Theos-Talk Archives (July 2006 Message tt00562)

Re: Crosby, K. Tingley, a Theosophist, etc.
  
     This is getting obsessive.  Did the 
various leaders of the Theosophical Movement 
have to go through "pledge fever" also, or 
were they sprung full-formed from a Deva's 
mouth.  In the Mahatma Letters and elsewhere 
it is stated that humans are "dual natured," 
we all have higher and lower propensities.  
The goal of Theosophy's picture of personal 
evolution is to overcome this and become 
"One", the lower overcome or controlled by 
the higher.  You or I will never meet such 
a person in all likelihood.
       Blavatsky had to undergo this also.  
In the MLs somewhere it is said that she 
had to undergo some crucial trial or karma 
"That She Was NOT Expected To Succeed At."  
But - Surprise! - she did succeed.  
       The same goes for Crosby or Tingley.  
Maybe they had trials, maybe they made some 
Big mistakes, Maybe they kept trying and did 
the best they could.  To make these 
dual-natured fellow humans into some sort of 
demi-gods is just nuts!  I was told in 
correspondence by G.C. Legros that Crosby 
knocked up his maid, divorced his wife, and 
ended up marrying his maid.  So what - it 
isn't of crucial importance.  He eventually 
formed one of the most important organizations.
      When Crosby got kicked out of Point Loma 
Community, I read somewhere also that he was
in fear for himself.  I wouldn't doubt this 
too much either.  The mass of the memberships 
where probably on a similar basis as many large 
groups, just a cultish following of the leader, 
and not themselves having a full understanding of 
the principles involved, and sort of acting 
like a typical mob to someone who supposedly 
did something nasty to their hero-worshiped 
leader, and act a bit like a mob.  The only 
salvation in such a case is to have a good 
leader - which Tingley and Gdep were to 
control such emotions in the group.  I think 
Mundy maybe also left for similar reasons, 
being perhaps cold-shoulder by the membership.
   
   Tingley was an over-bearing type of woman, 
it seems to me, and I doubt I could have stood 
to be in her group - but she was also a 
genuine Theosophist.  She may have made some 
serious mistakes in HER trials, and changed 
her actions later when she learned more about 
Theosophy (she wasn't much of a technical 
student.) Smythe, editor of the Canadian 
Theosophist for about 30 years, also left 
Tingley's group, and said she played politics, 
and played one person against another.  Maybe 
she did in early years and changed.  
Talbot Mundy, who I consider to be one of 
the best natural-born recent theosophists, 
also was married 5 times, and a social drinker - 
yet he still got some important theosophical 
perspectives out to perhaps millions of 
novel-readers.  An important task.
  
     Some of the differences in groups, 
I think, is at base a difference in personality 
types, and not specifically based in reality on 
difference in teachings, or teachers.  K.H. 
and Morya had different methods with there 
students, and one teacher wouldn't mess with 
the methods of the other, even though they 
didn't agree with them.  I know there are 
genuinely-motivated theosophists with the 
same basic Blavatsky teachings behind them, 
whom - likely - I couldn't stand to be around 
- and vice versa, which is probably the same 
with everyone.
  
SILENT EDITING:
     I don't see how small changes such as 
de Zirkoff does in changing sanskrit spelling, 
can compare with big changes - as in Dan's 
recent book, of leaving out whole sentences 
or the like.  Dan is lumping them in the same 
category, (which he knows they are not) 
JUST TO WIN THE ARGUMENT.  This seems to be 
a thing with DC, he wants to win the argument, 
using logic, even though the spirit of the 
truth of the matter is lost along the way.  
          - jake j.
  -------------
  Carlos writes:
  
<Friends,
  <I am sure Katherine Tingley was not a 
<Nazi. Far from that.
  <She was a Theosophist, and therefore her 
<priority was Universal Brotherhood, which 
<excludes no people and no nation.........
  <Best regards, Carlos. 


 		
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