Theos-Talk Archives (November 1996 Message tt00000)

I have been reading with much interest the postings from Theos-l
over the last week.  There is much discussion of the early
deceptions and hoaxes of Blavatskyy, the fraud of the Mahatma
Letters and the myth of the Masters.  But in all the postings I
have seen, no one has given DETAILED, SPECIFIC INSTANCES to
illustrate and document these generalized statements.  I will
quote a number of instances from these various postings.

Some one wrote:

> How do you reconcile the value that you find in the contents of
> the literature with the admitted facts of the early deceptions,
> hoaxes and personal power struggles of the founders that were
> purported to authenticate and validate them and their source in
> the "Brotherhood of Masters"?

What admitted facts are you talking about? What are your sources?
Your primary sources? Details are everything.

Dr. A.M.Bain or possibly someone else wrote:

> The production of the letters has been discussed rather
> extensively and much of the evidence points out to the
> non-authenticity of the letters.  Many who have studied them
> suspect the direct hand of HPB in the production of certainly
> some of them.

Dr.  Bain, could you please let us know your sources for these
statements? What evidence are you talking about? Could you give
us one or two GOOD EXAMPLES.

Art House wrote:

> I was just wondering how people on this list who had heard about
> the shams of those early days might have dealt with them (if at
> all).  It seems to me that through their deceptive actions the
> founders cast suspicion and doubt on much of what they were
> trying to do (and that's the optimistic view).
>
> Its bad enough that these deceptions were used in establishing
> the "occult authority" of the society in the first place, but
> they continued to be used, mainly in the form of "precipitated or
> psychically received" letters to try to back up both Annie Besant
> and Leadbeater's claims for power after Mme.Blavatsky's death.

Art, can you give us some details of HPB's deceptive actions?
What book or source did you read this in?

Again, Art, writes:

> Has anybody read a book called "Madame Blavatsky's Baboon" (By
> Peter Washington.1993,1995 Schocken Books Inc., New York).  It's
> well-researched and seems unafraid to look at the history of the
> Society, warts and all.

How do you know it was "well-reseached"? What background
knowledge do you have in the subjects Washington writes about? He
makes so many mistakes on HPB's life that I lost count of them.

MKR wrote:

> Most on the list are fully aware of it.  Since Washington wrote
> the book to make money and many have limited budget of time and
> money, may not have read them, nor are they likely to.

MKR, how do you know Washington's motive for writing the book?
Maybe his motive was to tell the truth about HPB and those that
followed her.  Did Mrs.  Besant or Krishnamurti have their books
published JUST to make money?

Michael <wichm@xs4all.nl> wrote;

> Dear Mark,
>
> Be assured that you have at least one supporter in this group to
> share your serious questions.
>
> I have raised these also in the group especially in regard to
> other critical works such as "Madame Blavatsky, the woman behind
> the myth" by Marion Meade (ISBN 0-399-12376-8).  I have never
> been under the impression, however, that the authors had much
> affinity to spirituality and therefore were ill-equipped to
> assess spiritual philosophy .

Michael, how well-researched is Marion Meade's book? Have you
checked up on her accuracy? For the past 16 years I have used
Marion Meade's book in my research work but it is full of many
inaccuracies, distortions and assumptions.  Every student of
HPB's work should read it but needs to do other reading in the
primary sources to evaluate what Meade writes.

Again, Michael writes:

> My impression is that participants in this discussion-group have
> at least the common sense to admit that we are dealing with a
> Theosophical myth - that of the Masters.  Although Spiritualism
> is frowned upon in these circles, being of a lower order, Mme
> Blavatsky's life can only be appreciated if one is conversant
> with the phenomena of communication and presences.  We have no
> proof that the "Masters" were not fragments of HPB's personality,
> or if they were entities, who tells us that they did not present
> themselves according to popular demand as Masters? One has only
> to follow the primitive commucations of the Brotherhood of Luxor,
> Egypt, to those of the Himalayas to see a striking development.
> It is a pity that, as far as I know, never a hand-writing expert
> analysed the letters in the British Museum library.

Michael, what do you mean by the Theosophical myth of the
Masters? I sorta know what K.  Paul Johnson means by the word
"myth" in talking about the Theosophical Masters? But what do you
mean? A concrete, detailed, specific example or two would be most
helpful.  Again, you write: "We have no proof that the 'Masters'
were not fragments of HPB's personality, or if they were entities
[???] , who tells us that they did not present themselves
according to popular demand as Masters." Have you read even
Johnson's books? A reading of his books would show the reader
that there was some evidence that HPB's Masters were MORE than
fragments of HPB's personality.  In several cases, a group of
people testified that they saw one of the Masters.  In those
instances, were the witnesses seeing NOTHING BUT "fragments" of
HPB's personality? How familiar are you with the primary sources
concerning HPB and her "Masters"?

Ann B. writes:

> Personally, I find the whole issue of who the Masters are, if
> they are and where they are, to be a tedious discussion.  It
> belongs in the category of proving if UFOs exist.  If one does
> pick you up for ride, no one is going to believe you anyway,
> because there is no "proof".  No alien ashtrays or galactic
> grocery receipts that one can lift from their saucer.  Same with
> a Master, or whatever you choose to call them.  Are they passing
> out souvenir teacups when you drop by for teatime in the
> Himalayas? As Carl Sagan says about UFOs, "There is no smoking
> gun!"

Ann, I see your point BUT if the "Masters" and the tedious
discussion of them belong to the category of proving if UFOs
exist, what about ALL of the Theosophical teachings???
Reincarnation, ESP, life after death, karma, other planes of
existence, etc.  etc.  Where's the "proof" of these? These are
even less physical or more elusive that "Masters"! Carl Sagan
does NOT believe in any of these subjects either!

K.  Paul Johnson wrote in reply to the first quotation in this
posting:

> There is to a certain extent a justification for the
> misrepresentations of the Masters made by HPB, which you will
> find in my books.  She was obliged to conceal their true names
> and much else about them in order to protect their privacy.  And
> having revealed more about them than was prudent, she then had to
> cover up by generating contradictory stories to confuse the
> issue.  For example, M.  and K.H.  are portrayed as a Hindu and a
> Sikh respectively, residents of Northwest India, in early
> sources.  But later they become Buddhists who live a thousand
> miles to the East in Tibet.  My conclusion is that the first
> story was the true one and the second designed to throw people
> off the scent.  Michael R., you put me in the vulnerable position
> of recommending my own books.  When you say "We have no proof
> that the `Masters' were not fragments of HPB's personality" I can
> only assume that you have not read *The Masters Revealed* and its
> sequel or else that you dismiss them entirely.  Although some
> Theosophists, most notably John Algeo, have reacted with contempt
> and anger to my effort to ground HPB's claims in history, most
> reviewers outside the TS and within it have accepted my
> fundamental thesis.  TMR got raves in the New York Times Book
> Review and The Skeptic of all places.  That claim is that every
> figure of note in the pantheon of HPB's Masters can be related by
> historical evidence to real people she can be shown or plausibly
> hypothesized to have known.  And moreover that her knowledge of
> esoteric and Oriental traditions can be observed to have
> gradually developed through her life due in part to acquaintance
> with a series of initiates in various traditions who were widely
> regarded as experts in them.  The correspondences between such
> acquaintances and the Masters as she depicted them are not simple
> one-to-one equivalences, which Algeo and others falsely accuse me
> of claiming to have provided.  And they range from very strong to
> quite weak, with every stage in between represented among the 32
> characters nominated as Masters.  But they are substantial enough
> to prove that HPB didn't make the Masters up out of whole cloth,
> or imagine them, or project them as multiple personalities.  She
> fictionalized real people who had many of the traits attributed
> to the Masters.

Paul, I must agree at least with your initial comment to Michael
R.  Did fragments of HPB's personality have the ability to appear
to groups of witnesses?

But Paul's thesis (at least on the Masters Morya and Koot Hoomi)
is extremely weak and is full of holes.  I have just finished a
42 page paper titled K.  PAUL JOHNSON'S HOUSE OF CARDS?: An
Examination of Johnson's Thesis on the Theosophical Masters Morya
and Koot Hoomi.  I deal with the historical issues in detail with
specific references to the primary historical documents.  Within
the next month, copies of this paper will be sent to Johnson,
various reviewers of Johnson's books, Frederick Crews and many
other interested parties.  Copies will be posted on various
Usenet groups and a copy will be available on the World Wide Web.
Interested readers will then be in a better position to judge the
validity or reasonableness of Johnson's thesis on M.  and K.H.

My reason for challenging various postings from Theos-l is to
encourage people to really think through the issues involved.
Have Theos-l writers read the primary source documents or have
they relied on secondary sources such as Mead's, Johnson's and
Washington's books?

I am hoping a few individuals addressed above will give me and
the rest of the Theos-l readers some detailed, specific examples
to illustrate their views and opinions.

Food for thought.