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Re: Theos-World HPB and Leadbeater

May 23, 2003 09:59 AM
by Bart Lidofsky


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





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