Theos-Talk Archives (August 2011 Message tt00024)

There appears to be much misunderstanding of the role of Internet in
relation to the objects of TS and Theosophy. We use modern discoveries and
inventions such as electricity, printing, telegraph, photography, sound
recording, trains, autos, airplane, telephone, video recording etc and the
latest being the computer, wireless phones and Internet. All these are just
tools and if one wants to live in Himalayan Cave or Brazil jungle without
any of these and just meditate and pray, one can do it and be happy and
possibly even make some spiritual progress.

Most of the people live in developing world where all of the above are
integrated with our daily activities. The work of theosophy is the welfare
of the people in the world and hence any intelligent man and woman working
for theosophy would use every tool available to connect with the masses,
because it is efficient and effective to do it.

One of the issues we have discussed several times in the past has been that
the theosophical organizations have been behind the curve in taking full
advantage of the modern tools to further their work. If you take a look at
the current leadership who make top level decisions around the world, they
are all really old-old and most do not fully understand how these modern
tools have gotten integrated with the daily lives of people in most of the
countries.

In the opinion of many theosophists around the world - not the old ones with
one step in the grave - but active middle aged and younger ones - TS and
theosophy is missing a great opportunity in using the modern tools to reach
the masses who would benefit a lot from the theosophical doctrines. The
greatest problem one faces is that these old-old people are set in their
ways and beliefs and are not likely to be open for educating what they are
all missing.

Only hope we see for the present is the isolated attempts of small groups of
individuals who are trying to provide forums on Internet where interested
theosophists and potential theosophists can interact and thus result in
dissemination of the objects of theosophy. Fortunately, Internet has leveled
the field between moneyed organizations and small groups on shoe-string
small budgets and may be that is the way of the future while organizations
with lots of money in the bank act as stumbling blocks.

MKR


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