HPB - First of the Moderns or Last of the Medievals?

I was having a discussion with a member earlier this morning about some of HPB's personal habits and after going to work I got to thinking about it and something more important about her (at least to me) came to mind.

Was HPB the last gasp of the medieval world, a world of magic, sorcery, and otherworldly thought or was she the first of the modern era, with her views on space and time and the nature of existence which fits well into today's world.

That's a puzzle and how we view it kind of frames how we "do" theosophy.

Your thoughts?

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Hey, Joe; 

I think she was a woman very much of her own time - on a certain level, but on another level, she was time-less.  Hard to explain, but in much the same way as Edgar Cayce, on a mundane level he was very much a man of his time period, but also lived out-of-time or beyond time, on another level. 

That being said, I do not think the ancients were as ignorant of "time and space and the nature of existence" as historians, et al. like to make them out to be, and conversely there is "magic, sorcery, and otherworldly thought" still existing today, for all our modernity.  At least for me.  No, I'm not personally into Wicca or that sort of stuff.  I find it interesting, in some ways, but I'm not a practitioner.  I find quantum physics interesting, too, but I assure you, I'm no theoretical physicist.  :-)    Maybe those are just two ways of describing similar, if not the same, things. 

Yeah, she is definitely a fascinating person, considering the times and all, her background, etc., quite aside from the spiritual part of her life.  I know less about her than I should or would like, in a biographical way, but what I have read is so intriguing, but then,  I have a decided fondness for that time period anyway, in some ways inexplicable, because it's not an active interest or anything I've studied, but I feel a real pull to it.  My favorite people from my childhood were the oldest members of my family, my great-grandfather who was born in 1973, and my grandmother (his daughter), who was born in 1898.  I felt so "at home" around them and in their homes.  Everything felt so familiar.  But I digress.... 

Make that 1873!  Doh!

 Hi!!!

Mmmmm... well, I don't think HPB would ever agree with modern era views of space and time and the nature of existence as they are understood today, even including quantum physics, but I can't think on her as the last gasp of medieval world, either, "gasp" maybe, but for sure not the last!

 But yes! our idea of her somehow frames how we do theosophy.  



IN MY OPINION:

 

(you can start cringing now...)


I would consider her the earliest example of one initiating the 6th Root-Race, the first Scout; her inability to feel that she could fit in must have been overwhelming, her greater abilities to see, feel, hear and sense what others could not, compelling. She would have insight, at least greater than ours at that time, of the cosmos and life on other worlds. True also, she would be one of the earliest entries from all Root-Races, so she would have considerable experience fighting the turbulence of new insight, as she single-handedly breaks through the religious notions of the day like an Ice-Breaker through the Baring Straights.


And so, her struggle would have been mighty, far greater than we have to go through, for she made our course easier. She would have to have gone running through the jungle of life with a machete, though, to accomplish any discovery, so I can forgive her a multitude of sins (and I mean that half-laughing).


Her natural mental and psychical proclivities would be coupled with her first of a wave significance to make her the most "fitted" for the role her alleged Masters assigned her (though, I have no difficulty in perceiving said masters being her own Higher Self, Higher guidance from the Mental Plane, or even Astral assistance, which she seems to be fond of, especially the lower (I don't think she maintained the significance in the difference in gradients of sub-plane to sub-plane, and how we relate to these, that we have come to learn ... her thinking and experience in terms of the total expanse of a Plane would seem to be indicated in her epics, thus no evidence of distinguishing the colors of a rainbow, only being in awe of a spectacular multi-colored site. 

 

christian von lahr

 

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