Theos-Talk Archives (August 1998 Message tt00307)

Thanks Paul for your email below.
When I have some breathing room, I will
attempt to reply to your points.  You bring
up some good points and I hope other Theos-talk
subscribers will mull over your words and possibily
post their own replies.

Daniel

K. Paul Johnson wrote:
>
> 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,
>