Theos-Talk Archives (January 2002 Message tt00028)

<<<Despite a sea of ink, spilled by her and others in an attempt to explain the unexplainable, there can be no doubt that in her New York years
Blavatsky denied the reality of reincarnation in the sense of reincarnation of the same individual on earth, allowing only the exceptions stated by Randolph-and (unusually for her early work) she emphasized that her position was derived from ,,authority">>>>

Brigitte, as far as I know, Blavatsky always denied reincarnation of the individual ego or personality. When did she ever change this position? Where does she say that the ego reincarnates? (if she does, then I am out of here)


<<<The meaning of these fairly clear statements and the conflict of these views with Madame Blavatsky's later ideas on reincarnation have been the subject of interminable debate among Theosophists since the early 1880s-so much so that the editor of the Theosophical University Press reprint of Isis Unveiled has thought it necessary to include with the volumes several of Madame Blavatsky's subsequent attempts at exegesis of the passage cited.>>>

As far as I know, it was her students who misunderstood what she wrote in Isis, and Blavatsky herself never changed her position but rather simply clarified it. The "attempt at exegesis" in TUP's printing of Isis is the very article that caused me to join the TS many years ago BECAUSE in it she rejects reincarnation of ego, which the Gita suggests is exactly what happens and for which reason I have never cared for the Gita. The main problem, for me, is that while she rejected ego-reincarnation she suggests a permanent reality of the Reincarnating Ego or Individuality alias Higher Self, and it is this that has led so many of her followers astray. She rejects personality while accepting individuality, which simply trades one type of self for another.

Jerry S.
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