Theos-Talk Archives (August 1998 Message tt00305)

Daniel, your post allows plenty of material to discuss in the
effort to clarify what I mean by "full doctrine on a silver
platter"-- which is the naive interpretation of how HPB received
her ideas from her adept teachers.  Whether or not you would
adhere to such an interpretation is a litmus test of Theosophical
fundamentalism.  Perhaps my explanation of the issue of eclectism
vs. pure transmission of a unitary body of doctrine will help you
define your own position.  Retracing our steps: I quoted a passage
in which HPB states that the doctrines of the SD are found
scattered in many other texts.  You blamed me for not appending
the next part:  "The sole advantage which the writer has over her
predecessors, is that she need not resort to personal
speculations and theories.  For this work is a partial statement
if what she herself has been taught by more advanced students,
supplemented, in a few details only, by the results of her own
study and observation."  You say this conveys the "whole message
conveyed in the entire paragraph" but what you take that message
to be does not coincide with what I see there.

HPB could be entirely eclectic, that is building up a systematic
body of doctrines out of multiple traditional sources, without
its contradicting the above passage in the slightest.  All she is
saying above is that almost every doctrine taught in the book was
not original with her, but came from "more advanced students" who
taught her.  There is no claim in this passage that these more advanced
students were all part of one outward organization, all knew one another,
all taught and learned the same identical body of doctrines.
Elsewhere you may find passages that imply such a claim, but I
can counter with at least an equal number that present HPB's
relationships with her living teachers in a different light-- as
connections with different traditions exemplified by people in
different parts of the world who did not know one another.  So
let's not resort to "proof texts" as that leads nowhere.  Suffice
it to observe that there are two levels of claims in the
literature, one of which I find confirmable in history, the other
of which looks highly suspicious to anyone with knowledge of
religious history and occult legends.  Level #1:  "I learned
virtually everything from experts in occult doctrines, and have
done little innovating or modification."  OK, not hard to accept
in light of how many experts she can be seen to have known.
Level #2: "and all these elements in my writings are in fact part
of a single occult tradition which is preserved secretly in
various places around the globe but which is a unitary body of
knowledge that has existed as such for very long periods of
time."  Attached to this are claims about Senzar, cave libraries,
international telepathic communication networks, etc.
*Not* OK, there's no credible evidence for this and the
overwhelming judgment of scholarship would be that such a thing
is not just unproven but extremely implausible.

When you refer to "isolated" adepts she may have known, that
misrepresents my thought, since the adept mentors I write about
are linked in various kinds of "lodges"-- Masonic, Hindu, Sikh--
and HPB is getting *traditions* through them, not just the ideas
of individuals.  But she is getting *separate traditions*, with
whatever commentary on their interconnections her sources might
have provided, and integrating them herself.

You may be right that "full doctrine on a silver platter" is a
caricature of what HPB and the adepts claimed.  But it is a naive
view that is widely assumed in the Theosophical movement and
clearly underlies the things Dallas was saying in his discussion
with Kym.

Some of your quotes are irrelevant to the issue at hand.  That
HPB knew "Eastern adepts" and studied "their science" does not
necessarily mean that all their knowledge was a single science.
If she said she had known "philosophers" and studied "their
discipline" would that mean there was only one philosophy to be
studied rather than an eclectic assortment?  When you talk about
the fundamental truths of all that we are permitted to know on
earth (quoting from Isis) and "one unbroken chain around the
globe" which was a "universal freemasonry of science and
philosophy" I think it important to note that at one level a
historical claim is being made here.  That should be subject to
all the same criteria of evidence that any such claim would be,
and comes up mighty short as a literal thing.  But at a mythical
level, whatever we humans deeply know because it is inherent in
our being does give a certain consistency and coherence to the
widest range of spiritual teachings in diverse places.  So talk
of a "universal freemasonry of science and philosophy" can have a
certain symbolic inner truth even though it refers to historical
circumstances that never existed-- or at least cannot be shown to
have existed by evidence that would persuade scholars.

Cheers,
PJ