Theos-Talk Archives (November 2006 Message tt01014)

Dear friends, 
 
 
Besides having been the international secretary of the Adyar Society for many years,  Ernest Wood was also candidate to the  international presidency in the election when George Arundale got the office,  in the 1930s.  Wood describes the moment when he perceived that the idea of liberty of thought had become just a façade, under which everyone must obey and exercise blind belief: 
 
?As the new tendency in the theosophical movement increased it offended me more and more.  My object all along had been to sift the gold  from the ore, but now it seemed that the ore was growing more and the gold less. Theoretically there was freedom of thought and opinion, and the Society was a truth-seeking body, and our truth-seeking was to be done as a brotherhood, without distinction of race, sex, creed or colour. In this spirit we were to study and investigate for the promotion of knowledge of the truth, especially about man,  his relation to his environment and his destiny. But in practice there was more than a tendency to give the platform to the believer and to squeeze out the critic or the independent thinker. Instead of the subjection  of all  doctrines to a co-operative inquisition, ?You must respect the faith of your fellow-members?.?
 
?By 1925 prayers of all materially powerful religions were introduced in  the Society?s official platform, and the movement definitely degenerated into a brotherhood of creeeds. Criticism of other people?s ideas became ?unbrotherly!?  And besides, it ?spoiled the work?, and the  work was largely a conveyance of blessings and forces by those who were admitted to the systems of organized access to these things. On these grounds offices were filled, and invitations  were issued to leaders to preside and lecture at the Society?s gatherings nearly all over  the world. (...)?
 
?Bishop Leadbeater and his agents were eminent in the theosophical weakness of wanting things both ways at once, though  that was quite illogical.  The Society must be quite without dogma, and yet its councils  must be governed and its platforms occupied by  those who were eager to promote certain beliefs, leaderships and objectives, and members who opposed these must be kept in the background.? 
 
To this ?having both ways at once?, as expressed in authoritarian political ideologies,  George  Orwell gave the name of ?doublethink? in his remarkable though  far from optimistic novel ?1984?, written in 1948. 
 
Leadbeater and Besant  in Adyar were contemporary with Mussolini in Italy, Stalin in Russia, and with the rising of Hitler in Germany, and all of them used the authoritarian way of thinking called ?doublethink? by Orwell.  That sort of thinking is slightly outdated. It is time to improve. And. Fortunately or unfortunately, there is no actual separation between Adyar  and the other theosophical groups and institutions, so we must all dialogue our way into some more realistic way of reasoning in the future. Adyar shortcomings are by no means limited to Adyar itself. No one is perfectly consistent.  Everyone makes mistakes, and some of us try to learn from them.  That will be easier if we stop seeing criticisms as ?attacks?, and abandon the emotional blackmail which forbids independent thinking.  Thus truth can be gradually put above bias of any kind. 
 
Best regards, Carlos 
 
NOTE: 
(1) ?Is This Theosophy??, by Ernest Egerton Wood, London: Rider& Co., Paternoster House, E.C., 1936, 318 pp., facsimile edition by Kessinger Publishing, LLC, Kila, MT, USA.  See p. 301. 
 
         
 
 


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