Theos-Talk Archives (September 2008 Message tt00282)

... each one of you should be and actually is a leader, a leader of 
men, a Theosophical leader, one more or less trained to guide his 
fellows. Oh! I pray that you do not forget this; for if this idea 
prevail among us, no matter what one may say about the relatively 
small number of adherents that the Theosophical Society at present 
has as compared with the many millions of humanity - if this spirit 
prevails, I repeat, we Theosophists shall be not merely the leaven 
raising the general average of humanity, but verily you will be 
leaders, guides, teachers; and that is what each genuine Theosophist 
should aspire to be ... Love is no mere sentimental emotion: love is 
vision; love is harmony; love is that which flows forth from one to 
others; and when a man or woman has this in his heart or in her 
heart, then he or she is a natural leader. I desire you all to be 
leaders. Don't be ashamed of this lofty calling. Proclaim yourselves 
as aspiring to be true leaders. No one in the T.S. is too humble to 
help someone else, to show the way, and the way-shower is the leader, 
the guide, and the teacher. 
- G. de Purucker, in Messages to Conventions, pp. 30-31. 


Each one of us has to learn to consider everything for himself, and 
that is the only way to qualify to lead or help others. A leader is 
not one who tries to regiment other people, make them think as he 
wants them to think for his own reasons. There are such leaders in 
politics of different parties, and their followers become a flock of 
sheep and echo the leader's thoughts. The less we have of such 
leaders in our Theosophical movement, the better. Every Theosophist 
has to learn to lead himself, in the sense of not being pushed either 
by others or by the momentum of his own past thoughts. He must help 
people to lead themselves, to find out and express what is best, most 
beautiful and precious in themselves. That is the only kind of 
leadership which would serve our Society, which has to be as a 
spiritual republic in which each one shines with his own light, and 
makes it his contribution to the total illumination of the world. 
- N. Sri Ram, in The Theosophist, August, 1959, p. 290.