Theos-Talk Archives (October 2004 Message tt00255)

To Dallas, Jerry & other Theosophists: 
HPB gives "four mutually contradictory versions"
about her Master according to Paul Johnson 

I hope that some Theosophists as well as
other readers on this list will comment and give
their observations on what Johnson wrote about this subject.

Below I give 2 extracts from Johnson: an
extract from THE MASTERS REVEALED and an
extract from Johnson's GNAT article.


EXTRACT ONE

In THE MASTERS REVEALED p. 41, Paul Johnson wrote:

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HPB told at least four distinct versions of 
her acquaintance with the Master she met 
in her youth in London. In *Caves and 
Jungles of Hindustan* he is "Gulab-Singh," 
the Hindu ruler of a small Central Indian 
state. According to this version, her first 
contact with him after their London meeting
was through a letter he sent her in New York 
over twenty years later. [15] The most frequently 
repeated story was that M. was a Buddhist 
living in Tibet where she studied with him 
for a long period in the late 1860s. But 
in yet another variation, she wrote to Prince 
Dondukov-Korsakov that her first contact with
him after their London meeting was a letter 
he sent her in Odessa many years later, directing 
her to go to India. In this version, she never 
once saw the Master although he directed her
itinerary by mail for more than two years. They were reunited
at last in Yokahama, Japan, where he had summoned her from New
York. [16] Finally, HPB wrote to her Aunt Nadyezhda that her Master
was a Nepalese Buddhist living in Ceylon, with whom she had
renewed acquaintance via a letter he wrote her in New York. [17]
With four mutually contradictory versions of the same
character, all that can be concluded is that most if not all of
HPB's stories about him were false.

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Footnotes to the above:

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[15] H.P. Blavatsky, Caves and Jungles of Hindostan, pp. 272-73.

[16] H.P. Blavatsky, HPB Speaks, vol. 2, pp. 20-23.

[17] Ibid, vol. 1, pp. 220-22.

[Note by DC: Also compare HPB's 1877 letter to her aunt:
"Sahib has been known to me for more than twenty-five
years; he came to London....Since then I have not seen 
him, until I received a letter from him...three years ago..."
See Letters of H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. I, starting at
the bottom of p. 352 and continuing on p. 353.]
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EXTRACT TWO

Johnson in his GNAT reply to my critique added the
following comment to his earlier statements quoted above:

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It would be more accurate to say that the conflicting
Morya stories cannot be true *and* about the same person,
although they may contain true bits and pieces about several.
But Mr. Caldwell, Dr. Algeo and other Theosophical critics seem
quite unwilling to face the obvious and undeniable truth
revealed by the above passage. Either HPB manufactured most of
these stories about Morya, allegedly her personal Master, out
of whole cloth, or she combined stories about several different
prototypes in different versions to different people. 

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Daniel 
http://blavatskystudycenter.org