Theos-Talk Archives (June 2006 Message tt00077)

Daniel, the point is that you can use short quotes from a letter to make
almost anything appear true.  Despite the choice of quotes, however, it
is the reader who in the end is making up his mind, right?

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "danielhcaldwell"
<danielhcaldwell@...> wrote:
>
> Mrs. Holloway and Mr. Judge
>
In the summer of 1875, an Egyptian Master wrote to Olcott about HPB as
she had got into a past current and was in a do or die fight with some
elementaries at that time:

"The Dweller is watching closely and will never lose his opportunity if
our Sister's courage fails.  This is to be one of her hardest trials . .
. how dangerous for her will be the achievement of her duty and how
likely to expect for both of you [Olcott and Gerry Brown] to lose a
sister and a -- Providence on earth. . . . Sher must enocounter once
more and face to face the dreaded one she thought she would behold no
more.  She must either conquer -- or die . . . solitary, unprotected but
still dauntless she will have to face all the great perils, and unknown
mysterious dangers she must encounter. . . . Brother mine, I can do
naught for our poor Sister.  She has placed herself under the stern law
of the Lodge, and these laws can be softened for none.  As an Ellorian
she must win her right."  (H.P. Blavatsky and the Theosophical Movement,
78)

In a special order of HPB written in Dec. 1888, she writes:

"As head of the Esoteric Section of the Theosophical Society, I hereby
declare that William Q. Judge, of New York, U.S., in virtue of his
character as a chela of thirteen years standing, and of the trust and
confidence reposed in him . . . (TJC, Pt. 1, 21)

>From "Chelas and Lay Chelas" we read:

"The Chela is not only called to face all the latent evil propensities
of his nature, but, in addition, the whole volume of maleficent power
accumulated by the community and nation to which he belongs. For he is
an integral part of those aggregates, and what affects either the
individual man, or the group (town or nation) reacts upon the other. And
in this instance his struggle for goodness jars upon the whole body of
badness in his environment, and draws its fury upon him." (BCW IV, 612)

So, as late as 1888, it is clear that Judge was not a failed Chela.

>
> In early April 1884, W.Q. Judge writes from Paris to Mrs. Laura
> Holloway:
>
> "?For several days, until yesterday, I have had the most awful
blues
> that ever were. So bad indeed that H. P. B. was very much worried.
> It seemed impossible to stave them off, and as they were accompanied
> with an uncontrollable desire to weep, I was in a bad way.
>
> "She said I had got into my past current, and also that in going
> about I HAD ABSORBED SOME OLD ELEMENTARIES which SHE SAW about me.
>
> "She gave me to wear all day her talisman ring, which is of great
> value and strength. It has a double triangle and the Sanscrit
> for `life' on it. THIS HELPED ME, but all the while I felt that
> something was to be done by me. . . . "  caps added.
>
> H.P. Blavatsky elsewhere gives a graphic description of elementaries
> and what SHE COULD SEE:
>
> "....It stands to reason that this mere earthly refuse, irresistibly
> drawn to the earth, cannot follow the soul and spirit ? these
> highest principles of man's being. With horror and disgust I often
> observed how a reanimated shadow of this kind separated itself from
> the inside of the medium; how, separating itself from his astral
> body and clad in someone else's vesture, it pretended to be
> someone's relation, causing the person to go into ecstasies and
> making people open wide their hearts and their embraces to these
> shadows whom they sincerely believed to be their dear fathers and
> brothers, resuscitated to convince them of life eternal, as well as
> to see them... Oh, if they only knew the truth, if they only
> believed! If they saw, as I have often seen, a monstrous, bodiless
> creature seizing hold of someone present at these spiritistic
> sorceries! It wraps the man as if with a black shroud, and slowly
> disappears in him as if drawn into his body by each of his living
> pores." A letter to one of her relatives in Russia.
>
> It should also be remembered that during the previous year (1883)
> Mr. Judge had been CLOSELY  associated with Mrs. Laura Holloway in
> Brooklyn, New York.
>
In an introduction to a "Reminiscence" by Holloway on her early years
with Judge that was reprinted in Fohat, we read the following:

"As Judge has also been accused of relying on mediums, the readers
should take note of Judge's interactions with Laura Holloway and how
she describes one clairvoyant episode while in the company of Madame
Blavatsky.  Judge and Holloway belonged to a small group involved in
"philosophic and metaphysical studies."  Although the
description is brief, it sounds like Judge would work with Holloway
asking her questions in an appropriate setting designed to elicit
visions.  Judge would record these visions and then they would get
together with the group and "investigate" these
"visions" to see what might be made of them.  That these visions
came by way of intuitive insight rather than mediumship is made clear in
Holloway's interaction with H.P.B. where she tells Madame Blavatsky
in the middle of a conversation that she received the impression that
Judge would return to America after his trip to India to see the
Masters.  This is not trance mediumship.

"It should also be mentioned that if one is investigating the
reliability of a psychic, it would be very important not to plant the
seeds of doubt into that psychic's mind with respect to their
abilities.  It seems that the art of such investigation lies in leading
the psychic to interpret correctly what they see by weeding out the
deceptive aspects of their visions.  For this reason I suspect that any
psychic that Judge worked with would come away from the session with the
understanding that Judge had full confidence in everything they saw. 
This, of course, would not necessarily be true.  That Laura Holloway was
gifted and of possible use to the Society is clear in a letter from the
Mahatmas to Sinnett where they scold him for his deleterious
interference with her making her unfit for use.  That she was not as yet
a reliable tool is clear from the fact that Sinnett was able to
undermine her value." (Fohat, Spring 2006, 15)

K.H. wrote to Sinnett, the following:

"Remember what I said to you some two years ago, "were H.P.B. to die
before we found a substitute," the powers through which we work in
our communications with the outside world may permit the transmission of
two or three letters more, then it would die out and you would have no
more letters from me. . . .  I have done my best to stop the evil but I
have neither jurisdiction nor control over her, nor shall I have any
better chance with Mrs. H. She is a magnificent subject naturally but so
distrustful of herself and others, so apt to take the real for
hallucination and vice versa that it will require a long time before she
becomes thoroughly controllable even by herself. She is far, far from
being ready; moreover she understands neither herself nor us. Verily our
ways are not your ways, hence there remains but little hope for us in
the West.

" . . . We had found Mrs. H. in America, we impressed her to prepare for
the writing of the book she has produced with the aid of Mohini. Had she
consented to stop at Paris, as requested, a few days longer and come
over to England with H.P.B. the later complication could have been
averted. The effect of her coming to your house has been described to
you by her before; and in resenting what Mohini and H.P.B. were saying
to you and Mrs. H. you have been simply resenting our personal wishes.
You will resent my words even now when I tell you that you have been
? unconsciously, I agree ? in my way, in her development. Yet
you would have been the first one to profit thereby."   (ML-66)



> Laura Holloway revealed years later the following:
>
> "For many years there was a small group of people who met each
> Sabbath evening in the home of one of their number for the purposes
> of social and spiritual recreation. They were people who earnestly
> desired to know aright, all that each could learn and whose right to
> receive wisdom was based upon their willingness to impart what of
> light they had already gained by persistent and well-directed
> effort."
>
> "Into this friendly circle Mr. Judge was early admitted as one who
> was far ahead of his associates in philosophic and metaphysical
> studies. He was an addition to the group highly appreciated and he
> was often moved by gratitude to express his thanks for the ready
> sympathy and good fellowship he enjoyed. At the period to which
> allusion is now being made, he was not a robust man, but was
> suffering from the effects of a fever contracted while on a trip in
> South America; mentally he was at his best, and socially he was a
> witty, companionable person, sometimes gay, always agreeable, and
> ever eager to talk on the subject of Theosophy. . . . "
>
> "Among the individuals that composed this group was a nature [Laura
> Holloway herself] that had some natural but untrained gifts of
> clairvoyance, and to this one Mr. Judge gave more of his confidence
> than to the others -- not thereby robbing them, but, NEEDING THE
> ASSISTANCE THIS PSYCHIC COULD SOMETIMES GIVE HIM, he revealed more
> of his mind to that one. But each and all shared alike in all
> the `visions' seen and reported, and between them all, there grew to
> be a STRONG MAGNETIC TIE, which united them in their investigations,
> and held them together in spirit, as long as they lived." The Word,
> November 1915. Caps added.
>
> Here is what Master K.H. wrote about Mrs. Holloway and her
> connection with elementaries:
>
> "You cannot acquire psychic power until the causes of psychic
> debility are removed. Your trouble is, that you "cannot take in" the
> doctrine of shells. You have scarcely learned the elements of self-
> control in psychism; your vivid creative imagination evokes illusive
> creatures, coined the instant before in the mint of your mind;
> unknown to yourself. As yet you have not acquired the exact method
> of detecting the false from the true, since you have not yet
> comprehended the doctrine of shells.
>
> "Whether you sit for friends in America or London, or elsewhere as
> medium ? though you now hate the word ? or seeress, or
revelator,
> since you have scarcely learned the elements of self-control, in
> psychism, you must suffer bad consequences. You draw to yourself the
> nearest and strongest influences ? often evil ? and absorb
them, and
> are psychically stifled or narcotised by them. The airs become
> peopled with resuscitated phantoms."
>
> "?.How can you know the real from the unreal, the true from the
> false? Only by self-development. How get that? By first carefully
> guarding yourself against the causes of self-deception, and chief
> among them, the holding of intercourse with elementaries as before,
> whether to please friends (?), or gratify your own curiosity."
> Letter 17,
> http://www.blavatskyarchives.com/hollowayml.htm

It is significant in the above that the Masters thought highly enough of
Holloway that they tried to get through to her.
>
> In another STILL unpublished letter from Master K.H. to Madame
> Blavatsky, he writes the following concerning Mrs. Holloway:
>
> "She labors under the very kind but erroneous & injurious notion
> that since she has done it (consoling the elementaries) ALL HER
> LIFE ? she cannot be doing wrong in continuing to do so.  Fatal
> error!  She has, she does wrong, a most serious one to herself:  for
> she has thereby been for years systematically destroying her health.
> This relationship during the course of which the unclean shells have
> been constantly absorbing a part of her vitality brought her to
> become the highly nervous & sickly sensitive.  The more they are
> encouraged the more serious it comes for her, & they may even kill
> her if she heeds us not.
>
> "And let her be impressed with the fact that whenever she thinks she
> sees a chela appearing with, or seeming to take an interest, or show
> any connection with those astral vampires ? she yields simply to
the
> cunning & crafty ways of the Shells.  No Gelukpa  chela ever meddles
> with the earth-bound remnants of humanity, nor will any of our chela
> [s] ? high or law ? encourage such an intercourse by his
> presence. . . ." caps added.
>
> In 1886, H.P. Blavatsky gives the following estimation of Mrs.
> Holloway in a letter to A.P. Sinnett:
>
> "...The first bomb-shell from the Dugpa world came from America; you
> welcomed and warmed it in your own breast. . . . The Dugpa element
> triumphed fully at one time -- why? because you believed in one
> [Laura Holloway] who was sent by the opposing powers for the
> destruction of the [Theosophical] Society and permitted to act as
> she and others did by the 'higher powers,' as you call them, whose
> duty it was not to interfere in the great probation save at the last
> moment. To this day you are unable to say what was true, what
> false...." The Mahatma Letters, No. 141.
>
It seems that  Sinnett's interference with Holloway contributed to his
long slide into the world of mediumship.  All mediums by believing in
what they do are tools of the Dugpas.  It is the Dugpas who encourage
the proliferation of mediumship, and those caught in their snares are in
a sense their agents.

More care should be put into how quotes are strung together.  Sometimes
people can come away with very distorted ideas.

Bruce



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