Theos-Talk Archives (November 1993 Message tl00071)

Osmar de C. and Jerry S:

    Thanks for your comments. I'm looking forward to making a reply,
    but it may take a few days until I have time. I appreciate the
    feedback because it points me to those things that I'm writing
    that I need to go back to, rethink, reevaluate, and improve or
    expand on what I've written. The feedback is helpful.

Jerry H-E:

    While I do not personally concern myself with the writings of
    Leadbeater, because I do not derive much value from them, and
    do not find reading them a learning experience for myself, I'm
    not sure that we can use their ability to stand the test of
    time as showing their intrinsic value.

    The ability to gather a following, to create a market for certain
    ideas leads to those ideas persisting. "The Book of Mormon," for
    instance, could have perished as a work of spiritualist literature
    of the last century, had a following arisen, giving it a current
    readership of who knows how many millions of people to this day.

    I would see Leadbeater's ideas gradually blending in with other
    New Age popular ideas, because they contain a strong element of
    spiritualism and are heavily christianized. Leadbeater was a
    precursor to the modern hippie, with long hair, bare feet,
    liberal attitudes towards sex, and a strong blending of the
    psychic with an appreciation for mother nature. He may not have
    met the higher standards that we would apply to students of the
    mysteries, but could serve as a role model for some people
    seeking a break with the materialistic western world and wanting
    to reestablish their links with the spiritual.

    His writings do not appeal to me because they do not contain
    a *something* that I find in Blavatsky and a few others in
    the theosophical world. But there is something to them, or
    they would not attract a readership and a following. We could
    perhaps leave it to a matter of personal preference and taste,
    with the idea that we all have the time where we know that
    something is missing in our lives and search for more. That
    which the writings of Leadbeater do not provide, will eventually
    be missed by his readers, and sought for elsewhere.

                                 Eldon Tucker