History of the Theosophical Movement

Blavatsky mentions Chakras, Sephirot, the Ogdoad, and the four elements which like Gurdjieff's octaves/enneagram are information theory things. You can however stick bad information in a good information theory so you always have to be careful with any cosmology/human evolution ideas connected to this kind of information theory. I personally like what Laura did here with densities attached to the Sephirot:

http://cassiopaea.org/2010/05/18/the-wave-chapter-26-the-tree-of-life

For me, you can actually tell it's an actual information theory diagram since there are two axes. STO to STS and physical to spiritual (1st to 7th densities). For me in generic Jungian terms the two axes are open (flexible perceiving) to closed (decisive judgment) and concrete (sensing) to abstract (intuition). I like Tony Smith's view of the Sephirot as an SO(5) thing math-wise which has two axes (and 8 vertices) for its associated root vector diagram. The extra Sephirot to get to 11 would be a third axis (the SO(5) diagram kind of is halfway between the 2-dim SO(4) diagram and the 3-dim SO(6) diagram).

Windmill knight said:

Arpaxad, I'm curious, did you read 'Secret Tibet' and 'Darkness over Tibet' by T. Illion? If so, what did you think about the philosophical ideas and criticisms to several 'esoteric schools' that appear in them?

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I've read Darkness, but as interesting as the philosophical contrasts were, it left an odd taste in my mouth. As one Amazon reviewer said of it, the specific geographic and cultural descriptions are so sparse that the whole thing could have been written back in Europe with some stationary, a little imagination, and a Tibetan-French or -German dictionary. So yeah, interesting by as a document of actual Tibetan religious groups highly suspect. Or so I think.

Neil, I wanted to thank you for your exposition of the serpent motif in very clear terms. Much of the serpent business was imo answered by Horns of Moses and common sense symbolism, via the well-understood historical mythicization (and esotericization) process. The exposition of how false and confounding religion generally is, paired with keen observations by Keel, Karla Turner and others about hyper-dimensional deception games seems to explain all the esoteric worship of the snake. That's made even more clear by how little these "brotherhoods" have seemed to benefit humanity in any appreciable form.

If this whole saga with arpaxad ha taught me anything, it's how dangerous it is to rely on one set of texts written by one person to teach you about everything. Just think of how much training was needed just to properly read texts in their historical context and relevancy, and how many diverse books and genres had to be studied in this sense to scrape together the little bit of signal we have amidst all the noise everywhere else.

My usual way of reading has been to just read a lot and see where on average most of the darts fall on the dartboard. But clearly this only gets investigators so far. I think I need to pick up The Historian's Craft asap.

Lest the History of the Theosophical Movement conveniently forget, if there's anyone who could do a bang-up job selling Theosophy, it would be U.G. Krishnamurti who was born into an environment with orthodox Hindu religious beliefs and practices *as well as* Theosophy. Sometime after gaining some prominence in his life, he spent much time teaching Theosophy and at least 10 years promoting it on a lecture circuit, from touring the U.S. to give talks on it to lecturing in European countries. Interestingly, it's said that he eventually quit his post in disgust, having realized that what he was doing was not something true to his real self.

I see 'not being true to one's real self' as also connected to obyvatel's post with Gurjieff's reference to 'identification' and Kerry Larson's "elision of identity", both posted on another thread. Elide, or elision I take to mean smoothing out the differences between two or more separate things so well that there appears to be continuity, or "sameness", or "no separateness." So, yeah, people must be losing themselves in this stuff. Apparently Gurdjieff was clear enough in his understanding of that danger that he was not hesitant to warn that questioner about the danger of something...of becoming psychopathic, was it?

He warned of the potential to feed one's psychopathy, but let us not judge too quickly lest we forget the context; before "psychopathy" progressively acquired its modern connotations of empathy-less sociopathic predator (in the second half of the 20th century), it used to have a rather general meaning which we would nowadays describe as "neuropathy", as an umbrella term for psychological disfunction.

I take Gurdjieff's warning as meaning that those practices can induce disintegration/dissociation from reality. Although, of course, I assume that dissociation from reality will ultimately lead to projection into a dissociated subjective self, which may very well disconnect one's sense of empathy - and thus induce secondary-type psychopathy?

That being said, it is true that Krishnamurti's disavowal of Theosophy, after having specifically been selected and trained to become their Messiah, is 99% of the criticism I need. I do not know about others on this forum, but I hold K. in deeo regard for the incisiveness of his intellect and discernment. I'd have to have very good reason (and free time) to disregard his disavowal and dive into an in-deoth study of the matter.

United Gnosis said:

He warned of the potential to feed one's psychopathy, but let us not judge too quickly lest we forget the context; before "psychopathy" progressively acquired its modern connotations of empathy-less sociopathic predator (in the second half of the 20th century), it used to have a rather general meaning which we would nowadays describe as "neuropathy", as an umbrella term for psychological disfunction.

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Point well taken. Literally, some pathology of the psyche...which breaks down further as the study of some emotion dysfunction in someone's psychology. Indeed, an umbrella term at a certain historical period, I think. Good reminder.

With regard to UGK, how could I not like someone who can body slam a sacred cow, and still say he has nothing to teach? :)

United Gnosis said:

That being said, it is true that Krishnamurti's disavowal of Theosophy, after having specifically been selected and trained to become their Messiah, is 99% of the criticism I need. I do not know about others on this forum, but I hold K. in deeo regard for the incisiveness of his intellect and discernment.

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The one selected to be their Messiah was a different Krishnamurti, Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986), rather than U. G. Krishnamurti (1918-2007).

Yes, there are two Krishnamurtis, UG and Jiddu who are often confused. Here is a thread primarily on UG but has mention of Jiddu as well.

http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,18505.0.html

As Mal7 wrote, Jiddu was trained by the theosophists and he later broke ranks with them.

obyvatel said:

Yes, there are two Krishnamurtis, UG and Jiddu who are often confused. Here is a thread primarily on UG but has mention of Jiddu as well.

http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,18505.0.html

As Mal7 wrote, Jiddu was trained by the theosophists and he later broke ranks with them.

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Indeed. Although Buddy specifically called him UGK, it was J.K. he was referring to:

Buddy said:

Lest the History of the Theosophical Movement conveniently forget, if there's anyone who could do a bang-up job selling Theosophy, it would be U.G. Krishnamurti who was born into an environment with orthodox Hindu religious beliefs and practices *as well as* Theosophy. Sometime after gaining some prominence in his life, he spent much time teaching Theosophy and at least 10 years promoting it on a lecture circuit, from touring the U.S. to give talks on it to lecturing in European countries. Interestingly, it's said that he eventually quit his post in disgust, having realized that what he was doing was not something true to his real self.

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so when I answered him I assumed it was J.K. and took it in stride.

U.G. is unrelated to Jiddu or to his thought; I'd rather describe UG as a disillusioned, embittered old man who turned nonduality into a sophist trick.

I should probably clarify that I was at all times speaking of U.G. and drawing mostly from his online obit here:

_http://www.ugkrishnamurti.org/ug/obi/

When I used the initials UGK, I was still referring to UG. The idea of "can't not like him" comes from the humor involved watching his antics. To me, he's harmless, but he can say stuff while saying he has nothing to say, contradicting himself from one sentence to the next and even admitting that! "I got nothin'" is how that phenomena is normally expressed, and the implication..."and the nothing I got is nothing", really makes him a funny guy to read. To me. But this might be a sign of my own twisted drama, so, FWIW. :)

I wasn't really responding to your regard for anyone else. As I didn't understand what you meant at the time, I was skipping over it. Sorry about any confusion I may be responsible for.

In this case, I might have been confused myself. I am not aware of UG's links to tgeosophy; I was specifically referring to JK having been selected as a child by theosophist handlers to be trained as their upcoming messiah, only for him to later turn around and disavow theosophy itself.

Did UG's life parallel this as well?

United Gnosis said:

...JK having been selected as a child by theosophist handlers to be trained as their upcoming messiah, only for him to later turn around and disavow theosophy itself.

Did UG's life parallel this as well?

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It seems so, but given my comparative unfamilarity with Jiddu's life story, you would probably be the best one to answer that from the info at the linked page in my reply above. You could also go here for a few other member's thoughts on UG, which I just added to myself awhile ago.

Interestingly and according to that obit, after UG quit Theosophy, he met with Jiddu and had some talks:

After that, he met J. Krishnamurti, who was by then famous as an unconventional spiritual teacher. For two years, he met him now and again and got into fierce discussions on spiritual matters, but later on, he was to reject JK’s philosophy, calling it a ‘bogus chartered journey.’

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It appears Jiddu was unable to bridge the gap between the two in order to bring UG to the level of knowledge and understanding Jiddu had. Maybe it was the "brutal honesty" that's been attributed to UG:

Even as a boy he was a rebel yet brutally honest with whatever he did.

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Anyway, that's not an indictment against UG necessarily, because I've heard other people whom I consider very bright and much smarter than me say they enjoy reading Jiddu and have no disagreements with him, but that Jiddu might have been one of those people who were "born awake" but not having trod the path in their teaching lifetime, find it very difficult to help anyone attain the enlightenment he believes is possible.

Anyway, readers may consider my views as just random thoughts if they like, because other than what I've posted about either of the two Krishnamurti's on this thread and at the forward pointing link, that's all I got that's not redundant.

United Gnosis said:

In this case, I might have been confused myself. I am not aware of UG's links to tgeosophy; I was specifically referring to JK having been selected as a child by theosophist handlers to be trained as their upcoming messiah, only for him to later turn around and disavow theosophy itself.

Did UG's life parallel this as well?

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It is a bit confusing, since they both had interactions with Theosophy, and with each other, and both later disavowed theosophy.

UG Krishnamurti's father TG Krishnamurti was a Theosophist. So UG had contact with Theosophy from an early age, but he was not selected and brought up to be a "messiah", as JK was by Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater. In 1925 when UGK was 7, he heard a talk by JK. At that time JK was still a Theosophist. There are several pages/chapters of biography of UG here: http://www.well.com/~jct/ugbio/ugbio2.htm

I have not read this whole thread but this book may be of interest to people:

Madame Blavatsky's Baboon: A History of the Mystics, Mediums, and Misfits Who Brought Spiritualism to America

To sum it up it is very much in agreement from what I read, with Laura's conclusions.

I have only read a synopsis of the coverage of Blavatsky. The book does cover other spiritualists and I found the reviews in Amazon quite worthwhile reading. Their are criticisms of the book that it is somewhat bias.

Laura said:

To construct a hypothetical “early oral tradition” based on later texts, or worse, a mythical “Q document” because you simply cannot accept that there is nothing behind that wall that Paul stands before, is just simply petitio principii.

And the same caveats apply to most scholars of Buddhist literature.

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Hi Laura,

What you say is so so so true.

The oral traditions are always problematic. Yet it's where all written Buddhist doctrines come from -- some 400 years after the time of Shakyamuni. 400 plus years is a long period so the question is how accurate are they?

The Tantric texts did not make it's way to Tibet till the first millennium CE. The concensus is that it did not originate in India -- but from a region in northeast Pakistan. A place called Oddiyana or more commonly, the Kindom of Shambhala.

The Mahayana tradition holds that the Buddha manifested in that region and gave the Tantric teachings -- in the same historical period where he gave the First and Second turning of the Wheel. (At Deer Park and Vultures Peak.) One simply has to have faith in such interpretations.

What has kept me interested and pushing ahead (in Buddhism & Tantra) -- is the focus on mind, and it's training. Along with what it means to be truly STO.

Service-to-Others has been defined concisely here (forum) as "giving all to those who ask." Through Tonglen practice however, I've gotten a somewhat deeper glimpse. It's an actual taking on of another's suffering (so as to know precisely what to give.) And when I tried it, it scared me. Not so simple! That episode occurred when I saw a homeless man eating at the cafeteria I frequent. I had to pull back my thoughts in a hurry.

My suggestion is that the next time someone thinks they're STO, do think twice and think carefully about its true meaning.

Taking on the suffering of one's own child is natural. For love ones ... easy. For a dear friend ... okay. But taking it on for a stranger is a whole different matter. And taking on the suffering of an enemy is (for me) next to impossible. Yet that attribute, may indeed be the true quality of what is meant by STO. It could very well be the C's definition as well. This subject has been on my mind for a long while now.

FWIW.

PS
Thank you Laura for your feedback and very kind remarks. And I greatly look forward to your next book.