Theos-Talk Archives (January 2010 Message tt00008)

I heard that in the end of the last year there were only about 950 attendees in the annual International Convention of the Theosophical Society (Adyar) at Adyar. This is very alarming. Something is going on. Usual number of attendees has been about 1200.

According to what I heard, only about 50 people were outside India. Usually this number is about 120.

I believe that many General Council (GC) members (General Secretaries and additional members) remained home when they realized that not anything special would be discussed at the GC meeting, held before the Convention. It seems that they think that it is nowadays impossible to include any new ideas on the agenda and discuss them at the meeting. Criticism is not at all welcomed at Adyar.

But it was not only General Council (GC) members who were missing on December. Hundreds of other attendees were missing in the Convention compared to previous years. To me it is likely that ordinary members of the TS remained home as well since their General Secretaries didn't attend.

I think that the TS administeation at Adyar has not handled the call for open decision-making well enough. We could actually call this very low number of attendees a protest from members!

On this forum MKR has indeed ALWAYS had excellent points about modern transparency, we all are grateful for him for that. However, I think that he just should admit that also Adyar should be more transparent.

Right, those GC members who proposed controversial amendments to International Rules last year, made then a very big mistake (proposal to remove general vote for International President)! But I think now they are rightly requesting for more openness from International administration. President and her supporters misthink that silence is the solution. It is the old way!

President should consent to a dialogue. This tense situation can not continue for a long time if the TS Adyar wants to survive.