Theos-Talk Archives (February 2002 Message tt00090)

Theosophy engenders self-responsibility. This is not a very popular 
concept among humanity today. Witness no end of examples 
around the world. But theosophy is fairly new, in historical terms. 
Give it time. It will catch on. 

Adelasie

On 5 Feb 02, at 16:26, bri_mue wrote:

> In 1928 World population was at 2 milliard people, the TS at 45.000.
> 
> In 1980 world population was at 4.5 milliard people, TS at 34.391
> according to Gregory Tillet?s figures. 
> 
> That is a loss in compairance of 66% of TS membership during this
> period of time.
> 
> If membership since 1980 went up according to the rise in world 
> population since then wich has again been considerable, the the ?66%
> would remain stable, if membership did not sufficiently go up, the the
> 66% would have become more since 1980.
> 
> I also attempted to figure out how much of the total world population
> Theosophists made up, but I came up with only a fraction of (much
> less then) 1% of the world population that after 150 years are
> Theosophists.Wich is rather remarkable if one considers that theirs is
> the religion of all religions, why after 150 years and a library full
> of books that have been written on it with at least one or the other
> translated in about all languages of the world, did hardly anybody
> catched on to the claimed facts ?
> 
> 
> 
> Brigitte
> 
> PS I also aquired some figures from the UK but these are even more
> deppressive if taken for itself so I left them out because according
> to these it would be much worser then –66%, namely in just 7 years
> time from 1928, 5,170 members in 1935 there where only 3,520, and has
> since dropped much more dramatic, checking it with world population
> in 1928 versus 1980. 
> 
> --- In theos-talk@y..., <gregory@z...> wrote:
> > In researching the influence of Leadbeater on the Adyar TS, I 
> accumulated 
> > large amounts of membrship statistics and included an appendix on
> > membership figures in my PhD thesis. The following is a brief 
> summary of 
> > the figures. For all sorts of methodological reasons (e.g. 
> different 
> > "official" sources sometimes give different figures) they cannot be
> > regarded as definitive, and are drawn from a range of sources (e.g.
> > Annual Reports). I have figures for every year from 1907-1983, but 
> only 
> > give sample years below. No accurate records exist for 1875-1906.
> > Josphine Ransom estimate 10000 as the memebrship in 1900.
> > 
> > Year
> > 1907 14863
> > 1910 20356
> > 1915 25696
> > 1920 36350
> > 1925 41645
> > 1928 45098
> > 1930 39311
> > 1935 30317
> > 1940 23644
> > 1945 29327
> > 1950 32564
> > 1955 32902
> > 1960 33875
> > 1965 31424
> > 1970 31721
> > 1975 34357
> > 1980 34391
> > 
> > During what might be called the Great Krishnamurti Decade (1923-
> 1932) the 
> > membership rose and fell, but the above figures don't really tell 
> the 
> > full story: between 1923 and 1932, 47,800 members joined the Adyar 
> TS, 
> > but 54,000 left it - a much more interesting statistic than the 
> simple 
> > change in the overall number of members, especially since those who 
> left 
> > included many members of long-standing.
> > Where state census statistics exist, these provide interesting 
> additional 
> > information. In 1916 the American Section of Adyar claimed 6648 
> members; 
> > the US Bureau of Census figure for the same year was 5097. In 1911 
> the 
> > Australia Section of Adyar claimed 1004 members, but the national 
> census 
> > reported 781; in 1921 Adyar claimed 2168, but the census reported 
> 1102.
> > 
> > Dr Gregory Tillett
> 
> 
> 
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