The next good job from a person committed to trying to free people from cult programming is much better than most. He demonstrates that the person is aware of the mind control techniques used to influence people. Having said that, I will now try to show how this piece is, in fact, evidence of SPIN or influence that the person involved in making it might not even personally realize. For example, Catholic exorcists are taught spells and rituals so that they do not understand or generally do not understand their derivation or history.
“Psychological Manipulation and Society
Cult Studies Magazine
Psychological Manipulation and Society
Flight. 11, no. 2, 1994
Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon: A Story of Mystics, Mediums, and Misfits
Who brought spiritualism to America?
Peter Washington. Schocken Books, New York, NY, 1995, 470 pages.
Reviewer: Joseph P. Szimhart
Theosophy, as discussed in Peter Washington’s highly informative and entertaining survey, has less to do with any sophisticated notion of “divine wisdom” than with a host of absurd pretenders that have successfully attracted thousands of seekers dedicated to experimenting and discover hidden truths In short, Theosophists tried to make occult respectable in an age of scientism. According to Washington, these neo-occultists and their progeny have essentially failed, as the back cover liner tells us, in a “curious comedy of passion, power, and gullibility.”
Topping the list is Madame Helena P. Blavatsky (1831-1891), whose colorful character ranged from the bawdy to the sublime. HPB, as she is known to Theosophists, co-founded the Theosophical Society (TS) with Colonel Henry S. Olcott and a few others who were interested in spiritual contact and psychic phenomena in New York in 1875. In New York parlance It was today, HPB became the main “channel” of TS. In a few decades, TS spurred an ever-growing amalgamation of groups and cults, the most important of which Washington portrays with solid reporting from an impressive array of source material and his personal research. In each case, a charismatic “guru” has received “ancient wisdom” from some mysterious sect, self-proclaimed enlightenment, or metaphysical source, while also assuming an exalted position as guru, messenger, teacher, teacher, or adept in the eyes of others. . the disciples and students.
Following HPB and Olcott (also known as Jack and Maloney), Washington addresses the lives and influences of the second generation of Theosophists, including the politically motivated Annie Besant, channeler Charles W. Leadbeater, Katherine Tingley, Rudolf Steiner (who became broke away from TS and founded Anthroposophy and the Waldorf schools), GI Gurdjieff and many of his important followers. Jiddu Krishnamurti, who famously abdicated his title of “world teacher” or Theosophical messiah in 1929, a role imposed on him at the age of 13 by Leadbeater, receives close treatment in Washington. Instead, he only briefly describes and sometimes only mentions splinter groups and more recent leaders of the TS amalgamation, such as Elizabeth Prophet and her Universal and Triumphant Church, George King and the Aetherius Church, Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov and the Universal White Brotherhood. , Lloyd Meeker. and the Emissaries of Divine Light, Idries Shah and the Society for the Understanding of Fundamental Ideas, and the Raelian Movement. Washington also covers the history of the esoteric School of Economics founded by Leon MacLaren and his connection to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi of Transcendental Meditation. She concludes her text with a solid and dispassionate look at the life of JG Bennett as she was influenced by Gurdjieff, PD Ouspensky, Shah, the Subud cult and ultimately Catholicism.
Missing from the Washington survey are some important offshoots of the TS, such as the Agni Yoga Society founded by Nicholas and Helena Roerich in the early 1920s, the Arcane School also founded in the 1920s by Alice A. Bailey, and the I AM Activity founded by Guy and Edna Ballard in the mid-1930s. To those who have studied the history of Theosophy and how it has influenced these and other groups not mentioned by Washington, these may seem like glaring omissions. But the pervasiveness of Theosophy’s influence, especially with the thousands of New Age teachers and sectarian movement around the world, would take many volumes to simply summarize. However, Washington fulfills his mission to give us a clear idea of the Western guru tradition, its roots, and its effects on certain disciples.
The book’s title is derived from a stuffed baboon that featured prominently among Blavatsky’s exotic paraphernalia in her New York flat. The baboon was fully clad in glasses holding a copy of Darwin’s Origin of Species, mocking that controversial scientist. Blavatsky saw herself as Ancient Wisdom’s counterpoint to that “strutting gamecock” of science, whom she often criticized in her two fantastic, notoriously plagiarized tomes, Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine. HPB more than anyone else has influenced the Western occult tradition with the notion of spiritual evolution as it supposedly occurs through rounds of “root race” reincarnation. Some of her racist notions later crept into Nazi philosophy, even though Hitler rejected the Theosophical Societies.
A very revealing passage from Madame Blavatsky’s The Baboon describes PD Ouspensky, a leader of the Gurdjieff School or Fourth Way, who near the end of his life in 1947 was very depressed (confusion and depression have been common ailments of lifelong disciples of the Western guru tradition). He was given the task of escaping from the students in his car with his cats. Ouspensky would park his car at some destination, sit in the back seat looking out the window while he hugged his pets. “Coming home from a trip, he spent the rest of the night in the car while a schoolgirl was standing next to him at the window, her arm raised as if in blessing. A cat would never be so stupid” (p. 337). This passage not only reveals the depths of deception that both guru and follower can reach, it also reveals Washington’s insensitivity to the dedicated, perhaps deluded but nonetheless struggling victims of such gurus.
Washington’s sources are many and significant. Three notable ones are Bruce F. Campbell’s Ancient Wisdom Revived, Marian Meade’s Blavatsky, and James Webb’s The Harmonious Circle, the latter being a comprehensive history of Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, and their followers. A biography of Blavatsky was also written by theosophist Sylvia Cranston, who clumsily tries to portray HPB as a maligned New Age saint. Meade’s biography is far superior and accomplishes even more than the Washington or Campbell books in introducing us to Blavatsky’s complex personality. Another valuable resource on HPB and the type of Western guru not mentioned by Washington was written in 1948 by EM Butler: The Myth of the Magus (Cambridge Canto ed., 1993). In any case, if he wants to read a critical and up-to-date look at Blavatsky and her influence, he chooses Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon.
Joseph P. Szimhart
Cult Information Specialist/Exit Counselor
Pottstown, Pennsylvania Copyright ©1997-99 AFF, Inc.” (1)
The so-called western guru tradition they refer to is just a superficial label. It could show how Unitarianism and Christian Science are equally polysolipsistic or panentheistic in effect. Emerson, Whitehead, and even Teilhard de Chardin are all part of the same line of thought as the old-line Gnostic or Arian Christians and even many more mystical sects of Catholicism or Christianity, including Carmelites, Quakers, Sandemanians, and others. . You need to ask yourself if your purpose is really to stop cultish or shy behavior. Is there a schedule? Why do we pay people to deprogram people inspired by New Age philosophy and allow so much fundamentalist programming, even bypassing outright proselytizing in public schools and from the mouths of presidents?
Your references to Krishnamurti being given Messiahship at the age of thirteen is contrary to my understanding of what Krishnamurti wrote under the name Alcyon and how he operated throughout his life. He also continued to work with people within Theosophy despite rejecting the mantle of Messiah, which is correct. In fact, if they had any desire to be fair, they would point out that Krishnamurti was against others telling you how to find your true and faithful calling. Here are some words from righteous biographers about this great man that illustrate his aversion to dogma or any form of worship.
“Education had always been one of Krishnamurti’s main concerns. If a young man could learn to see his conditioning of race, nationality, religion, dogma, tradition, opinion, etc., which inevitably leads to conflict, then he could become a fully intelligent human being. being for whom right action would follow. A prejudiced or dogmatic mind can never be free.” (2)
Annie Besant adopted Krishnamurti and was a great social activist, as well as one of the few female Masons. Why don’t they mention that? She founded a college in India and was a vital part in achieving Indian independence. Her work for women’s rights in England preceded Margaret Sanger in the fight to educate people about children’s causes despite social taboos against education. Sad to see this transvestite being allowed to go under the cult deprogramming heading. Yes, Blavatsky was a promoter and a plagiarist, as are most of those who hit the pulpit. In fact, you can learn by reading his books and researching what he says. This is what the reviewer should have pointed out instead of saying that some of these people suffer from depression. They go so far as to say that “confusion and depression have been common ailments of lifelong disciples of the Western guru tradition.” Of course they put it in brackets as if it were an afterthought: it is the main purpose of this total twist or lie. Yogananda was a much better psychologist than this guy could hope to be. I remember how Erickson was a psychology guru until he saw the truth in Eastern thought and the science of the soul. He then he was mercilessly abandoned. I expected to read Krishnamurti committed suicide at ninety, after that nonsense. These people allow much greater insight into the soul and our connectivity than most psychiatrists and other programmers posing as quacks.
Read the passage carefully and note all the pejorative words and the ways they demean without fair reporting. Do some research and study hard or you will remain more of a sheep to the paradigm. Ask yourself what role the Freemasons had in all of this on both sides of the issue, including the Mormons, Hitler, and other royal mind control cults like Scientology.