Theosophy as Divine Wisdom
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Parapolitics – Bringing Imagination into Political Relations from Within-Without

PARAPOLITICS – BRINGING IMAGINATION INTO POLITICAL RELATIONS FROM WITHIN-WITHOUT

Parapolitics is an imperfect means to a transcendental end, the repeated channeling of energies for the enlightenment of the entire race of mankind.  — HERMES

“Given . . . the decline of institutionalized authority and the weakening of formal modes of securing allegiance, the recovery of initiative is a challenge to the capacity of every citizen.  Each must become an effective moral agent capable of translating his own conception of the good into a social goal sharable by many others.  Every person participates potentially in a larger self that includes all selves.  All men and women have a potential beyond their present power of action….”

“Part of the inimitable charm of the Platonic dialectic is that even though the ideal is remote, individuals may move steadily toward it.  These characteristics of wisdom will be developed only training ourselves in the giving and receiving of reasons…When a human being begins to exemplify even a small measure of the Platonic dialectic, he evolves.  He becomes a minor Initiate in his own company and circle, initiating without strain, with detachment, and without concern for praise and blame.  He is concerned that the good ensues, that it be tentatively formulated for the sake of understanding.  He is happy when other men care for his ideas, if they are ideas for the good.  He loses a sense of mine and thine in the realm of what is good because of his constant pain at the anguish of mankind, the wastage of human resources, and compassion for the world’s victims.  Because he so much wants to the good to happen, to be maximized, he achieves self-transcendence.  Without such a motive, he could never handle even one stage of the dialectical process…. “

“. . . the imaginative application of ideas suggests the effective insertion of unconstrained creativity into the concrete contexts of social life, bounded by spatial, temporal, and energic parameters.  Critical distance as a detached awareness of expanding frontiers, fluctuating contours, and interstitial spaces, can help overcome the inexorable pressures of linear time.”

“Parapolitics is an explicit way of legitimizing, encouraging, and sanctifying individual freedom and fulfillment.  This stems from the unbounded capacities of individuals to enrich their social environment through inspired and self-chosen modes of cooperation within existing political structures.”

“The abilities of persons to imagine alternative states of societies and to engage in self-definition through their changing conceptions of what it means to be human, are as much a part of the political spectrum as any imitative reassertion of some familiar mode of self-aggrandizement.”

“. . . in every dialogue . . . A person can always draw the larger circle, can always accommodate all points and make them compatible in terms of something more important that each omits.”

RAGHAVAN IYER,

Parapolitics: Toward the City of Man

Published by permission of theosophytrust.org.

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