What are the ‘products’ of the Theosophical Society? What service(s) do we provide? Who are we in competition with? What are we best at? Worst at? Is it different in different countries? At different levels within countries? What needs are we meeting? What opportunities are we missing?
Why do people become members? Why do they stay members?
What do you want from the Theosophical Society?
Products?
Well books, obviously – and magazines. That make you think about existential issues. (the last issue of The Theosophist was excellent BTW).
Services: bringing together people that want to talk about existential issues (lodge meetings, summer schools etc.)
Don’t have answers to the rest of them.
I joined the Society to get 10% off at the bookstore. Look what trouble such an innocent thing can cause..
Over the years, I have met so many interesting people at Olcott and elsewhere. I look forward to every gathering to see old friends, and meet new ones.
I do think I appreciate the people best. Collectively we’re a pretty wise and special bunch
As I have collected responses to this question over the years, two themes have emerged.
Very generally, most answers fall into two categories: Information and Community.
What often motivates the search that leads to theosophy is a quest for answers. Theosophy can not only withstand the kind of questioning that drove many of us out of our familiar contexts, it actively invites it. As a high school student desperately looking for some model of the universe that could accommodate the truths I was studying in philosophy, religion and science, not to mention the experiences I was having. Theosophy could do that. Fifteen years on, it still can.
But information isn’t enough to inspire the kind of loyalty that keeps so many of us involved at the level we are. Just as important as the teachings I encountered at the Theosophical Society were the teachers and fellow seekers. It was the first place I felt at home, not just intellectually, but as a whole person. No matter how strange and odd we are, I will always feel more at home in a room of theosophists than anywhere else. There is a shared perspective, a common set of values, definitive ones, that unite us in ways more satisfying and pervasive than even friends of family.
I hope more people find this site and these posts. I would really like to hear more about other people’s thoughts on the questions above.
Why I never joined the Theosophical Society. Over the years, I’ve attended many lectures and activities in Wheaton and frequented the Quest book shop. But the society never offered me what I was looking for. I was looking for not just ideas – I got that from the books . I was looking for a path to Awakening or Enlightenment and someone who had traveled that path successfully. Krishnamurti seemed to be one example of someone who had arrived, even if he poorly communicated the path or the goal. But he was no longer associated with the society.
What does the society offer the seeker as a path and how does the society advertise this path. and are there any masters left in the society.