Theos-Talk Archives (April 2004 Message tt00102)

Dear Mauri,

Everything you say about the attitudes in the Toronto TS reflects 
those local lodges/study centers I visited repeatedly in the 80s and 
90s: TS in Maryland, D.C. Lodge, Charlotte Study Center. Those I 
visited only once, Oakland, Atlanta, New York, were just as 
hospitable to all kinds of ideas. As they were, for that matter, in 
Paris and London. Nor in any dealings with the Pasadena TS 
headquarters have people been overtly dogmatic or unfriendly in 
reaction to my books. The Pasadena TS had a branch in Hampton Roads 
VA for 10 years that I was involved in founding and we were as 
multiperspectivalist as possible with lots of Cayce folks on board. 
I had plenty of enjoyable visits to Wheaton after my first book on 
the Masters came out. There too one gets an impression of 
multiperspectivalism in their publications and activities.

But there is a category of interrelated ideas on which multiple 
perspectives are regarded as threatening and which therefore must be 
silenced/avoided. #1 on the list might well be Masters and their 
relationship to Theosophy, #2 being the relationship between 
Leadbeater and Krishnamurti (which the Krishnamurti-ites of all 
varieties seem as spooked by as the Leadbeater-did-no-wrong TSers.) 
Resistance to multiperspectivalism in Theosophy is IMO strongest in 
the ES (which has the one true secret path to get to the only real 
Masters, concocted mainly by that poor victim of endless slanders, 
CWL) and the ULT (which has the one authoritative body of scriptures 
which represents the Masters' teaching.) But that small minority of 
dogmatic Theosophists is the tail that wags us multiperspectivalist 
dogs in local lodges and study centers and most of all at-large 
membership. If Adyar local groups' multiperspectivalism is 
superficial, and covers up hidden dogmatism about sacred cow 
subjects at the national and international levels, there's something 
fraudulent about the whole enterprise. 

ULT is a tail wagging the Theosophical dog in the sense that 
Cranston's HPB bio was and is treated by both the Adyar and Pasadena 
TSes as the most reliable treatment of their founder, endorsed 
publicly by them for years. Since her book came out in 1993 nothing 
new about HPB has been written in the publications of any of those 
organizations AFAIK so it is as if that biography was canonized 
throughout the movement as the orthodox Theosophical truth about 
HPB. The one thing they can (and DID) all agree on is that new 
ideas or questions about HPB are unwelcome. All that has been 
settled.

Cheers,

Paul

PS-- Bart has repeatedly suggested that I'd be as welcome as ever to 
speak at most local lodges in the US-- if not at Wheaton where I 
never did before anyhow. 

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, Mauri <mhart@i...> wrote:
> Paul wrote, partly: <<Maybe someone 
> should start a Multiperspectivalist 
> Society and get back to the original 
> spirit of what HPB was trying to do.
> Cheers,Paul<<
> 
> I've been a member of the Toronto TS for 
> some years, and I don't know about other 
> TS's, but I don't see how this one could 
> be any more 
> multiperspectivalistisisistic than it 
> already is, seeing as they seem to be 
> not only studying, but praising, 
> apparently, writings, writers, people 
> that have been getting many critical 
> comments on these lists. They have had 
> special sessions just for such praisings 
> and thanksgivings. I'm tending to 
> refrain from naming names of such 
> authors on the grounds that that might 
> be, in a sense, somewhat too multi of me 
> to do, here, in this context, maybe. 
> While there may be perfectly good enough 
> reasons why lots of people of all kinds 
> might be praised and studied (after all, 
> if "all kinds" of people are real 
> enough, to begin with, well then, 
> obviously enough ...)... In my case, eg, 
> I have read/studied authors that, I 
> suspect, lots of people might consider 
> crazy, dipsy, flapdoodly, delusional, 
> among other things, "basically," in some 
> sense ...
> 
> Still, I'm tending to wonder if there 
> might be some kind of "relevant-enough 
> but" that might be worth considering in 
> the context of multiness in Theosophy, 
> generally speaking (if not always "more 
> particularly speaking," so much, maybe, 
> in some cases/scenarios ...) ... While 
> "broader" perspectives in general might 
> be seen to be a good thing, wouln't the 
> nature of the "broadness" have something 
> to do with the nature of the goodness or 
> relativity of such broadnesses ... Not 
> that broadnesses in general might not 
> tend to get manipulated in so many ways, 
> but ...
> 
> So maybe you should try out the Toronto 
> TS, Paul, if you want more multi. While 
> that TS seems a little too multi for my 
> taste, I've been giving them $15 a year 
> so can borrow books from their library.
> Not that the people there aren't "nice," 
> and all like that (and I have attented a 
> number of their meetings), but/"but"... 
> In other words, I think I'm trying to 
> say that, while there may be forms of 
> multiness in Theosophic societies that 
> might be seen to promote some kind of 
> progress, seems to me that one might 
> ALSO want to consider whether there 
> might be forms of multiness that might 
> have the effect of tending to dilute and 
> erase the Theosophical Movement as such, 
> possibly tending to replace it with 
> whatever such multiness might promote, 
> whatever that might be per whoever ...
> 
> Cheers,
> Mauri