Theos-Talk Archives (February 2005 Message tt00491)

Dear Vladimir,

Before answering your questions I will get off my chest a comment 
about how my books are profoundly misrepresented by certain 
Theosophical critics. The title and subtitle tell the real story; 
if TMR were the book they imagine it to be the proper format would 
be:
The Myth of the Great White Lodge:
Madame Blavatsky
and The Masters Revealed

But the actual order tells the true story. The book is:
1. Primarily an attempt to identify the individuals who were HPB's 
spiritual mentors and sponsors. The format is a chronological 
series of biographical sketches of 32 such individuals; the approach 
is historical rather than polemical.
2. Secondarily an attempt to understand HPB's writings and ideas in 
light of those successive influences, that is to explain her 
intellectual biography in terms of her international network of 
acquaintances. (This is sketchy and fragmentary rather than 
systematic.)
3. Thirdly an attempt to understand how these historical mentors and 
sponsors were fictionalized in her writings, and the causes and 
consequences of this fictionalization. (Even more sketchy and 
fragmentary.)

The selective quotations posted yesterday make it seem as if it is a 
book *primarily* about Ranbir Singh and Thakar Singh as prototypes 
for M. and K.H. respectively. Were that so it is most odd that the 
former does not appear in the text until page 120 of 245, and the 
latter only in the chapter following that. The parallels between 
those historical individuals and those two literary characters take 
up only a few pages in two chapters out of 36. Some folks have a 
near lifelong obsession with "Morya" and "Koot Hoomi;" my near 
lifelong obsession is demythologizing history-- and I have long 
since abandoned religious history due to the ugly passions it evokes 
in believers. (But demythologizing racial and political history of 
the South, my current project, isn't likely to be any less offensive 
to people deeply attached to myths.)

It is noteworthy that no serious criticisms have emerged in the 
decade since TMR came out about my primary effort; it has either 
been praised as successful or ignored. No *other* historical 
mentors or sponsors I failed to notice have emerged in the last ten 
years with a single exception; I should have included the Maharaja 
of Varanasi among HPB's Indian royalty sponsors. All the criticisms 
have been about objective 3, and mainly from the POV of people who 
assume the right to be furiously angry that anyone would not take 
everything HPB said or wrote about the Masters as literally true.

You asked:

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, Vladimir <forums@s...> wrote:
> 
> Dear Mr. Johnson,
> 
> I beg your pardon, since I'm a newbie here and your research is 
not my
> daily reading, could you please answer a few short questions to 
avail
> my humble self of the essence of your statements. Maybe you've 
already
> created a sort of f.a.q. page somewhere, if so, then would you 
please
> hint me at it.

No I have not, but Katinka Hesselink has much useful information at:
http://www.katinkahesselink.net/his/index_sb.htm#johnson

Here are the questions.
> 
> 1. Are you trying to prove that HPB lied about the nature of 
her teachers, who really may have existed?
> 
Of course not. At the outset my motivation was more the opposite-- 
trying to prove that the Masters were not entirely fictional as her 
critics had long supposed. But that was the case with the self-
published book that preceded TMR and its sequel. By the time I was 
writing for a university press, the whole "trying to prove" element 
receded far into the background. As I wrote in the introduction to 
TMR, "This book is intended as a new beginning toward understanding 
a century-old mystery...written in the hope that HPB and Theosophy 
may be judged with greater wisdom and objectivity in the future." 
(Which hope has been fulfilled beyond my wildest dreams in the 
scholarly world, and been crushed beyond my wildest nightmares in 
the Theosophical world.)


> 2. Or are you trying to prove that she lied when asserting their 
very existence?
> 
Hell no.

snip 3-5 as irrelevant

> 
> 6. If "no" for 5. then who cares about the personages? Are 
you interested in transitory persons or in knowledge which is 
supposed to last much longer?
> 
False dilemma: both.

7-- snipped as irrelevant.

Hope that helps!

Finally, I would encourage you to go to amazon. com and use the 
search function, because it lets you look at tables of contents, 
indexes, sample pages, etc.-- you can get a very good sense of the 
book that way. When I try to copy a link it is terribly long and 
comes up broken. So just go to 
http://www.amazon.com
and enter "The Masters Revealed" in the search box.


Cheers,

Paul