Theos-Talk Archives (November 1995 Message tl00432)

ET to Paul

You seem to be giving a "good guy / bad guy" theme where the
negative and less-developed aspects of a theosophical student
go under one term and the positive and more-advanced aspects
under another term. I don't see this dichotomy. We're all
students with various strengths and weaknesses students in
study hall with no guru or teacher to conduct the class. This
is the status quo of theosophical groups as they are currently
being run.

RI

Or perhaps that is exactly the unintentional insult most in need of redress.
Of the things about organized Theosophy which have caused me to shake my
head over the years few have produced a wider arc than this: that it begins
by calling to the Master-Wisdom in each of us and that it ends by reducing us
to the status of lowly students in a study hall.

One becomes a Jehovah's Witness and is instantly transformed enough to go
door to door in the new and glorious raiment of God's Chosen; one becomes a
"Theosophist" and even the good suit we arrived in can no longer be worn
until each thread is properly footnoted and cross-referenced to some garment
someone supposedly far more worthy than we used to wear. We are considered
to be on our best best behavior when we simply "study"; on our worst when we
speak from personal authority.

If the term *theosopher* has to be another coin put into circulation because
the old coin *theosophist* no longer gives much if any recognition to an
individual's "own transcendental progress which has resulted in at least some
personal knowledge of things otherwise inaccessible" so be it. Who else
could a theosophical society be for anyway? Someone who shows up on
Theosophy's doorstep so empty-handed that his or her only excuse for being
there could be the study and perhaps worship of dead people who had such
progress and resulting knowledge?

No we all showed up as theosophers but were willing to call ourselves
"theosophists" as long as we thought that term included our own spiritual
advancement and the unique perspectives and articulations which necessarily
flow from it. If we find however that we are more and more being
"screened" for orthodoxy and "graded" for book-knowledge *theosophers* some
of us shall be again until things change.

In the meantime let us leave the atmosphere of the study hall and meet as
kings and queens or not at all. . . .

I like Paul's attitude actually.

Richard Ihle