Theos-Talk Archives (October 1996 Message tl00026)

        I'd like to add my 2 cents worth to this discussion. Since I skipped
several theos-l digests, because I was behind, it isn't quite clear to me
who came across with what idea. Might be Bee or Ann or Doss or Einar.

Someone said "The master always chooses the chela". That's not necessarily
so. I remember some Theosophist writing that sometimes someone advances
him(her)self so greatly that a master has to take notice. I think Serge King
works on that principle, it's Kahuna. People get answers, if they ask the
right questions. Otherwise, he is still.

""It probably will take time before many wake up to the fact that it all
lies within themselves, and then have the courage to follow their own tune."
 I'd like to suggest that this isn't so easy all by yourself, because I know
of some people who were made to try something like this. You go into
completely uncharted territory. There are no recognizable sign posts. The
entire landscape is new & strange. Now just try to find your way through
this without any help, completely by hit or miss. Very difficult.

Quoting DePurucker "It is the intuitive understanding that comes from on
high that could constitute proper thinking". I think that statement needs to
be clariefied a little, because I don't think it's such a great idea to just
accept every ideas one gets from "on high" without checking it out against
one's common sense.

"Olcott is said to have modeled the democratic structure of the TS after the
Constitution of the United States, thus ensuring both full democracy and
strong infrastructure."

I don't really know what Olcott set up, but what there is today, at least in
the United States, is a mockery of democracy. Our board meets in privacy and
decides what the Society is to do, and then it tells us peons some of what's
been decided, not all of it. Elections are skewed, electioneering is skewed,
and Wheaton can tell the branches & study centers what to study. Last year,
I tried to find out what was happening with the large sum of money which
some group in Mass. got as a result of the sale of the Boston branch's
house. I got an evasive reply, and upon a 2d request no asnwer at all.
Internationally, sections are disbarred without every being told why. All of
this I don't call very democratic.

In a true democracy, to my way of thinking, there should first off be flow
of information , opinion, & decision from the bottom up as well as from the
top down. Also, there are newer structures which aren't hierarchies. To me a
hierarchy represents that I'm the boss and you're the peon. I think there
should be much more member participation in the process. I believe in
working by concensus as far as that can be done, because if everyone has a
hand in what's being done, they're more interested in seeing to it that it
succeeds. Besides, there's also greater richness of ideas. In one recent
"Noetic Science Review" there was even a description of organizations in
nature ohere each individual just does its part, and somehow the whole group
reaches one common goal. The job gets done. The examples were a tree colony
and I think an ant colony. Hierarchies are male inventions, where people
have to fight each other to get to the top or perish, instead of
cooperating, and we'll all get the job done together.

Heap ugh.

Liesel