Theos-Talk Archives (March 2006 Message tt00534)

Voting on membership:

Krsanna called last night about the reasons we at the Narada 
Theosophical Society in Tacoma have in our By-Laws the right of the 
Lodge to vote on new members.  It must be remembered that prior to 
the writing of our By-Laws, the American Section as well as Europe 
was attacking H.P.B. and the E.S., W.Q.J. was being savagely 
attacked by a faction within the T.S. and with little help from 
H.S.O.  Each of the Lodges had to protect themselves from these 
attackers.  

The American Section was looking for a permanent home around 1918 
and were trying to force Krotona away from the Lodge that owned it 
for a National Center, and the battle was in full force across the 
United States in debate of this issue.  Krotona Lodge owned the 
property and the A.S. was sending out ballets asking the Lodges for 
their vote on whether the National Center should be at Krotona.  
They wanted the opinion of all the members before they decided to 
take over Krotona for the National Center.  Krotona Lodge finally 
told them that they had kindly allowed them to rent space within the 
Lodge but they would have to move out and find their own home.  

This battle went on for years, until the A.S. finally moved to 
Chicago, and later to Wheaton.  Since this problem we have had to 
protect ourselves from leadership such as this.  It is also in the 
early version of the By-Laws from Adyar that when a new member joins 
the Society he has no vote for two years at the Lodge, National, or 
the International level, protecting ourselves from a takeover of any 
other groups.  You need to read The Collected Writings of H.P.B. and 
her reasons for leaving Adyar, and the continued attack from within 
the Society against her, as well as Judge.  These two people are 
probably the reason we have such writings today.  They knew who were 
their enemies and allowed them to break their Pledge and behave the 
way they did.  They knew you could not limit the written knowledge 
for the many because of the actions of so few (who were against 
them.)  They also knew the Karmic responsibilities they had to 
themselves.  They took the brunt of all the attacks so others could 
go ahead and plan the workings of the society.