Theos-Talk Archives (November 1995 Message tl00027)

JRC:

It's interesting to read your fiery indictment of theosophical
organizations in your reply to Liesel. I won't try to quote
anything because that could carry on for too many pages.

You're basically making an impassioned statement for karma
yoga the path where immediate service to others is the highest
good. In terms of this approach you define chelaship as
measured in terms of what good deeds that the chela has done
in the world. And you suggest that it is wrong to occupy
ourselves with any practice that ignored the major crises
that face humanity at this time.

While I'll accept karma yoga as one possible path I won't
give it supreme status and discount the rest. Someone sitting
zazen is as useful as someone lobbying for a piece of
legislature to protect the environment. It's a maya to say
that a flower eagerly growing in the field is less useful
than a doctor helping the poor for free or a blazing star in
the night sky. Each of us is responsible to determine the
proper way to give personal expression to the divine and
your path of karma yoga is only one such way. *You* cannot
pass judgement on others for not following *your* path yet
you seem to be reacting to being treated this way yourself
by theosophical groups.

Anything that we do can be done purely skillfully with
selfless or unstained awareness or it can be done with
petty personal motives. That includes both the reading and
study of deep philosophy as well as talking care of a
sickly 100-year-old lady down the street needing help
cooking her lunch while her grandchildren are at work
during the day.

I'd agree that the existing theosophical groups need a
dramatic overhaul. But I won't accept your definition of
usefulness nor your rush to judgement as "utterly
condescending garbage" any discussion of a spiritual
path with clearly-define steps going beyond where we
are at this time. Do you also reject the Buddha dharma
as elisist because a series of steps are outlined with
sufficently clarity that it's possible to be on a step
that everyone else isn't on?

-- Eldon