Quest Magazine

International President's Inaugural Address

Printed in the Fall 2014 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Boyd, Tim. "International President's Inaugural Address" Quest  102. 4 (Fall  2014): pg. 123-125.

This speech, for the occasion of Tim Boyd's inauguration as eighth international president of the Theosophical Society, was delivered at the Society's world headquarters in Adyar, Chennai, India, on May 8, 2014.

Greetings, everyone. It is a great honor to be here with all of you. It is a humbling experience that so many of you would take the time and have the interest in the Theosophical Society and who its president might be. I am here today because we have recently completed an election and now we are having an inauguration.

The Theosophical Society, since its founding, has been dedicated to the democratic form of choosing its leadership. A vote has taken place. Some people have voted one way, and others have voted differently. To those who saw that there was some value in the possibility that I might assume this position, I am thankful. For all those who saw another choice and another possibility, I am equally thankful, because all of us have invested ourselves not just in a person, but in an organization that has a deep history, a powerful vision, and a mission for the upliftment of humanity. So the individual who ends up standing in front of the microphone is certainly a secondary consideration.

I find myself in the position of being the eighth president of the Theosophical Society since its founding in 1875 in New York City. Many of you have known some of the people who have occupied this position, and each one of them, without doubt, has been a great individual. None of them was perfect, but all of them were perfect in their devotion to the Theosophical Society and in their life of service to this work that they saw as so valuable. As the eighth president, I am the most recent one to bring my own particular set of imperfections to this work, but I promise that I will try. More than that, I cannot promise.

Since its inception the Theosophical Society has been engaged in a very important work around the world. Much of it we have seen, but a great deal has taken place in the most important areas that it came into being to serve, that is, the inner levels of our being. If we were to really try to put our finger on what it is that the Society has done, we could say that it has been engaged in seeding human consciousness, much like a farmer seeds the land, with seeds of great potency that it was hoped would spring to life. The particular name that was given to this work was Theosophy, the Ageless Wisdom, which speaks of the possibilities for unfoldment of capacities that each of us have, but that seem to remain hidden, latent, throughout the course of our lifetimes.

With the introduction of the Theosophical Society, much of that hidden landscape of our consciousness became vividly described, and an avenue for actual transformation was depicted for us all. When we look at it historically, one seed that was planted grew and arose in someone like Annie Besant. Another seed sprouted into someone by the name of J. Krishnamurti. Other seeds that were planted relate to contemporary scientists and philosophers like Rupert Sheldrake, poets like W.B. Yeats, artists like Wassily Kandinsky. The movement of human thought, the arts, and all of the realms of expansion from the inner to the outer have been deeply influenced by this act of planting these various seeds.

While all of that has its own great importance, to you and to me probably the true importance of this act of planting seeds is that they have been planted equally in each of us. We now await how they will arise and flower. The work of the TS in the world and its influence on world consciousness is clear and undeniable. Nothing that we see in the world today has not been touched by this wisdom called Theosophy and its Society. Each one of us is a recipient of this great benefit. The original injunction of the Society to popularize the knowledge of Theosophy in many ways has been fulfilled splendidly.

If we trace our thinking back to the context of 1875, when this Society arose, the various ideas and concepts that we take for granted today—such as the sevenfold constitution of the human being; that we are more than just the body; that there are layers and layers, planes of existence, which are functioning simultaneously within each of us—were not just remote ideas, they were unknown, particularly to the Western world.

Theosophical Society - Tim Boyd delivering his inaugural address at the Adyar headquaters in May 2014
Tim Boyd delivering his inaugural address at the Adyar headquaters in May 2014.

Ideas that are quite common and ordinary in the Eastern world—such as karma and reincarnation, that are a fact that people build their lives upon—to the Western world of Europe and the Americas, these ideas were unknown. Today, any dictionary in the world contains all of these terms, and the ideas have taken root in a popular sense. It is not uncommon when I am in the United States at a coffee shop or in a grocery store to overhear a conversation with someone talking about their karma, or about reincarnation, or about some level of dreams and their meanings. All of these things were unheard of in the world of 1875, and now are quite common. Those particular seeds have flowered.

This blessing is also part of the problem. The Theosophical teachings present a comprehensive view. However, the world at large has adopted it in its particulars, taking what has been of interest, leaving behind the greater view within which it resides. So such concepts as karma, planes of Nature, spiritual evolution, even such beings as the Masters of the Wisdom, have been diminished—reduced to commodities and mere details in the ceaseless quest for self-satisfaction. This is something of a problem.

For a member of the Theosophical Society, this condition of the world brings certain questions to mind. At the time the Society was started, it was viewed as a soothing balm of truth that could do much, if properly presented, to alleviate many of the self-induced sufferings in our world. Few people would argue that the same sorts of selfish motives that were active in the hearts and minds of many in 1875 are less active in 2014. If anything, the level of selfish competition has increased. Nations, groups, individuals, find themselves in constant contest with one another—for what? Everybody, it seems, is trying to get more. More of what? You pick it: more control, more money, more fame, more. The same sorts of hungers that gnaw at the hearts of people now have gnawed at the hearts of people before, even in the presence of something that we call "Theosophy." What we describe as religious sectarianism does not differ in any of its details from warring nations or from predatory businesses. Lump them all together and they all look the same. Everybody is competing for "market share"—their piece of the global pie.

The scenario of today is not the hoped-for vision of humanity that so many people projected into the future at the time of the founding of the TS. It forces us to ask certain questions of ourselves. The first might be: "What, in fact, has become of this soothing balm of truth that the Theosophical Society introduced into the world?" There is no religion higher than truth; there is no dharma higher than truth—no person, no ideas, no movement, no teachings.

In the face of this most recent expression of the Ageless Wisdom, what has been the response of our world? This also brings to mind another question: As members of the Theosophical Society, as people who actually value and try to live by our experience of this Truth, what is our role in bringing about this state of affairs in the world? Have we abdicated a role that should fall to those who, at least in theory, have knowledge? It causes us to ask yet another question: Is knowledge, even knowledge that we describe as Theosophical, sufficient? Is it enough to say that "I know," and that I know something which has been pointed to by wise persons over all the ages as something of great value?

Somehow, the answer that the world gives us is that perhaps something more is needed—and what is it? Everyone is endowed with some degree of sensitivity in perhaps slightly different ways. There are few people who are not aware that there is a new pattern emerging in today's world. We see it happening, we know that something is taking place, but our ability to describe its outlines, to point to the way in which it is going to emerge, is somehow limited. Still, everybody knows that something is going on in this world.

There is a mighty consciousness that is wanting to make itself known in the world. If it were a person, we could describe it as something seeking to walk among us. There is this consciousness, always searching, just as water searches for ways to flow. This consciousness is perpetually available to openings through which it can make itself felt. For those who have embraced the spiritual path, to whom the ideas and actual experience of Theosophy have become meaningful, we can describe our role as becoming that opening.

There is a problem for us. It may sound blunt, and perhaps it is better not said, but the world today, with its deep yearning for some connection with something that is "real," something that speaks to the inner beauty, the inner calling that is in every person—that world—is not beating a path to our door, and there is no reason to expect it. Perhaps the question that would be more valuable to us is: Are we beating a path to the door of those in need? This work that lies before us is the same work that lay before the founders; it has not changed. It is the work of becoming open to a world in need.

One of the great TS presidents, Annie Besant, talked about the spiritual life in many ways. One of the things she said about spirituality, and particularly about our efforts and our approach to it, is that we should let our spirituality be judged by our effect on the world—not by how good we feel about ourselves, not about our ability to become quiet in our private moments—none of those things: "Let our spirituality be judged by our effect on the world. Let us be careful that the world may grow purer, better, happier because we are living in it." Perhaps that may not be everyone's standard for spirituality, but it is a valid one for us to consider.

I will share with you two overlooked passages from Christian spirituality. These are the ones that people tend not to quote. The first one is: "Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it" (Ps. 127:1). The second, and one that formed the basis for the work of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and others of that depth of perception, is "Resist not evil" (Matt. 5:39). The connection for me between those two quotes has nothing to do with evil, definitely nothing to do with building houses. It has to do with a state of our being which perhaps is sometimes overlooked. In a word, that condition of our being, of our mind, could be described as a state of openness.

Like the door is open, like the window is open, it is a condition of our being that resists nothing, that blocks nothing, that does not turn from that which our minds categorize as ugly or low. Resist not. Resistance, of its very nature, is the response of a mind that is trapped in fear. "Self-protection" is the mind that resists. For those who are genuinely wise, this behavior may even seem humorous, if it did not cause so much pain. A modern Taoist philosopher asked, then answered, a question: "Why is it that you are so unhappy? Because 99.9 percent of everything you do, of everything you think, of everything you want, is for your self, and there isn't one." The self that occupies so much of our attention, that we take excessive pains to beautify, to harmonize, to get the right diet for, to think the right thoughts, this self is, by its very nature, without substance.

The more outwardly acquisitive forms of selfishness—grabbing for money, houses, reputation—are easy to identify. The more subtle ones, like our commitment to an enduring self that will continue to exist from body to body, from culture to culture, are more difficult. When closely examined, no one has yet been able to point to this elusive self. Answers are good, but it is the question that is more valuable. The question establishes the focus for living. Answers tend to be small things. So these are the questions, the matters that should be stirring within us. At this time we are wanting for nothing in this work of unfoldment. The seed has been planted within us, the soil, the water, the nutrients, are all to be found in this moment. The only thing that prevents the light from shining and stirring these seeds into life are the obstacles we throw up, like clouds.

They say that who you are speaks so loudly that people cannot hear a word that you are saying. Your inner state is what is being called out for. That state is this quality of openness; not tolerance, not merely accepting different creeds, religions, or races. While that is important, openness demands something more of us.

In this moment, let us respond to this ever-calling invitation to openness, which is the only way in which we as individuals can be transformed, and the only way in which humanity can experience the regeneration that has been spoken of by past presidents. That is the goal of the Theosophical work as a whole.

 

 

From the Editor's Desk Summer 2014

Printed in the Summer 2014 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Smoley, Richard. "From the Editor's Desk" Quest  102. 3 (Summer 2014): pg. 83.

Theosophical Society - Richard Smoley is editor of Quest: Journal of the Theosophical Society in America and a frequent lecturer for the Theosophical SocietyToday, when money and spirituality are mentioned together, something called the Law of Attraction often comes up. The idea behind it is that thought in and of itself produces results in the physical world. Moreover, "like attracts like." That is, if you're spending a lot of time brooding about financial worries, those very thoughts are going to bring problems to you. Conversely, if you think thoughts of wealth and abundance, the dollars will be banging on your door.

The idea, epitomized in Napoleon Hill's 1938 best-seller Think and Grow Rich, was a mainstay of the New Thought movement throughout the twentieth century. Its current popularity is due to the teachings of a nonphysical entity (or rather, group of entities) named Abraham, channeled by Esther Hicks. Books by Hicks and her husband, Jerry, have hit the best-seller lists any number of times over the past decade. The idea grew still more popular with Rhonda Byrne's 2006 film (and later book), The Secret, another best-seller.

The Law of Attraction thus starts to sound like a pyramid scheme. The best way to manifest abundance is to write about manifesting abundance.

Is there more to it than that?

I have my doubts. First of all, there is nothing self-evidently true about the claim that "like attracts like." Often it seems to be the other way around: opposites attract, whether we are talking about male and female or the positive and negative ends of a magnet. It would seem rather to be the case that "like repels like."

Nevertheless, it would be hard to say flat out that the Law of Attraction does not work, since many say they have had success with it. But I think something else is going on.

One form of occult magic involves this procedure: you form a clear, sharp, stable mental picture of what you desire. Once this is fixed, you raise "power," a subtle force that is not well understood even though everyone experiences it. This power is what you sense in a room just before an argument is about to erupt. It can also be produced by strong sexual attraction. Most of the time it is raised unconsciously and discharged just as unconsciously. But an occultist who knows how can infuse this power into the mental image and (perhaps) make it manifest on the physical plane.

I suspect that many of those who are working with the Law of Attraction are doing something of this kind. From my own experience, I would say that it is possible, even comparatively easy, to achieve results with this method.

If so, why doesn't everybody do it? To begin with, most people don't know about it. Many of those who do, including most reputable esotericists, refuse to use it. But they don't always explain why, except to say that it is not permitted to use occult powers for personal gain.

There is another reason, I believe, that this kind of magic has been frowned upon: while you can get results with this practice, it is almost impossible to avoid unintended and unwanted side-effects.

Years ago a friend of mine told me this story. She had had a boyfriend who was starting a business, and he needed ten thousand dollars. So she did some kind of magical ritual to get the money for him.

Around this time she finished medical school and was moving out of her dorm. She had loaded all of her belongings into her car. The car was broken into and everything was stolen. The insurance settlement came to ten thousand dollars.

If we are being honest with ourselves, there are probably few on the spiritual path who have not tried something like this once or twice, with similar results. Most people get their fingers burned and learn their lesson. Only those who are very stupid or very evil, or both, go any further.

On the Internet you will see references that trace the Law of Attraction to H.P. Blavatsky and Annie Besant, but as far as I can tell, they didn't use the term that way (for them, it was usually a kind of rough approximation of the law of gravity). Nevertheless, the Theosophical literature does explore the power of the mind, and Besant's Thought Power, first published in 1903, remains a useful and impressive work.

For Besant, thoughts are creative, although not quite in the way that the Law of Attraction would have us believe. She says little, if anything, about using thoughts to gain a million dollars and all that it will buy, except to say that such thoughts bind the consciousness to lower planes of manifestation.

Instead Besant emphasizes strengthening the mental body by the conscious use of thought and removing negative patterns from the mind by concentrating on positive and uplifting thoughts. Each individual, she says, "fixes the normal vibration-rate of his mind. Thoughts which do not harmonise with that rate will be flung aside when they touch the mind. If a man thinks truth, a lie cannot make a lodgement in his mind; if he thinks love, hate cannot disturb him; if he thinks wisdom, ignorance cannot paralyse him."

It is true that we can change the world with thought; it is done all the time. But it may be more important, and in the end more satisfying, to change ourselves.


Richard Smoley

Viewpoint: The Question of Seeing

Printed in the  Summer 2014 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Boyd, Tim. "The Question of Seeing" Quest  102. 3 (Summer  2014): pg. 88-89.

Theosophical Society - Tim Boyd was elected the president of the Theosophical Society Adyar in 2014. He succeeded Radha Burnier.

Like many of us, if you were to follow me home you would find a couple of places in the house crowded with photographs. On top of the dresser in the bedroom are photos of family—my daughter, my wife’s parents, my parents, brothers, sisters. In my study I have other photos—teachers, wise women and men, special moments. It is here that you would find one of my favorite pictures. It is a photo of my daughter and me. It was taken at the end of a long day of walking and sightseeing in Washington, D.C. It was her first trip to the city. She was ten or eleven years old. We are sitting at the foot of the long stairway leading to the Lincoln Memorial. Both of us are tired—I more than she. So when the photo was taken, we were not frowning or straining to smile. I was simply looking at the camera, content to be sitting with my daughter by my side. We are seated on a granite embankment on a cool November day, with green boxwood hedges as a backdrop. My daughter is on my left, leaning her head on my shoulder, smiling and flashing a peace sign — something she tended to do in photos at that age. The photo is a freeze-frame of a contented moment, both of us happy; happy to be sitting down, happy with each other, happy because there was no reason not to be.

That photo was taken ten years ago, but when I look at it I remember the moment well. Nowadays when I take the time to study it, I see other things. One of the main things that stands out is how different we both look now. Then, unlike now, I had just a few gray hairs. My face was smooth, without the lines that I have now come to say give my face “character.” My daughter is grown and in college. Her choice of clothes has changed. Her hair is now rarely styled in that little-girl ponytail that was her constant look as a child. The peace sign no longer comes up as the chosen photo affectation. All of it has changed.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about examining that photo is that in spite of the changes, when I look at it I recognize myself and feel that in some way I am the same person. In spite of the evidence of change, there seems to be some essential sense of “me-ness” that fuses the person in the photo and the one looking at it today into a consistent whole. This habitual way of seeing is paradoxical. On one level it is correct, but at the same time, it is fundamentally wrong.

There is a piece of popular “knowledge” that has been repeated enough to have attained the status of a recognized fact. It says that all fifty to seventy-five trillion cells that make up our bodies die and are replaced every seven to ten years. Though not entirely accurate, this statement expresses a fundamental truth about the body’s impermanence. In a physical sense we are always changing, and the facts do not support our cherished idea of a continuous sense of self.

Although the physical body is the most visible part of what we call our self, most of us are as strongly attached to other, less material dimensions of our being—our feelings and thoughts. From the Theosophical point of view, what we identify as the personality is the combination of the physical, emotional, and mental components of an individual. Like the physical body, this arrangement of materials is ever-changing and temporary—even more so than the physical. Thoughts and emotions come and go rapidly. It is useful to keep in mind that from the Theosophical perspective the stuff of emotions and thought is considered matter in the same way that we regard solid, liquid, and gas as merely more refined, less dense physical matter. In letter 10 of the original edition of The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, the Master Koot Hoomi makes the sweeping statement, “We believe in matter alone, in matter as visible nature and matter in its invisibility.” A continual stream of thoughts and feelings enter and exit, leaving their tracks and shaping the materials of our astral and mental bodies.

The specific combination of matter that we each identify as “me” holds together for a lifetime, then dissolves into the basic units that comprise it. At the end of a life the processes of change that have been ongoing become more pronounced. In the absence of a binding force the physical body decomposes. All of its materials are reduced to molecules and atoms and are recycled into the pool of materials used to build other life forms. The same holds true for the material of the emotions and thoughts. In a very real sense, even physically, we are one with all beings. Ultimately our substance finds its way into the bodies of all creatures. Thich Nhat Hanh uses the term “interbeing” to express this radical interdependence and beautifully says, “The tears I cried yesterday have become rain today.”

Mathematicians have applied their methods to this idea of interbeing in some fascinating ways. In one exercise the calculation was made for how many of Buddha’s atoms each of us has in our bodies. (My Buddhist friend says that these particular mathematicians are people who clearly have too much time on their hands.) There are three sources of Buddha’s atoms: (1) those produced at the time of his death, (2) those breathed out during his lifetime, and (3) those that exited in the form of solid, liquid, and gaseous waste while he was alive. Some of those atoms mixed in the atmosphere; some in the water; some in the earth, becoming present around the world in a period of days, months, or years. After some basic calculations accounting for the total number of Buddha’s atoms and the number of atoms in the total environment, it is possible to arrive at an approximation of how many of his atoms are in each of us. The startling number is two hundred billion (2 x 1011). Remarkable!

Before this little fact swells our egos, and we start rewriting the Dhammapada, or changing the Four Noble Truths to five, it would be good to realize that in terms of the total number of atoms in our bodies, this number is insignificant. The average human body has the unfathomable number of 4 x 1027 atoms — 4 followed by 27 zeroes! The Buddha contingent literally amounts to less than a grain of sand does on a beach. For the sake of humility we also should keep in mind that in addition to the atoms of Buddha, Jesus, Mother Mary, and Sitting Bull, within us are atoms of Stalin, Pol Pot, Nero, and every other good, bad, or indifferent person, animal, or plant that has ever appeared on earth.

There is a profound principle at work here. The materials that pass through the personality are changed by the contact. They are quickened or dulled by the quality of the consciousness within which they are embodied. Rather than looking at the experience of being human as some solid, permanent state of affairs, it might be more accurate to view our human experience, our period of incarnation, as a meeting place for the ever-flowing, ever-changing streams of the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. For the time that they are intermixed, each stream influences the other. Patanjali, in his Yoga Sutras, describes the purpose of the coming together of the streams of spirit and matter (purusha and prakriti respectively) as “the gaining by the purusha of the awareness of its true nature and the unfoldment of powers inherent in it and prakriti.” During our lives we are continually charging all of the materials we encounter with the qualities of our consciousness and passing them on to others.

To some, this idea of interbeing, which includes the illusory, impermanent nature of the self, is disturbing. By definition it is difficult to grasp. In the words of the twentieth-century Taoist writer Wei Wu Wei, “99.9% of everything you think, and of everything you do is for yourself, and there isn’t one.” For those who through careful consideration and practice eventually emerge into this way of seeing, it is liberating. Gone is the sense of needy grasping and competition. The gnawing sense of loneliness that drives so much of all the things we do, from entertainment to relationships, evaporates with the profound awareness of our inviolable connection. The meaning of service also transforms. What act of service could be more far-reaching than the careful regulation of the quality of the thoughts we think and the emotions we encourage in ourselves? This is our ongoing contribution to the stream of life that flows through us all. From moment to moment we choose the quality of our sharing. Will it be a muddied current of confused emotion and thought, or a brightened stream of blessing? It’s all in what we see.

From the International President

Printed in the Summer 2014 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Boyd, Tim. "From the International President" Quest  102. 3 (Summer  2014): pg. 83.

Theosophical Society - Tim Boyd was elected the president of the Theosophical Society Adyar in 2014. He succeeded Radha Burnier.It has been a long strange road that led me to the Theosophical Society's international headquarters at Adyar, in Chennai, India. As I write, Adyar is where I am now serving as the TS's eighth international president. As much as we Theosophists believe that change is the nature of life and that all is in a continual state of flux, April 27, 2014, will be a day that marks an obvious and dramatic shift for the TS, and for me personally. That was the day that the election ballots were counted and the day that I stepped into the Adyar headquarters building to assume the president's position.

Just to give you a little background: In May of 2011 I had just taken over as the president of the Theosophical Society in America. It was an exceedingly busy time. Not only was I acquainting myself with the ins and outs of the national headquarters' operation, but I was also directing the endless details of the Dalai Lama's fast-approaching visit. It was a heady time, in which the TS's name and reputation received a great deal of favorable attention. Good wishes poured in from around the world. Soon after, in December, I attended my first meeting of the TS General Council at Adyar. After almost forty years of membership it was my first visit to the international headquarters. Then-president Radha Burnier had asked me to give a public talk to the twelve hundred people assembled for the annual convention. During my time at Adyar I spoke with Radha, inviting her to visit with us at Olcott when she came to the U.S. in 2012. She assured me that she would.

Life went on, but it seemed to be taking on an international character for me. Radha came to the U.S. and we talked about many things. Specifically, she wanted to explore my suitability and availability to serve as international president. We parted agreeing that we would both think about it. At Olcott each year we hosted at least one major international event—in 2011, the Dalai Lama; in 2012, the International Theosophy Conference, which brought together the diaspora of Theosophical groups; in 2013, the international Theosophical Order of Service planning conference. On the invitation of various Sections I participated in TS schools and conferences in New Zealand, Singapore, India, Brazil, and Mexico. Then in October 2013 Radha passed on, and the TS was thrown into the selection process for a new president.

Fast forward to today. The international elections have come and gone. In the U.S. the TSA elections have just been completed with the same result — my election as president. While this dual presidency is unprecedented, it is the fact of the moment. For the time that this state of affairs lasts, it will require a division of my time between the two centers. The American Section is strong and has systems and people in place to advance the work. The international headquarters at Adyar needs a great deal of attention. Toward the end of Radha's life and during the six months since her passing, many functions ground to a halt in anticipation of a new president. The Adyar center has many dedicated and qualified long-time workers, but we are seriously understaffed. People here are performing two, even three different jobs to make sure that the work gets done. The result is that our people are spread thin. The level of commitment to the work is inspiring, but the workload many have taken on is unfair.

Although the maintenance of the Adyar head­quarters is only one part of the international work, it is an important part. The TS is an international organization. In recent years some of the sense of the TS as a global body has begun to fade. Many of our Sections have struggled. Going forward, we will have to give greater attention to reestablishing a genuine global participation. All around the world our various national Sections find themselves strapped for resources. Often, just like at Adyar, the main resource lacking is dedicated workers. Since I have taken office, every day has brought members to my door asking to volunteer their time and skills, as well as e-mails from India and abroad asking, “How can I help?” Step by step an international team is forming.

As great as the task seems, my experience in every situation of my TS life encourages me. Sincere aspiration, commitment, and intention are unfailing in calling forth a response from those Great Ones who support this and all work on behalf of humanity. The TS worldwide will be fine. My greatest hope is that you will find your way to participate in this special moment. I will wait to hear from you.

Tim Boyd

  1. President's Diary
  2. Explaining Money to a Fairy
  3. The Money Magicians
  4. The Aquarian: Ronald Reagan and the Positive Thinking Movement

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