Theos-Talk Archives (January 2002 Message tt00409)

--- Gerald Schueler <gschueler@earthlink.net> wrote:
> Blavatsky claimed that her teaching, which she
> called Theosophy, is ancient, and has been around in
> one form or another for as long as humanity. Daniel
> pretty much sides, I think, with this view. Paul has
> shown in his books that she could have gleaned much
> of her information from other occultists of her day.
> Brigitte and Steve take the more opposite extreme
> position that all of her ideas were known by others
> during her day, and that she needed to come up with
> next to nothing of any originality, although they
> admit that she was able to put the various ideas and
> theories together in a tidy and useful fashion.

That is subtly different from what I said. Please
refer to the following quote from the SD:

"To the public in general and the readers of the
'Secret Doctrine' I may repeat what I have stated all
along, and which I now clothe in the words of
Montaigne: Gentlemen, 'I HAVE HERE MADE ONLY A NOSEGAY
OF CULLED FLOWERS, AND HAVE BROUGHT NOTHING OF MY OWN
BUT THE STRING THAT TIES THEM.' Pull the 'string' to
pieces and cut it up in shreds, if you will. As for
the nosegay of FACTS ? you will never be able to make
away with these. You can only ignore them, and no
more." (SD 1.xlvi)

This is not my statement but Blavatsky's. She is
clearly saying here that she contributed NOTHING
except the selection, arrangement, and synthesis of
the material. That seems to answer Daniel's question.
She makes reference to a few manuscripts which were
kept somewhere in northern India, but most of the
sources she quoted were published. For a list of
those sources, see Coleman's biography, which
allegedly has been thoroughly discredited by Sylvia
Cranston, and yet is entirely accurate as I have
determined myself. I do dispute that the manuscripts
in question were millions and millions and millions of
years old. It is simply impossible that that could be
true. That they attempted to reconstruct a system of
beliefs which must have existed in ancient times on
the theory that bits and bobs of that ancient system
can be seen in modern belief systems is perfectly
credible. That this would have required many years of
study and could not have been done on the fly by an
isolated Russian drifter seems highly probable. But
the statement that the physical manuscripts themselves
were written when dinosaurs walked the earth and had
been kept, undecaying, for all that time in someone's
house in India and that people in India could still
read their language despite their great age is not a
credible statement. I think we have to see
exaggeration here.

Most Theosophists interpret the SD, rightly, I think,
as an instance of special pleading, in which the case
is agreed upon before hand, and facts are gathered to
support the case or rejected if they do not support
the case. It is the case which is being pleaded here
which is Blavatsky's contribution. It is therefore
implicit, as well as interesting and ingenious.

When she tells her readers to "Pull the 'string' to
pieces and cut it up in shreds, if you will," she is
referring to her own contribution. She was denying,
in other words, that her synthesis was infallible,
just as she denied this elsewhere not once but several
times.

"The nosegay of FACTS" which she says "you will never
be able to make away with" are statements from
nineteenth century books, many of which have been
replaced by more modern hypotheses. Many of them have
alteady been made away with, regrettably.

By the way, the gal is dead and I am therefore
commenting on the writings of a dead woman, usurping
the privilege of her self appointed modern mahatma and
revelator, who alone has the right to do that.

Sorry about that.

Steve


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