Theos-Talk Archives (July 1996 Message tt00030)

Rodolfo, Bee, and Nicholas:

I'll write a combined response rather than three separate
messages, since we're all talking about the same important points.

The key idea, I think, is that we have a sacred trust. We've had
the special karma to have come into contact with the Mysteries,
through the benefit of HPB and her Teachers. Even though that
contact is through the source writings, and through the help of
more senior students as we first came to study Theosophy, it's
still appropriate to use the word "Mysteries", because it's rooted
in the same dharma and lineage as the Mysteries are.

Our sacred trust is to honor what we've been given. How do we
honor it? We make it a living force in our lives. In doing so, we
engage a spiritual practice, something that is self-devised, since
we don't have the benefit of living Gurus to instruct us. That
practice opens us up to the spiritual, and some of the effects
include our becoming unselfish, and seeking to be of benefit to
others.

We become a force for good in the world because that is
what we are, what we are interested in doing, what is the content
of our minds and hearts. This is not because we've been acting
with the thought: "I do these unselfish things that I don't
particularly like because I know they are good for me to do and
I'm *trying* to be a better person." Not that, but rather because
we're acting like someone in love, where that love is a power that
sweeps through our lives changing us. It's the opposite of someone
not in love, but pretending to be in love with the thought of "I'm
supposed to". In a sense, we're talking about igniting and setting
ablaze deeply-seated spiritual energies and passions in our lives.

When we're working for Theosophy, we can intellectually study the
books and pick up the basic concepts. And we can be useful to
other new students that need tutoring in the basic concepts. But
there is a definite ring-pass-not, a barrier, plateau, or ceiling
that we reach, where we can go no further. We reach a point where
the mind can take us no farther -- as we are using it -- and we
have to try something different.

We come to a point where, as Rodolfo says, we have to transform
ourselves, or fail. We reach a turning point in our personal
progress, and can either take new steps in our lives, and flower
in new and different ways, a kind of personal initiation, or we
can fail. What happens when we fail? We backslide. The Teachings
lose their magic and power. It is not a dramatic crisis of
meaning, where it all falls apart in our lives. Rather, it is a
slow fade, a gradual decline, as we lose interest in the
Philosophy and the Path, and drift back into some other belief
system.

(This same thing happens in any spiritual school or approach to
the Path. It is not saying, here, that the theosophical path is
the only one, nor that every time that someone walks away from it,
that they have failed. Some may leave Theosophy for other
approaches, and make genuine progress along those other lines. We
cannot judge people as to *why* they have left Theosophy.)

As Nicholas says, the satsangha, the Community of seekers, is
determined by the quality of its members. But a group, I'd say,
that has a particular focus, will attract and hold sympathetic
individuals. A group with a ill-defined focus will have a broad
spectrum of participants and a lowest-common-denominator approach
and effectiveness. A more focused group may appeal to a narrower
spectrum of people, but be highly effective to those that belong
to it. An extreme contrast would be between the type of work that
could be done by chelas in a genuine ashram, as opposed to
shoppers in a suburban mall.

When Rodolfo speaks of a place to communicate, a common language,
a common goal, and uses the word "lodge", I think of a place for
theosophical workers, not exactly a Mystery School, but something
more than a book-study club. This makes me think of one type of
work that I think could arise out of the Theosophical Movement in
the West. The founding of junior or quasi Mystery Schools, of
genuine centers or groups for the spiritual that are rooted in the
theosophical tradition. I'm not sure if this would be possible or
how advanced such groups could get, but I think that it is a
worthy goal, *in addition to the public work*, in addition to the
work of disseminating the basic, bread-and-butter teachings into
western thought.

In the most basic public work, I could see new books being written
that carry forward the work of HPB, that offer her basic ideas in
new ways, adapted to and commenting on advances in western culture
and science. But these materials are generally introductory, to
attract the attention of the searching minds. These works don't
have to use terms like "root races" and can take into account the
prejudices and biases of modern thought. (No age is immune to
prejudice and bias, although members of that age are usually
unaware of their problems, thinking themselves modern, advanced,
and free of problems.)

As to the more advanced materials, we're not in the same class as
HPB and her Teachers, and certainly could not write about things
with the same skillful manner of teaching, nor at the same depth.
So even if our introductory materials are clothed in modern words,
at some point we'll have to train people in the original
terminology, and provide assistance to students as they pick up
the source literature like THE SECRET DOCTRINE and move deeper.

And we are, as Bee says, pilgrims committed to serving mankind.
Lodge work is one manner of service. It is important to share what
we have, to give it to others. Sharing what we've learned of
Theosophy through lodge work is one way to do this. But there is a
vast treasury of the spirit awaiting us, a vast wealth of insight,
experience, and joy in life that comes from taking additional
steps in our lives, steps that go beyond our studies, by
themselves, as an intellectual activity. So we come back to
Rodolfo's point: we must first transform ourselves.

We share what we have. That starts with the book learning. But it
becomes much more, as we associate ourselves with the theosophical
lineage, perhaps not so much by taking pledges and joining some
organization, as by making a certain thought stream a permanent
fixture in our lives. We establish a living connection with the
lineage in a respectful, hand-shaking, reverent manner, and it
becomes not so much an inner friend as a friendly face that the
world takes on for us. Then it's not a "lonely business" because
life itself is our friend, a friend that never leaves our side,
and we're always busy at what we love to do.