Theos-Talk Archives (May 2003 Message tt00067)

For me the best of such days was in 1986. For many months I had followed Dr
Vernon Harrison's exposure of the Hodgson report, an exposure which had
begun life as a Sunday evening lecture to the Adyar Theosophical Society in
London ( of which he was not a member.) Now after numerous obstacles, it was
ready for publication in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research
of April 1986, which would be slightly late. I was asked by the SPR, for
whom I had done some publicity work, to draft a press release about this and
a second one about another major paper in their journal.

The notice about Dr Harrison's paper was a difficult task, surrounded as it
was by high emotion, a century of misunderstanding, and two organisations
with a history of conflict. On the one hand, it was desirable to get some
closure to the experience of unfairness and grievance on the theosophical
side; on the other the SPR had no collective view. It was possible,
naturally, to quote what Dr Harrison said, which was dramatic enough ,
beginning with his title " J'Accuse"
that echoed the Dreyfus case. So too was the press release's own heading,
that Madame Blavatsky was unjustly condemned, a new study had concluded.
Just to see those words on SPR notepaper was hard to believe. Generations of
Theosophists had lived and died under the cloud of the Hodgson report.

There were also some almost apologetic words by the SPR editor, Dr John
Beloff( a Rationalist by belief) with which he had prefaced Dr Harrison's
work. And an unprecedented quote from Dr Hugh Gray, general secretary of the
TS in England, welcoming the paper. The addresses and phone numbers of both
organisations appeared on the press release. Quote clearly, these two bodies
were not hostile any more.

Professor Arthur Ellison, centenary president of the SPR in 1982 , had much
to do with that. A lifelong Theosophist, for a time driven to the edge of
the TS by hostility to free enquiry ( as he was to recall in his Blavatsky
Lecture) his calm, friendly and progressive outlook was a blessing to all.
The SPR was later to ask him to serve a further term as president. If this
was Theosophy, they wanted more of it! 

As for Dr Harrison himself, he was already in his mid-seventies when he
entered the history books, but still working an expert witness in the law
court. Behind his modest bespectacled manner was fifty years experience of
the psychic field in the SPR, including high profile cases like Matthew
Manning and Harry Price ( no relation to me ) and a recognised expertise in
forgery, photography, handwriting and paper. He admired HPB's writings, was
influenced by her thought, but somehow had been preserved from every
becoming a Theosophist! Here was a loaded gun all right, but one with
beneficent effects- a many of gentleness, and a lover of music, whose
immaculately typed research step by step exposed error.

While acknowledging the many years of painstaking defence of HPB by other
students of her case like Walter Carrithers, it fell to Dr Harrison to fire
the shot that brought the walls down. Not that all psychical researchers, or
even all Theosophists, then began to regard HPB as the soul of truthfulness;
but rather the balance had been redressed.

After fine tuning, the text of the press release was agreed by the SPR. It
is common to date such releases as embargoed until a particular time. I
chose the start of 8 May, being aware of what that meant to Theosophists.
101 years after the Hodgson report, and 95 years after her death, Madame
Blavatsky's public reputation was released from its imprisonment by that
report.

Copies of the press statement were placed in the post, airmail to distant
parts. The news was largely ignored by the secular press. Some psychic
papers picked it up. Then came the theosophical publications. The TS
Pasadena sent out a special letter. "The Theosophist" called for justice for
Leadbeater too! Its president's letter was reprinted by many national
sections. Within months Dr Harrison's name was being read and spoken in many
languages.

Later in the year began a second wave, as new books included reference to
the report, first as hurried footnotes. This continues, although one book "
Madame Blavatsky's Baboon" managed to mention George Harrison the Beatle but
not Vernon Harrison. Last night I looked at a 1997 Russian anthroposophical
book. Among the Cyrillic letters in a footnote I could read, in our
alphabet, Dr Harrison's name and paper. 

Dr Harrison and Professor Ellison have since been called home. Dr Beloff,
over 80 and retired, is still active in parapsychology. Madame Blavatsky
would, I think, have benevolently enveloped them in tobacco smoke. The work
of vindicating her continues with attention turning , I hope, to her Tibetan
and Sanskrit connection. After the psychical researchers, it is time for
justice from the orientalists.


Leslie Price







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