Theos-Talk Archives (August 2004 Message tt00566)

Drpsionic@aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 8/26/04 9:09:56 PM Central Daylight Time, 
> aupanishad@msn.com writes:
>
> << His "motor" 
> was a concoction of threads and such according to the ones who 
> checked it out in his day. >>
>
> Actually it was more a system of compressed air. It was one of the great 
> frauds of the 19th century. The irony is that the air system was so advanced 
> that if Keeley had chosen to market that instead of his fake motor he would have 
> been legitimately wealthy.
Well, you convinced me to do a little research. Here's what came out on 
top of Google:

http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/museum/keely/keely.htm

Notice that nobody really examined his work until after THE SECRET 
DOCTRINE was written. Blavatsky very often relied on the observances of 
others in her work, and when those observances were faulty, it would 
translate into her work (for example, her ideas of hypnosis seem to have 
come from the seminal but flawed works of Dr. James Braid, and his 
errors appear in her works).

If Blavatsky's word isn't enough, this is a major reason for realizing 
that Blavatsky's works were based in the knowledge of her time, and 
filled with second-hand flaws, incorrect guesses designed to fill the 
holes in the knowledge, and lack of a vocabulary to describe many concepts.

Even assuming the Mahatmas were who they said they were often relied on 
their human memories for some details. I am aware of a number of cases 
where even advanced scientists who should know better will give an 
answer which, while "common knowledge", is entirely false. For example, 
I was once in a discussion with a group that included a nuclear 
physicist on airplane wings. The physicist explained that they work by 
the Bernoulli effect. Well, if the physicist had done the math, he would 
have seen that the Bernoulli effect is insufficient to generate the lift 
necessary for planes to work, and, in addition, would not explain the 
effectiveness of some wing shapes over others. I can see how those who 
are referred to as the Mahatmas, similarly, could just take incorrect 
common knowledge for details that they would never have worried about 
had they not been asked about them.

Bart