Theos-Talk Archives (November 1998 Message tt00250)

Jerry Schueler wrote:

>Here we get into some trouble with Theosophy because HPB never
>went this far. She made atman a monad, and now Theosphists all
>see this as "real."  To merge the Mahayana and Theosophy
>together we need the idea of two truths: relative and absolute
>(which equates to duality and non-duality). The only problem with
>this is that there is practically nothing in the Theosophical
>literature about this distinction, about emptiness or anatman (of
>course, there is nothing opposed to it either, but because it is
>not spelled out, Theosophical fundamentalists ignore it and take
>atman for reality).



Poppycock! HPB and their followers teached a many times about the
atman/anatman paradoxy. HPB never described atman as real. For example:


"[I do not] believe in an individual, segregated spirit in me, as a
something apart from the whole..." (Theosophist, Jan. 1886, Cranston 568,
no. 40).

Many more details about that can be found in the theosophical standard
literature: SD, ML etc. GdePurucker discussed the atma/anatma problem in his
esoteric SD-study class, rendered into the chapter: "Is the spiritual ego
immortial?" in his classic commentary on the Sd and the ML from pp. 499-503.

Jerry, I beg you, please let it be to disinform regularly the readers of
this maillist with your unjust and off the point assertions about HPB. Not
everyone who is fair and true to HPB is a "fundamentalist". Newcomers have
the right to read about genuine
theosophy and not merely about distortions.

Frank