Theos-Talk Archives (November 2008 Message tt00305)

Dear Anand,

As I find the topic in discussion crucial for the understanding of 
the role of the Theosophical Society I would like to express some 
personal views. 

In what sense was the Theosophical Society meant to be vehicle for 
the spiritual movement? Can "spiritual movement" express itself 
through an organization which is an artificial form of association of 
different individuals and not by itself a body capable to express 
some "spiritual truth"? Can not spiritual truths, ideas, express 
themselves only through individuals? If this is the case, and it 
certainly is, then these expressions are necessarily different as 
individuals are different. The organization can promote some 
uniform "spiritual truth" only when its individual members decide to 
give up to their individual expressions and subdue themselves, for 
whatever reason, to some other individual expression of "spiritual 
truth" or "teaching" transforming it into dogma. 

Henry Still Olcott wrote:

"The secret of the persistent vigor of the Society is that its 
platform is so drafted as to exclude all dogmas, all social contests, 
all causes of strife and dissension such as are begotten of questions 
of sex, color, religion, and fortune, and make altruism, tolerance, 
peace and brotherliness the cornerstones upon which it rests."

Therefore, the main idea of the inception of the Theosophical Society 
was, as I understand these words, to allow fraternal co-existence of 
countless expressions of "spiritual truth" as fact in nature and to 
oppose to the subordinations to or enforcements of some "spiritual 
truth" to other people as acts against the natural order of things. 

While through its history the Theosophical Society was able to spread 
into society several truths about the real nature of man and universe 
it to large extend failed to represent an example of altruism, 
tolerance, peace and brotherliness. And it failed, in my opinion, 
because its leaders (with the exception of Henry Still Olcott) always 
tried to find some unified expression of "spiritual truth". And now 
we are repeating the same mistake because we are afraid that without 
such a "leading spiritual idea" we are loosing ground and that being 
just a society of fraternal seekers of Truth (facts in nature) is not 
enough - while this is actually the hardest (as we can all see) and 
the greatest thing we can achieve. Therefore I think that the 
Theosophical Society can once again become a vehicle for the 
spiritual movement only with the acknowledgement that on this level 
spirit manifests itself through countless individual expressions 
which can and should live in fraternal co-existence and help each 
other to greater understanding.

Warmest regards,
Anton


--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "Anand" <AnandGholap@...> wrote:
>
> One can see that starting a spiritual movement is not an easy task.
> Masters tried to do that through Theosophical Society, and what is 
the
> result ? Today we have many different teachings contradicting with
> teach other. These are Blavatsky's writings, Leadbeater's writing,
> writings in Pseudo-letters, Krishnamurti's teaching. One movement
> started and we have many different teachings contradicting with each
> other. Among these, there are distinct fanatic cults like one formed
> around Krishnamurti's teaching, another cult around
> Blavatsky-Pseudo-letters teachings. And these cults set themselves 
in
> opposition to other major religions in the world like Christianity.
> These Theosophical cults perhaps don't have more than few thousand
> members and yet they oppose confidently Christianity with it's two
> billion followers. It is like ants challenging elephant. 
> How is TS going to decide it's direction and maintain it is 
important
> question. I can already see that many National Sections (like 
Holland)
> have lost the direction. It will be interesting to see what 
direction
> TS takes in next three hundred years.
> Best
> Anand Gholap