Theos-Talk Archives (May 2011 Message tt00084)

Many theosophists suspect that in this day of Kali Yuga (Dark Age), when
there is so much pain and suffering going on around the world, not because
of natural causes, but created by politicians and zealots on his brothers
and sisters around the world, whether Dugpas are taking advantage of the
general conditions to influence what they do best - bring strife, put road
blocks on all activities which help our fellow beings.

Theosophy and theosophical organizations do not seem to have escaped their
attention. Let us take a look at the panorama of events.

Elections:

All that went on at the time of last International Election of TS simply
showed how a serious attempt was made to mislead the membership and followed
up by unsubstantiated allegations against the Indian Section and further
followed the ultra secret attempt to disenfranchise all members in the
election. When there is a clamor for democracy every where - one man/woman,
one vote - disenfranchisement attempt, especially emanating from the USA,
cannot be easily explained.

Publications:

Theosophy is expected to reach everyone - rich and poor. But, in practice
that is not the case. Firstly, when the misplaced manuscripts of the Secret
Doctrine commentaries were discovered, it was kept secret for fifteen long
years. This was done by those who are supposed to be long time theosophists
and are expected to act better.

Lo and behold, when it was finally published, it was pricey and cost $100
and beyond the reach of most theosophists (only few are fat cats). All the
leaders and well known theosophists kept silent on this aspect, perhaps
because they all got complimentary copies.

Organizational issues:

Who in the right mind would shut down a 75 year old operating lodge in
Orlando Florida? This is what was attempted. When on appeal, the
International President attached the lodge to Adyar, the American Section
leaders were wailing that it was a renegade lodge (has TS in America become
a cult?). But no facts were provided to the membership about the specific
violations of the rules or bylaws which led to the decision to cancel the
charter. This has lead to the speculation that there may be other reasons
unrelated to theosophy or the operation of a lodge that is behind the
decision. Members are still waiting to find out specific facts.

Sale of property:

The sale of Tekels Park property in England, is being discussed on Internet
for quite some time. Very little is known about the details. Due to the
autonomy given to the Sections, English Section can do almost anything with
the property. Secrecy surrounding the property and the impending massacre of
the rare animals living there has brought this issue to public attention.
Many are questioning how you reconcile the theosophical doctrines and the
killing of animals. Again, it is a PR disaster for TS.

Internet and Transparency

Master KH warned Annie Besant in the 1900 letter that unnecessary secrecy
has dealt a death blow to many organizations. We have not seen any leader
discuss this issue in relation to the operation of TS. In pre-Internet days,
organizational leaders never paid any attention to transparency since it is
easy to operate in opaque environment.

Transparency is a bulwark against unwise decisions and actions of leaders.
Internet technology has made transparency easier to address at very little
cost.

Theosophical organizations and its leaders are yet to embrace Internet. None
of them are seen interacting with other theosophists using Internet,
possibly because it cannot be controlled by anyone.

Theosophists cannot be ungrateful to Internet for what it did during the
election crisis that TS faced in 2008. But for Internet disseminating
factual information to everyone in the world, we would have a totally
different organization today. Have we forgotten all that?

Taking all of the above together, many theosophists are fully convinced that
Dugpas have decisively influenced many of the decisions above which are not
for the welfare of Humanity or the help theosophical doctrines can give to
the future generations.

MKR


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]