Theos-Talk Archives (August 2004 Message tt00366)

Hey Steve,

Driving to work today I was thinking about your comments here:

> I am not unsympathetic, but realistically that is what you sign on 
> for when you go beyond merely uncovering new facts about someone's 
> religion, and rip it to shreds.

The above stated re The Elder Brother, contrasted with The Masters
Revealed:

> As for TMR, I see it as a completely different type of book,
inasmuch as it addresses difficult questions which can never be
settled finally, whereas there is little doubt about Leadbeater. 

which reminds me of Peter Berger's sociology of religion and his
notion of "cognitive bargaining" as one option for followers of a
religious tradition trying to adapt to the challenges of modernity. 
Two other options are cognitive surrender and cognitive retrenchment.
What the Adyar TS has done with TEB is the third alternative: we're
not interested in the evidence, we know it's all malicious lies from
an author whose name is unworthy of mention in our publications. Not
only are we not going to surrender to Tillett's overwhelming evidence,
we are not even going to DEAL with it except by total rejection and
willful ignorance.

On the other hand, what I was doing in TMR and hoped to encourage
among Theosophists was cognitive bargaining-- figuring how much of the
Theosophical claims about Masters could withstand historical scrutiny,
and surrendering the rest. (Not surrendering in the sense of assuming
their falsity, but rather admitting that certain claims were
unprovable, others contained self-contradictions, and some were
disprovable.) For a year after TMR came out Theosophical readers and
reviewers seemed to accept this model of cognitive bargaining-- some
statements about the Masters by the Founders are more reliable than
others, and while final answers are impossible the question is worth
pursuing. But what finally happened with John Algeo and then others
who attacked TMR was that the cognitive retrenchment model took hold.
No longer a series of loosely-connected hypotheses to be partly
accepted, partly rejected, discussed, debated, it became one single
hypothesis to be dismissed, rejected, condemned as beyond the pale. 
(That being that Johnson had established a series of irrefutable
one-to-one correspondences between historical individuals and Master
figures in Theosophical literature.) Several folks now on theos-talk
contributed mightily to that. As Eldon has indicated, some perceived
TMR as a political attack deserving of a political punishment-- ostracism.

There is 
> not much to argue about where TEB is concerned, but TMR raises 
> interesting issues which remain open questions and implicitly
invites discussion and even controversy. 

Tillett's slam dunk did not leave any wiggle room for cognitive
bargaining. Surrender and retrenchment were the only options, and
Adyar was unwilling to do the right thing, which was surrender. There
is virtually nothing worth saving about CWL's legacy, and an
all-or-nothing accept-or-reject response from TS powers that be was
thus inevitable. Whereas TMR leaves huge areas of uncertainty and
alternative scenarios, and as you say *invites* a nuanced and
piecemeal acceptance or rejection rather than the all-or-nothing
extremism that Tillett's irrefutability evoked. That's because HPB
left a large body of evidence *for and against* her claims whereas CWL
left only evidence *against* his.

Accepting that invitation should 
> not irk the author so long as it is the evidence and not the author 
> himself which is being discussed.

The scholarly and publishing world's acceptance of my work has more
than made up for Theosophical hostility, so on balance I have nothing
to be irked about personally. But it's still irksome that
Theosophical discourse was not only *not uplifted* by the publication
of my books, it was *degraded* by the retrenchment reaction that
ensued. No relief in sight either, as far as I can tell.

Cheers,

Paul