Theos-Talk Archives (June 1998 Message tt00195)

Jerry H-E writes:

>This situation also brings to
>mind the late Iverson Harris who devoted the final fifty years of his
>life to writing letters and correcting errors of fact concerning HPB and
>Point Loma issues.  His output of letters fill several full sized filing
>cabinets.  I have read through a good sampling of these letters, and
>find that he for the most part did a pretty fair job of citing the
>errors of fact and supplying documentation that would correct them.
>Many of these letters were written to published authors or articles and
>books.  I also noticed that the academic writers who bothered to
>acknowledge his efforts, usually simply blew off his documentation and
>made no changes in their subsequent works.  The only exception that I'm
>aware is the late Dr. Greenwalt, who worked closely with the Point Loma
>survivors and as a result made many changes in the second edition of his
>history of the Point Loma community.  As I say, Greenwalt was an
>exception, not the rule.  This has left me to seriously question whether
>it is either wise or fruitful to feel obligated to look into every
>allegation dreamed up by the latest writer.  My experience has been that
>while it takes only a minute to write a careless statement, it takes a
>great deal of research and often a very long essay in order to
>investigate, correct and document corrections to the carelessly made
>statement.  If the writer lacks the intellectual integrity to take the
>corrections to heart and to make changes, then as Iverson has
>demonstrated, the effort is wasted.

          In the limited experience I've had in letter-writing publishers,
book-sellers and authors in correcting errors on Theosophy, that most lack
integrity is certainly true.  Since their integrity is not centered or
directed toward abstract "Truth", one has to see that their chief concern is
self-interest (including satisfying the vested interests and pruriency of
the audience) with "truth" only served as a secondary concern.   One really
has to admire Harris for doggedly writing all those letters, which no doubt
had their effect even if not obvious in immediate results.  Much of the B.S.
printed about Blavatsky doesn't surface anymore or as often.   Since authors
and publishers don't show much reaction to  personal letters,  revealing
them in magazine articles and the like would seem to have better results, as
authors and publishers DO respond to public if not private scrutiny,  and
the public in general does resent being fed unsupported balderdash.
     I don't care either about supposed "untruths" by Blavatsky, but am
mostly concerned with studying the philosophy, since I've established to
myself that it is genuine and to be trusted.  Who cares if Blavatsky "got
one caught sideways" a couple of times!  She was always under pressure and a
chela and not an adept after all.

-  Jake