Theos-Talk Archives (August 1998 Message tt00373)

The maligning of HPB still goes on.

There was a programme about the Buteyko drug-free treatment for asthma
sufferers.  A doctor submitted two chronic cases, which he could do no more
for,  for the Buteyko method.  When they improved considerably from the
treatment, he was still sceptical, even though he could see the improvement
with his own eyes.  That these folk are able to go back to live relatively
normal lives is very bad news for the drug companies.

Whatever the evidence some still can't or will not see it.

Thanks Alan for setting this out clearly.

Tony

"Alan Donant" <aedonant@hotmail.com> writes:

>Research resource for the production of *The Mahatma Letters to A. P.
>Sinnett*
>
>H. P. Blavatsky and the SPR: An Examination of the Hodgson Report of
>1885, Vernon Harrison, Theosophical University Press, 1997.
>
>Full text available on-line at:
>http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/hpb-spr/hpbspr-h.htm
>
>
>Dr. Harrison is a leading counterfeit and forgery expert.  He describes
>the book:
>
>"This book is divided into two parts. Part 1 reprints my earlier paper
>entitled "J'Accuse," published in the Journal of the Society for
>Psychical Research, Vol. 53, No. 803 (April 1986), pp. 286-310, plus a
>few footnotes for clarity's sake. This is, in the main, a study of the
>Hodgson Report itself, supplemented by as detailed a study of the
>Mahatma Letters as time and opportunity to visit the British Library
>permitted. It is reproduced here because the Journal of the Society for
>Psychical Research does not circulate widely outside the SPR and some
>libraries.
>
>Part 2 describes work done after 1986 and records the findings of a
>line-by-line microscopical examination of each and every one of the
>1,323 color slides in the British Library set. Several pages of these
>documents are reproduced in this book. Hodgson gave no illustration
>whatever of the alleged incriminating Blavatsky-Coulomb letters, of
>which he made much; and the only illustrations of the Mahatma Letters
>given in his Report are fragments, mostly isolated characters torn from
>their context and from documents which, for the most part, can neither
>be identified nor accurately dated."
>
><snip>
>
>"My conclusions from this examination are:
>
>FIRST: The Hodgson Report is not a scientific study. It is more like the
>address of a counsel for the prosecution who is interested only in
>evidence, however dubious, which can be made to support his views.
>Hodgson shows that he was either ignorant or contemptuous of the basic
>principles of English justice -- and the rest of the Committee seemed
>little better. As said, he quotes verbal and uncorroborated statements
>of unnamed witnesses; he cites documents which are neither reproduced in
>his report nor identifiable; he advances conjecture as established fact;
>and he makes his handwriting experts change their minds until they give
>him the answers he wants. The possibility that someone other than HPB
>could have written the Mahatma Letters was never considered. This list
>of misdemeanors alone would render the Hodgson Report inadmissible in a
>court of law.
>
>SECOND: In cases where it has been possible to check Hodgson's
>statements against the direct testimony of the Letters preserved in the
>British Library, his statements are found to be either false or of no
>significance in the context. He makes three cardinal statements on which
>hangs his whole contention that Madame Blavatsky wrote the Mahatma
>Letters herself with intent to deceive. These I summarize as follows:
>
>(i) That there are clear signs of development in the KH handwriting,
>various strong resemblances to Madame Blavatsky's ordinary handwriting
>having been gradually eliminated;
>
>(ii) That special forms of letters proper to Madame Blavatsky's ordinary
>writing, and not proper to the KH writing, occasionally appear in the
>latter;
>
>(iii) That there are certain very marked peculiarities of Madame
>Blavatsky's ordinary writing which appear throughout the KH writing.
>
>The first two are demonstrably false; the third could apply to many
>other writers and does not pinpoint HPB as the writer to the exclusion
>of all other possible writers. These downright falsities coupled with
>the procedural errors, make it impossible for me to accept as a fair,
>impartial statement of fact those parts of the Hodgson Report that I can
>verify from primary evidence. This being so, I may perhaps be pardoned
>for regarding with suspicion the remainder of the Hodgson Report for
>which supporting firsthand evidence is no longer extant.
>
><snip>
>
>LAST: I find no evidence of common origin of the KH and M scripts and
>HPB's ordinary, consciously-made handwriting. That is to say, I find no
>evidence that the Mahatma Letters were written by Madame Blavatsky in a
>disguised form of her ordinary writing made for fraudulent purposes.
>What may have come through her hand in trance, dislocation, or other
>forms of altered consciousness is another matter; but writing so made
>cannot be classed as either fraud or imposture."
>
>The book includes 13 color plates of the Mahatma Letters.
>
>
>
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