Theos-Talk Archives (May 2006 Message tt00789)

Daniel- 

This is great ! I asked Boris once about that solitary page of SD mss in
HPB's handwriting that he reproduced that you refer to below. He said that
as far as he knew there wasn't more than this or perhaps another page in
poor condition. (Dara may know) Another thought occurs to me - in the HPB
letters to SInnett she sends Sinnett the intro and first three chapters and
then later wants him to send it back so she can send it to Olcott (I havn't
checked the timing on this...) Could she (I am speculating) have sent these
to Adyar and recopied them herself to also have the copy for Keightley ? I
hope everyone reading realize that these seemingly tiny historical pieces
being linked together can have very important implication and even
direction. I feel it is now more probable that there is SD mss. waiting to
be 'found' somewhere.....and this could be quite wonderful !  

Also thank you for posting the Laura Holloway material........insightful
and controversial as it is. I have read through much of it and seen these
parts before and it is definitely authentic.(Is everyone afraid to comment
on it ?) Boris also thought this should someday be published and was
important.

Ken

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 An Intuitive Hunch about a Solitary Page of the SD

If you look in Boris de Zirkoff's Introduction to the SD, p. [36]
you will see a:

"Facsimile of a solitary page of one version of THE SECRET DOCTRINE
in H.P.B.'s handwriting preserved in the Adyar Archives."

Now I had always asked myself:  WHAT version?  Certainly not the
final 1888 version!

Yesterday, after having had an exchange on Theos-Talk with Ken Small
on the different versions of the SD, I was pondering on what had been
discussed when I had what many would call an "intuitive insight".

It suddently dawned on me that this above mentioned solitary page
was actually from HPB's handwritten manuscript of 1886!!

This would have been one of the many pages that Bertram Keightley
read in May 1887. Remember he wrote that Madame Blavatsky:

"placed the whole of the so far completed MSS. [of The Secret
Doctrine] in the hands of Dr. [Archibald] Keightley and myself....We
both read the whole mass of MSS.--a pile over three feet high--most
carefully through."

Here I give two links:

The first link is to an online facsimile of the page in question:

http://blavatskyarchives.com/sdsolitarypage1886.htm

The second link is to a larger version in red.  This version may
help readers especially in deciphering the latter part of the page.

http://blavatskyarchives.com/sdsolitarypage1886bb.htm

Now as soon as I got over the excitement of the intuitive hunch, I
thought:

Hmm.  Now I need to somehow verify or falsify this.  Can I do it?

A preliminary mental analysis confirms to me that this is indeed
one page of HPB's original 1886 manuscript.  And it was found in
Volume II which at that time was the volume on Cosmogenesis.

When the volumes were rearranged/reordered, this Volume II page and
the rest of Volume II became Volume I.

Now notice that this solitary page shows the 3 famous fundamental
propositions of the SD.

In the solitary page, the 3 propositions were part of the commentary
on Stanza I but HPB must have decided to take this material and
transfer it from the commentary on Stanzas I to the "Proem" section
of the same volume.

In the published 1888 Vol. I, she  starts listing these propositions
on page 14, but she apparently greatly EXPANDED her comments and you
can see some of the comments from the solitary page on page 18 for
example.

Students will also see that she REWORDS the 3 fundamental
propositions in the final 1888 version!!

Interesting to read and study the 2 different versions (1886 & 1888)
of the 3 propositions…..

Daniel
 
 
 

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