Theos-Talk Archives (July 2002 Message tt00300)

July 12 2002

Many thanks for your good comments Daniel.

I can see some difficulties from the point of view of exact
physical securing of proofs. I have no more access to any
"primary" documents that I know of, or that you do not
already seem to have yourself.

I do a lot of thinking on the nature of certain "reticence "
that H PB and others in those days exercised. Trying to
fill in the blanks at this stage and over 100 years after
the events is not easy at all. Of course there will be
guess work and surmise. The only appeal can be to reason and
to continuity of a train of thought. I sympathise with some
aspects of those.

My methods would not be accepted by "scholars" of today and
their pre-set criteria. But I am not very concerned with
that. Their perception of "gaps" cannot be reconciled if
there are no physical documents -- true.

Here is a for instance:

By chance have you seen a letter from Subba Row reprinted in
THE THEOSOPHICAL FORUM (Point Loma) Vol. VI. No. 7, March
15, 1935, pp 185 ... "Leaves from theosophical History" ?
I find S. Rao gives some reasons for his reticence, and also
gives some of the rather strict interpretations of
discipline in the occult schools. Very curious reading..

Best wishes,


Dallas.

-----Original Message-----
From: danielhcaldwell
[mailto:comments@blavatskyarchives.com]
Sent:	Tuesday, July 30, 2002 11:28 PM
To:
Subject:	Page 570 of THE THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT [1925 ed.]
about SD Vol. III

Dallas, you write:

"H.P.Blavatsky sent the original draft to Subba Row in
Madras
to review. He found that too many of the Brahmanical
esoteric secrets were to be revealed. He could not stand
that, and that is what set him against H.P.Blavatsky see
The THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT (1875-1925) pp. 51, 137, 150, 235,
570. That draft has been retained in the Adyar library. H
P B then rewrote those pages and we have that version in the
"original 1888 Edition" of the S D."

Dallas, there are a number of confusions and misstatements
in what
you write above. And I see that your key idea in what you
write
above apparently originates from what is given on page 570
of THE
THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT, 1925 edition.

It would also appear that this material on p. 570 can be
found
online. I now quote the main portion of this material as
found on
the WWW:

------------------------------------

The utter disappearance without a trace left behind, of the
genuine
Third and Fourth Volumes of the Secret Doctrine remains to
this day
an unrevealed mystery. And as to Mrs. Besant's spurious
"Third
Volume," her own Preface alone is ample to convince any
careful
student, able to sift statements, that it is nothing more
than a
hodge-podge of rejected manuscripts, "literary remains,"
private
papers originally issued to the E.S.T. during the life-time
of
H.P.B., and largely rejected manuscript of the first volume
of the
Original Edition. For it is, or should be, well known to
every
Theosophical student that, as repeatedly announced in the
earlier
volumes of "The Theosophist," H.P.B.'s original intention
was that
the "Secret Doctrine" should be a revised edition of "Isis
Unveiled,"
and in pursuance of that intention she wrote one entire
volume, prior
to 1886, when returning confidence and trust in her by the
mass of
members of the T.S. enabled her to enlarge her plan and
write an
entirely new work. A copy of that early first volume was
sent by
H.P.B. to Subba Row for criticism and comment. Followed his
breach
with H.P.B.(6) as already narrated. He refused to do
anything with
it, but kept the manuscript. It is matter from that rejected
manuscript which is incorporated in Mrs. Besant's "Third
Volume."
And, -- notable phenomenon -- the fact is admitted by Mrs.
Besant
herself in "The Theosophist" for March, 1922 -- twenty-five
years
after the event. Why did she concoct this spurious "Third
Volume" in
the first instance? And why did she in 1922 let slip the
truth which
in 1897 she not only suppressed, but replaced by a
deliberate untruth?

-----------------------

[Extracted from:
http://www.wisdomworld.org/additional/TheTheosophicalMovemen
t-
Series/Chapter-31.html ]

To view this extract online the reader will have to
carefully paste
all of the link into the address field of one's browser.

-----------------------

SOME OF MY COMMENTS:

A number of general assertions are made in the quoted text
on the WWW
but the reader is NOT given access (or even citations) to
the primary
sources from which these generalized statements are made.


And I call attention to the following statement in the
above-quoted
text:

--------------------------

And as to Mrs. Besant's spurious "Third Volume," her own
Preface
alone is ample to convince any careful student, able to sift
statements, that it is nothing more than a hodge-podge of
rejected
manuscripts, "literary remains," private papers originally
issued to
the E.S.T. during the life-time of H.P.B., and largely
rejected
manuscript of the first volume of the Original Edition.

-------------------------------------


Please pay special attention to the wording that reads:

". . . largely REJECTED manuscript of the first volume of
the
Original Edition. . . ."

Rejected by whom? By HPB???

What are the anonymous writers trying to convey to us?

That HPB wrote "one entire volume, prior to 1886" that was
later "rejected" [by whom?] and completely set aside and
that
subsequently HPB wrote a SD manuscript completely new???


DTB	I would assume that the Masters and H P B were
responsible for that.



Dallas, can you specify in some understandable detail what
the
contentions of the anonymous authors are in the above quoted
extracts
from page 570 of THE THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT (1925 ed.)?

If not, can you expand on the statement you made that is
quoted at
the very beginning of this posting?

I am seriously trying to understand what is being stated in
both your
quote and from the quote from page 570 of the TM book.

Daniel H. Caldwell
BLAVATSKY ARCHIVES
http://blavatskyarchives.com/introduction.htm



















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