Theos-Talk Archives (January 1997 Message tt00013)

Forwarded from Theos-l and Theos-Roots.

Daniel

> Date: Wed, 29 Jan 97 14:30:20 EST
> From: "K Paul Johnson" <pjohnson@leo.vsla.edu>
> Subject: HPB's authority
>
> I agree with Michael Rogge that HPB's synthesis of spiritual
> traditions has the strong imprint of the 19th century mind, that
> her understanding of source traditions was not always reliable,
> and that it behooves us to go directly to the sources and modern
> scholarship for a more grounded view.  Even at my deepest stage
> of true believerhood, I would never have disputed this statement.
>
> But to say these things as if they somehow invalidate HPB seems
> to fail to appreciate the extent to which the same can be said of
> *any* teaching.  Blavatsky Theosophists say the same about
> Bailey, Leadbeater, Cayce, etc.: that they are distorted
> interpretations of the "source" material, reflecting the biases
> of a later period and different circumstances, and one should go
> back to the source for a more grounded view.  But Jews are
> entitled to say it about Christians, Christians about Muslims,
> Hindus about Buddhists and Sikhs, ad infinitum.
>
> The truth is that any new religious teaching is constructed from
> bits and pieces of preexisting systems, the meaning of which is
> changed as they are formed into new patterns.  To use a
> Gurdjieffian expression, "That's not an exception.  That's life!"
> So the important question concerning HPB's authority, to my mind,
> is not whether she accurately understood and conveyed all the
> material she studied; of course she didn't.  What makes HPB stand
> so far above so many other comparable figures in history is the
> vastness and audacity of her spiritual quest, her literary
> skills, and her ability to convey what she had learned in a way
> that sparked important cultural transformations.
>
> You could prove all her miracles fraudulent, prove her
> scholarship full of holes, and prove her personal character
> blameworthy and that wouldn't detract at all from her status as
> the single most influential factor in the awakening of the West
> to Eastern and esoteric spiritualities.  Nor would it alter the
> fact that she traveled to more obscure places and studied more
> different spiritual traditions than any other writer of her time
> (except her friend Sir Richard Burton).  Nor would it change the
> fact that she took heretofore obscure, dusty subjects and wrote
> about them so engagingly as to hit the best-seller lists of her
> time (if they had them).  That's where her greatness lies, and I
> continue to regard her as having attained greatness.  This
> despite agreeing with Mr.  Rogge on a subject where he has
> perceived my views to be quite different than they actually are.