Dara Eklund – USA
Dara had a green thumb for her own garden but also frequented gardens such as the Huntington Garden in San Marino, CA. The wonderful flower on the photo was grown there
Theosophical Visionists are those who perceive the pure and timeless stream of Theosophy as the impetus to an ever – ascending spiral of spiritual development.
Theosophical Revisionists seem to be those students giving ear to the outer trends of world development, who would like to reconstruct the channel for the stream of Truth; perhaps even building ducts and tributaries to suit some temporary fancy of the passing age. Perchance they feel a need to draw some of its precious water off to an experimental scientific garden or two. Forgetting that Truth is ever One, they would divert its nurturing tributaries to suit their own particular scholastic specialties or theories.
Such revisionism seems present in a statement by Stephan Hoeller in The American Theosophist of September/October 1988, in which it was proclaimed that one should regard reincarnation and karma as metaphors. Our occult teachers have stated that these two doctrines are facts in Nature. Mr. Hoeller writes:
“The final question is: Are we able, and. more importantly, willing to interpret what we hitherto considered to be fact and metaphysical truth as a set of psychological keys to transformation? Can we stand up and proclaim that The Secret Doctrine is myth; that its cosmology is a psychological model of reality; that reincarnation and karma are metaphors; that Atlantis may be a symbol of our consciousness submerged in the ocean of unconscious forgetfulness?” (p. 191)
Mr. Hoeller then proceeds to quote Mr. Sanat’s statement that anyone who interprets Theosophy to be a series of fixed teachings is misrepresenting the truth. It seems to me, that to interpret The Secret Doctrine as myth and metaphor, is just as much a fixed idea as those who interpret it as being a statement of the principles of Nature and Man. Furthermore, it may be dangerous and spiritually futile to regard the Secret Doctrine as a myth. One danger is that looking at the Ageless Wisdom as myth will only end in a “reorientation” within our fevered intellects and never lead beyond conceptual thinking. We may simply replace our metaphysical jargon with psychological jargon.
Messrs. Hoeller and Sanat are correct in wishing to go beyond the Theosophy of fixed teachings. Perhaps if we put as much energy into transforming ourselves, as we do into reforming our methods of transformation, we would all get beyond our “fixed teachings” sooner. However, there are principles in the Universe which are fixed, by the very fact that the tone of any one manvantara is set by the Divine beings who instructed early mankind and whose very actions in the Universe become the Laws of Nature.
Many keys to both myths and metaphors are unveiled in The Secret Doctrine, but this does not infer that the Ancient Wisdom itself is a Myth!
From:
The American Theosophist, y 1989 v77, i1 Feb p13