Theos-Talk Archives (July 2005 Message tt00042)

> In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "Daniel H. Caldwell" wrote:

Dear Daniel,

> It seems that many Theosophists have ignored what
> the Master says in this excerpt or downplayed what is
> said or simply disbelieved the Master.....

It's just because reincarnation has much more evidences than
existence of the Masters. Reincarnation, according to many known
evidences seems to be more reasonable theory, it can stand easily
without support of the theory about Masters which itself needs
some support. You know that there are many alternative
explanations about Masters, really much more than alternative
explanations of reincarnation like telepathic theory, etc.

One simple question. It is widely believed that Mahatma Letters
are created by so called precipitation. The Master has the image in
his mind and produces the letter by means of materialization. But
WHY all the letters are in the handwriting, while it is much easier to
imagine the PRINTED letters, like those we see in the books and
on the screen? To imagine handwriting with much minor details is
much harder task, and needs much efforts with are quite obsolete
for they make the letters more hard to read.

>> it would probably refute most evidences of reincarnation,
>> because we simply scarcely have any others.

> Well if it refutes most evidences of reincarnation, and it is also
true, then so be it.....

It is important because you are using for its support some
information based on the authority of the Masters. They also
taught reincarnation. In this case we are left with two theories
which are quite speculative because there are almost no any
evidences for them.

> It is hard to understand exactly in what sense you mean the
> telpathic theory is "very unscientific".

I mean that it needs many assumptions for its support, while it
ignores the experience of many psychic researchers,
parapsychologists and other people who experimented with
telepathy. Some people think that the theory of the formation of the
universe from the casual combination of atoms is a scientific one,
but to me (and probably to other theosophists too) it seems to be a
large assumption. Similarly with a husk-theory. We should assume
that the husk survives, that it lives many years, that it is not a 
soul
but a husk, that it attaches to some child (why to this particular
child, there's no any explanation), that the personality of the child
undergoes some change when he cannot separate two
personalities and they are perfectly blended into one, endowing
the child by the likes, dislikes and qualities to the alleged husk.

> you have not detailed why it should be so obvious, it is hard to
> know what you are exactly referring to.

Because they ignore information which is well known to anyone
who studied results of the psychic experiments. They have right for
their own opinion, but it seems that don't take any trouble to refute
the deductions made by experimenters from their data.

For example, how telepathic theory explains the marks on the
body of the new-born child which correspond to the injuries made
in previous life by swords, bullets and traces of surgical
operations?
How it explains that a child has no other telepathic contacts and no
any ESP?
How does it explain why the child feels quite happy and there's no
fight and fear as in the case of obscession? (Behaviour in a case
of obscession is well known and is described not only in
parapsychological but in the religious literature also).
Why authors of the theory ignore all that and don't take any trouble
to refute previous evidences of parapsychologists?

> Well the "empty shell" theory may not apply to the case under
> consideration, but notice that in the following extract from the
> Master KH, he is referring not to a shell but to something else:

He just describes the survival of the soul, if we to use the ordinary
words. He never proposed the obscession theory. Obscession is
quite other thing and it is well-known. If you don't believe to other
authors, HPB herself also describes a typical case of obscession
in her Nightmare Tales.

> And KH writes that many of the victims of accident, if "good and
> pure", would "fall into a state of quiet slumber, a sleep full
> of rosy dreams, during which, they have no recollection of the
> accident, but move and live among their familiar friends and
> scenes, until their natural life-term is finished, when they find
> themselves born in the Deva-Chan...."

I very glad for them, but it is not the case with the pilot boy who
had a good recollection. Moreover, no Master wrote that instead
going to devachan such entity obscesses poor children. He'd
rather eat his own turban than to write such a nonsense!

> I myself have had vivid dreams in which I felt I was
> someone else, not Daniel Caldwell. If this could happen in my

It is a phenomenon known very well to psychical researchers, but it
is a switching of personalities, they don't got intermingled. There
was a case of a woman who have seen the dreams from her past
life, and that person of XIX century was really identified, and your
theory could work for these cases, but these are not numerous;
really I know only one fully described. But in your case it can be
just an additional personality, for some contemporary
psychologists hold the theory that a man can have several
personalities.

>> Some stray lines picked up in the astral light or in somebody's
>> brain and remembered, I never forget what I once see or read.
>> "Old Lady" called me a "brain pirate" and a plagiarist

> Thus a child may be born bearing the greatest resemblance and
> features to another person, thousands of miles off,

The Master describes the well known phenomenon of tepepathy or
the brain piracy, but it NEVER involves personal attitudes and
attachments. I know this phenomenon very well, for I was an
inductor and another guy was a recipient. It was in a newsgroup
like this; there was a delay between the time of composition and
the time of publication. My pen-friend often wrote replies which
conformed to mine in essence; the inquirer often received two
similar answers, from me and from my friend, the mine was earlier,
the his was later but he couldn't see mine when he wrote.
Nevertheless the messages retained the different pecularities of
my and his styles and attitudes, only the meaning matched.

> no connexion to the mother, never seen by her, but whose
> floating image was impressed upon her soul-memory,

The influence of the child to be born is also the phenomenon
which sometimes happens but it has other nature, somewhat
similar to telepathy or maybe psychic suggestion.
For example, my mother is a materialist, or rather an agnostic.
Some time before I was born she visited a library on other town
and by unknown reason she felt an impulse to take a book by
Blavatsky and read. Those books were quite rare then; they wasn't
strictly prohibited but it was rather a miracle that she came upon
such book in a public library of some provincial town. She
confessed that she didn't understand anything, and she had no
wich to study such books later. Noteworthy that it was like a
suggestion but she retained her own attitude to such kind of
books. She didn't know why she read it.

> Plus keep in mind that Dr. Stevenson has also found other cases
> of children "with anomalous dates of death and birth."

It is the only serious fact worth consideration.

> it would seem that the subject's body was fully made and
> presumably occupied by one personality before another one
> took it over...."

Yet I have met the examples of that in occult literature. It explains
by the actual death of previous tenant. Those can be the cases of
yogis who can inhabit the free body by will, or on the contrary, of
unevolved souls for which any body is fit.