Theos-Talk Archives (February 2000 Message tt00000)

Feb 1st 2000

From:  W. Dallas TenBroeck
	dalval@nwc.net

		Re:  	Correction requested on Dr. Einstein's SECRET DOCTRINE
			Mr.  L.  Maurer
			THEOSOPHY WORLD,  Jan 31st 2000 issue.

Dear Eldon:

In regard to the article by Mr. L. Maurer on Dr. Einstein using a
copy of the Secret Doctrine, would you allow me to make a
correction?


One of the statements that Mr. Maurer makes from his memory of a
talk he heard at the UNITED LODGE OF THEOSOPHISTS in New York by
Mrs. Sophia Wadia in the 1970s, implies that Mme. Wadia said she
was in Adyar when Dr. Einstein's niece brought her uncle's copy
of the SECRET DOCTRINE to the TPH or to the Library there.

Mr. Maurer writes from memory.

Allow me to state that to the best of my knowledge, and to the
knowledge of my friends and fellow associates at the United Lodge
of Theosophists in Bombay who lived and worked with her until her
death  [Sunday, April 27 1986]  --  (and with whom I have just
conferred) states that she never visited Adyar during the period
of her life and work in India, a fact well known to me.

It is therefore probable that there is some confusion in memory
operating in this.  If Mme. Wadia never visited Adyar, she would
not have seen or handled Dr. Einstein's SECRET DOCTRINE.  She
would have had no direct knowledge of the incident narrated.

Best wishes,

W. Dallas TenBroeck

dalval@nwc.net

=======================

	REFERENCE:

(Please note that the materials presented in THEOSOPHY WORLD are
the intellectual property of their respective authors and may not
be reposted or otherwise republished without prior permission.)

=================================================================
=
CONTENTS

THEOSOPHY WORLD  Issue for January 31st 2000


"How Did Albert Einstein Intuit E=MC^2?" by Leon Maurer
"There Are No Neo-Theosophists," by Dallas TenBroeck
	...etc....

	SNIP


-----------------------------------------------------------------
-
HOW DID ALBERT EINSTEIN INTUIT E=M^2?

by Leon Maurer

That's easy. He looked it up in THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

On the 20th Anniversary of Einstein's death (1975), physicist
Richard Feynman was quoted in TIME MAGAZINE as saying:

> I cannot understand how he arrived at the intuition leading to
> E=MC^2, considering the level of scientific knowledge at the
time
> [1905].

This equation states that

> ...mass or substance is equivalent to energy and that time and
> space are integral parts of the substance-energy continuum.
>
> -- A. March and I.M Freeman, THE NEW WORLD OF PHYSICS, 1963.

A niece of Einstein reported that a copy of THE SECRET DOCTRINE
was always on his desk.

> Iverson Harris, THE JOURNAL OF SAN DIEGO HISTORY, SAN DIEGO
> (California) HISTORICAL SOCIETY, Summer, 1974, 16. In checking
> this information it was learned that a niece of Einstein's, in
> India during the 1960s, paid a visit to the headquarters of the
> Theosophical Society at Adyar. She explained that she knew
> nothing of theosophy or the society, but had to see the place
> because her uncle always had a copy of Madame Blavatsky's
SECRET
> DOCTRINE on his desk. The individual to whom the niece spoke
was
> Eunice Layton, a world renowned theosophical lecturer who
> happened to be at the reception desk when she arrived. While in
> Ojai, California, in 1982, Sylvia Cranston met Mrs. Eunice
> Layton, who confirmed the story.
>
> -- Cranston, S. L., HPB: THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE AND INFLUENCE
OF
>    HELENA BLAVATSKY, Preface, Note 11, 557)]

Another witness, Jack Brown, reports similarly in an article, "I
visited Professor Einstein." (See OJAI VALLEY NEWS, Ojai,
California, September 28, 1983." (ibid, Notes, Preface, Note 12.,
558.)

---

Here's the story as I got it:

> Sometime, around the mid 1970s, I was attending a lecture by a
> foreign visitor at the United Lodge of Theosophists in New York
> City. After the talk, a group of students and I met the
speaker,
> Mrs. Wadia, the elderly British born widow of a well known
> Indian theosophical writer and lecturer.
>
> She told us that when she was at the Theosophical Publishing
> Company in Adyar during the mid 1960s, she met Einstein's
niece,
> who said she had come to the TPC headquarters to offer their
> library the book that was at the bedside of her uncle when he
> died. Mrs. Wadia said that she and several others at the Adyar
> Lodge gratefully accepted the worn out and dog-eared copy of
the
> first edition of THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
>
> I asked Mrs Wadia whether she actually handled and opened the
> book. She answered that she had. When I specifically asked if
> there were any margin notes, she said that the book was heavily
> notated and underlined, and that the margins were covered with
> scribbles and other markings that none of them could make heads
> nor tails of. (What would we give to get a look at them?) When
> someone else asked what happened to the book, she said, it was
> still in the library of the Lodge in Adyar.
>
> Whether it could still be found there today, is anybody's
guess..
> (If anyone gets to read its "scribbles" as a result of this
lead,
> please let me know.)
>
>		SNIP

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