Theos-Talk Archives (December 1994 Message tl00008)

The Winter 1995 issue of Gnosis includes a dossier of documents
from the Solar Temple, the cult which carried out a mass suicide
in October in Switzerland and Canada.  It turns out that their
beliefs are uncomfortable close to some Theosophical teachings.
Here's a quote from the document "Transit to the Future":

Neither the races nor human Evolution are the fruit of chance.
They are ruled by an Occult Brotherhood made up of 33 Masters
(The Elder Brothers of the Rose+Cross), as well as a few Adepts
gathered in small and discreet brotherhoods.  Having completed
their human evolution, their entity uses borrowed bodies to
manifest in this world and to accomplish the Divine Purpose.
Beyond time and spice, these high-ranking Initiates always
recognize and find each other in order to organize mutations,
modify the structure of Nature, transform brute Matter so that
the Consciousness of the kingdoms evolves harmoniously toward
higher levels of being.  Although their membership in this
Brotherhood remained secret, by their presence, their influence,
and their action, they have marked the great shifts of
Evolution.(p.  92)

I would suggest that this kind of thinking about Masters,
prevalent outside the TS as well as in it, is fundamentally
dangerous because inherently unhealthy.  Delusions of grandeur,
persecution, reference, influence-- the whole Pandora's box of
paranoid symptoms-- seem to follow in the wake of any such
conception of Elder Brethren.