Theos-Talk Archives (January 1997 Message tl00651)

Ann writes that the Krishnamurti episode so traumatized the TS
with being a laughingstock that there was an unspoken agreement
to avoid all risks of such a thing recurring.  I think that's
right on the money with the Adyar Society.  Katherine Tingley
was in her own way a real intuitive, unpredictable, creative
type, and in her wake the same kind of conservatism seems to
have emerged in the Point Loma and derivative branches.  There
the conservatism may have had something to do with her
overextending the society financially and the trauma of losing
Point Loma parcel by parcel afterwards.  Chuck says that a
compulsion for respectability has caused the Adyar TS to adopt
whatever coloration is fashionable rather than being creative
or distinctive.  That, too seems right on.  After being an
international joke in the wake of Krishnamurti's departure, the
attitude seems to be to show just how mainstream we are.  TPH
has published a lot of fine books by creative authors-- but
they haven't been Theosophists and haven't written about
Theosophy.  

An occult theory about this goes to the 100-year cycle
business.  This indicates that from 1925 everything was
downhill until 1975, when it completely died.  But I don't have
any trouble seeing signs of a new impulse coming in around that
time.  For a close-to-home example, it's the year that the ARE
built its library and conference center and Virginia Beach
started to be a New Age mecca.  But there are lots of other
cultural trends one could cite that indicate the mainstreaming
of Theosophical ideas in other forms from about that time.
So maybe the work of the TS is done, successful in spite of
itself, but the impulse being spent our energies should go into
new forms.