Adyar, 1 December 2012

Study at Leadbeater's Chambers appartment,

Anno 2012

Adyar, Saturday, 1 December 2012.

Last Sunday there were lots of activities at TS Adyar: the Annual Conference of the Madras Theosophical Federation, meetings of the Theosophical Order of Service and of the Adyar Lodge, and a lunch in the Indian restaurant. The day started with a panel on “The continuing relevance of the Perennial Philosophy.”  There appear to be many old workers and a few newcomers. The TOS does social work and is active to help the locals with medical service and has had 127 check-ups done for the workers at the TS compound here. It has also organized a homeopathic clinic, a drinking water project, an eye-screening action for some 14.000 people since 2007 and beach cleanings.

On Monday the School of the Wisdom started on the Yoga Sutra’s of Patanjali, which represent the most comprehensive exposition on Yoga practice. The teacher is one of the older national lecturers of the Indian Section and a TS member since he was 20 years of age. He is very well prepared and keeps the students actively involved, with the restult that almost all of them do try not to skip classes. For next week the students have to prepare a paper on the subject of one of the Yoga Upanishads, of which there are 20 out of the 108 Upanishads. 

Monday afternoon we were invited for lunch again by a TS member who left for Europe and afterwards we went into town to the Big Bazar and to Fab-India. At the Bazar there were all kinds of shops with eastern and western articles. This Bazar is an enormous air-conditioned shopping mall as big as a football stadium and as a consequence prices tend to be higher than normal. The Fab-India shop had local products, which could be bought at reasonable prices.

Wednesday afternoon two of the students made a visit to the TS Adyar Library to find the book on the Yoga Upanisads. A membership card of last year was lost, but it showed up in the register of the library, so we could have a look at the textbook.

After some discussion, we decided to buy the book at Theosophical Publishing House in Besant Gardens on the other side of the Besant Avenue. This is the road, which was constructed straight through the TS compounds, a long time ago.

The Theosophical Library and research Centre has edited the book with all the 20 Yoga Upanishads in the year 1938, and the Theosophical Publishing House has reprinted it very handsomely in the year 2008. In this book the Yogattvopanisad, has a lot of references to the subjects treated in the Sutra's of Patanjali. A major difficulty for western students though is that there are many Sanskrit words used in this book and also in  I.K.Taimni's textbook on the Yogasutra's. Frequently referring to Internet translations during study and writing of the paper would be the best way to cope with this linguistic problem.

Wednesday evening there was a lecture at Headquarters Hall by the director of the school of the Wisdom on The future of the Theosophical Movement. He held an inspired talk, at the end of which he read the statement in the “Key to Theosophy” where H.P. Blavatsky says, that Theosophy is synonymous with Everlasting Truth and that the future of the TS will depend on the quality of the members, who will carry on the work and direct the Society, and notably their degree of selflessness, earnestness, devotion and last but not least the amount of wisdom they possess. Thus it is not so much numbers, but mainly quality that counts.

Yesterday we had tea with the students in one of their rooms and this time together with the husband of a local TS worker, who had been busy helping us to move one of us to another room, because a water pipe in the bathroom had come loose and there was an inundation in the apartment spilling water into the garden while making a sweet, heavenly noise like that of a natural waterfall, until the water tank on the roof was empty. Repair could only be done during the day time. This minor disaster has eventually led to a surprise tea party, but has left no time for study and work.

As we can see, the research into Neo-Platonists, announced last week, has quickly been replaced by Yoga Upanishads study. This was to be expected, but does not mean, that the work on the European Theosophists will come to a standstill. The Theosophical Society is meant to bring together East and West, so both have to be equally emphasized. It just happens that the School of the Wisdom has such interesting subjects as The Secret Doctrine, The Science of Yoga, The Science of Life and The Bhagavat Gita.

Tomorrow there is work to be done on the Yogattvopanishad paper.

Bye for now,

Mr. Brooder