Theos-Talk Archives (December 1994 Message tl00153)

Coming into work today, I found nearly 40 postings to catch up
with on the list, when I'd only been away a few days!

First, with regard to CW Leadbeater, more than one person has
said in essence "Why don't we leave this all behind us where it
belongs?"

I don't believe we can put it all behind us yet because there's
too much unfinished business here.  There's too much conflict or
sense of conflict that still has to be worked out.  Sure, let's
get on with the other aspects of our work but, if we don't deal
with this, it will continue to be destructive, especially when
newcomers to the TS encounter the controversial material on CWL
and want to know what really happened.

If TS members can't handle these questions comfortably and from a
position of strength, it will be a negative for the newcomers.

The best way to handle this situation is to be prepared, by
having looked at the issues for and against, and worked out our
attitudes and responses beforehand.  This means being informed,
for a start.

Like many others, I used to read a lot of CWL in my first few
years of belonging to the TS.  and have a lot of admiration for
him and his work.  I now read other writers, but not because I
heard any bad press about him.

Without prejudice to CWL, we need to keep in mind that "falls",
as they are sometimes called, are an ever-present hazard along
the spiritual way.  And what are we told to do if we fall? It is
to get up, dust ourselves off, and carry on.  Even if it happens
10,000 times.  It's the determination to continue that counts,
they say.

And if we see somebody else fall, what are we supposed to do? Is
it not to help them to get up and be ever-mindful of the best
within them? Is that not a way we can express love, and help them
along?

We can do these things across the bridge of time to those who
went before us, as part of our attitude towards them.

It may be hard to forgive each other in conflicts on a discussion
list but it's often harder to forgive our leaders! This is
something I've observed over the years in the TS and beyond,
towards leaders of all sorts.

It is not beyond us to hold the greatest respect and love for
somebody and be aware at the same time of their failings.  In any
case, we weren't there, so our knowledge is necessarily second
hand and very partial.  The joys of maya (appearance or illusion,
if you're wondering).

Incidentally, regarding the idea that CWL gave rise to other
seers who saw similar things (I'm paraphrasing here), Geoffrey
Hodson who in one of his 1920s books expressed a very high regard
for Charles Leadbeater, didn't always see the same things as
Leadbeater, when applying his own clairvoyance to the Occult
Chemistry field.  Some things he did see the same, like the
oxygen spiral, but it was very apparent that he was making his
own observations and taking his own path into the territory,
often seeing very different aspects of the field.

Another little offering from GH is that, when the question arose
of Krishnamurti's declining to be vehicle of the World Teacher as
proposed by CWL and Annie Besant, Hodson just said to me "It was
heartbreaking for all concerned."

Now, regarding the way people have interacted on this discussion
list regarding the CWL question, there have been a lot of good
and helpful ideas, but I especially liked this part of JRC's post
of 26 December 94:-

> We, Theosophists, at our highest and most brilliant point of
> development, could become one of those very few groups that
> discover and articulate those patterns...and at this point in
> humanity's history no organization could hand to humanity any
> greater gift.  When I think of this possibility, I begin to
> understand what HPB poured her whole life into...begin to
> understand why the Masters put such a relatively large amount of
> their very rare and scarce energy into the TS.  I certainly do
> not claim to know what such a thing as true Universal Brotherhood
> looks like, but I have, after a decade of meditation on that one
> concept, concluded that its manifestation lies in patterns of
> relationship...thousands of groups and philosophies have a notion
> of the *idea*, and there are countless books written full of
> wonderful sentiments about "loving" one another, treating one
> another with respect and dignity & etc.  Literally hundreds of
> millions of people mouth pithy little aphorisms...but the whole
> thing falls apart at the level of interpersonal relationships.
> To discover how to have those wonderful ideas penetrate that
> layer of human living where a few people engage one another on a
> topic about which there is great disagreement...is (IMO) to most
> fully engage the task embedded in the First Object...and it takes
> the full courage of the first ray, the enormity of the
> understanding of the second ray, and the clarity of intellect of
> the third ray to even undertake such a project.

To my mind, relationships are indeed the stuff of the body of
humanity that the Masters care so passionately about.

Humanity seems to me a bit like the brain of a new-born child
(using the current ideas of neurophysiology) with all the nerve
cells there, but not many interconnections, or not many strong
ones, between them.

So let's hang in there, and work through this "stuff"!
Grow those connections!!

Murray Stentiford
murray@sss.co.nz