from The Theosophist May 1958
The Lodge Members (1)
Hugh Shearman
Although this whole refers to the members of the Theosophical Society, there is still good reason to devote a special chapter to Lodge members.
Attracting New Members
The Society cannot exist without members, and the gaining of new members
is a natural part of its work. Yet the meetings and activities of the Society
ought to be carried on for the purpose of fulfilling its objects and not
primarily for the purpose of attracting new members. If the programmes of
a Lodge are excessively dominated by an anxiety to attract new members, the
true purpose of the Society is lost sight of, and it may presently be found
that there is little to attract new members.
The best advertisement for the Society, and the best means of attracting
new members to it, must always be the existing members. If they are quietly
engaged in carrying out the objects of the Society and letting the implications
of those objects penetrate deeply through the very stuff of their daily lives,
members cannot fail to make some impression on those with whom they come
in contact. People of like sympathies and interests do tend to be drawn towards
each other.
Explaining to Others
Talkativeness and a compulsive anxiety to make our views known will not be
helpful. What a man has to talk about very insistently is rarely something
that he has deeply assimilated. It is in the quality of our response to an
unexpected situation, in the tranquility of our attitude, and in the comprehensiveness
of our understanding that we may show how far we are really Theosophists-
not by earnest protestations or lengthy explanations.
Wisdom, after all, does not lie merely in explanations; and an explanation
given at the wrong time can repel. We cannot helpfully offer certain kinds
of explanations until people are to some extent prepared in their own deeper
feelings and are already themselves groping towards the solution which our
explanation embodies. Wisdom does not engage in propaganda, nor does it anxiously
strain to convert people to some kind of opinion or belief.
In what are sensitively perceived to be the right circumstances and the right
time, wisdom will make available useful information or a helpful idea; and
since the time and circumstances are wisely chosen or intelligently recognized,
the information or idea may produce fruitful results.
As well as a right time and circumstances for any communication of thought
or information, there is a right way of expressing it. Other things being
equal, it is eminently desirable that our way of speech should not be uncouth,
our facts of dubious accuracy and questionable authority, and our manner
pompous and unconvincing. If we are going to quote history or science, we
must quote them without solecism and with the ease of real acquaintance.
If we are going to quote words some foreign language, we ought not to mispronounce
them ludicrously.
It is true that the stranger, if he has wisdom in him, can sometimes recognize
a deeper value lying behind an uncouth lecture or conversation. But we must
try to remove any unnecessary barrier to understanding; for, since most people
are rather superficial and conventional in their judgments of anything new,
our barriers of inadequate expression can often be completely successfully
in driving a newcomer away.
A person who is vaguely seeking some kind of truth has usually met with many
disappointments, and he has probably an unconscious expectations that the
Theosophical Society, or the member of it whom he meets, is going to be another
disappointment to him. He is often much more ready to be convinced that the
Society holds nothing of value for him than that it has something of value.
A foolish representation of the Society and what it stands for is likely
to make him feel that he can dismiss it as he has dismissed other movements
because they were limited, useless or inane.
The vast majority of people are not yet looking for what the Theosophical
Society has to offer, or at least they are not looking for it in the form
in which the Society can offer it; and their path in life will not lead them
into membership of the Society. But there are some whose sympathies and questionings
are daily making membership of the Society more right and appropriate for
them; and, in our quest for new members, we need to make known quietly but
persistently and pervasively that we have in the Society some of those things
which such people are seeking. We need to be informative but not to engage
in any sensational kind of self advertisement.
Some Considerations on Brotherhood
The bond of attraction for a newcomer ought not simply to be a common ground
of opinion or ideas. It ought to be the unobtrusive reality of that brotherhood
which we profess. He ought to be led to feel that he wants to be friends
with us and to know that we want to be friends with him.
Brotherhood is the fundamental principle of the Society. It has often been
said that many organizations and movements are preaching and practicing brotherhood
and that, if the Theosophical Society cannot do something more original than
that, it might as well close down. But such an idea arises from taking too
superficial and too conventional to brotherhood. We are aiming at entering
into a deeper and deeper experience of those fundamental realities of which
brotherhood is only the outer expression; and through that experience we
seek to bring into being an entirely new quality of brotherhood.
The brotherhood with which we are concerned has to transcend those outer
forms of brotherly action in which many of our members engage, such as social
service, work for international understanding, the relief of suffering, or
the development of cultural and artistic work. It may be all these , but
it is also something vastly greater, based upon the deepest realities in
man and in the universe. And into that deeper experience of its meaning we
have to enter, drawing from it inspiration and refreshment which will transform
the outer expressions of brotherhood which we already know and give them
a quality far surpassing the conventional meaning of that word.
One quality which must belong to the deeper levels of brotherhood is very
important in our work. Brotherhood at its best and wisest is surely impersonal.
If we look upon the idea of brotherhood in a very personal and emotional
and sentimental way, we bring a false note into our relations with others.
A sticky and cloying element enters into a relations which is personal and
sentimental; and all too often it can develop in ways that are vicious and
sensual and exploiting or else end in resentment. The experience of merely
personal attraction is bound up with the experience of personal repulsion;
and sentimentality is a fruitful soil for quarrels.
Right relationship within the Society depends upon some degree of recognition
of the great universal and impersonal setting in which we work. When that
vaster whole is even dimly felt in the background, then we have an incentive
for working together in a way that does not give rise to the meaner forms
of competition, to personal resentment or to personal clinging.
Brotherhood, moreover, is not really a proper theme for speech-making and
for the uttering of rhetorical generalizations. Its true expression is in
deep and largely self-forgetful understanding of others from moment to moment.
To make speeches about it is too often to surround ourselves with a shell
of unctuous words which cut off from that fresh and sensitive appreciation
of the needs of our fellow human beings which is the essence of the experience
which we call brotherhood.
Brotherhood is impersonal because it involves the dropping or forgetting
of the more personal self. This is sometimes called liberation. This can
come about as we become increasingly aware of the larger setting, the greater
whole within which we live, and which alone gives meaning and value to our
lives. In that awareness our meannesses, ambitions and resentments can fall
away and our service to others can become increasingly realistic and effectives.
It might be felt that these considerations have a more appropriate place
in a work of ethics than in what is intended as a guide to work in the Theosophical
Society. But these problems of human relations are our work in the Society
and can in no way be separated from any discussion of the Society's organization
and practical functioning.
The New Member and His Motives
If a new member is to be stable, useful and lasting as a living component
of our nucleus, brotherhood, in some form suitable to his temperament, must
be his main motive in joining us. If he comes merely to gain information,
to satisfy intellectual curiosity, to develop his "powers", to calm an uneasiness
about life after death, to have access to our library, or any of innumerable
other motives which are grounded on cultivation of self rather than love
of humanity, he will not be a lasting member - unless he can move on from
his initial motive to a deeper appreciation of the meaning of his membership.
A study of membership registers has shown that the fourth of fifth year of
membership is a critical period. By that time a new member will have assimilated
a good deal of the information which is superficially available in the Society's
literature. If he joined with a merely acquisitive motive, he may begin to
drop out at this stage, cease attending meetings regularly, and perhaps presently
lapse from membership. If he has joined with a motive of brotherhood or has
discovered that motive some time after joining, he will now be trying to
apply what he has learned in order to render himself more fit to help others.
Causes of Stress
Membership, particularly new membership, involves certain psychological stresses
and strains. It has often been noticed that some new members go through a
phrase of being irritable and uneasy. The reason for this is simple enough.
When we embark upon anything new, everything in our natures that is incompatible
with it is thrown into prominence and brought to the surface. When, for example,
we begin this experiment of working on friendly terms with others whose opinions
may be quite different from our own, there will come to the surface in us
a very acute sense of disagreement with them.
The subjects that are studied in the Theosophical Society have implications
too, which can penetrate challengingly and disturbingly into every aspect
of our lives. The more completely a new member plunges into Theosophical
studies and into discussion and friendly relationship with his fellow-members,
the more is he liable to experience a certain strain at the beginning. And
later, as a member progresses in deeper understanding, he may find himself
disturbed, in ways of which he his not always fully conscious, by new discoveries
and new views which will demand of him a reassessment and reorganization
of all the conceptions that he had already formed.
It is important in these cases that members should realize what is happening
to them, or what is happening to others. Emotional disturbances blow over
in time if they are allowed to do so and if no importance is attached to
them. In oneself they ought to be recognized for the temporary conditions
that they are, and not given embodiment in any course of policy or in estranging
words. And when we see them occurring in other people we must deal gently
with them and be prepared subsequently to forget them. Moreover, in a Society
in which human nature ought to be in a state of change, a pugnacious claim
to self-consistency can be a futile vanity.
Concerned as we are with "the powers latent in man", we are aware in our
Society that in order to know people we must look more deeply than their
surface behavior. This is particularly useful if we have to do at nay time
with a member who is somewhat disturbed. In such a case we can strive to
see and to speak to that deeper element within him which is not disturbed.
It has been said that somewhere inside every insane person there is a person
who is sane. In the same way we may remember that inside every person who
is disturbed there is somebody who is calm; inside everybody who is unreasonable
there is somebody who is reasonable. It is our happy task as members of the
Theosophical Society to seek out that calm and reasonable person in others
and , where necessary, address ourselves to him.
Guiding the New Member
A new member will usually like to find his own place in the Lodge quietly,
and to discover gradually where and how his temperament and interests fall
into relationship with those of the other members. Some Lodges introduce
a new member through some form of entrance or initiation ceremony; but nowadays
this can be inadvisable, and newcomers have been known to stay away from
a Lodge because they were temperamentally repelled by the prospect of taking
part in such a ceremony.
The advice has often been given that when new members join a Lodge some older
member ought to be allotted the duty of looking after them and helping them
to find themselves in their new relationship to the Society and to their
fellow-members. This may be a very useful plan provided that no idea of superiority
comes into it. The fact that a person is new to the Theosophical Society
does not at all mean that he may not be wiser and better than ourselves.
And no matter what his qualities and capacities may be, he is unique; and
there is something that we can learn from him that no other person in the
world can teach us.
The new member must therefore expand in his new relationship quite freely
and in his own way. We may help him much in this, but his way will inevitably
be somewhat different from ours; and we must not imagine that to help a new
member means to mould him to a pattern like our own. Moreover, the aspect
of Theosophical study which at any time seems most important to us is usually
that which is connected in some way with the next step in our own growth.
That is where the interest and the intriguing and stimulating quality of
Theosophy for us will be found. But the next step for us is not necessarily
the next step for the newcomer. Though it leads to the same summit, his path
is and ought to be somewhat different from ours. And from that difference
we may learn something.
Sometimes older members of the Society can display a certain negative anxiety
about those who are new to Theosophical studies. They try to guide the new
member away from certain studies, to protect him from reading what they believe
to be the wrong books. But, although there are books that are obviously more
suitable than others and some which are perhaps very unsuitable, Theosophy
is not fundamentally concerned with right books or wrong books. It is concerned
with the establishment of such a stability of attitude in ourselves that
we can choose our studies rightly and confidently for ourselves. The one
who has that stability can often evoke it in another and can give him true
guidance without any anxiety.
At the same time the person who really has achieved a degree of inner stability
must be careful. Often he has more power than he knows, and he must try not
to use it disturbingly, still less coercively. By his very stability he can
be a source of unconscious reproach to somebody else who is passing through
an unstable phase. And the very clarity and lucidity of his answers can be
deeply frustrating fro the person who question him; for the questioner is
not seeking mere answers but is really seeking some kind of help in his own
inner uneasiness. Thus every advance in knowledge or in self-mastery brings
new responsibilities for kindly tact, patience and self-effacement.
A Source of Stability
In all activities and relationships among members, the most steadying thought
to hold in mind is the great world setting of our work. If we look merely
at the immediate and personal scene and think only of immediate considerations
and short-term results, we are liable to become agitated. We begin to think
that something terrible will happen if some particular person is elected
or not elected to some office or if some particular policy prevails or fails
to prevail. We become anxious and emotionally disturbed. But, if we recollect
that all the personalities and the influences that enter into making the
Society's history at any time are only small ingredients in something vastly
big, we shall recognize that the thing that might, if we took a merely short-term
view of it, agitate us today, will be of little real importance in a century's
time.
Sometimes we perhaps think that we see something very wrong being done in
the Society. Perhaps it may be our duty to try to prevent it; but we must
not try personally to compete with those whom we believe to be wrong or mistaken.
At the personal level, too, the clotted prejudices of another person are
rarely dissolved by any form of frontal attack.
To be powerful and effective, our contribution and our attitude must be positive.
It is by the very texture of our lives, the total quality of our thoughts
and feelings and actions, that we build this nucleus of Brotherhood and give
it a secure future. It is not by policy programmes or by influencing people's
opinions or votes that we create a fair future. It is by our love and integrity
and unselfishness, the completeness of our dedication to the service of humanity.
When our work for the Society is really established upon those qualities
in ourselves, we shall have discovered something which will enable us to
live and act without doing or even thinking injustice to others and without
agitation or anxiety.
Footnotes
(1) From a forthcoming book, To Form a
Nucleus: a Guide to Work in the Theosophical Society to be published by the
Theosophical Society, Adyar.