Theos-Talk Archives (April 2000 Message tt00166)

Dear Dennis,

Dennis, Dennis, Dennis!  I must say I REALLY enyoyed your e-mail!  Can't 
figure out, though, altogether why you got so upset.  We're among friends 
here.  Really.  No need to get so excited.

In a message dated 4/30/00 12:05:48 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
dennw3k@earthlink.net writes:

<< 
 > In a message dated 4/12/00 7:07:59 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
 > dennw3k@earthlink.net writes:
 >
 > << According to Leadbeater he was only vaguely clairvoyant, till one day,
 the Master Morya visited him, laid his hand over CWL's forehead for a time,
 and then CWL had a real Talent for the rest of his life.
 
 > Dear Dennis,
 > Where in the world did you get this information about how CWL became
 > clairvoyant?  Please give a specific quote.  In THE INNER LIFE OF
 > KRISHNAMURTI I give specific references as to how CWL became clairvoyant.
 As you can see there, it did not come easy, took a great deal of work, & was
 a > painful process.  He speaks of the Master Djwal Khul (spelling varies) as
 > being primarily in charge of the technical proceedings, though the Master
 KH > was his teacher, & overseeing the whole thing (which strikes me as a
 > procedure associated with CWL's perennial initiation).
 > You do a very serious disservice to research into these issues (not to
 > mention the truth) when you INVENT things for which there are no
 references.
 
 [DK]++++++++++++++++++++++
 Well now, - INVENTING THINGS!-? This means that I have to put aside the many
 other things that I have to do and look for that passage that I have read
 somewhere in the last 6 months!
 
 We are NOT, [as the old saying goes], amused! >>

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa!  From your comments in this e-mail, I see I 
thoroughly misunderstood what you were trying to say.  My sincerest 
apologies.  Two things led me to go on what now can be seen as my most 
inappropriate diatribe:  1) Your mention that CWL had been "temporarily 
clairvoyant" (actually, you were using that expression, which Ramadoss had 
employed), and 2) your mention that "Master Morya" had just touched his 
forehead, & voila! -- instant clairvoyance!  That's how I read it at the 
time.  My understanding, as you correctly quote further on, was that the 
Master KH had been in charge of the proceedings, while the Master Djwal Khul 
was the one involved in most of the "nuts & bolts" daily details of working 
on developing CWL's clairvoyance.
I hope you can see how I could have misunderstood your intention.  
Nevertheless, I most humbly apologize.
Now:  Let's be friends!!

<< You are saying then, that CWL coined the term CLAIRVOYANT,
  it didn't exist before CWL, and so, HE defines the concept? >>

No.  You will not find any statement such as that, in anything I have ever 
written or said.  What I was referring to, when I said CWL had created the 
language & conceptual structures everyone else has been using since his time, 
is spelled out in pp. 40-53 of my book.  Very briefly (& therefore 
incompletely), the point is this:  Before CWL, every single esoteric school 
of which at least I know (everywhere on the planet) had referred to things 
like chakras, kundalini, & other subtle phenomena & energies, in ways that 
were meaningful, understandable, strictly to practitioners, initiates, or 
perhaps in some cases scholars of the particular school.  The best ancient 
literature on kundalini & the chakras, for instance, was the tantric.  This 
school had the most developed descriptions of these phenomena to be found 
anywhere.  Yet, when you do go to those sources, what you see is a highly 
poetical language that only those privy to its deeper meanings would ever 
have a chance to (perhaps) fathom.
Even in the work of HPB & other contemporaries who wrote before CWL, you will 
notice a first effort to explain these energies in a more universally 
understandable way, but a faltering one.  It is only in the work of CWL, 
beginning with his first major contribution in this genre, The Astral Plane, 
a manner of "common sense," scientific-sounding description that we do not 
find anywhere else, before his work began to become public.  He speaks of 
VIBRATIONS and ENERGIES in a matter-of-fact manner that we do not see before 
his time.
After CWL, numerous people have claimed to be clairvoyant (& a number of them 
may well be), & speak of these subtle energies using precisely that 
terminology & manner of speaking that did not exist before CWL came into the 
picture.
So, what I am saying is that ALL subsequent authors have made use of CWL's 
LITERARY creation, his intellectual property, if you will, without ever 
giving him credit, & in fact at times even putting him down while 
simultaneously ripping off his creation.  I am saying that they could use 
CWL's terminology if, and only if, he was clairvoyant.  That is the only 
possibility that makes any sense.  Therefore, ANYONE using CWL's literary, 
descriptive, & conceptual creations while claiming to be clairvoyant, is 
TACITLY telling us that CWL was also clairvoyant.

 << I am happy that you are of good cheer. I have not found fault with your
 book, nor said that I found something wrong with items of evidence that you 
cite,
 and am surprised with this unwarranted attack on me. You are right, One who
 puts down someone out of the blue, and accuses him of  "INVENTING THINGS",
 putting up Straw Men, and demanding that the accused then defend these
 things, That does say something about the accuser! >>

I do hope that by now we can both see that we were both victims of a mutual 
misunderstanding.  Again, I'm sorry for my part in it.  I also do hope you've 
been laughing through all this, as I have.  Ultimately, of course, what 
matters is if there are theosophical states of awareness present in our daily 
lives.  Whether someone was or was not clairvoyant, whether someone was or 
was not in touch with Masters (whatever that word may mean) is profoundly 
irrelevant, if there are no theosophical states of awareness.  That is what, 
to me, makes all this so very funny.

<< Well, after a lot of eye strain, and a few hours, I did find the passage,
 and I had read it only a month or so ago.  The reference, as YOU well know
 is CWL's own HOW THEOSOPHY CAME TO ME, page 131-2. I find that I was
 somewhat mistaken as to the Master who did the deed. It was not Morya as I
 recalled. On the other hand, it was not Djual Kuhl, as you recalled, either.
 
 The passage cites the Master KH, who suggested a certain kind of meditation,
 supervised the work, and:
 
 "In his autobiographical fragment, HOW THEOSOPHY CAME TO ME,  CWL described
 how he became clairvoyant in the summer of 1885 under the tutorship of the
 Master KH:"   ==Quote #1.
 
    "I worked at it for forty-two days, and seemed to myself to be on the
 brink of the final victory, when the Master Himself intervened and performed
 the final act of breaking through which completed the process, and enabled
 me thereafter to use astral sight while still retaining full consciousness
 in the physical body ..... I was given to understand that my own effort
 would have enabled me to break through in twenty-four hours longer, but that
 the Master interfered because He wished to employ me at once in a certain
 piece of work."
 --And that would be Quote #2
 
 So, it was not the Master Morya, as I had thought, not Djual Kuhl, as you
 cite to credit for generating the clairvoyance of CWL, it was the Master
 Koot Humi.  >>

As mentioned above, the Master KH was said by CWL to have overseen the 
proceedings, since that was CWL's teacher.  But if you read the book (which I 
do have), you'll see that the Master DK was the one involved in the daily 
work of raising the kundalini up CWL's spine, & related developments.
 
 << And that reference is in CWL's autobiography. Unfortunately, I do not have
 THAT book, so I have to rely on a book that quotes CWL's book. That book, of
 course is YOUR book, pages 120 and 121. Quote # 1 is your introduction to
 Quote #2, which (I assume) are CWL's words. >>
 

<< So, again, we come back to why we have all the straw men, and all the
 huffing and puffing, and false conclusions, and accusations of Inventing
 Things without proper references, when it comes out that I was quoting your
 own book. Perhaps you should actually read it and find out what there is in
 it. You say that the Master DK did the deed of helping CWL make the final
 push, yet your book did not mention that at all, and gives the impression
 that the Master KH did it all. >>

I hope by now you may see that what the book says is accurate:  The Master KH 
had been in charge of the proceedings.  But, if you must know, the "final" 
version of the book is approximately ONE FIFTH of what I had, originally.  A 
GREAT DEAL got edited out, to make the book commercially publishable.  Since 
the detail about the Master DK having been involved in the details was not 
really essential, it was cut out by the editor (appropriately, I think).
 
<< I said that CWL was prompted to develop clairvoyance by a Master, and that 
a
 Master helped him. This passage in YOUR BOOK confirms that, and agrees with
 what I said, although it designates a different Master than either You or I
 had recalled as helping him along.
 
 So why are you putting all this on me? Is it just to make others want to buy
 your book and see for themselves? >>

The reason I continue to refer to the book is that what it shows to be the 
case is -- more often than not -- profoundly foreign to the very many who 
have been holding unsupported opinions on these & related subjects, for much 
too long.  So people make the unwarranted & arbitrary assumption that they 
already "know" about all this, when the truth is far from being that.  Since 
the book is the result of several decades of extremely careful & detailed 
research, that is the arena in which these discussions are best held.  If I 
am mistaken at any point, or in the whole thing, I really want to know it.  
But that will only happen with equally careful, detailed research based on 
facts & evidence, not on unsupported opinions.  That, really, is the reason 
why I refer so much to the book.  It avoids having to reinvent the wheel, 
every time I write an e-mail.
 
<< If it IS true that you are getting on others for quoting facts from your 
own
 book because you yourself don't remember what you put in it, perhaps we
 should ALL be amused, or perhaps wonder who DID write the book!
 
 Dennis >>

I need to ponder on that.  I'm not altogether sure I wrote the book.  So you 
may be quite right.
In even better good cheer than I was before I read your e-mail, & with 
genuinely-felt affection,
Aryel 

-- THEOSOPHY WORLD -- Theosophical Talk -- theos-talk@theosophy.com

Letters to the Editor, and discussion of theosophical ideas and
teachings. To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message consisting of
"subscribe" or "unsubscribe" to theos-talk-request@theosophy.com.