Quest Magazine

Printed in the  Fall 2020  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Hebert, Barbara, "Viewpoint: Change and Our Response to It" Quest 108:4, pg 8-9

Barbara Hebert
National President

Change is a part of life: few if any things remain static. For this reason, theories of change exist in many areas, including business, education, healthcare, and psychology, and so on. They may help us to deal with changes more effectively.

Organizational psychologist Kurt Lewin created a model for management change that is frequently used in business. Lewin’s theory requires looking at the various aspects of a given situation, setting aside prior knowledge, and replacing it with new information.

Lewin’s three-stage model includes the following steps: unfreezing, change, and refreezing. For example, a business unfreezes its current process in relation to a given situation and looks deeply into all procedures related to it. Once this analysis has been completed and more efficient processes are identified, the business makes changes. After these are in place, the business then refreezes the newly implemented processes.

While each of these stages involves certain pragmatic steps, the emotional response of the people involved is worth exploring in more detail. To explore it, we can look to the Change Curve, a model that is also frequently used in business. Based on Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s work in grief and loss, the Change Curve model has four stages. The first, identified as status quo, is the  situation in place when people are first introduced to upcoming change. The response is frequently shock or denial. Stage two, disruption, occurs when individuals begin to realize that change is actually going to happen. At this point, many begin to experience fear and anger as well as resentment and concern. Some may protest, while others may even resort to active resistance. Stage two is a difficult time for many and if not controlled can spiral into chaos.

Exploration is the third stage of the Change Curve, and it is the turning point. During this stage, individuals begin to let go of their fear and start to explore the changes that are occurring. They begin to experience both the positives and the negatives of the new situation. They test the changes for themselves, determine how they will apply to their own jobs and lives, and discover how they must adapt to them. As this exploration continues, many individuals begin to accept the new conditions and feel some degree of optimism.

The final stage is rebuilding. At this point, individuals have accepted the changes and are now committed to them. They are rebuilding the ways in which they work. 

Some might wonder why I have gone into such detail about these business models, but it seems to me that they can help explain what many are experiencing in our world today.

Recent and current events have focused the attention of many on the need for change. In fact, we are watching it happen before our eyes. We see people in various stages of that change and experiencing a wide variety of feelings about it. These feelings range from concern to outright anger to optimism and hope for the future. We also see people exhibiting behaviors that stem from those feelings. 

If we look at the Change Curve model, many people today probably fall into the second stage: disruption. They have realized that change is happening and are experiencing fear, anger, resentment, and concern. It may even feel as if the world is in chaos and that everything is falling apart. However, we know that there are other stages to follow: exploration and rebuilding. We don’t know when they will occur, but we know that they will. This provides a solid foundation from which to view the changes that are happening and also gives us hope for the future. 

This issue of Quest magazine is dedicated to articles about the Ageless Wisdom. For students of this wisdom, learning about change models can be valuable. The Ageless Wisdom teaches that apart from the Ultimate Reality, change is a constant in the universe. Lao Tzu reputedly said, “Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” All of life is on a pilgrimage that requires change, growth, and expansion. In order to create something new, the old must be taken down or even destroyed.

We are also taught that what happens in the macrocosm is mirrored in the microcosm. As life continues to unfold and expand, so too do we unfold and grow. To allow for growth, the old ways must go. This applies not only to life but also to our own consciousness. We must let go of our old ways: our thoughts, perspectives, perceptions, conditioning, and so on.

In the Theosophical Society, we frequently talk about the importance of self-introspection for seeing what needs to be discarded as we move forward. This time of transition brings self-introspection into the spotlight. In this process, we look at all aspects of ourselves. We may look at what keeps us attached to the status quo, or at the origins of our thoughts, that is, our conditioning. Our families, those who teach us, our friends, and even the society that surrounds us have conditioned us to have certain expectations about life and other people. 

What do we think about the way life should be lived or the way in which we should relate to others? Where did these ideas originate? As young children, were we encouraged to see others as dangerous or different, or less important? As young children, did we receive messages that in order to be safe, we need to be in control of others and the world around us?

As human beings, we will likely experience some sense of disruption in relation to the many changes that are occurring in our world. There is nothing wrong with experiencing such feelings. Humans have them for a reason, and they must be experienced and acknowledged. Then we can move forward. In this process, self-introspection can enable us to understand our reaction to change and facilitate our adjustment to it. It may help us avoid the extreme reactions of many others. Without it, we may find it far more difficult to deal with the emotions that arise.

For me, this is part of our work on the spiritual path, for which self-introspection is essential. This work involves accepting change as well as experiencing the feelings engendered by it. Through self-introspection and maneuvering our way through the changes and the experiences, we learn and grow. Our consciousness expands; as a result, the consciousness of all life expands as well. 

We can learn to deal with change in many ways: studying the Ageless Wisdom, finding models of change that speak to us, listening to our own inner voice, and self-introspection. Regardless of how we do it, we must deal with change, and we must change. As painful and uncomfortable as it may be, let us all embrace the opportunity for self-awareness and change. Let us move forward together.

Printed in the  Fall 2020  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Blumenthal-McGannon, Sally, "Therapeutic Touch Camp Continues via Zoom" Quest 108:4, pg 8, 40

By Sally Blumenthal-McGannon

I recently had the privilege and honor of participating in a Therapeutic Touch (TT) camp on Zoom, the web conferencing site. I am not savvy about or comfortable with technology, so imagining this event was challenging for me. Fortunately I have been attending TT workshops at Indralaya from the beginning in the seventies, as well as a few more at Pumpkin Hollow, where I had the opportunity to learn and study with both Dora Kunz and Dolores Krieger, the cofounders of TT.

Over the years, a group of us have remained very close. Endowed with a variety of skills, we normally hold our healers’ camp yearly at Camp Indralaya on Washington state’s Orcas Island. This year, the virus made this gathering impossible, so we decided to hold the camp online with Zoom. Some of the group had prior experience providing TT with Zoom individually or in small groups.

I am a great believer in healing at a distance and sending healing to others in need. TT is all about energy. There is no need to physically touch the person you are treating. However, if you add technology, you lose me. I have lived in a virgin redwood forest for a long time and have never had good Internet reception. But the desire to participate in TT this summer was so great that other healers came together and figured it out.

While I was glued to the TV, watching the pain and suffering of protests after the murder of George Floyd, I was reading the applications of TT practitioners who wanted to be of service, knew they had something special to offer, and explained why they wanted to attend our virtual camp. I was so touched by their generosity and kindness that the healing from our future gathering had already begun for me. I was reminded of Dora, who urged us to send love and peace to the angels over the cities in distress. This enabled me to shift my focus from suffering to being centered, being of service, and reinforcing what we need in our world during these troubled times. The pandemic was another reason for me to appreciate the power of shifting my awareness and focus on healing.

In addition to all the emails I receive every day, I smile when I see contact from my TT family and know it is about love and healing. And I breathe. The benefit of my TT life and commitment continues to serve me, as I laugh at my original reason for learning Therapeutic Touch, which was to become a better nurse.

Our experiment is over. We held our Indralaya Zoom camp for three days, and it was beyond our greatest expectations (not that the outcome was ever in our hands). I could never have imagined the impact we would have on everyone involved.

We began our mornings with Helen Bee, an Indralaya elder who led morning meditation in the meadow during TT camp. She was actually at the camp, with a camera focused on the meadow, so we could see our safe space and begin our mornings together as we meditated in the meadow.

I was one of the facilitators for the Healing Partners (HP) group, something I have done for many years. As always, we met the evening before, where we had the opportunity to acknowledge what we would need to feel safe as we came together. Many participants knew one another from past summers, so our reunion began by seeing each other face-to-face on Zoom. Newcomers were greeted as well. We began with a welcoming meditation, thanking one another for showing up with a desire to connect with the healing spirit of Indralaya.

The next morning we all came together, over fifty of us, for meditation “in the meadow.” Then we were put in breakout rooms, where individuals received TT treatments from experienced practitioners. A few of us stayed in the main room, holding a safe healing space, available to pop in if someone needed support in a breakout room.

After resting, we met with our group, and HPs (healees) shared their experiences of receiving TT. It was amazing. People’s descriptions resembled those from the live camp. The treatments were just as effective, and sometimes more so. HPs loved the shared intimacy, closeness, and connection with their practitioners—amazingly, all on Zoom.

The first day was my opportunity to set the tone of being open, feeling safe to be vulnerable, and being held with respect and confidentiality. I addressed intimate topics such as grieving, dying, illness, and especially loss during this year of pandemic and social unrest. Naming the fear enables people to address it more easily.

By our afternoon session, HPs were open to sharing their journeys. I shared a page of quotes and had participants each write about one that resonated for them, which led to a deep discussion afterward. Here are some of the quotes they received.

Not everything that can be faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed that is not faced. —James Baldwin

There’s nothing as whole as a broken heart. In these traditions, you cultivate a broken heart, which is very different from depression or sadness. It's the kind of vulnerability, openness, and acute sensitivity to your own suffering and the suffering of others that becomes an opportunity for connection. —Rebbe Nachman of Breslov

As long as I’m alive, I will continue to try to understand more, because the work of the heart is never done. —Muhammad Ali

Laughter is not only carbonated holiness: it is medicine. —Anne Lamott

Everything will be OK in the end. If it’s not OK, it’s not the end. —John Lennon

Sorrow is how we learn to love. —Rita Mae Brown

My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. —Desmond Tutu

Willing to experience aloneness, I discover connection everywhere; turning to face my fear, I meet the warrior who lives within. —Jennifer Welwood

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it. —Alice Walker

When there’s a big disappointment, we don't know if that's the end of the story. It may just be the beginning of a great adventure. —Pema Chödrön

Your present circumstances don't determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start. —Nido Qubein

How did the rose ever open its heart and give this world all its beauty? It felt the encouragement of light against its being; Otherwise we all remain too frightened. —Hafiz

The universe is wider than our views of it. —Henry David Thoreau

What we have before us are some breathtaking opportunities disguised as insoluble problems. —John W. Gardner

Receiving TT brings new energy, as the healee opens up and lets go of old pain, emotional and physical (if it is time for that). Sharing their chosen quote allowed participants to go deeper into their experience, feeling understood and supported.

The group experience was profound. I reminded people that we are all mirrors and that they might hear their own thoughts or feelings being expressed by another. There is a cumulative effect of TT, which grows over the days and continues after camp is over.

The connections and sharing, the risk taking and vulnerability, is profound. Each gathering builds on the past, and by the end of camp, we were an amazingly close group of people, who felt safe and held with respect and kindness, some on a level never perceived before.

We had a follow-up gathering a week later to check in and validate peoples’ experiences. Three of us led this group. I had wanted to remind the healees that when we parted last week, it was ending, but that every ending is also a beginning and how joyous it would be to share some of their new world.

What we heard was profound. Many recognized the timeliness of our gathering. Before it began, no one knew that our country was going to break open with such overt pain and vulnerability. The timing was impeccable and, again, out of our hands.

Below are some comments from participants.

“How timely for us to hold camp in the world right now. It was profound, and I got to experience BLM with a dose of Zoom and hope.”

“The bubble of safety, kindness, and support has stayed with me.”

“I learned how connected we are energetically.”

”My heart took a leap when I saw this group today.”

“I am transforming and figuring out how to protect myself (often from myself), having experienced such absence of judgment during TT.”

From someone who was deep in a grief state and sadness: “I now see my home as a sad bubble, outside of me when I finally went out (and my sadness), and I am ready to make changes since I have changed. I have found a way to stay connected with my husband with love, not pain.”

 “I’m grieving, everything is changing, energy started moving.”

This Zoom retreat has allowed us to connect with each other, ourselves, and the higher/inner power that connects us all and nature. I am left with greater awareness of our oneness and our innate healing power, which enable us to move forward during these challenging times. The healing will continue in each of us as we go out into the world. Knowing we have something to offer during these troubling transformative times is profound and humbling.

Sally Blumenthal-McGannon, MFT, RN, is a nurse, therapist, and Theosophist who has been studying Therapeutic Touch since 1976. She has started a hospice, been the Santa Cruz County AIDS Coordinator, and served as adjunct faculty at Santa Clara University, and has a private practice. She is presently writing a book called The Joy of Dying.

Printed in the  Fall 2020  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Smoley, Richard, "From the Editor's Desk" Quest 108:4, pg 2

Cherry Gilchrist’s image of a ruined city on a riverbank in this issue reminds me of some thoughts I put into my book How God Became God: What Scholars Are Really Saying about God and the Bible.

In his play Our Town, Thornton Wilder writes, “Everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being.”

When I think about this “something eternal,” one image that comes to me is that of a water table. I would say that this something eternal is like a water table underlying everything that we call reality. It is a vibrant, moving presence, and it is there whether we know it or not. The world of the five senses is simply a crust that floats on this eternal presence. And it is this presence that gives life to this crust that we call reality, which would not exist without it.

What name shall we give this underlying presence? Some have called it the Ground of Being. Another common term is Spirit. Yet another is God.

Let us take the metaphor further. There are areas where it does not rain. If people live there, they have to rely on the water table for their water supply. Let’s say that our earthly reality is like a region of this kind. It has no life, no energy of its own. All the life it has is drawn from this Ground of Being, this Spirit.

To live, in any true sense, is to have a connection with this Spirit. We can imagine this process as involving wells, or springs, that connect the two levels of being. At certain points the water of the Spirit breaks through the crust, forming wells. These “wells,” shall we say, are moments of encounter with the sacred.

To take this analogy a step further, let’s say that there are places where the water arises more often. People are attracted to these places. They come repeatedly. Hotels and other accommodations are built for them. Someone notices that this water seems to surface more often at certain times, so the place attracts even more people then. These become regular occurrences, and, like all other forms of human activity, they become formalized.

This groundwater does not belong to anybody. It comes and goes as it will, sometimes in a predictable pattern, often unexpectedly. But the land around the spots where the water comes up can be owned; it is real estate just like anything else. The property is bought up by the devout and by the shrewd, and they start to limit people’s access to the water.

These owners set themselves on high. They say the water rises because of certain things that they themselves do. They will let others take part—if these others will do as they say and pay them a price for the privilege.

Say also that this groundwater of the Spirit erupts in an especially powerful way at a particular place and time. These are the revelations known to world history. Those who experience them have not only seen—and seen in a very powerful way—but often believe that they are inspired to guide humanity in the right path. Usually one individual encounters this eruption most directly and powerfully. He becomes the founder, the lawgiver. He gives commandments about how to pray and how to live with our fellow humans.

This eruption of the groundwater of the Spirit revives and nourishes the land around it for many years. Life becomes possible there. The water continues to bubble up in varying quantities—sometimes enough for a group, sometimes for an individual only. Over the centuries, it bubbles up less often. Soon the land is dry again; only the tiniest trickles appear from time to time. But people still live there, remembering when the water was abundant. Some even eat dirt and tell themselves they are drinking water.

We could also liken the Ancient Wisdom to this groundwater. It does not belong to anybody; no one can claim it, though plenty of people try. The impulse comes with great force, then over the centuries it weakens. Its truths are diluted, its ideas are subtly changed, until it has only the faintest resemblance to what it originally was.

It would be foolish to mistake one of the dry wells for the living water underneath, yet people do this regularly. The water itself becomes a matter of memory and legend. Scoffers deny that there was ever such a thing.

Those of us who devote ourselves to the Ancient Wisdom should, I believe, reflect on these ideas. Every form that embodies this wisdom can dry up. At the very least we ought to avoid mistaking the wells for the water. Perhaps their ultimate value is as reminders to dig our own wells for ourselves.

Richard Smoley

Printed in the  Fall 2020  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Clewell, Andre , "How Do We Teach about the Root Races?" Quest 108:4, pg 24-25, 30

By Andre Clewell

I earned a PhD in evolutionary biology at a major Midwestern university. Later I was introduced to Theosophy. I was distraught to learn that some evolutionary concepts as understood by Theosophy differed widely from contemporary scientific fact and theory. This contentious material was prominently featured in The Secret Doctrine. I was particularly concerned with the elaborate narratives concerning human evolution in earlier Root Races, which read like children’s stories. The chasm separating evolution as understood by biology and anthropology and that in The Secret Doctrine continues to widen, and the two versions seem irreconcilable.

I was chastened by the realization that Theosophy otherwise presented a cogent and compelling case for spirituality and that The Secret Doctrine was written under the unassailable tutelage of Masters Morya and Koot Hoomi. Perhaps, I reasoned, extenuating circumstances would eventually come to light and resolve some of the differences between these incompatible evolutionary accounts.

Uneasily, I shelved my concerns as I continued studying Theosophy. However, I was concerned that other novice spiritual seekers would summarily reject Theosophy on the basis of The Secret Doctrine’s fantastic and contentious evolutionary narrative. As I began to teach Theosophy, I tried to avoid going into any detail that would raise the concerns that my initial Theosophical instructors in Theosophy mentors had raised in me.

This article explores the short-circuited nexus between science and Theosophy and how we can approach this topic when giving Theosophical instruction to newcomers. My concerns begin with teachings in The Secret Doctrine insisting that human evolution represents an evolutionary lineage distinct from that of all other mammals. H.P. Blavatsky repeatedly expresses this opinion. Yet all scientific evidence, including that from DNA investigations, converges upon a different, and indeed incompatible, explanation of human evolution.

In addition, HPB said that atmospheric gases were stable over geologic time (Secret Doctrine 2:159). That notion has been thoroughly and universally discredited. In general, The Secret Doctrine displays a lack of a fundamental understanding of ecology and its formative roles in evolutionary processes. Genetic mechanisms were unknown when it was written, and Mme. Blavatsky’s writings exhibit a profound misunderstanding of the role of sexual reproduction in evolutionary processes.

More importantly, from a contemporary perspective the alleged emergence of protohumans in the Third, Lemurian, Root Race and the early Fourth, Atlantean, Root Race seems fantastic. Others before me have questioned this material. The late TSA president Joy Mills wrote, “The subject of lost continents, both Atlantis and Lemuria, remains a topic of speculation for many people” (Mills, 365). Discussions of the Stanzas of Dzyan 6 through 9 (Secret Doctrine 2:131–226) are especially disconcerting from a modern scientific perspective, particularly the descriptions of sweat-born beings, giants, androgynes, and narrow-brained beings. The gradual solidification of bodies in these beings from a transparent etheric state seems incongruous with modern knowledge about biochemistry, cell biology, and physiology. It would be much easier to accept the accounts of these fantastic beings if they had been presented as human prototypes that were developed by pitris or other demiurges entirely on nonphysical planes of existence.

Notions about these beings and the solidification of bodies appear in the Stanzas. Although Mme. Blavatsky discussed them at length in The Secret Doctrine, she only mentioned these earlier Root Races briefly without elaboration in her Collected Writings, and I have not seen them discussed in other nineteenth-century Theosophical literature, including the Mahatma Letters. At one point, though, HPB suggested that these teachings contain “more or less transparent allegories” and that the portrayal of the sweat-born race “concealed a psycho-physiological phenomenon, and one of the greatest mysteries of Nature” (Secret Doctrine 2:148). Unfortunately she did not elaborate on this assertion.

In his monograph on how The Secret Doctrine was written, Theosophical scholar Boris de Zirkoff explains that the Masters reviewed the manuscript each night as Blavatsky wrote it. Could the Masters have suggested that these topics were indeed allegorical, and could HPB have dutifully added a paragraph to that effect? Her only other recourse would have been to rewrite many completed pages of manuscript for The Secret Doctrine at a time when subscribers for her long-overdue magnum opus were clamoring for its publication.

The Stanzas of Dzyan reduced to writing knowledge that oral tradition had passed down for innumerable generations. Were these teachings garbled from countless oral retellings by elders of what actually happened in Lemuria and Atlantis? Is this why they may be allegorical? Did the Masters decide that HPB was too ill and too burdened by other responsibilities to demand an extensive rewrite, so they allowed her one suggestion of allegory to suffice? We don’t know. We don’t even know if the Masters reviewed all of the nearly 1500 pages of The Secret Doctrine with equal care. Their principal interest was that the spiritual paradigm that we call Theosophy be made publicly available. Mme. Blavatsky’s numerous detours into related Victorian science and scholarship were of less concern to them.

According to de Zirkoff, other Theosophists suggested edits and prepared texts that were incorporated into The Secret Doctrine. We don’t know which passages were contributed by others, although they are unlikely to have concerned the contentious material. Furthermore, other hands made major rearrangements of the text just before the manuscript was typeset. We don’t know for sure if these changes affected HPB’s narrative or if the Masters reviewed the results of this last-minute exercise.

The Masters only imparted information which humanity was ready to absorb and integrate from cultural, historical, and philosophical perspectives. They presented new information within the intellectual context of the times. For example, when The Secret Doctrine was written, the structure of the atom was unknown to science, and the Masters could not explain atomic behavior in terms of subatomic particles and quantum mechanics. Likewise, they were not at liberty to explain the evolution of species in terms of mutation and genetic isolation. They were addressing an audience preoccupied by considerations of biological classification rather than ecosystems, so they did not discuss ecological dynamics in evolutionary processes. They largely limited their instruction to answering questions that were put directly to them, and they did not venture into side issues.

Even so, why did the Masters feel that information in The Secret Doctrine could be effectively presented in the form of fables and fairy tales? Why did they allow HPB to promote an evolutionary lineage for humans that diverged from all other mammalian evolution?

These topics raise more questions than answers, and we have reached a quandary. A reconciliation of the ever-widening gap between The Secret Doctrine with modern biology and anthropology seems highly unlikely.

Yet we are loath to reject the content of The Secret Doctrine, which was overseen by Masters who also provided us with spiritual theory that unites the wisdom traditions of the ages. The Masters know more than we do. They have much better access to knowledge on the higher mental and intuitional planes than we do. Who are we to doubt them? Unfortunately, they are no longer precipitating letters with answers to our questions. Our only alternative is to have patience and trust that explanations will eventually be forthcoming.

In the meantime, how do we teach Theosophy to novices without affronting their intelligence and scaring them off with seemingly preposterous fairy tales? How do we give instruction about The Secret Doctrine? I recommend that we consider its contentious chapters on Root Race development as outdated scholarship. We should downplay the literal importance of these chapters and admit that we do not know how to interpret this material in light of our present state of knowledge. In so doing, we set these ideas aside for interpretation by future generations in light of new revelations. As an added benefit, we can avoid having to address several passages of Victorian snobbery that are tucked into these contentious chapters. This material would insult modern readers, who would rightfully consider it as racially biased.

We should not let ourselves be held hostage to the past by considering The Secret Doctrine as presenting a static dogma like the Christian Bible. The Masters intimated that more spiritual knowledge would be revealed as humanity advances and is ready for it. In that regard, the paradigm of Theosophy is and should be regarded as dynamic and open to new thought. Otherwise we will become stuck in the past like religious fundamentalists. From that perspective, outdated scholarship may well prove to be the only viable explanation for contentious science in The Secret Doctrine.

Sources

Blavatsky, H.P. The Secret Doctrine. 2 vols. Wheaton: Quest, 1993.

Mills, Joy. Reflections on an Ageless Wisdom: A Commentary on the Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett. Wheaton: Quest, 2010.

Zirkoff, Boris de. Rebirth of the Occult Tradition: How the Secret Doctrine of H.P. Blavatsky Was Written. Adyar, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1977.

Andre Clewell investigates mechanisms of plant species evolution. He is a founder of the new discipline of ecological restoration, which recovers degraded ecosystems to their historic, natural condition. He is a Life Member of the TSA and past president of the MidSouth Federation.