Theos-Talk Archives (March 2004 Message tt00642)

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "John Plummer" <jplummer@b...> 
wrote:

> issues, esp Krishnamurti, around the split with the TS. Just read 
> any of Rudi's lectures from the second half of 1912, as things 
were 
> coming to a head. Not pretty.
> 
> Just like all of us, these folks had both great strengths and 
> significant personal failings. I think we have to learn from 
their good work, while not avoiding an honest, but compassionate, 
awareness of the less edifying parts of the story.
> 
> John

Thanks for the thoughtful post. One of the least pretty and least 
edifying elements of the split was the fierce, ethnically tinged 
nationalism on both sides before and during WWI. Leadbeater and 
Sinnett were absolutely sure that the Masters were on the side of 
the British empire and the Germans were inspired by Brothers of the 
Shadow; Steiner's position was a mirror reflection of theirs as best 
I can recall.

IMO this all reflects very poorly on the First Object having any 
influence whatsoever on these people, who shared the hatreds and 
bigotries of their supposedly less enlightened countrymen-- and used 
the Masters to justify their nationalism. We tend to think of 
`Aryan' as becoming an evil code word in WWII, but Theosophists and 
Anthroposophists were using it harmfully well before then.

Paul