Theos-Talk Archives (May 1998 Message tt00436)

>Daniel Caldwell replies:
>
>Jerry, it would be helpful if you gave us some examples of
>words HPB used which you consider "quaint and out of date."
>And why do you consider them "quaint" and "out of date"?
>

How about Linga-Sarira? Dhyani-Chohans? Manas (whats wrong
with mind?)? All of these kind of "foreign" words are found today
in Theosophy and nowhere else outside of their original countries
perhaps. And I doubt if anyone today actually speaks, writes, or
reads Sanskrit except scholars. They are rather like the technical
terms used in science, good for building mystic and elitism, but
largely unnecessary. This is, of course, just a personal opinion
and I fully realize that most Theosophists enjoy having this kind of
mystical/magical language.


>Concerning the term "devachan", you say that this word
>doesn't exist?  What do you mean?  In THE RELIGIONS
>OF TIBET by Giuseppe Tucci, p. 291, the glossary gives
>a word:  bDe ba can   It is Tibetan and the
>pronunciation of the word is given as:  Dewachen
>It is defined as the "name of a heavenly world" and is
>the equivalent of the Sanskrit word:  Sukhavati (name
>of a paradise).
>
>"Dewachen" is the phonetic spelling.  A careful reader
>of THE MAHATMA LETTERS will notice that the writers
>usually give the phonetic spelling of Sanskrit and
>Tibetan terms.
>

I have great respect for Tucci. But outside of a few scholarly
works (and for all I know they could be using HPB as a source)
I have never come across this word in any of the many books
that I have read. Furthermore, its use as a "name of a
heavenly world" is NOT how it is used in Theosophy as you
well know. In fact, de Purucker defines it as a non-localized
mental after-death state rather in the same sense of the
Tibetan Bardo.

Jerry S.