Theos-Talk Archives (December 2006 Message tt00070)

Dear Friends, 
 
The booklet “At the Feet of the Master”  offers its readers many fruits from the strange tree of Leadbeaterian Neotheosophy.  One significant example is in the fact that it mentions “bodies” instead of “principles”.   
 
Besant and Leadbeater widely  adulterated the Masters’  teachings on the seven principles.  They not only ‘materialized’ the principles by calling them “bodies”.  They also changed some of their names, and numbered them in the opposite direction than in the Masters’ esoteric philosophy.  Thus they left  aside one of the most central keys in Theosophy: the correspondence between man’s principles and the principles present in the macrocosmic universe as a whole.  
 
At  the same time, by causing confusion and adulterating the teachings on the seven principles, Besant and Leadbeater turned it much more difficult for the Adyar students to even understand HPB’s teachings. 
 
In “At the Feet of the Master” we read about “astral body” and “mental body”(1) , but we see no reference to man’s principles, or to the micro-macro links between man and the kosmos.  The whole pamphlet is dedicated to promote obedience, not understanding.  The same, of course, occurs all over Leadbeater’s and Besant’s literature.  Since Besant’s time, most Adyar TS authors have obeyed the same misinformed view of the occult constitution of man.  Geoffrey Farthing and Ianthe Hoskins were notable exceptions to that rule. 
 
An easy-to-understand approach to the seven principles in man can be found at Chapter Six of “The Key to Theosophy”.  The topic is absolutely central in the path of self-liberation through self-knowledge. 
 
We all know of the hermetic idea that “as below, so above”.  The teaching on the seven principles is the key foundation for a clear understanding of how that unity between individual man and kosmos actually works in  life. 
 
Regards,   Carlos. 
 
 
 
NOTE: 
 
(1) “At The Feet of the Master”,  by Alcyone, The Theosophical Publishing House, Wheaton, IL, USA, Pocketbook edition, 1984, 32 pp. See pages  10 and 19, for instance. 
 
 
 
ooooooooooooo


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