Theos-Talk Archives (September 2004 Message tt00011)

Sept 1 2004

Re Theosophical Texts

Agreed:

Let there be peace. [See important quotes below from HPB]

Students will study as the please in any case.

The history of the THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT is available through documents for
those who desire to learn of it. [The THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT (1875-1950) [$
7.50] Cunningham Press, Los Angeles .

Emphasis is that the "Original Teachings" of HPB and the Masters are NOT THE
SAME as what later writers have provided -- in some cases the contradictions
are very large.  

[see Margaret Thomas: THEOSOPHY or NEO-THEOSOPHY.] 

If one wants to know THEOSOPHY then better go to the ORIGINALS. 
[I mean the Original Editions, as reprints have in some cases been
"edited."]

Study HPB. [NO ABRIDGMENTS, Originals only.] This will clear away
confusion.

OK ?

Dallas

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-----Original Message-----
From: Erica 
Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 2004 4:33 AM
To: 
Subject: Re: Favor or Disfavor

Hi,

It is a favor or disfavor for theosophical cause, when the name of 
some theosophists is constantly connected to heavy accusations? How 
precious time is lost in discussions about the personality and life 
of some known T.S. fellows? 

Is this a service for the cause? 

Or a critical way of thinking based on prejudices and a kind of personal 
satisfaction to discuss about the weakness of others? 

Below I am sending some quotes of Blavatsky for reflection.

Erica 

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"Neither unpopular characters nor their work are judged in our day 
on their intrinsic value, but merely on their author's personality 
and the prejudiced opinion thereon of the masses. In many journals 
no literary work of a Theosophist can ever hope to be reviewed on 
its own merits, apart from the gossip about its author. Such papers, 
oblivious of the rule first laid down by Aristotle, who says that 
criticism is "a standard of judging well," refuse point blank to 
accept any Theosophical book apart from its writer. As a first 
result, the former is judged by the distorted reflection of the 
latter created by slander repeated in the daily papers. The 
personality of the writer hangs like a dark shadow between the 
opinion of the modern journalist and unvarnished truth; and as a 
final result there are few editors in all Europe and America who 
know anything of our Society's tenets." 

H.P.B. PHILOSOPHERS AND PHILOSOPHICULES 
Lucifer, Vol. V, No. 26, 
October, 1889, pp. 85-91
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"but whenever the word "Theosophy" is printed and catches the 
reader's eye, there it will be generally found preceded and followed 
by abusive epithets and invective against the personalities of 
certain Theosophists."

H.P.B. PHILOSOPHERS AND PHILOSOPHICULES Lucifer, 
Vol. V, No. 26, 
October, 1889, pp. 85-91

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"How long, O radiant gods of truth, how long shall this terrible 
mental cecity of the nineteenth century Philosophists last? How much 
longer are they to be told that Theosophy is no national property, 
no religion, but only the universal code of science and the most 
transcendental ethics that was ever known; that it lies at the root 
of every moral philosophy and religion; and that neither Theosophy 
per se, nor yet its humble unworthy vehicle, the Theosophical 
Society, has anything whatever to do with any personality or 
personalities!" 

H.P.B. PHILOSOPHERS AND PHILOSOPHICULES 
Lucifer, Vol. V, No. 26, 
October, 1889, pp. 85-91

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"To identify it with these is to show oneself sadly defective in 
logic and even common sense. To reject the teaching and its 
philosophy under the pretext that its leaders, or rather one of its 
Founders, lies under various accusations (so far unproven) is silly, 
illogical and absurd. It is, in truth, as ridiculous as it would 
have been in the days of the Alexandrian school of Neo-Platonism, 
which was in its essence Theosophy, to reject its teachings, because 
it came to Plato from Socrates, and because the sage of Athens, 
besides his pug-nose and bald head, was accused of "blasphemy and of 
corrupting the youth."

H.P.B. PHILOSOPHERS AND PHILOSOPHICULES
Lucifer, Vol. V, No. 26, 
October, 1889, pp. 85-91

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"Aye, kind and generous critics, who call yourselves Christians, and 
boast of the civilization and progress of your age; you have only to 
be scratched skin deep to find in you the same cruel and 
prejudiced "barbarian" as of old."

H.P.B. PHILOSOPHERS AND PHILOSOPHICULES 
Lucifer, Vol. V, No. 26, 
October, 1889, pp. 85-91

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"Were an opportunity offered you to sit in public and legal judgment 
on a Theosophist, who of you would rise in your nineteenth century 
of Christianity higher than one of the Athenian dikastery with its 
50 jurors who condemned Socrates to death? Which of you would scorn 
to become a Meletus or an Anytus, and have Theosophy and all its 
adherents condemned on the evidence of false witnesses to a like 
ignominious death? The hatred manifested in your daily attacks upon 
the Theosophists is a warrant to us for this. Did Haywood have you 
in her mind's eye when she wrote of Society's censure:

But man, as if a foe to his own species,
Takes pleasure to report his neighbour's faults,
Judging with rigour every small offence,
And prides himself in scandal . . ." *  

* [This passage is from a tragedy by Eliza Haywood (1693?-1756)"
H.P.B. PHILOSOPHERS AND PHILOSOPHICULES 
Lucifer, Vol. V, No. 26, 
October, 1889, pp. 85-91
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