Theos-Talk Archives (December 2001 Message tt00292)

In 1892, Albert Rawson wrote:

"She [Blavatsky] had tried hasheesh in Cairo with success, and
she again indulged in it in this city [New Yorkgt?] under the care
of myself and Dr. Edward Sutton Smith, who had a
large experience with the drug among his patients at
Mount Lebanon, Syria. She said, 'Hasheesh multiplies
ones life a thousandfold. My experiences are real
as if they were ordinary events of actual life. Ah!
I have an explanation. It is a recollection of my former
existences, my previous incarnations. It is a wonderful
drug, and it clears up a profound mystery."
(FRANK LESLIE'S POPULAR MONTHLY, Feb. 1892, p. 202.)

Steve, I ask: 

(1) When Rawson writes that Blavatsky tried hasheesh in Cairo, what 
year is he referring to?

(2) When Rawson writes that Blavatsky "AGAIN indulged in it in this 
city [NYC?]", what time period is he referring to?

(3) Rawson writes that Blavatsky tried hashish in Cairo and AGAIN 
indulged in it in New York City. Steve, do you think that she had 
continued using hashish between the time she was at Cairo and the 
later period when she was in NYC?

(4)What does Rawson mean when he writes the following?

". . . under the care of myself and Dr. Edward Sutton Smith, who had a
large experience with the drug among his patients at Mount Lebanon, 
Syria." 

Why did Blavatsky take hashish UNDER THE CARE of Rawson and Dr. 
Smith? Was she a "patient"? What is Rawson referring to but not 
saying explicitly when he uses the phrase "under the care of myself 
and Dr....Smith"?

(5) When she went to India in 1879, did she continue to take 
hashish? But then she would not have been UNDER THE CARE of Rawson 
and Smith.

(6) Steve, do you believe Blavatsky habitually used hashish over many 
years?

(7) In the KEY TO THEOSOPHY, we find the following from HPB's pen:

"ENQUIRER. Then with regard to the use of wine and spirits, I suppose 
you do not advise people to drink them? 

"THEOSOPHIST. They are worse for his moral and spiritual growth than 
meat, for alcohol in all its forms has a direct, marked, and very 
deleterious influence on man's psychic condition. Wine and spirit 
drinking is only less destructive to the development of the inner 
powers, than the habitual use of hashish, opium, and similar drugs." 
Quoted from: http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/key/key-13.htm

Steve, do you believe when HPB wrote these words in London in 1889 
that she was puffing away on a cigarette containing hashish? That 
she was an habitual user of this drug in 1889?

Daniel H. Caldwell
http://hpb.cc