Theos-Talk Archives (September 2002 Message tt00161)

wry wrote:
> This race stuff has always turned me off, and it is one of the reasons 
> I have not delved into theosophy more deeply in the past. How does the
> average theosophist deal with it? I would appreciate any honest 
> answers people can give out here. 

The Theosophical concept of "root races" has NOTHING to do with what is
commonly called "races" (which turns out to hinge on a tiny amount of
unconnected genetic matter). Civilizations are based on cultures, and
different cultures have evolved different features. But if you took a
newborn baby born in the heart of Africa, or the middle of China, or an
Australian aborigine, disguised it as a European, and put it in a
European culture, it would grow up with the cultural characteristics of
a European. In other words, one's previous incarnations have little or
nothing to do with the genetic ancestry of one's body. 

Nowhere is this as obvious as the United States. At least until
relatively recently, where forces that wished to destroy the United
States have been purposely blocking this, all who came to the United
States, regardless of their ancestry, became culturally American. This
meant that the traits being developed in many different cultures: the
spirituality of the Orient, the communications of Africa, the political
systems of the Americas, the scientific development of Europe, just to
name a few, came together in the United States, where the cultures got
combined into something quite new. (Unfortunately, there are forces at
work to create civil war in the United States, with the fanciful hope
that a Communist Paradise would arise from the ashes of the destroyed
civilization. Part of this is a concerted attempt to keep new immigrants
from becoming part of the American culture, while simultaneously
allowing an unprecedented number of new immigrants in). 

Even among Theosophists who believed that, due to the culture in which
they lived, they were somehow more advanced than others, that included
an even greater responsibility to make sure that nobody was oppressed.
When Brian quoted the Mahatmas about the Europeans being more
intellectually advanced, by the way, he cut out the part where they said
that the Asians were more spiritually advanced. And they were talking
about CULTURES, not individuals. 

Karma is a law of nature, NOT a law of humanity. What is fair by
nature's standards can be very unfair by human standards. And, as
Blavatsky wrote, humans have an obligation to attempt to reduce the
unfairness that nature's laws have by human standards. 

But Blavatsky, Judge, Olcott, Besant, Leadbeater, even the Mahatmas
were human beings. And, being human beings, quite imperfect. So,
occasionally, they would write without thinking. And, especially by
modern standards, those times included extraordinarily bigoted thinking.
And if you think there are bigots in the West, there are plenty that are
just as bad or WORSE in the East. And information wasn't as readily
available back then as it was today. There is a saying among computer
programmers: Garbage in, Garbage out. So, if you get information about a
culture from a highly biased source, you are likely to make completely
incorrect conclusions about that culture. 

What most Theosophists do is to ignore the occasional mistake, and to
go by the general principles. Remember, in the Theosophical Society, one
is free to accept and reject whatever one chooses to, with the only
exception being the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity. 

Bart Lidofsky