Theos-Talk Archives (June 1996 Message tl00884)

To RI & BB & others ...
	I also must say the my personal experience with Joy Mills was
hardly positive. I met her only once. I was a speaker at a Wheaton Summer
Convention ... speaking on "TS 2000" - and was trying to outline a vsion
for the TS ... not just theory, but a good number of practical
suggestions. Problem was, most of them had to do with opening the TS ...
to attempting to greatly increase both the presence of the TS in the
world, and suggeesting far greater interaction between current members.
It took a good couple of years of intense work to work the ideas out -
many of them taken from other successful organizations and adapted to the
TS.
	Gave the talk at the convention. It was received with something
close to excitement by most of the audience - and great disdain by the
leadership. Joy Mills came up to me afterwards, introduced herself, said
"I *don't* agree with you" ... and simply turned around and walked away.
	I little realized at the time that (in retrospect) most of my
ideas had to do with opening the TS to "tourists" - being, as I was, too
unevolved to understand that theosophy is only for the Special People.
	But my first and only meeting with Ms. Mills did not exactly
strike me as a contact with a "saint". Dorothy Abbenhouse was exceedingly
gracious (she was President at the time) - even though she also disagreed
with most of the ideas. Joy was just outright rude - came up with no
other apparent purpose other than to take a quick shot (not a word of
*why* she disagreed ...) - as though any thoughts I had were simply
beneath her notice ... and she just wanted to make sure I *knew* they
were beneath her notice.
	In critisizing her "tourist/pilgrim" paradigm - I am, at least,
acknowledging her thoughts to be worth the trouble to discourse upon. But
neither my personal contact with her (quite different than Richard's
experience) nor her ideas (which was all *I* was critisizing in my own
post) strike me as anything but fairly good demonstrations of the mindset
that has reduced the TS to a fairly miniscule and ineffectual
organization with very little hope of accomplishing its Objects in any
substantive way in the larger world.
								-JRC