Theos-Talk Archives (March 2006 Message tt00092)

Dear friends,

For extra-clarity, I am using double quotation marks in the paragraphs
written by E. Wood.  Carlos.


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Ernest Wood, ex-international secretary (Adyar), gives his testimony:

LIBERTY OF THOUGHT, OR LIBERTY BUT TO SAY  “YES” and “AMEN”?

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Dear friends,

Fraternal greetings from my 3,000 volumes library, which is surrounded by 
trees and birds and located in an area of environmental protection in 
Brasília.

Besides having been the international secretary of the Adyar Society for 
many years,  Ernest Wood was also a candidate to the  international 
presidency in the election when George Arundale got the office,  in the 
1930s.

Wood describes the moment when he perceived that the idea of liberty of 
thought had become just a façade, under which everyone must obey and 
exercise blind belief:

“"As the new tendency in the theosophical movement increased it offended me 
more and more.  My object all along had been to sift the gold  from the ore, 
but now it seemed that the ore was growing more and the gold less. 
Theoretically there was freedom of thought and opinion, and the Society was 
a truth-seeking body, and our truth-seeking was to be done as a brotherhood, 
without distinction of race, sex, creed or colour. In this spirit we were to 
study and investigate for the promotion of knowledge of the truth, 
especially about man,  his relation to his environment and his destiny. But 
in practice there was more than a tendency to give the platform to the 
believer and to squeeze out the critic or the independent thinker. Instead 
of the subjection  of all  doctrines to a co-operative inquisition, ‘You 
must respect the faith of your fellow-members’.”"

“"By 1925 prayers of all materially powerful religions were introduced in  
the Society’s official platform, and the movement definitely degenerated 
into a brotherhood of creeeds. Criticism of other people’s ideas became 
‘unbrotherly!’  And besides, it ‘spoiled the work’, and the  work was 
largely a conveyance of blessings and forces by those who were admitted to 
the systems of organized access to these things. On these grounds offices 
were filled, and invitations  were issued to leaders to preside and lecture 
at the Society’s gatherings nearly all over  the world. (...)”"

"“Bishop Leadbeater and his agents were eminent in the theosophical weakness 
of wanting things both ways at once, though  that was quite illogical.  The 
Society must be quite without dogma, and yet its councils  must be governed 
and its platforms occupied by  those who were eager to promote certain 
beliefs, leaderships and objectives, and members who opposed these must be 
kept in the background.”"

To this “having both ways at once”, as expressed in authoritarian political 
ideologies,  the English author George  Orwell gave the name of 
“doublethink” in his remarkable though  far from optimistic novel “1984”, 
written in 1948.

Leadbeater and Besant  in Adyar were contemporary with Mussolini in Italy, 
Stalin in Russia, and with the rising of Hitler in Germany, and all of them 
used the authoritarian way of thinking called “doublethink” by Orwell.  That 
sort of thinking is slightly outdated. It is time to improve.

Fortunately or unfortunately, there is no actual separation between Adyar  
and the other theosophical groups and institutions. We must all dialogue our 
way into some more realistic way of reasoning in the future.

Adyar shortcomings are by no means limited to Adyar itself. No one is 
perfectly consistent.

Everyone makes mistakes, and many of us try to learn from them.

That will be easier if we stop seeing criticisms as “attacks”, and abandon 
the emotional blackmail which forbids independent thinking.  Thus truth can 
be gradually put above bias of any kind.

Best regards, Carlos Cardoso Aveline.

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NOTE:

(1) “Is This Theosophy?”, by Ernest Egerton Wood, London: Rider& Co., 
Paternoster House, E.C., 1936, 318 pp., facsimile edition by Kessinger 
Publishing, LLC, Kila, MT, USA.  See p. 301.

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