Theos-Talk Archives (December 2001 Message tt00156)

Daniel: "In the ODL account about the pencils, there
is no indication that there were two adepts burning
herbs in Olcott's room. Also the pencil account did
NOT occur in Olcott's room.

I am missing something somewhere. Why does it matter
whose room he was in or how many people were burning
herbs there? The account he gives is that of someone
influenced by drugs. That is the implication of what
I said: that it supports Rawson's statement.

Daniel: "If you dismiss Leadbeater's accounts, what
about the other two accounts I cited by Olcott?

Let me turn that around. What about the evidence I
presented that herbs may have played a role in some
(but not all) of these occurrences?

Daniel: "Concerning Leadbeater's accounts, the
relevant observations (about letters materializing
out of a white mist) by Leadbeater are confirmed by,
for example, a similar account by Mohini Chatterjee.

I would personally prefer to deal with Mohoni's
account than Leadbeater's. But what does this have to
do with hash smoking, which is the topic at hand? 
Blavatsky was smoking hash. Rawson saw her smoking
hash. She says her teacher was smoking. Olcott might
as well have been smoking since he was inhaling all
kinds of fumes. Blavatsky's cigarettes might have
contained a combination of ingredients not commonly
found in modern brands. She was constantly smoking
when these phenomena occurred. This sort of thing was
fairly common among people who were into that sort of
thing in the 1880s. What is your take on that?

My point is merely that the phenomena you cite were
observed and recorded under conditions which rendered
most of them useless as scientific evidence, even
though they are charming stories which I am glad have
been preserved. They are entertaining but they are
unfortunately not evidence of anything in the absence
of supporting evidence collected under better
conditions.

Steve


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