Theos-Talk Archives (April 2005 Message tt00456)

Anand,

> My lodge has very young membership of very qualified people, total
> > >110 members. This despite management's policy of not advertizing.
> > >Apart from that we have displayed Krishnamurti's photo in the Lodge.
> > >Most members respect both Theosophy and consider Krishnamurti as
> > >World-Teacher. They study mostly AB and CWL's books and like them
> > >very much.
This sounds like the Lodges we used to have here in the early 1960s when 
I first joined the Theosophical Society. Besant Lodge in Hollywood used 
to typically have 100 people attending their Sunday lectures. A Picture 
of Krishnamurti hung on the wall, as well as pictures of Besant and 
Leadbeater. Times have changed and the American culture has changed 
quite a lot. TSA management no longer actively supports Lodges, and 
there are very few of them left. Besant Lodge now has very few members. 
> Let me know if you have any ideas to 
> communicate Theosophy to modern world. 
Well, I have a lot of ideas, and we have been experimenting with them. 
But they are formulated in terms of what will work in American culture. 
If I were in India, I would be thinking differently and probably would 
not be doing anything very different from what I think you must be doing 
already. With a membership of 110, if that is an active membership, I 
would imagine that attendance at one of your member's meetings is 
typically between fifty and one hundred people. With such a large 
group, a straight lecture format is easiest, but not the best. When we 
organized conferences at Krotona, we would typically have an audience of 
100 people or more. We experimented with breaking them up into smaller 
groups where people would be able to interact with each other and 
share. However, at that time, the elderly members were used to coming 
for straight lectures and did not like interactive groups. They have 
since passed away, and younger members are used to this kind of 
interaction, because they began in the 1970s to do this kind of thing in 
the public schools. 
Jerry







Anand Gholap wrote:

> Jerry,
> This happens to be a 
>
> > favorite subject of mine--communicating Theosophy to the modern world. 
> >
> > But have seen little interest in the subject here. That also makes me sad.
> This if important for me also. Let me know if you have any ideas to 
> communicate Theosophy to modern world. 
> Anand Gholap
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