Theos-Talk Archives (June 2012 Message tt00036)

The American Section of TS(Adyar) is perhaps the richest one the world.
Over the years, its treasury has been accumulating and now is quite
substantial even with the current financial state of affairs in the world
with very low returns.

In theosophical thinking, a key concept is Karma. With all the accumulation
of money in the bank, what we find is that the membership has been in a
continuous slide. Various readers have various explanations why the
membership is shrinking.

TS was launched on a shoe string and accumulating wealth was not one of its
main aims. It is making theosophy available to men and women so that they
will benefit by it and in turn benefit everyone they deal with everyday.
Only objective measure of the growth and effectiveness of propagation of
theosophical ideas is the membership count. Many may not agree with this.
They talk about the quality vs quantity. No one has proven the present
quality of membership is in any way superior to that fifty years ago.

There is one more angle from which we may want to look at the inverse
relationship between money and membership. While many may have donated
money with good intentions, if the methods used to accumulate the money was
immoral and unethical, such money may bring with it the Karmic associations
generally bad. Is it likely that this factor is playing a role in the
current trend of disconnect with money and membership?

MKR


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