Theos-Talk Archives (October 1994 Message tl00020)

John Tullis,

Glad to see your interesting feed back.  I'm taking you up on
your invitation to comment upon it:

JT> 1) The Nazis were quite effective at organization. They
> committed much that I consider evil, the leaders were deeply
> involved in the occult, and they managed to hang together long
> enough to do a lot of damage.

Yes, quite a few books and magazine articles have been devoted to
this.  Surely the swastika and the double headed bird are
powerful symbols.  So was also the praxites, which was eliminated
from the back of our Mercury dimes, thanks to Mussolini's
appropriation of this beautiful symbol.  In my view, the
manipulation of symbols by governments is an occult practice,
whether the government is fully aware of their power or not.  But
keep in mind, that all governments manipulate symbols.  It comes
down to motivation and intent.  Yes, I would agree that the
Nazis' killing off some twenty million people is a good
indication of evil intent--to put it mildly.

JT> 2) The old KGB was very effective at infiltrating
> organizations and placing forged documents where they would be
> found and believed to be genuine, inserting moles into
> government and intelligence agency structures of their
> opponents, feeding "disinformation" to the media, destablising
> government and other organizational structures. Many of
> their actions were "evil", again in my opinion. (I hope we
> don't get into a long discussion on what is evil, since I
> suspect that most of us agree on it. I also am not claiming
> here that the KGB is or was the only intelligence apparatus
> that pursued these methods.)

Yes, but as you seem to hint, our own CIA gets bad press from
time to time for the same tricks.

JT> Therefore, I argue the following (my opinion):
> 1) That we should not be so quick to reject the concept of
> organized evil. I don't think that just because the dark path
> is ultimately one of selfishness (and please lets not get into
> a discussion on the meaning of selfishness, please please) that
> that means that active members and agents of the "Dark
> Brotherhood", consciously or unconsciously, cannot act in an
> organized manner to achieve specific ends.

Agreed.  As I mentioned in my earlier post, the Mahatmas use the
term "Brothers of the left hand path." To me, it is both
suggestive of the Mahatma's acknowledgement that even these
people are still "brothers", and that they work in a brotherhood.
Personally, I distinguish the concept of the maverick "black
magician" from the collectivity of forces leading to the polarity
of matter.

JT> 2) That it is clearly possible that some of the confusion,
> backbiting, and quarreling between the various founders and
> their followers could have been deliberately provoked.

This is where I become uncomfortable.  It was this idea that
motivated my earlier comments concerning the conspiracy paranoia.
It may be very true that all of this "backbiting and quarreling"
may have been "deliberately provoked", but if these founders
didn't have the capacity within themselves for backbiting and
quarreling in the first place, they could not have been so
"provoked." Another thing that comes to mind concerns HPB's
warnings to probationers in the E.S.  Once the probationer makes
those pledges, the worst and the best within them begins to come
out.  She didn't blame this phenomena upon interference from
"dark forces", but just stated it as an occult fact.
Theosophical history shows example after example of people who
came into contact with the Masters, and/or HPB, and went off into
outrageous behavior.  They got onto some real ego trips and
created more damage than good.  I think it is an important
warning for all of us.  As I mentioned before--stupidity,
ignorance and greed for power, cover these problems very well.
They are underlying motivations that we can detect.  If
"provocation" from the "dark forces" lie behind that, it is less
easy to judge.  However, even if it were so, I don't feel that
this circumstance relieves the founders from responsibility for
their actions.

JT> 3) The more successful an organization is for "Light", the
> more pressure will be placed on that organization to discredit
> it, break it up, damage it, and destroy it. Some pressure is
> done through apparently reputable people publishing "debunking"
> reports. Some will be done by publishing negative reports about
> organizational leaders. Some will be done by attacking the
> organization financially. Some will be done by infiltrating
> the organization and quietly disrupting it from the inside.

Agreed.  However, this is also a very dangerous double edge
sword.  There are also people who recognize the "evil" within an
organization, and try to expose it.  This is true in all
organizations, "esoteric" or "exoteric." In exoteric
organizations, when certain principled people discover corruption
within an organization and try to expose it, they are labeled
"whistle blowers." You may have seen the movies "Serpico" and
"Marie," which are docudrama of two such famous cases.  A recent
study on whistle blowers, however, shows that the typical fate of
a whistle blower, is that they lose their job, are blacklisted
and their whole lives are ruined, even when the corruption is
exposed.  Corruption is inherent within organizations, whether
the motivations be money, power or ego.  Those who try to expose
hypocrisy, lies, and corruption within an organization are almost
invariably labeled as a threat by both those in power and the
uninformed workers for the organization.

So yes, there may be "evil people" consciously or unconsciously
working for the "dark forces" to destroy "spiritual"
organizations, but don't confuse them with the more common
"trouble makers" who are working out of principle, in their
attempt to expose an exorcise the "evils" that are already within
the organizations.  The people are rarely recognized for what
they are trying to do, and are almost invariably considered
enemies, even by the very people (the majority) who would benefit
the most by their efforts.

JT> 4) Most attacks are not coordinated from any single agency.
> However, just as today intelligence agencies infiltrate
> organizations all the time (the FBI specializes in this), it is
> just possible that SOME disruption of the early society may
> have been due to various early intelligence agencies.
> Of course, this IS purely speculation. All we do know is that
> British intelligence suspected HPB of being a Russian spy.

Yes--purely speculation.


JT> Finally, I think that most damage done by the DB to the
> Theosophical Society is done by influencing people through
> their lower natures. But I also think that it is organized. I
> don't subscribe to conspiracy theories.  But I do think that an
> organization that works for Light attracts attention, and gets
> "attacked" more than, say, a business organization.

I wish I could get my wife to post some of her findings
concerning government and corporate corruption.  She teaches
courses on this, as well as having researched and published quite
a lot.  But, she doesn't think very highly of e-mail as a form of
communication, so it is hard for me to find a reason for her to
want to do so.  Her research, however, makes it quite clear that
corruption in government and business is so ingrown into the
system that little can be done about it.  From what I have
observed, corruption in spiritual organizations run so close to
the same patterns found in business and government, that I would
be hard put to make a distinction between them.  Of course, in
non profit organizations, the motivation is not usually money,
but that is the only distinction that I can think of off hand.
Motivations of power, and self aggrandizement are common to both.
However, I still don't find any unanswered riddles that require
the "DB" to account for them.  People muck things up just fine on
their own.  If the "DB" was involved in the early (or even
present) movement, to destroy it, they didn't have to do very
much.  Most of the work was done for them.

By the way, this subject is very germane to why I felt that a
discussion on ethics would have been so productive on theos-l.
One of the reasons why corruption is so successful is because
most people benefit from it in one way or another.  The negative
side, is that it is very much like a cancer in that it eats out
and destroys the vitality of an organization.  Ethics are so
often applied situationally--that is, personal advantage so often
weighs heavily in ethical decision making.  A common scenario
might run like this: Why should I rat on my boss who is stealing
from the company? Exposing him will almost certainly ruin my own
career, even if I was believed.  Further, what he is doing is so
commonly done, that little good would be accomplished by exposing
him anyway.  Better to mind my own business.  Or many
theosophists I have known would rationalize, "better to stay out
of it and leave it to his own karma."

Jerry Hejka-Ekins