Theos-Talk Archives (February 2006 Message tt00365)

Dear Hauw,

Not wanting to be overconfident, I won't declare total victory over 
the meme "HPB's Masters were entirely fictional."  But it does seem 
to be dying if not dead in the literary/scholarly milieu, post-
Godwin post-Johnson.  No thanks at all to certain Theosophists, who 
clearly prefer that the world regard the Masters as fantasies. That 
avoids uncomfortable questions about the organizations' foundations. 
But somehow proving that "HPB's Masters were not entirely fictional" 
does not seem much of an accomplishment in the eyes of Theosophists, 
for whom the starting assumption is that they are entirely non-
fictional-- which no one could prove because it isn't so.

CWL's Masters, in terms of the stories he tells about them, do seem 
to be entirely fictional; that is, he might be having astral 
encounters with who knows what and how can we judge; but when he 
tells stories about real world Master encounters none of it has 
remotely the ring of plausibility as HPB's references to a lifetime 
of real world spiritual exploration.  Nor can it be confirmed as 
HPB's spiritual encounters can.

Does that help?

Paul

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "T. H. Hauw" <hauwquek@...> wrote:
>
> 
> Hello Paul,
> 
> In your post of Feb 15, you said, "If HPB's Masters are 
acknowledged by
> scholars to have been real, then the contrast with
> CWL's imaginary ones becomes all too glaring." Can you or someone 
explain
> the background to this statement please?
> 
> Thanks
> Hauw
> New student of Theosophy
> 
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> 
>____________________________________________________________________
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> >
> >Message: 3            Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 14:37:35 -0000
> >   From: "kpauljohnson" <kpauljohnson@...>
> >Subject: Salience, valence, HPB, and scholars
> >
> >Here von Egmond is implying, correctly in my view that the
> >previous attitude toward HPB among scholars had generally been
> >that the Masters were figments of fantasy and that therefore HPB
> >herself did not deserve serious attention in terms of studying her
> >sources.  Why would Adyar not welcome this?  It undermines the
> >unassailable CWL, for one thing.  If HPB's Masters are
> >acknowledged by scholars to have been real, then the contrast with
> >CWL's imaginary ones becomes all too glaring.
> >
> >Paul
> 
> 
> 
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