Theos-Talk Archives (November 2006 Message tt01119)

Let us suppose the SPR actually withdrew its charges about HPB.

What would it really signify?? What would it really mean?

Well, first of all, it is the Council of the SPR who would have to
do this "withdrawing". And the council would have to vote on it.

Let us suppose there are 20 people on the SPR Council.

Let us also suppose that the vote to withdraw the report was 11 to
9. That is, 11 to withdraw the Hodgson report, 9 against doing so.
What would be the significance of this vote?

If such a vote had actually taken place, and REGARDLESS of the
voting outcome, I would consider the voting results MEANINGLESS.

Why?

Think about it....

How many of the members on the council would even KNOW ENOUGH about
the Hodgson/Blavatsky case to be IN A GOOD POSITION to judge whether
the original charges should be withdrawn or not????

I'm sorry but reading Vernon Harrison's article in the SPR Journal 
does not qualify one to be IN A GOOD POSITION....

I can tell you one thing.....I am not going to base my view about
Madame Blavatsky and the validity of her paranormal powers, etc. on
a vote of people who "as a group" may know less about her and the
original controversy than your typical Theosophist!  :)

What if the vote had been 11 for not withdrawing the report? What
would one therefore make of that vote?

My advice to interested readers:

If you are at all interested in determining the validity or
not of the Hodgson Report, read and study it FOR YOURSELF
and also read and compare it with the various critiques by
Harrison, Carrithers, Vania, Hastings, Besant, Kingsland, etc. as
well as some of the material written by defenders of the Hodgson
Report.

Of course the EASIER WAY [the lazy man approach??] is to let some
one else do your homework and thinking for you and just accept that
the SPR [whether formally or informally] withdrew the Hodgson Report
and its charges against HPB, THEREFORE we can conclude that there is
no substance to the charges, etc. etc.

Is this like a priest that tells the congregation: "Don't read
the Bible for yourself, I'm here to tell you what it really means"?

Now personally I came to the conclusion years before Harrison's
report was published that Madame Blavatsky was treated unfairly in
Hodgson's report and that there were good reasons to discount many
if not all of Hodgson's claims.

I came to MY OWN conclusions NOT by believing the SPR supported the
charges or withdrew the charges BUT by reading AND studying the
OBITUARY book plus also reading the Hodgson's report, the Coulomb
pamphlet, the Patterson articles, the Gribble report and dozens of
other books and pamphlets on the subject plus my own research into
other primary sources.

Now maybe I am wrong in my own conclusions but at least they are my
own conclusions and not the conclusion made as a result of some SPR
council vote!!!

So Carlos Aveline and others of similar thinking, go ahead and
succumb to "organizational" authority, in this case, the
SUPPOSED "informal" withdrawing of the report by the SPR...

Daniel
http://hpb.cc