Theos-Talk Archives (February 2006 Message tt00054)

I sent it

Dallas

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-----Original Message-----
From: carlosaveline cardoso aveline [mailto:carlosaveline@hotmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, February 07, 2006 10:49 AM
To: dalval14@earthlink.net
Subject: To Dallas on Theos-net 


Dear Dallas,


This is another message of mine which does not get through. It might be my 
computer or some other reason.

Could you help me by sending this to Theos-net? You might say to people I 
asked you to do so since the message did not go through...

Thanks,  Carlos.






Dear friends,

Daniel Caldwell has kindly recirculated his material about  some of
my ideas.  Thanks. Here is my answer to what he had to say.
The text below was published in "Fohat" and "The Aquarian Theosophist"
after his own.

Best regards,   Carlos.




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LIBELS AGAINST THE TEACHER: A TEST TO EVERYONE

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Carlos Cardoso Aveline



Dear Editor,

Since Mr. Daniel Caldwell  now sees that publishing libels against H.P.  
Blavatsky  is no longer  accepted as “just normal” in theosophical circles, 
it is quite natural for him to try to  criticize those who come up to defend

the founder of the Theosophical Movement.

As to me, he is welcome to do so. I would be proud to be attacked instead of

her.   To be critized for defending HPB is good karma,  not only to me, but 
to all those who have the  opportunity and the priviledge to do this.  I 
also happen to be among those students who have a heartfelt commitment with 
their souls not to be silent while utter lies and libels are publicized 
against their sacred Teacher.

The way Daniel Caldwell and John Algeo – editors of “The Esoteric World of 
Madame Blavatsty and of  “The Letters of H.P. Blavatsky, volume I ”  – see 
Theosophy  is based in a certain moral relativism.

It seems that for this kind of editor everything can be true  and everything

can be false, according to their own interests.  Will publishing libels 
against HPB  make a book “hotter” in the market?

May belittling HPB help keeping the structure of the Adyar Society the way 
it is now, Leadbeaterian, churchlike  and  ritualistic?  They won’t  think 
twice. They do not seem to care too much about truth.

Before starting with this practice of adopting as true the same old and 
proved lies against an Initiate, Daniel Caldwell had already surrendered to 
the little editorial “paparazzi” pleasures of that which Ms. Radha Burnier 
once called “keyhole curiosity” –   that is, an exaggeration of,  and an 
undue attention to, outer, smaller details about the life of great beings. 
>From that level of editorial practice to actively promoting falsehoods about

  HPB’s life, at least one or two further unfortunate steps were taken by 
Algeo and Caldwell.

[I will not accept discussing the karma of publishing  abuses against the 
very  names of  sacred Adept-Teachers, which Caldwell also did upon 
publicizing the libels fabricated by Emma Coulomb against HPB.]

As to attacking HPB, though, not everybody in the Adyar TS thinks like Mr. 
Algeo and Mr. Caldwell. I am happy to see that  Ms. Radha Burnier and 
several other members of the Adyar TS do not seem to entirely agree with 
Caldwell’s and Algeo’s policy of circulating libels.

While it is always disagreable to go into minor and external details of 
other peoples lives (except perhaps for paparazzi readers) –  it is not 
always useless or harmful. Years ago, Walter Carrithers, Jr., for instance, 
did go into details in HPB’s life in order to prove her innocent –  and he 
succeeded. Daniel Caldwell is going the other way around. He is walking in 
the  opposite direction  –  and he will not succeeed. The recent, now 
growing   movement in defense of HPB will prove  that there are still those 
who defend Truth in the Esoteric Movement. And Truth prevails.

Now, should we get personally angry at Daniel Caldwell, John Algeo and at 
those who make similar choices in life? Not at all.

Those of us who may be tempted by feelings of anger should meditate in the 
stoic philosophy of Epictetus, a  freed slave and sage  in the Roman Empire,

a man  who taught:

“The untrained response to robbers and thugs and to those who otherwise err 
is outrage and retribution. Wrongdoers need to be rightly understood to form

the correct response to their behaviour. The appropriate response to bad 
deeds is pity for the perpetrators, since they have adopted unsound beliefs 
and are deprived of the most valuable human capacity : the ability to 
differentiate between what is  truly good and bad for them. Their original 
moral intuitions have been distorted, so they have no chance at inner 
serenity. Whenever someone does something foolish, pity him rather than 
yield to hatred and anger as so many do.”  (In "The Art of Living, the 
Manual  by Epictetus", a new interpretation by Sharon Lebell, 
HarperSanFrancisco, HarperCollins,  USA, 1994, 113 pp., see p. 102.)

As to Mr. Caldwell’s arguments in his more recent letters published in Fohat

(Fall 2005, pp. 53, 54 and 68), I am not sure that I have the required 
patience to answer everyone of his minor issues and gossipy  details – a 
kind of patience that only that keyhole curiosity mentioned above can 
provide. Yet there are a few things I can say.

Mr. Caldwell refuses to see the radical, oceanic difference between 
“negative accounts” and “proved lies and libels”.  Negative accounts about 
HPB are welcome in my view, but not lies. Not  Libels. Enemies, when 
sincere,  teach us a lot. Liars, and those who publicize lies, are made of a

different stuff, whether they praise or blame.  Mr. Caldwell accepts 
Solovyov and the Coulombs as historical sources.  His position is outdated. 
He does not  want to accept the fact  that the Society for Psychical 
Research, SPR, abandoned in 1986 all charges against HPB, so no one now,  
except Caldwell and Algeo, will take Solovyov  or the Coulombs  as 
“historical sources”  as to HPB’s life.
With regard to the publication done by the Edmonton Theosophical Society –  
it was made in a correct way and it has nothing to do whatsoever  with Mr. 
Caldwell’s “editorial” work.

Mr. Caldwell and I seem to agree that the esoteric movement should not be 
afraid of contrast and polemics when necessary. I would say that a certain 
amount of rajas (movement) will serve to go beyond tamas, inertia, and 
sooner or later can open room for satwa, a higher harmony and rythm.
Yet Caldwell defends the contrast between liars and sincere people, that is,

he wants the disguised “contrast” of Solovyov, Coulomb and  their followers 
against the teaching, the teacher and the Elder Brothers.

That is not what HPB meant by contrast. The contrast she meant – also 
recommended by the Mahatmas –  was the paradox between different aspects  of

reality, as honestly seen by different people.

Surprising as it may sound to Mr. Caldwell and to Mr. Algeo –  HPB did not  
mean to defend the free circulation of proved offensive lies in a movement 
whose motto is “there is no religion higher than truth”.

As to the origin of libels against HPB which were fabricated under the form 
of letters ascribed to herself  –   the same libels now enthusiastically 
accepted as “possibly true” by John Algeo and Daniel Caldwell – I must 
invite students to meditate upon some words of an Adept-Teacher.

In a letter dated October 1884, a Master announces that the enemies of the 
theosophical movement –  having an active support from dugpas and liars –  
aim at presenting false letters to attack H. P. Blavatsky. The Master says 
that these texts are “pretended letters alleged to have come from H.P.B.’s 
laboratory”, and that they consist of  “forged documents showing and 
confessing fraud and planning to repeat it”.  The Adept-teacher explains 
that the false texts were made  with an “enthusiastic help from the Dugpas, 
in Bootan and the Vatican!” (See "The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett", 
T.U. P., Pasadena, CA, USA, 1992, Letter LV, p. 322.)

This is the kind of stuff Mr. Caldwell and Mr. Algeo have been 
subreptitiously circulating as if they were true, while more and more 
theosophists fortunately open their eyes worldwide and start  defending, 
first,  the  Truth, second, the  inner core of the movement, and third  – 
HPB.
Important as it is, HPB’s personality is perhaps the least decisive of the 
three factors mentioned above. The key element here is that behind the 
attack to HPB  there is an attack to the core of the esoteric movement, to 
the  subtle magnetic connection between the Sacred Adept-Teachers and the 
Students as a whole, at the  living link or connection which she helped 
create and establish.

One aspect of this sacred magnetic connection is referred to in 
Bulwer-Lytton’s well-known occult novel "Zanoni".

At the end of chapter four (book one),  a sincere friend of Zanoni’s says 
that he considers “this illustrious gentleman” his friend and, in future, he

will take any whisperings against Zanoni’s honour and reputation as an 
insult against himself.

Indeed, esoteric tradition states that sincere students have no option left 
but valiantly defend their Teachers against unjust attacks – if such attacks

are indeed unjust. If the students see the attacks, examine it, see  that 
the attacks are false and yet they do not  defend the source of their 
learning,  their inner magnetic link  to the source of the sacred teaching 
will wither away in a process of which they may have scarce 
brain-consciousness.

Hence comes the occult test or “probation” present in such whispering 
attacks.

As to Mr. Caldwell and Mr. Algeo, they  can still think once more and 
abandon the practice of publishing libels against HPB. It may be unlikely to

occur, perhaps –  yet it is  still in their hands to do that.

And every student of Theosophy has some degree of actual responsibility with

regard to the adoption and circulation of such dugpa-libels as if they were 
part of Theosophical literature. It is up to us to investigate the meaning 
and  importance of this episode, and then to follow our own hearts.

( Best regards,   Carlos Cardoso Aveline )

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