Theos-Talk Archives (February 1995 Message tl00185)

On 2d thought, this belongs on Theos-l as well, not only on my
Interfaith mailing list.  A few days ago, I noticed again that
someone, don't remember who, said something a little disparaging
about Annie Besant, and Alice Bailey (both in 1 sentence,
although they surely don't always share the same points of view).
There are people on this net who believe in 1 or the other, or
both of these 2 ladies, & what's wrong with that? Are all
Theosophists supposed to be uniformly blond haired, blue eyed,
wearing a brown uniform with a red Swastika arm band, ticky
tocky? & if you happen to be black haired & brown-eyed, then "off
with her head!"?

In this sense, I think, what T.  Subba Row wrote 100 years ago
applies very much to the diverse factions of Theosophists today.
It would be nice if we, who have as our 1st object to be a
nucleus of the human family, (officially known as "The
Brotherhood of Man", because red tape causes all bureaucracies to
be a little behind the times) would include Annie Besant, Alice
Bailey ,& all others who, don't exactly believe as we do
ourselves, in our Brotherhood of Man aka The Human Family.  They
happen to belong there.  It's a birthright.  Human is human, even
if it doesn't always look that way to everyone.

See ya round

Liesel

Hi, everyone,

This AM, I was browsing around in T Subba Row's "Esoteric
Writings" again, vintage 1895.  I found a passage which so
perfectly agrees with what we're trying to do here, that I
thought you all might like to see it.  So I'm about to copy it
off for you.  It's 100 years old, & sounds so new.

T.  Subba Row isn't a very well known personnage in Theosophical
circles.  I have no idea why I ever purchased his "..Writings".
But I do keep on finding passages which arouse my interest, every
time I browse through his book.  He must have been a Hindu
Theosophist (we belong to all of the world's religions, & his
picture on the book's cover shows him in a turban), and a good
friend of H.P.  Blavatsky, the founder of the Theosophical
Society.

p.  451-3 "....  I desire to live in peace and brotherly love
with all men; I have my own views, which satisfy my head and
heart, in which I firmly believe, and which I hope all other men
will respect in me; and I do not doubt that others who differ
from me have equallly seized the views that satisfy their heads &
hearts, are equaly justified in holding these and have an equal
claim on me to respect these their views.

"Looking round the universe nothing so strongly impressed me, as
the system of division of labour which pervades it.  Practical
results never spring from solitary causes; they are ever the
resultants of the more or less divergent effects of an
inextricable plexus of diverse causes.  It is from contrasts,
that all the joys and beauties of the world arise; it is from the
equilibrium of antagonistic forces that the Universe subsists.
All progress springs from difference; all evolution is the result
of differentiation; as in the great, so in the spiritual; as in
the visible so in the unseen universe.  "How, then can men fail
to see that diferences of opinion on matters spritual are parts
of the necessary mechanism of the spiritual organism that
everywhere underlies (as the bones underlie the flesh & skin) the
physical or visible world? How can they find fault with others
for holding views different from their own? How fail to realise
that those others are as truly working in harmony with the
pervading design or law of the ALL as themselves?

Night is as needful to our mundane economy as day; shall the
night revile the day, for its glare, its noise, its heat, or the
day reproach the night for its dusky stillness?

"So then it is in no spirit of finding fault with those who
differ from me, but only in the hope of clearing away imaginary
differences which being unreal work harm, not good as real
differences do that I desire to say a few words as to belief in a
Personal God, in an Impersonal God and in No-God ...." The
section is entitled "A Personal & An Impersonal God." The above
quotation is the lead-in.

Liesel