Theos-Talk Archives (May 2003 Message tt00219)

Simon wrote:
> I recently read a book by Charles W Leadbeater entitled: "How 
> Theosophy Came to Me" and found it fascinating. In it, he writes 
> about his meetings and travels with HPB. However, I have since read 
> elsewhere that a lot of it might have been made up and that 
> Blavatsky, during her lifetime, said she hardly knew him. I can 
> understand perhaps Leadbeater inventing stories about his background 
> in order to be more accepted into the kind of circles he moved in, 
> but how much else did he fabricate and can we believe what he tells 
> us about his encounters with the Masters?
Excellent question. The answer is: it should not matter. The Adepts 
themselves wrote that we should not accept anything simply on the basis 
that it came from them; that they are offering propositions for us to 
investigate on our own.

Personally, it is my opinion that many of the "2nd generation 
Theosophists" such as Besant, Leadbeater, and Bailey, took what was 
supposed to be allegory, and crystallized it into Revelation(TM). 
Especially, they took what was, to me, clearly divisions on 
continuities, and turned them into discrete values, ignoring Blavatsky's 
statement that the atom was infinitely divisible, and every monad 
contains a Universe.

> Christians are often attacking Theosophy and blaming it for the rise 
> in the so called New Age movement. To what extent did it influence 
> this?
It was a combination of several factors. The original concept of the 
"New Age" came from a combination of the Theosophy, the Golden Dawn, and 
their successors (the former believing in that magic would come from 
spiritual growth, the latter believing that spiritual growth would come 
from the practice of magic). Both groups considered altruism a basic law 
of the Universe, and, in fact, ultimately in one's own self-interest, 
because of the basic Unity behind everything.

During the "youth rebellion" of the 60's, there was a lot of rejection 
of the main religious and scientific beliefs, a situation that was taken 
advantage of by the philosophers of the Frankfurt School, who, observing 
this, provided a philosophical underpinning for it (such as Erich 
Fromme, particularly Herbert Marcuse, with influence from the earlier 
works of Wilhelm Reich). Their philosophies glorifying the individual, 
such as "if it feels good, do it" got intermixed with the New Age 
philosophies, turning the movement from one of self-growth and altruism 
into one of self-empowerment and selfishness. Hucksters started coming 
in and taking advantage of the situation (nothing new; the Spiritualist 
Church in the late 19th and early 20th century practically invited the 
hucksters in), making all sorts of extravagant promises and collecting 
very large fees. The whole thing gave the term "New Age" a bad flavor.

Luckily, those who go from surface to serious study of the "New Age" 
principles usually end up finding the original roots, and feel kind of 
foolish and resentful of the postmodernist "New Age".

A number of religions have come from the original New Age philosophy, 
many of them based off of paganism (the term is "neopaganism"). A term 
has come up among more serious neopagans to describe those who buy the 
postmodern hype: "fluffy bunnies". This is based on general beliefs by 
these types that there is no such thing as evil, except civilization 
itself, and if people just came back to nature, everybody would get 
along fine, just like animals in the wild do. The idea is that these 
people believe that all of nature is like the little friendly fluffy 
bunnies, that we see in a petting zoo, and do not have the faintest idea 
of what nature is really like.

> I am currently reading "The Ocean of Theosophy" by Judge. I thought 
> this would be a good place to start before I move on to "Isis 
> Unveiled" and "The Secret Doctrine".
The ULT (United Lodge of Theosophists) gives away a lot of pamphlets of 
articles by H. P. Blavatsky. These are very useful, as while books such 
as ISIS UNVEILED and THE SECRET DOCTRINE were designed to teach, the 
articles were designed to explain. A good collection of Blavatsky's 
articles can be found in Michael Gomes' HPB TEACHES.

Finally, THE MAHATMA LETTERS is very readable and often interesting. 
The one caveat for all of these is to remember that they were written 
over a hundred years ago, and there HAVE been changes in language and 
writing styles. Also, you have to learn to recognize the individual 
prejudices of the authors, and try discriminate between what is correct, 
and what is the author's personal opinion. Easier said than done.

Bart