Part of the Theosophical
Community
Remains Free from Bureaucratic
Illusions
Carlos Cardoso Aveline
Theosophy
teaches a global vision of life, free from any attachment, and impersonal
Small events may have great
consequences, and the creation of the United Lodge of Theosophists, in 1909, is
a clear example of that. One hundred and seven years after 1909, the founding
of the Independent Lodge in 2016 potentially expresses the same aspect of the
Karmic Law, in a different cycle of History.
The ULT was founded by a few
students in Los Angeles on 18 February, 1909.
By that time, the theosophical
movement had lost contact with its guiding lights. There were two rival
Theosophical Societies, both walking away from the original teachings of
Theosophy, built by H. P. Blavatsky between 1875 and 1891. Besides, their
leaders had no common sense.
The Adyar Society saw scarce
value in the teachings of HPB. It was fascinated by the use of lower psychic
powers and imaginary talks with Masters. In the two first decades of 20th
century, the leaders of the Adyar TS repeatedly declared to the wide public,
with ill-disguised pride, that soon the world would see the Return of the
Christ.
The new Messiah was Jiddu
Krishnamurti, a young disciple of Annie Besant. Thousands of sincere idealists
were deceived during decades by spectacular statements coming from one or
another “clairvoyant disciple”, even after Krishnamurti himself, personally
disappointed, denounced the whole farce and abandoned the Adyar Society.
Those frauds and illusions have
not been accepted as such yet, and they continue to form the foundation of the
bureaucratic structures of Adyar. As we will see in the present article, the
struggle to attain common sense and to preserve it continues to be a historical
necessity, not only to the Society which
produced the false Messiah of the 20th century, but also for the theosophists
of the other lines of thought, with no exception.
Progress
and Mistakes in Adyar
The worship of fake masters
and ritualistic ceremonies still make it very hard to search for truth in the
Besantian Society.
Since the second half of the
1930s, however, there was real progress in the long march back to common sense.
Time does not pass in vain, and Karma ripens through actual facts.
In spite of partial steps
taken in the right direction, the ethical dilemma remains unsolved since the
abandonment of the authentic Theosophy, a few years after Helena Blavatsky’s
death in 1891.
Ms. Radha Burnier served as
the international president of the Adyar TS during some 33 years, starting in
1980 and up to her death in October 2013. Radha was an honest and thoughtful
person, an idealist, and her world vision has essential points in common with
Theosophy. This must not be forgotten.
Radha was also the heir and
manager of the pseudo-theosophical structures fabricated during the first half
of 20th century. She did not want to make Adyar recover from such delusions, or
she was not capable of doing that. However, as she saw that her incarnation was
nearing its end, she refused to nominate any “successor” as the Outer Head of
the fake Esoteric School created by Annie Besant.
Radha also did not accept the
idea of indicating a successor for the direction of the “Egyptian Rite”, the
elite “occult” body secretly placed above the Adyar Esoteric School.[1] And she did not name anyone to
succeed herself as president of the Society.
Thus Radha interrupted the
“line of succession” of the fraud inaugurated by Mrs. Besant in the beginning
of 20th century, and closed her incarnation by ushering the Adyar Society into
a quicker transitional period whose result can be either a rebirth, or
destruction.
The step taken by Mrs. Burnier
in refusing to nominate successors was useful. It was also timid. The Adyar
Society looks like a church today.
However noble the intentions of its members, they still have to use
their best discernment and choose between two alternatives. The first one is to
promote a sense of respect for the facts and to stimulate the return to common
sense by adopting once more the original teachings.
The second possibility is to
go on with the present process of decay.
The question that remains
unanswered is: how long will it take for the first option to be chosen, which
is necessary for the Adyar Society to start experiencing a rebirth? The same
issue is valid to the United Lodge, for, in its own way, the ULT also got out
of tune regarding its original impulse.
The
Dilemma of the United Lodge
Since it was founded in 1909,
the United Lodge of Theosophists started to change in the movement as a whole the
dynamics of departure from the original theosophy.
The ULT emerged under the
leadership of Robert Crosbie and John Garrigues, with the aim of restoring the
common sense and the authentic teachings. Approximately two decades after the
foundation of the ULT, the Societies of Adyar and Point Loma (Pasadena) had
their fancies and “innovations” caught in blind alleys. Then both started to
gradually see once more the value of the philosophy taught by Helena Blavatsky.
In the Point Loma-Pasadena Society, the process was stronger. In Adyar, the
march back to common sense was interrupted during the 1990s.
How did the United Lodge work
as long as John Garrigues lived?
The ULT ignored political and
organizational divisions of the movement. It looked to the movement as a living
process, a dynamics transcending external forms. It believed that the sincere
search for truth is the common ground where all theosophists can come together.
It proposed the original teachings of the founders as the unassailable basis of unity among theosophists.
However, the ULT is far from
perfection. A significant part of its lodges, especially in the Western
countries, is rather limited to the mere repetition of the writings of Helena
Blavatsky and William Judge, and refuses to look at the challenges faced today
by mankind.
Other groups of
the ULT cannot see the need to actively unmask pseudo-theosophy. Yet there are
sections of the ULT and independent truth-seekers scattered in various
countries that are open to a renewal and potentially apt to a new cycle. In
India, where the influence of Mr. B. P. Wadia’s life and writings is strongly
felt, the ULT seems to remain strong. The insightful international magazine
“The Theosophical Movement” is an indication of that. [2]
An
Independent Lodge Emerges
In 2016, the
Brazilian-Portuguese lodge of the ULT declared its independence. It respectfully
disaffiliated itself from the Office of the ULT in Los Angeles and adopted the
name of Independent Lodge of Theosophists.
Active in various ways in
English language, the small association considers that it is not the material
dimension or number of followers that gives legitimacy to a school of thought.
The opposite frequently takes place: only those who do not wish to be the
biggest can concentrate on substance and quality.
The successful experience of
the ULT in the first decades of its existence constitutes a guiding light for
the Independent Lodge. One of the key factors in such a success is in the fact
that it was wise enough to remain small, acting with creativity and
independence. Theosophy teaches a global vision of life, free from any attachment,
and impersonal.
In the first decades after
1909, the ULT avoided both artificial growth and attachment to routine. Its
priority was the criterion of affinity. In general terms, it avoided the
mistake of subconsciously considering the search for universal truth less
important than the search for “believers”, followers and material possessions.
In spite of that, it gradually lost vitality after the death of John Garrigues
in 1944.
The Independent Lodge is a
complex proposal, such as the United Lodge was for most of its trajectory. A
part of the Lodge flows above the denser aspects of the physical plane
movement.
It is not an institution. It is
not a legal entity. From a formal point
of view, it has no leaders.
According to Robert Crosbie, a
theosophical lodge must be a set of ethical and universal principles. It is
also a community of people who learn and teach. It does not sell its knowledge,
for it considers that the eternal wisdom is like the air one breathes. It belongs
to all beings: how could one try to sell it?
The associates of the
Independent Lodge do not have to pay fees of any kind. The donations which
sustain the works are freely given. It sells books, but works in papers are but
the material tools of the teaching. The courses and studies it offers are free.
[3]
In various aspects the method
of the Independent Lodge is similar to that of the ULT, and some students may
see it as mysterious and hard to understand.
It does not work as a
conventional institution. It must be
understood in a gradual way. The rule of the Universal Brotherhood is to live
and work in internal communion, without unnecessary noise, and preserving
external diversity.
In order to make it easier to
understand at least in part the Independent Lodge, it is useful to remember the
authentic schools of philosophy in the past - in the West and the East alike -
did not charge for their teachings, and did not demand money at all. They were
not legal entities, and their teachers and students led simple, austere lives.
Only the Sophists, denounced
by Plato in his Dialogues, got payment from their students and adapted their
commercialized “verities” according to the interest of each client and circumstance.
Time is cyclic.
The philosophical schools of
the future will do the same as those of antiquity.
From this point of view, the
modern theosophical movement can be seen as a timeless and multidimensional school
of wisdom.
The Independent Lodge thinks
that the modern theosophical effort is not attached to a dead letter view of the
original teachings, nor to organizational structures that easily get old and dysfunctional. The movement is classic, Platonic and Neoplatonic.
It should try to express the original teachings in a loyal, ethical and
creative way, with no distortions. It is Eastern. It is an Eclectic School like
the one in ancient Alexandria. It is a school of Jnana Yoga, a science older
than our mankind. It also belongs to the future; and, being less than 200 years
old, it is young.
NOTES:
[1] See the article
“The Fraud in Adyar Esoteric School”, by Carlos Cardoso Aveline. The text is
available in our associated websites.
[2] The Theosophical
Society of Pasadena, which is present in some ten countries, has more than one
aspect (both positive and negative) in common with the United Lodge. The “Point
Loma” Theosophical Societies are active in a few countries. These seem to have a
top-down political structure and apparently constitute the school of thought
with less points in common regarding the vision of movement largely shared by
the ULT and the Independent Lodge.
[3] See the article “O Dinheiro Segundo a Teosofia” (“Money According to Theosophy”), by
Carlos Cardoso Aveline, which is available in our associated websites.
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