1. I can understand why Plato wrote his Dialogues. His main tenets were needed and they were and still are good literature. He did say though that some ideas in his teaching are not expressed in the Dialogues.
I can understand why Gurdjieff produced his own writings mixing so wondrously reality and fantasy – always true to character.
Ouspensky obviously wanted with his early publications (Tertium Organum, Fourth Dimension etc.) to leave his mark on philosophical thought.
I can understand (and am grateful) why Krishnamurti wrote down in 1961 his experiences for about 6 months. These notes were first published in 1976 and are magnificent descriptions of visions from a higher level of consciousness.
I can understand why Leon MacLaren wrote the Nature of Society and Essays in Economics thus formulating clearly the Natural Laws in Economics.
2. I can also understand why so many people wrote books about Gurdjieff and Ouspensky and some published Ouspensky’s notes and lecture materials.
I gather that the successors of Dr. Roles in the Study Society allowed the publication of his Conversations with the Śaṅkarācārya and their dissemination.
Soon afterwards several people, outside the Study Society somehow bought copies. It seemed a most unhappy situation and some thought the copies should be returned! But this last was impossible, of course, as there were new copies and photocopies in a wild proliferation.
In any case, for some time now all of Dr. Role’s lectures (several thousands of pages) are now available on line on the Internet!
And now we have books on MacLaren and on his School. D. Lambie undoubtedly approved of Hodgkinson’s In Search of Truth and may even have suggested it himself.
But I feel sure that neither Roles nor MacLaren would have allowed all these publications. I certainly would not.
3. I suspect numbers of students coming in these organisations have dropped and are dropping out. Such publications may be thought to attract people – except Mrs. Tolley’s which seems to have an altogether different motive.
Obviously vanity is another important motive on the part of numerous authors. Also the desire for financial gain. These are hidden below the more ostensible and “ethically correct” motive of passing information and helping others to understand.
Surely there are many decorous forms of advertising. It is not necessary to bring out to public view your dirty underwear.
Nor of course to cast esoteric pearls before swine.
The drop in intakes must be due to other forces, not lack of publicity. Publicity was much poorer in the middle of the 20th century or the beginning of the 21st but the numbers were not at all small then.
4. It is strange that all these occultists who taught one or other version of this wonderful teaching did not find more fitting successors. Dr. Roles as a successor of Ouspensky has been a remarkable exception; but his own successors have proved inadequate.
It seems to me that the intellectual aspect (= information) increasingly takes over and the emotional (= being) is subtly disregarded. Greater effort and longer time is required for spiritual development despite the great aid of meditation.
What we sow that do we reap: the inexorable Law of Nature.
But it must be also the relentless descent into the Kali Yuga (or Iron Age) where virtue and strength, knowledge and love diminish according, again, to the Law of Nature.
