Theos-Talk Archives (April 2008 Message tt00158)

To all readers


My views are:



- - -  Growth, Deterioration, and Renewal - - -

Real teaching starts with the Guardians, Lords of Knowledge
and Understanding. It does not start with Love, Effort or Ac-
tion, because real love, effort and action are made possible only
through real knowledge.

But when too many slightly covetous people appear or
remain in a community, they turn methods into beliefs, and
believe what they should practise.

There are two conditions which can lead to the perishing of
a group. In the first, there is too much insincerity in the people
in charge. In the other a little insincerity spead among all the
members constitutes the equivalent of one or more wholly self-
ish people.

The insincerity-flaw retards the progress of the leaders and
of the others alike. Only searching self-examination can reveal
it to them. If it were not for this flaw, they and the community
would have arrived at their destination. It is well known, of
course, that the worse the degree of self-esteem, the less able is
the victim to detect it, or even contemplate it.


To revert to the behaviour of the infected group:
These individuals and their followers choose thoughts and
actions which themselves smother most of the hope of success
in human fulfilment. They may try to form a permanent orga-
nization to aim for enlightenment. They probably subject every-
one to the same exercises and observances forgetting the orig-
inal intention, they turn practises and illustrative tales into a
sort of history, whic they try to teach. If they posses litterature
and contemporary memoires of teachers ('masters'), they use
them to bolster a belief in their own rightness and the correctness
of their procedures. They frequently use but a single method
of interpretation of litterature and tradition, training people and
not enabling them to become illuminated.

The Centre has by this stage effectively disappeared. The
work has instead become a kind of kingdom, intent upon con-
serving but knowing what to conserve. The leaders and
their adherents remain frozenly attached to its body, making
it a place of imitation which concerves minor or irrelevant out-
ward forms. They esteem, under other names, raw
emotionality.

Concurrently, there comes into being over-veneration of
men, of groups and legend, and hosility towards others, and
sometimes impatience. What was originally a unity splits into
groups of varying interpretation or concentration, generally use-
less, and observations which are inaccurate. By this point almost
all reality and potentiality have been departed. The community has
been effectively invaded and possessed without this develop-
ment having been registered by its members. The truth may
be obscured by the continued use, by the 'lame' community,
of words and outward aspects, biographical reminiscenes, and
other facets of the original knowledge. Certainly its members
will believe that by these tokens they are continuing on the
right path.
Their only hope of retrival is in the exercise of cioncentrated
efforts towards sincirity.

This pattern is one reason why from time to time the Guardians
must emerge and announce to the possessors of ears the renewal
of the high tradition by means of apposite working. By now,
naturally, to the strayed ones, these words will sound strange
or inimical, like the speech of reason seems to the demented -
absurd.
One result of the condition is that without intending it the
Guardians incur, variously, both over-enthusiastic support and
also opposition to themselves in different sections of their audi-
ence. Both reactions are unpromising, if expected, signs, just as
objectionable as apathy.

Working togther the parties must overcome these tenden-
cies if success in reviveing the teaching is to be achieved.
This is the story of every age upon earth. The only real vari-
ant is the time-span during which this behaviour takes place.

Those who have only little knowledge, and think that they
have more than that of ordinary folk, are no less open to reason
and to teaching than those who have no knowledge at all of the
Tradition. This irony is a furhter complication.
And yet they are better able to make progress in the Way
once the outer husk of ageing has been softened. They some-
times retain potentialities whose presence involves us in a
chance to offer rescue. It is the furtherance of this duty, based
upon our knowledge of the Tradition, the teaching and the
conditions of parties (groups), that we can exercise skill, action
love and effort.

When the husk of people or groupings is too hardened, such
individuals and communities will remain ike hard nuts which
are being rapidly carried down a river, heedlessly.
The water of comparison and understanding will not be able
to soften them enough to help them sprout into seedlings be-
fore they reach a dam where they pile up, abandoned and,
unfortunately, uncomprehending.


- - - - - - - 
Especially the last part of the text above on
"Those who have only little knowledge, and think..."
should be given consideration.

Small groups have more quality in teaching than open groups if the members
are sincere enough. Blavatsky knew about this on her level.






M. Sufilight

H. P. Blavatsky said: 
"The Society founded to remedy the glaring evils of Christianity, to shun bigotry and intolerance, cant and superstition and to cultivate real universal love extending even to the dumb brute". 
(The Collected Writings of H. P. Blavatsky, vol. 7, p.246) 

Master KH wrote in a Mahatma Letter: 
For the opposition represents enormous vested interests, and they have enthusiastic help from the Dugpas -- in Bhootan and the Vatican! 
(Here is all of Mahtama Letter, No. 55. Dugpas are the same as selfish Magicians.) 

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