Theos-Talk Archives (January 2002 Message tt00044)

Hi, Daniel:

Well, nobody ever said Blavatsky was a Kardecist. But
the statement that she did not accept Alan Kardec's
system does not in itself constitute a statement that
she accepted the reincarnationist system of some other
writer.

Let me suggest addressing Olcott's statement, which is
unambiguous and emphatic. It is true, as you say,
that after going to India and becoming converted to
some new ideas she expressed embarrassment regarding
things she wrote earlier in which she rejected those
same ideas. There were a lot of unconvincing words
written to "prove" that Isis really was a
reincarnationist document and that Olcott or someone
else messed the whole thing up.

Unless we are searching for a system of dogmas, or
some sort of inerrant holy religious book or something
like that, there is no reason to be distressed that
some writer or other changed her mind on things over
the years. I find Schopenhauer's ideas extremely
interesting, and some of them quite persuasive. But I
won't pretend that he was a nice fellow (he wasn't) or
that be was a divinely inspired and inerrant being
(nonsense!) and I do not perform a puja in front of
his portrait. The only reason one would want to view
him or anyone else that way is to have him do our
thinking for us. Like Orwell said, "orthodoxy means
not thinking, not needing to think. Orthodoxy means
unconsciousness." If Blavatsky were alive today, she
might or might not write against "quickie rebirth" but
she would surely write against what she wrote against
before: orthodoxy, abdication of our responsibility to
think for ourselves, and the ridiculous idea that any
mortal is infallible.

Steve



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