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Theosophical Society Revisited |325|
by Mike Patterson | Aug 16 | Consciousness Science
Is it still relevant and useful?
photo by: Dan Brikley
When I was 15 I started reading a book called Hidden Teachings Beyond Yoga by Paul Brunton. I could scarcely get through a few paragraphs before falling asleep – not out of tedium, but because the sheer intensity the novel ideas overwhelmed me. I persevered with passion, but it took me 18 months to finish the book.
This was in 1967 when, in Tasmania, there was almost nothing available to me outside the standard faith of my culture – Christianity. At the same time I was loaned another book. On its cover was the fearsome portrait of Helena Blavatsky, one of the founders of the Theosophical Society (T.S.). Blavatsky scared me: so much so that I never opened the book. I was also fascinated, so I propped it up on the window ledge of my bedroom, as a promise and sign of something I did not understand.
I was driven to leave Tasmania, to discover what lay beyond shortly after I turned 18. In Sydney, I haunted the Adyar Bookshop, the T.S.’s most public expression. But I was drawn to go no further. The notion of membership never entered my head. And yet the authors who were the sources of my earliest understanding of the esoteric side of human experience were all members.
by Mike Patterson | Aug 16 | Consciousness Science
Is it still relevant and useful?
photo by: Dan Brikley
When I was 15 I started reading a book called Hidden Teachings Beyond Yoga by Paul Brunton. I could scarcely get through a few paragraphs before falling asleep – not out of tedium, but because the sheer intensity the novel ideas overwhelmed me. I persevered with passion, but it took me 18 months to finish the book.
This was in 1967 when, in Tasmania, there was almost nothing available to me outside the standard faith of my culture – Christianity. At the same time I was loaned another book. On its cover was the fearsome portrait of Helena Blavatsky, one of the founders of the Theosophical Society (T.S.). Blavatsky scared me: so much so that I never opened the book. I was also fascinated, so I propped it up on the window ledge of my bedroom, as a promise and sign of something I did not understand.
I was driven to leave Tasmania, to discover what lay beyond shortly after I turned 18. In Sydney, I haunted the Adyar Bookshop, the T.S.’s most public expression. But I was drawn to go no further. The notion of membership never entered my head. And yet the authors who were the sources of my earliest understanding of the esoteric side of human experience were all members.