Theos-Talk Archives (March 2006 Message tt00257)

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

“It may be true, it may be false, who knows?”

ADYAR  T.S.  AND  ITS  PATTERN  OF  AMBIGUITY

Carlos Cardoso Aveline

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Dear Friends,

As we examine the “editorial policy” adopted by Mr. Daniel Caldwell and Mr. 
John Algeo, we may recognize in it an  old  pattern of ambiguity, doubt and 
indecision which dates back to Annie Besant’s time.

Since the 1890s, Adyar has been accumulating doubts and skepticism 
underneath its practice of blind belief and ritualistic authoritarianism.

1) In the 1890s,  A. Besant and H. Olcott made a worldwide campaign  against 
William Judge, accusing  him of forging messages from the Masters.  They 
created a Committee to judge him but the Committee did not do this. Once 
Besant and Olcott had won their political struggle for power against W. Q. 
Judge,  they both gave signs they had repented from  those accusations. Yet 
W. Q. Judge has NOT been declared inocent yet.  Adyar leaders seem to say:  
“He may be guilty, he  may innocent, who knows? And who is anyone to know?”  
Indeed, thus began the policy of  power-ambiguity.

2) Let’s see another example.  C. W. Leadbeater went to Mars and Mercury and 
had many other absurd fancies about talking to  the Masters,  about being an 
Initiate, about a Second Coming of  Jesus Christ,  etc.  Yet even now Adyar 
authorities say: “C.W.L. may be right,  he may be wrong, who knows? And who 
are you to judge him?”  A firmly  ‘agnostic’ position about obvious facts. 
Those who want to see more sincerity are systematically accused of being 
arrogant, authoritarian and unbrotherly.  Thus the discussion is  astutely 
taken  to the personal level and the facts are forgotten. If the questioners 
happen to be  members of the Adyar Society, they are usually persecuted 
until they get out of it.

3) Let’s see one more  fine example of such a systematic ambiguity.   H. P. 
Blavatsky was the object of libels in the 1880s. The S.P.R., which made the 
false charges,  abandoned all of  them in the 1980s. Now, surprisingly 
enough, those lies are being published as part of  H.P.B.’s  own writings! 
And that’s not all.  They are being published  with no clear identification 
to the average reader. This editorial practice is tantamount to directly 
libelling her. What is Mr. John Algeo’s position?  “These letters might be 
false, or they might be true”.  What about Mr. Daniel Caldwell’s position? 
“These are ‘negative accounts’ and ‘testimonies’ ”.  The fact that they are 
UTTER LIES apparently makes them look rather useful to those Editors’s eyes 
– for motives of their own. In the case of Caldwell’s book,  the Masters of 
the Wisdom are, themselves,  personally attacked.

4) Quite recently, in February 2006, Daniel Caldwell was identified by Paul 
Johnson in Theos-talk  as the physical person behind  false names such as 
“David Green”, “Terry Hobbes” and others, used to attack the ULT and other 
of his ‘blanks’.  Confronted with Johnson’s facts, Caldwell  does not 
clarify the issue.  Caldwell’s friends seem to say:  “The charges may be 
true,  and they may be false, who knows? And who is anyone to judge Daniel?” 
  Yet it is not a question of judging him as a person. It is a question of 
evaluating some of his actions -- which seem to belong to the same  old 
pattern of  “political”,  systematical ambiguity.

Examples could be many, but these are enough for a start.

In the Adyar Society, since the 1890s, we have had a thick layer of top-down 
blind authority and blind belief, on one hand.   On the other hand, there is 
 a great amount of skepticism, doubts and unbelief.

These two  extremes are kept in a dangerous equilibrium through the art of 
political and authoritarian  ambiguity.  Officially, this policy of   “maybe 
yes,  maybe not” is presented to the world as pure liberty of thought. Yet  
anyone who searches for a clear, unambiguous position is immediately accused 
of being intolerant and authoritarian, and of  “disturbing  harmony”.

Thus H.P.B. and William Judge, who had pure minds and hearts, are put at the 
same moral level as C.W.Leadbeater and James Wedgwood, whose ethical 
behaviour and spiritual discernment are located somewhere  below sea level.

This ambiguity-system does not belong to Neo-Theosophists only.  It has 
ancient roots. In the West, it started with the Greek  Sophists.

While Greek ‘Philosophers’  (literally, ‘friends of the wisdom’) were 
commited to seek  truth regardless of self-interest, “Sophists” like 
Protagoras held that truth can be adapted to anyone’s short term interests, 
like getting money and personal power.  Hence the famous sentence:  “Man  ( 
i.e.,  one’s short term goals)  is the measure of all things”.

The matter of the fact is that Sophism is not a process located exclusively 
outside of ourselves.  It is also  a role played by our lower quaternaries 
or outer personalities in producing self-delusions and a whole set of 
short-term interests and mayavic ideations  which prevent us from seeing 
truth in  a clear  way.

If we have the patience and the courage needed,  little by little we can get 
rid of it.

In the decades ahead, we should be able to perceive and understand more and 
more of these personal and collective mechanisms of self-delusion.

For this,  two essential factors are: A) the courage to develop an 
independent thinking; and B) the loyal  hearing to the ‘voice of the 
silence’ -- which is the voice of our own conscience.   Both factors develop 
at the same time, and eventually  such a process will stimulate 
buddhi-manas.

(On the other hand, active factors like blind belief, hatred and fear 
obviously tend to block  Antahkarana, the manasic bridge between higher  and 
lower selves.)


Best  regards,   Carlos Cardoso Aveline


O o o o O o o o O o o o O o o o O

_________________________________________________________________
Com o MSN Spaces você divide seu blog, suas fotos, sua lista de música e 
muito mais com seus amigos! Crie já o seu espaço online e com seus amigos! E 
só entra no   http://spaces.msn.com/