Theos-Talk Archives (April 2005 Message tt00040)

April 1 2005

Dear Friends:

Some inquiries have been made concerning the source, progress and present
position of the THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY and the THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT 

This (written exactly 100 years ago) will assist in understanding these



THE THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT
	
There is a very great difference between the Theosophical Movement and any
Theosophical Society. The Movement is moral, ethical, spiritual, universal,
invisible save in effect, and continuous. 

A Society formed for theosophical work is a visible organization, an effect,
a machine for conserving energy and putting it to use; it is not nor can it
be universal, nor is it continuous. 

Organized Theosophical bodies are made by men for their better cooperation,
but, being mere outer shells, they must change from time to time as human
defects come out, as the times change, and as the great underlying spiritual
movement compels such alterations.

The Theosophical Movement being continuous, it is to be found in all times
and in all nations. Wherever thought has struggled to be free, wherever
spiritual ideas, as opposed to forms and dogmatism, have been promulgated,
there the great movement is to be discerned. 

Jacob Boehme's work was a part of it, and so also was the Theosophical
Society of over one hundred years ago; Luther's reformation must be reckoned
as a portion of it; and the great struggle between Science and Religion,
clearly portrayed by Draper, was every bit as much a motion of the
Theosophical Movement as is the present Society of that name - indeed that
struggle, and the freedom thereby gained for science, were really as
important in the advance of the world, as are our different organizations.
And among political examples of the movement is to be counted the
Independence of the American colonies, ending in the formation of a great
nation, theoretically based on Brotherhood. 

One can therefore see that to worship an organization, even though it be the
beloved theosophical one, is to fall down before Form, and to become the
slave once more of that dogmatism which our portion of the Theosophical
Movement, the T.S., was meant to overthrow.

Some members have worshipped the so-called "Theosophical Society," thinking
it to be all in all, and not properly perceiving its de facto and piecemeal
character as an organization nor that it was likely that this devotion to
mere form would lead to a nullification of Brotherhood at the first strain.
And this latter, indeed, did occur with several members. 

They even forgot, and still forget, that H. P. Blavatsky herself declared
that it were better to do away with the Society rather than to destroy
Brotherhood, and that she herself declared the European part of it free and
independent. These worshippers think that there must be a continuance of the
old form in order for the Society to have an international character.

But the real unity and prevalence, and the real internationalism, do not
consist in having a single organization. 

They are found in the similarity of aim, of aspiration, of purpose, of
teaching, of ethics. Freemasonry - a great and important part of the true
Theosophical Movement - is universally international; and yet its
organizations are numerous, autonomous, sovereign, independent. 

The Grand [Masonic] Lodge of the state of New York, including its different
Lodges, is independent of all others in any state, yet every member is a
Mason and all are working on a single plan. Freemasons aver all the world
belong to the great International Masonic Body, yet they have everywhere
their free and independent government.

When the Theosophical Society was young and small, it was necessary that it
should have but one government for the whole of it. But now that it has
grown wide and strong, having spread among nations so different from each
other as the American, the English, the Spanish, the Swedish and others in
Europe, and the Hindû, it is essential that a change in the outward form be
made. This is that it become like the Freemasons - independent in government
wherever the geographical or national conditions indicate that necessity.
And that this will be done in time, no matter what certain persons may say
to the contrary, there is not the slightest doubt.

The American Group, being by geographical and other conditions outwardly
separate, began the change so as to be in government free and independent,
but in basis, aspiration, aim and work united with all true Theosophists.

We have not changed the work of H.P.B.; we have enlarged it. We assert that
any person who has been admitted to any Theosophical Society should be
received everywhere among Theosophists, just as Masons are received among
Masons. It is untheosophical to denounce the change made by the American
Group; it is not Theosophy nor conducive to its spread to make legal claims
to theosophical names, symbols and seals so as to prevent if possible others
from using them. Everyone should be invited to use our theosophical property
as freely as he wishes. 

Those who desire to keep up H.P.B.'s war against dogmatism will applaud and
encourage the American movement because their liberated minds permit; but
those who do not know true Theosophy, nor see the difference between forms
and the soul of things, will continue to worship Form and to sacrifice
Brotherhood to a shell.

PATH, August, 1895
 

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This brief article seems to state all essential points

Best wishes,

Dallas


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