THEOSOPHY SHAME

[Scott Sands]

I want to introduce a very unpopular unspoken topic. I have seen nothing about it by any Theosophical author. Only after years in Theosophy have I come across it and that has been piece by piece... most of which has been formed by what's not said rather than said. And I still know very little about it.

I bring this up not to rehash and old wound. I bring it up because it has been (from what I can tell) a defining event and possibly a cause for the down turn in TS numbers from a member peak in the past.

The little I know about it has come from other-than TS sources... and if anyone should know about it or talk about it... I think TS members should. Even if it is a darkened spot in TS history.

The topic is Hitlers ideas and beleifs which were inspired the Blavatsky and Theosophy. His idea of the Arian race came from Theosophy. They share the swastika. What else? I'm not sure.

Now he took these ideas and ran with them in his own direction. Commiting atrosities in their name. The down turn in members seems to be around this time also.

We know we cannot hold Theosophy to blame for any of this and it makes sense the TS would not want to acknowledge the connections... but I beleive the only way a shame can be released is to acknowledge and talk about it.

I may be wrong in some of some of what I've stated... which is exactly why I bring this up. We should know and understand what happened so we can explain it to others if asked.

[michaelcarlo]

"Those that refuse to learn from the past will be condemned to repeat it." That was fun ,standing in judgment of other people but we're not qualified to judge "we don't have any skin in the game".That's an interesting "tag" adonis777. What does it mean? Is it as esoteric as it implies? The 777 Incarnations? 7 revolutions around 7 globes of the 7 World Periods.

[Clifford Bruhn]

I think that the Nazi swastika rotates in the opposite direction from Theosophy's, which makes sense based on the use to which the Nazis put it.

[Odin Townley]

A lesson concerning this is suggested by W. Q. Judge in his Letters: "The world is not free from superstition, and we, a part of it, must have some traces left of the same thing. They [Masters] have said that a great shadow follows all innovations in the life of humanity..." (Letter 2)

"These two, light and darkness, are the world's eternal ways." - Krishna (Bhagavad-Gita, Ch. VIII, p.62)

[Nabil Naser]

Many before have used the good word for evil deeds
Some still do

[Maurice Pedro]

Hitler and the occultists that promoted him had it in their heads for quite a while that Aryans were supermen and they set out with a vengeance to prove it. They drew upon several sources and twisted them if they didn't fit their peculiar world-view. The Secret Doctrine is a huge volume of work and can be misinterpreted in a thousand ways. HPB never wrote that Germans were the master race, (that I have seen) the Aryans she spoke of were not Germans.
In the historical novel "Creation" by Gore Vidal he wrote of the times of the Persian Empire circa 400 b.c. In his novel the Aryans were a mystery even to those Ancient peoples, they constantly wondered if they were Aryans.
The Nazis also drew heavily on Darwin's theories and anything that remotely hinted at a hierarchy of human beings or even animals.
For more info on the development of the Nazi "philosophy" called Ariosophy I recommend a book by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke called Black Sun. In this book you will see that Nazi beliefs came from several sources and organizations.

[Scott Sands]

We cannot judge. We just can't. Anything and everything in the world that is beautiful and pure and righteous and true can be claimed and overrun with good intention and bad intention and completely smothered from it's original expression.

We can't judge Jesus by Christians.
We can't judge Buddha by buddhist.
We can't judge flowers by bouquets or pictures of flowers.

We can only get, in any one moment, what we get from that moment. The before, the after, where it came from, and the who said what doesn't matter. How we are affected by an interaction with a person, thing or idea... and that alone is all that matters. When we try to quantify it, trace it's roots, figure where it's thoughts came from... we are no longer where the moment that mattered is.

We are a collection of moments. The ones that move us... we often try to capture or relive instead of living in that moment... and inevitably we lose it or drowned it in our grand intelligence.

I don't have a point.

[Nick the Pilot]

Hi everbody!

I have been discussing Theosophy with a group of Jewish people on the Internet. To my surprise, all of the Jewish people in this group hate Theosophy and HPB. I mean they really hate Theosophy and HPB. It all boils down to two sentences in the SD:

"The Semites, especially the Arabs, are later Aryans -- degenerate in spirituality and perfected in materiality. To these belong all the Jews and the Arabs." (SD vol 2 p 200)

It seems that any Jewish person who knows about Theosophy and has heard this statement immediately gets a very bad opinion of Theosophy that they just cannot be talked out of. I have had several discussion with these Jewish people (with no luck) and I thought I would ask everyone here at this Forum a couple of questions.

1. Do you think HPB was justified in calling Semites (which I think refers to all Abrahamic religions, but I am not sure about that) as being spiritually inferior? What does the phrase "spiritually inferior" mean to you?

2. HPB was known to be very hot-headed. Is this merely an example of her losing momentary control of her writing due to a bad temper? Did she just "lose it" in a rant, when she used the idea of spiritual inferiority?

3. HPB wrote in the late 1800's. Is it possible that such language was tolerated in those days, and is not tolerated today?

4. By the time HPB had started writing the SD, she had been the target of attacks from several relgious sources for many years. No doubt all of these attacks had worn her down. Can we attribute anything to the fact that she was well-worn out by this time?

5. How do we reconcile the idea of Semitic spiritual inferiority with the idea of universal brotherhood?

[Nick the Pilot]

6. Do we have the right to think, much less say, that Theosophy is "better" than another philosophy?

7. HPB was said to be an "imperfect" instrument of the Mahatmas. Is all of this just an example of her imperfections? I remember one case in the Mahatma Letters where the Mahatmas were angry with HPB. Is this an example of when people should be angry with HPB? (Does anyone have that example from the Mahatma Letters?)

[Nick the Pilot]

8. HPB tells us that Genesis in the Bible was intentionally and blasphemously re-written. Is this why she seems to be saying that Judiasm is spiritually inferior, because it is based on such altered scriptures?

[Konstantin Zaitzev]

> Is this why she seems to be saying that Judiasm is spiritually inferior

I think yes. And I agree with her.
"What is also needed is to impress men with the idea that, if the root of mankind is one, then there must also be one truth which finds expression in all the various religions-except in the Jewish, as you do not find it expressed even in the Cabala." (Key to theosophy).

Bible contains the ideology of race superiority and this ideology is the direct predecessor of nazism. Hence its adherents hate theosophy.

Nevertheress there's nothing antisemitic in the works of Blavatsky, and there are theosophical lodges in Israel. She was far from condemning jews as a race. "The occult doctrine admits of no such divisions as the Aryan and the Semite" (Secret Doctrine, vol 2).

[michaelcarlo]

The Atlantean, 4th Root Race 5th sub-race "Semites" were the "chosen" or prototype for the present, 5th Root Race Aryan. Just as our still forming 6th -sub-race will be the prototype of the coming 6th Root Race. After the 6th Root Race, their will no longer be Racial differences and the sexes will recombine. It will be Graduation Day for most . The problem most orthodox believers in Judiasm experience, is the self imposed exclusiveness of their Religion. Their belief that they are special and must separate themselves from the other 6 of the combined Sacred 7 is the cause of the modern inferior nature through crystallization and Dogmatic adherence from the "command of the Manu " in the past to "separate". The Creation is "ONE" and organized teaching of separateness is erroneous, thus inferior. This I believe is the purpose of Theosophy to help all the Great Religions get "the bugs out" of their misunderstood teachings.

[Nick the Pilot]

Michael, thank you for your post. It was very helpful! Please read what I wrote to the group of Jewish people. My post follows.

~~~

I have been doing more research into this entire question. Fortunately, a fellow theosophist has explained the story to me, and I thought I would share it. But first, I need to cover a little bit of basic Theosophical theory.

According to Theosophy, humans on this planet will be born into a total of seven successive races. (Theosophy technically calls them root-races.) There is a bit of overlap in the existence of each race, but not a lot. All of present humanity is part of the fifth race. The Atlanteans were the fourth race, and they disappeared about 11,000 years ago. Our present-day fifth race is called the Aryan race.

We now come to the important part for our particular discussion, which is the beginning of the Aryan race. This occurred about three-quarters of the way through the total time period of the Atlantean race. In the beginning, the Aryans began as one small tribe in one small valley. According to Theosophy, this single tribe eventually expanded until it became all of the humanity of today.

The crux of the issue is the relationship of the original Semites to this first tribe. Theosophy says this first Aryan tribe was the Semites. This brings us to the issue of being chosen. I previously and mistakenly said that Yahweh was/is the patron saint of the Jews. My Theosophical friend has corrected me, and told me this: From the many tribes that were available at the time, the Semites were chosen to be the prototype from which the fifth race was to be created. My mistake was I said their Semitic “guardian angel” chose them and I was wrong. The entire fifth race also has its own “guardian angel,” who is the semi-divine being who did the choosing, and he chose the Semites. The Semites were then put on a special track, developed, and from them sprang the entire fifth-race humanity of today.

Now for the problem. The fifth-race’s “guardian angel” commanded them to “separate,” and they did. But according to Theosophy, they took a dogmatic approach to such “separating,” and orthodox believers in Judaism began maintaining a self-imposed exclusiveness of their Religion. Their belief is that that they are special and must separate themselves from the rest of humanity, This was the major source of friction between the Semites and the other Aryans. “... The Creation is ONE” and organized teaching of separateness is erroneous, thus inferior. According to Theosophy, the early Jews needed to blend into the just-starting Aryan race, and they did not. This has continued down through the centuries into the terrible situation as it is today.

As a side note, everyone is familiar with casts in the modern-day country of India. It has been said that casts were commanded by the fifth-race “guardian angel” because intermarriage of the fifth-race people with the fourth-race people was threatening to wipe out the newly started fifth-race, so casts were instituted to preserve the integrity of the burgeoning fifth-race. Sadly, the need for casts in India disappeared many thousands of years ago, but casts are still a large part of Indian society. (This also points to the idea that the Jewish and Hindu religions sprang from the same source, a key Theosophical teaching.)

The purpose of Theosophy is to bring people together, not to separate them, and certainly not to give one ethnic group excuses to discriminate against another. Theosophy merely relates the story of why and how the Jews came to have a sense of separateness that persisted after it was necessary, and to explain the hatred the Jews have experienced ever since, at the hands of fellow Aryans. (As you can see, Theosophy claims that Jews are very much Aryans, a very non-Nazi idea.) Theosophy hopes to show the commonality of all humanity, the need for the removal of separateness, which will eventually take us back to the ONE together, arm in arm.

On a different topic, yes, it is true that Blavatsky spoke very disparagingly about Jews. I feel that she was wrong in using such contemptuous words. But I feel that her anger was directed at the earliest Jewish leaders, not at the Jews people, ancient or modern. Theosophy is devoted to bringing Jews together with all other humans, not discriminating against them. I also feel that if Blavatsky had done a better job of explaining all of this, no one would have accused Theosophy of being a racist philosophy. I can now see clearly why Theosophy is seen as a racist philosophy, I can see how this developed along a clear line of thought, and how it is all a misunderstanding

I have personally seen the hatred that exists towards Jews. One of my best friends is a flaming Jew-hater. I personally see no reason for this, and I see the Jewish people as a nice people. I certainly have no reason to hate them. Yes, I did watch Fiddle on the Roof a few days ago, and the Jews in the movie came across as very nice people. One of the strange things about the rampant hatred of Jewish people in today’s world is the fact that it is unexplained. Theosophy offers an explanation, and a way to solve the problem.

The issue has been raised again and again ad nauseum that Theosophy provided the Nazis the philosophy it needed to claim that Jews are inferior. I put much of the blame on Blavatsky for her very poor choice of words. I would like to apologize to all Jews on behalf of Blavatsky for her poor choice of words. But I do not think we can blame Theosophy for the things the Nazis did to the Jews. A poor choice of words does not justify murder.