Theos-Talk Archives (April 2005 Message tt00980)

Anand,

> No. It is not exactly Californian but inside Ashram it is more 
> American than Indian.
I think you mean that the ashram is full of spoiled rich Americans 
acting like, well...spoiled rich Americans. I assure you that they are 
not what, I, as least, would call a typical American. 
> It is interesting to know some Christians are also radical and 
> fundamentalist. In Kashmir there is some problem but elsewhere there 
> is no much problem. 
I've followed the Kashmir story with interest. Very sad. However, here 
is is not the same. We don't have religious civil wars. Most radical 
fundamentalists are just harmless bigots. Aryan Nations people are more 
of a problem. We have a neo-nazi group in the neighboring town here. 
As long as they confine themselves to wearing white sheets and burning 
crosses, they are within their rights. But, blowing up government 
buildings is frowned upon.

> What makes me wonder is American society is so cosmopolitan, to some 
> extent cultured and still students of Theosophy there attack each 
> other's beliefs forgetting that everybody has right to follow anybody 
> or any philosophy.
Most of American society is suburban or rural. This is very different 
from cosmopolitan. Those who live in places like New York City, Boston, 
San Francisco, Los Angeles are indeed cosmopolitan. They are more 
likely to be very highly paid professionals who work for major 
corporations. It is their children which you are more likely to meet in 
the Ashrams in India. Notice that California, Massachusetts, New York 
and Illinois have the largest cosmopolitan populations, and they are the 
states where President Bush did not win in either of his two elections. 
The states which voted for Bush tended to be rural and agricultural. 
The South and the center of the country tend to be rural, conservative, 
Christian, less educated, and less tolerant. The cosmopolitan states 
mentioned above, in their major cities only, tend to be more educated, 
less religious, or more likely to be interested in non-Christian 
spiritualities. While I live in California, I live in an agricultural 
part of the state, which has recently become suburban. The people here 
were once very religious and with little education. About thirty years 
ago, The State of California built a university here. The people who 
lived here bitterly fought against having a university in their town. 
They said that all of that education would destroy their culture. It 
did. This town is now becoming a suburb for San Francisco. 
Now, what does this have to do with Theosophy? Well, quite a lot. The 
Theosophical Society began in New York City. The TS initially was of 
interest to the more educated and established classes. Only ten years 
earlier, we had fought a terrible war where slavery was one of the 
central issues. Even today, the wounds that war opened in American 
culture have never completely healed. It is significant that the first 
President was a Civil War Colonel. After the war, was a revival of 
Christian sentiment in this country. It was only after the Civil War 
that the words "In God We Trust" first appeared on American currency. 
At the same time, the age of scientific discovery was beginning to take 
off. The new science of archeology was throwing into question the 
veracity of the Bible. Darwin's origin of the species (1859) conflicted 
with Christian beliefs about creation. American culture was dividing 
into two camps: those who wanted to preserve their life style of the 
past, and those who wanted to embrace the new scientific age. This 
conflict continues today. If you had read the Mahatma Letters to 
Sinnett, you might remember that KH mentioned that Science is their 
"best ally." A.P. Sinnett, in his, Occult World, speaks of occultism as 
a secret science. Notice that Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled is divided into 
two volumes: Science; Theology. The Secret Doctrine also compares and 
contrasts religions and science to occultism. Theosophy is rarely 
mentioned in either text. 
Olcott and Blavatsky saw the Christian missionaries as the enemy of the 
Theosophical movement and a danger to the Eastern Cultures. In her 
work, "Parting Words from Madame Blavatsky (Vol. 1, BCW) she writes:

We have among us persons in high positions political, military, 
financial and social who regard Christianity as the greatest evil to 
humanity and are willing to help pull it down. But for them to be able 
to do much and well, they must do it anonymously. The church 
Triple-headed Snake, as a well-known writer calls it can no longer burn 
its enemies, but it can blast their social influence; can no longer 
roast their bodies, but can ruin their fortunes. We have no right to 
give our enemy, the church, the names of our who are not ripe for 
martyrdom, and so we keep them secret. If we have an agent to send to 
India, or to Japan, or China, or any other heathen country, to do 
something or confer with somebody in connection with the Society general 
plans against missionaries, it would be foolish, nay, criminal, to 
expose our agent to imprisonment under some malicious pretext, if not 
death, and even the latter is possible in the faraway East, and our 
scheme is liable to miscarry by announcing it to the dishonorable 
company of Jesus.

As you know, almost immediately after this was written, they went to 
India, and set up educational institutions there and in Sri Lanka and 
(did far more than they get credit for) defeated the work of Christian 
Missionaries in both countries--especially Sri Lanka. CWL, when new to 
the TS, accompanied HBP to Sri Lanka. He stayed on and in 1888 he 
edited an English Language Magazine called "The Buddhist: The English 
Organ of the Southern Church of Buddhism." He also produced a Buddhist 
Catechism for Children.

With Olcott, Annie Besant, who joined the TS in May of 1890, eventually 
relocated to India where she continued her work with Olcott in the 
establishment of free schools in India.

So, at least, in the early period, an important work of the TS was to 
check the spread of Christianity, and also to show that modern science 
is an ally to Theosophy, but its materialism must be checked. 
Beginning in 1908, after the death of the last founder, the TS began to 
radically change direction. But this is a story for later. The main 
point that I wanted to make here is that what was going on historically 
in the US and India at that time, is very relevant to what went on in 
the TS. It is important to understand these histories, if one is to 
really understand the nature and beginnings of the modern Theosophical 
Movement.

Jerry