Theos-Talk Archives (October 1997 Message tt00103)

Phil Harris wrote:

> Paul J seems to have had a most unfortunate experience with some
> part of the theosophical movement in that the tone of his
> offering to the discussion gives the impression that he has
> tarred the whole tribe of theosophists, at least in the upper
> echelons, with the same brush! I have perhaps been more fortunate
> in my experience.

Perhaps.  But I may have given a false impression.  100% of my
experience with the Adyar lodges in Baltimore and Washington has
been extremely pleasant and welcoming.  I've spoken to each a
dozen times, probably.  Ditto the single visits where I spoke to
Atlanta and Oakland lodges.  As well as the Charlotte Study
Center, and the Tidewater branch of the Pasadena TS which I
founded and which lasted 10 years.  Nor have I had any unpleasant
encounters in my four visits to Pasadena, two to Wheaton, three
to the London TS headquarters, or once each to Adyar and the New
York ULT Lodge.

Moreover, 7 of the 9 reviews of The Masters Revealed by
Theosophists I've seen were positive, and the two negative ones
were by the same person.  Given all these positive experiences,
what would explain my feeling so ostracized in the Theosophical
movement now that I let my Adyar membership lapse and have had
much less contact than before with Pasadena despite intending to
remain a member? Not wanting to dwell on past negatives, I'll
just say that I've been barraged by hostility almost entirely from
people I have never met, either on the Internet or by mail,
in a way that permanently affected my feelings about the
movement.  And it's not the personal aspect of it that made the
longest lasting impression.  It's the general intellectual
atmosphere.  Being the proponent of new ideas about the very
basis of Theosophy and the TS, I found that there is absolute and
total institutional resistance to considering such new ideas in a
respectful, objective way.  Ridicule and hostility on one hand,
and being coldshouldered on the other, were not simply my fate.
They are what would happen to any author who dared to criticize
what many people treat as orthodox dogma (and lucky me, I
criticized about the only one that Adyar, Pasadena and ULT agree
on!).  Since new ideas is my main interest, when I found out how
unwelcome they are in Theosophical circles that meant that my
dharma was elsewhere.

For the past couple of years I've belonged to the A.R.E.  and
have written a book about Cayce.  Despite the fact that it's the
most critical, questioning look at the readings ever published,
I've had full cooperation from the Cayce family, the A.R.E.
leaders, and the Edgar Cayce Foundation.  Have not found a single
person who considers it "fighting words" to say there are
demonstrable errors in the readings.  (Boy, did that recent
passage from a post here push my buttons!) They have been
incredible open-minded, encouraging, and helpful.  This
organization is just vastly more intellectually flexible and
open, and feels like home in a way no Theosophical organization
ever did.  At the local level, I'd say they are equal, but the
A.R.E.  leadership is incredibly open.  One author told me he'd
been sent at A.R.E.  expense to give lectures in 30 odd cities
around the country promoting his own theories which not a single
person in the leadership agrees with!

Paradoxically, I was into Cayce and A.R.E.  before finding
Theosophy-- and got turned on to HPB right there in the A.R.E.
library in Virginia Beach which has become my hangout while
writing the Cayce book.

So to summarize, Theosophists individually have been almost
entirely cordial and welcoming to me for years.  Just a handful
of people sent hostile communications in the wake of the book.
But the overall mindset of all three organizations is to ignore
or attack anyone who poses fundamental, challenging questions
about HPB and the Masters.  (Or CWL, or Judge, or Besant, or
Purucker, or Tingley, etc.  etc.) Whereas, posing fundamental,
challenging questions about Cayce and his akashic sources has
been welcomed, encouraged, and even celebrated.

Thus my wholehearted conversion.

> One of the most impresive theosophists I ever met was the then
> President of the Adyar TS, Mr.  N.  Sri Ram.  A gentle and
> unassuming man of immense theosophical erudition, he displayed
> not a scintilla of intolerance of differing views of what
> constitutes theosophy.  His successor, John Coats, was of like
> ilk.  I spent quite some time travelling with John who was most
> catholic in his dealings.

Gregory Tillett said the same about Coats.  That he said
"Regardless of what you find out about CWL, it should be
published and read, and all the resources of the TS are open to
you" when GT was in Adyar.  Radha, at the time the library
director, flouted Coats's instructions and did everything she
could to thwart Tillett, according to him.  After Radha's
election, the reaction to The Elder Brother was exactly the
"ignore it or attack it" cultlike phenomenon that I subsequently
encountered from the leadership.

> One hesitates to bring a living person into the discussion and I
> trust that she will forgive me, but as editor of the Theosophical
> Encyclopedia I have found Grace Knoche, Leader of the Pasdena TS
> most cordial and accommodating in spite of the fact that the
> project is in the hands of 'Adyarites'.

Cordial and accommodating indeed; I have high regard for her.
But I don't see Pasadena as being 1/10 as open to new ideas as
the A.R.E.