Theos-Talk Archives (July 2011 Message tt00044)

First Looks - Krotona, Theosophy and Krishnamurti -Joseph Ross

I briefly browsed the recently published book - Volume 5 of the Krotona
Series. Here are my initial brief comments.

The book is soft cover 9" by 6" paperback and has 360 pages. The book has
some of the rare unpublished material of the period 1927 to 1931 and would
be of great interest to both historians and serious students of theosophy.
This period is important to the theosophical movement in that Krotona was
established in Ojai and Krishnamurti made the famous Truth is a Pathless
Land statement.

Many of the documents point to the fact that the Inner Founders were active
behind the scenes in important decisions taken during the Presidency of
Annie Besant. While much of the details were not publicly discussed, by
analogy, many students would see to that They continue to act behind the
scenes during critical times of TS.

When Krishnamurti made his statement Truth is a Pathless Land, many were
disappointed and came to the conclusion that he was going against all the
theosophical doctrines and some  members left the TS. Ernest Wood, well
known lecturer as well as one who had direct communication from one of the
Adepts had written a document explaining how what Krishnamurti was talking
is fundamentally not different from the basic doctrines of theosophy. It is
a well reasoned and convincing writeup. To my knowledge, this is the first
time it has been published.

Any student of theosophy will find much of the material of great interest
and anyone interested in the historical developments in TS should read the
book.

One major short coming of the book is the lack of an Index.

One big hurdle facing the average reader is the price of the book. Authorâs
website shows that it can be either ordered from Amazon or from the author.
>From either source, you have to pay the list price of $30.00, which is
pricey for a 360 page paper back book. The website indicates that a Kindle
version would be available soon and pricing is unknown.

The potential market for a theosophical book is rather small. Also many of
the readers outside the West will find the book too pricey. If we want the
material to be easily accessible to a lot of students outside the West, then
it should be made available as an electronic file for a small donation. (The
electronic file can be made searchable with no additional effort.) This mode
of distribution has been successful in computer software applications and
there is no reason why it should not succeed among theosophists. I hope the
author will seriously consider this avenue of distribution.

MKR


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