Theos-Talk Archives (November 1997 Message tt00157)

Dear Ramdoss

You paint a golden picture of Sri SaiBaba's teachings and followers.
I do not wish to enter into personalities--particularly of living
ones--once again ! But a sense of duty--maybe a false one--makes me say
that we who live here in Bangalore next to Sai Baba know that the golden
clouds have some shadows. This was true in HPB's time about some of the
so-called theosophists and their motives and manner of leading their
lives. We cannot be neive and think that followers of
Sai Baba have lost all their human nature and suddenly become each and
everyone saints. This is not the case in any spiritual movement the
pupils and devotees bring with them thier karma and their tendencies,
which become their stumbling-blocks. We have to MAKE OURSELVES, we
cannot be MADE, miraculously to loose all our weaknesses if not even
wickednesses. "The Voice of the Silence" describes the virtues we have
to attain, and defines the difficulties we have to overcome by strenuous
effort and application.
One of the very false doctrines which has been exported out of India is
the idea that a Guru by Initiation (!) wipes clean all our past
(karma)and we shall by the end of this life attain Moksha, Nirvana,
escape the bonds of reincarnation. If this was indeed true HPB's
Mahatma-Master's have done a great disserivice towards us who are still
learning about theosophy and daily struggling with our faults and
failings. There are no short-cuts to Adeptship or Mahatmaship, as the
Third Fundamentals Proposition teaches, it is alone "by self induced
ways and means" that progress maybe attained.

Sophia, Nov. 11, 97