no gravity where there is no matter.  Thus gravity changes
as matter changes.  It can't be "universal" or "eternal" because
matter isn't.  If you like the idea of God making it all up, then go for 
it.  Thats not much different than the notion that Manus or Cosmocrators
did it all.  I prefer to think that our spiritual Selves brought it all
together, or at least had a say in it.

>What would the word "imaginary" mean, if there is no such thing as a
>perception that is not identical to reality?
	Imaginary means somethine that we perceive, that is not
shared by the perception of others.  Its part of our personal reality.
Reality, like karma and the unconscious, is both personal and 
collective.

>If I perceived a bridge across the Grand Canyon and tried to walk on
>it, and instead fell in, in what sense would the bridge have been
>"real" and why would it be wrong to refer to that perception of the
>bridge as mistaken?
	This is a mistake known in the occult world as 
confounding the planes.  The bridge that you see, and others don't 
see, is astral rather than physical--a physical bridge would be a 
shared perception.  We get into all kinds of trouble when we
perceive inner (astral) reality and mistake it for outer (physical)
reality.

>That's not at all what I mean by it.  No one has any choice about what
>truth is.  It can only be discovered, not decided.  
	What is "discovered" if not experienced?  We all see our own
truth, and we all see our own world.  I have the right to decide what
I consider to be truth or false.  You do too.  Sometimes your truth
and my truth may agree.  Sometimes not.  We will tend to agree a
lot on physical things.  But there is less agreement as we rise upward
through the astral and mental planes.  Above the Abyss we will have
agreement again.

>That perception of truth changes does not mean that truth changes with
>it.  You are defining away the possibility of error.
	Depends on how you define error.  I define it as anything
that is replaced with something new.  As our sense of reality changes,
we get a new sense of reality, the old being labeled as an error.  Your
reality may be my error, or vice versa.  When I am dreaming, the dream
seems very real to me.  After I wake, I can label it error.  This is
pretty much what we all do.

>If I perceive a unicorn, the components of that perception must have
>some reality.  I know what a horn is.  I know what a horse is.  By
>putting together components of what I know, my perception of a unicorn
>is possible.  But that doesn't make it accurate.
	It will not be accurate in the sense that such a being does
not exist on the physical plane.  But it would be accurate in the
sense that such a being exists on the mental plane, else you would
not have been able to invision it.  You seem to keep wanting to
limit reality to the physical plane.  The physical plane is only the
tip of a large iceberg, so to speak.

>>Perception is reality.  
>Perception is a subset of reality.
	Well, at least you seem to be getting there.  In a technical
sense, we each have our own reality, and each person's reality is
a subset.  Where two people's subsets overlap, we have shared
experiences.  Those areas that do not overlap, we call imagination,
but this is only a word for our personal reality.

>All perceptions are objectively real.  But not only are they
>not all accurate, I would go so far as to say that none of them are
>perfectly and completely accurate, but are all partially so, to unique
>degrees.  
	What do you mean by "accurate?"  Do you mean that
others have to agree to it?  You seem to be saying that our
overlapping areas, our collective reality, is real but our personal
reality is unreal.  Do you think that your dreams are unreal too?

>The law of karma is objective, as is everything else, in that errors
>in perceiving it accurately are possible.
	Again, I don't know what you mean by accurately.  As
our perception changes, we label what was true as false, and
assume the new stuff is "accurate."  But this only lasts until
the next change.  There is no objective accuracy anywhere.  
There is no subjective accuracy anywhere either, because our
sense of identity changes along with our sense of reality.
We each have a sense of reality, a sense of identity, and sense
of time, and so on.  But all of these things change.  

>I infer that you mean that the law of karma is unique to each
>planetary chain.  How might it differ in other planetary chains from
>ours?
	Depends on how we want to define the law of karma.  If
we define it as causality, then it may not change much.  If we
define it as some kind of divine justice, then it will change a great
deal.  However, even as causality, I am a firm believer in chaos,
or what Jung called synchronicity as as acausal principle and
thus not subject to karma except in a collective sense.  Karma
is not the only game in town.  It can be suspended, delayed,
precipitated, and eliminated.  When defined as Order, karma
is deterministic and logical.  Chaos is undeterministic and illogical. 
Karma always exists with Chaos, just like subjective always
exists with objective.

>Something doesn't seem right about referring to how the individual of
>which one is conscious relates to the monad of which one is not
>conscious.  I don't see how they cannot be referred to as separate
>entities.  
	They usually are referred to as separate entities.  In Enochian
Magic, the monadic or spiritual part of ourselves is called the Holy
Guardian Angel.  Actually, the whole idea of Angels began by the
perception of our spiritual counterpart being a separate entity.  But
those who have contacted their spiritual Self, report that it is not
really separate at all.  For us, the reality of such beings are separate 
and external, while for the world's mystics, they are not separate
at all.  Whose reality is correct?  I think they both are.

>I have no awareness of this monad which is distinct from
>the individual of whom I am aware.  
	For this I am sorry.  Some day, perhaps.  Until
you become aware of it, I doubt that you will accept much
of what I am saying.

>How could one who is not aware of one's monad become 
>aware of it without trusting someone else as an
>authority?  No effort to try to be aware of it would or even could be
>made without faith in others who say it exists.
	I agree that we have to begin with faith.  At some point,
though, faith has to give way to experience.  Actually, effort is
not always necessary.  Some people get this automatically,
without effort.  Presumably they developed the ability in a past
life.  

Jerry S.
Member, TI