Theos-Talk Archives (December 2006 Message tt00230)

Friends, 
 
 
The most remarkable aspect of  discipleship, as it is described by Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater,  is its recommendation of a total and automatic obedience to the Master.  This, they said, must be done out of devotion.  
 
The blind-obedience principle of “doing whatever the Master wants” was first officialy adopted in the history of the theosophical movement by C. W. Leadbeater and A. Besant. It was taught not only in their various talks and books, but also in the little Adyar classic “At The Feet of the Master”. 
 
Up to the early 1950s in Adyar, orders coming  from the supposed Masters  were received through the leaders of the TS.  This arrangement was, of  course,  rather convenient to these same leaders,  who played the role of intermediaries between “disciples” and “Masters”.  
 
This system operated until, and including,  C. Jinarajadasa’s time.  It only stopped with N. Sri Ram. 
 
In “At the Feet of the Master”, as in other works,  one  can read a direct recommendation: 
 
“When you become a pupil of the Master, you may always try the truth of your thought by laying it beside His. For the pupil is one with his Master, and he needs only to put back his thought into the Master’s thought  to see at once whether it agrees. If it does not, it is wrong, and he changes it immediately, for the Master’s thought is perfect,  because He knows all.  Those  who are not yet accepted by Him cannot do quite this; but they may greatly help themselves by stopping often to think: ‘What would the Master say or do under these circumstances?’  For you must never do or say or think what you can not imagine the  Master as doing or saying or thinking.” (1)
 
The deluding  lines above deserve examination.  
 
1) First, they suppose  that a disciple should mimick his Master and try to imitate his thoughts, words and actions.  This does not make sense,. Two different beings, living karmic situations totally different,  and having widely different amounts of wisdom, must  inevitably think, speak and act in different ways.    
 
2) Second, these lines suppose that a disciple is able to get inside the Master’s individual consciousness, which, of course, also does not make sense.  The text is based on the fancy that there is no difference or distance, in thought and in karma,  between a Master and a disciple. 
 
3) Third, this would-be disciple totally renounces thinking  for himself,  or being responsible for his own life and actions. He hides behind that which he fancies or thinks to be his Master’s thoughts. Of course, such “thoughts” used to be conveniently “transmitted” to him by the Adyar authorities. In  many occasions, though, since Besant’s time students of various generations have developed their own personal fancies about “Masters’ orders”,  based on this same  Doctrine of Blind Obedience,  as exposed in Besant’s and Leadbeater’s books.  There is no need to describe here the disasters caused by this illusion.  
 
The reality principle tells us that  no disciple is able to completely know or share the vastness of abstract contemplation which must be the natural state of mind of  Adepts. 
 
Mahatmas may have renounced Nirvana in order to help mankind,  but their natural state of mind  is obviously still close to that level.  No disciple can therefore fully anticipate a Master’s  “thinking”.  His mental perceptions are not personal. They are too intuitive and too non-lineal to be considered similar to any  conventional thinking.   These are all self-evident facts.  
 
On the other hand, the Mahatma Letters and HPB’s writings show us another  obvious fact. That real disciples have their own karmic situations to face,  and they are therefore too busy to loose time  mimicking  or imitating that which they would suppose to be the personality of  one individual  Master. 
 
Things are deeper than that in esoteric philosophy,  and more democratic, also.  
 
In fact, we average students of Theosophy  –  and not only regular disciples and lay disciples –  can easily compare our own thoughts and actions with the Collective Teachings of the Masters ( Masters in the plural, not singular form ) ;  and  that  includes the Masters’ Teaching on “discipleship”, that is, on  the actual learning process.  
 
And that comparative view is a most revealing experience indeeed. Because what the Masters actually  teach about  discipleship is absolutely the opposite to the many  idealizing illusions one sees in “At The Feet of the Master”. 
 
In reading the “Mahatma Letters”, one has to face the fact that as early as 1882  the Masters were already intensely and directly fighting this very sort of distortion about discipleship: the “blind obedience heresy”;  the “mental laziness principle”  of blind obedience to an imaginary Master. 
 
A true Adept of the Himalayas wrote, and the letter was received in November 1882 :  
 
“The objections of last year are creeping out also, you have a letter from me in which I explain why we  never guide our chelas (the most advanced even); nor do we forewarn them leaving the effects produced by causes  of their own to teach them better experience. Please bear in mind that particular letter.  Before the cycle ends every misconception ought to be swept away.  I trust in and rely upon you  to clear them  entirely in the minds of  the Prayag Fellows.” (2)  
 
This  central pedagogical  Principle of Autonomy of the Learner is scattered all over HPB/Masters writings.  In the “Letters from The Masters of the Wisdom”, for instance, one reads this appeal made by a Mahatma to a certain lady of altruistic intentions: 
 
“You have offered yourself for the Red Cross; but, Sister, there are sicknesses and wounds of the Soul that no Surgeon’s art can cure.  Shall you help us teach mankind that the soul-sick  must heal themselves? Your action will be your response.” (3)  
 
A conscious  individual responsibility before Life, and therefore the inner and conscious autonomy of each learner;  these  are two basic and fundamental conditions for all students of Theosophy, if they want  to have success in their endeavours.  

Best regards,   Carlos. 
 
 
NOTES:
 
(1) “At The Feet of the Master”,  by Alcyone, The Theosophical Publishing House, Wheaton, IL, USA, Pocketbook edition, 1984, 32 pp. See pp. 13-14.  
 
(2) “The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett”, TUP, Pasadena, CA, 494 pp., see Letter  LXXII, p. 374.  In the Chronological Edition (TPH Philippines, 1993), this is the Letter 95, p. 333. 
 
(3) “Letters From the Masters of the Wisdom”, transcribed by C. Jinarajadasa, TPH, Adyar,  India, second edition, 1973, see Letter 72, p. 129. 
 


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