Theos-Talk Archives (January 2007 Message tt00154)

Friends,   
 
Suppose that two money forgers are caught by police officers and arrested for circulating false dollars in a down town supermarket. Imagine that they say, purporting to be deeply surprised: 
 
“But, policemen, we are doing this with the best of intentions. We are circulating false dollars in order for people to know by themselves what is true and what is false!”   
 
They could also explain to the officers: 
 
“We have committed no crime, because we did not fabricate these false dollars ourselves. We are just  passing them on and making them circulate, in order to test people’s judgement. Every one must decide which dollar bill is true and which dollar bill is false!” 
 
It is sad, but it is true: the absence of a consistent self-criticism on the part of both Mr. John Algeo and Mr. Daniel Caldwell, after they included – scattered in books they edited (1) –  dozens of  libels and false accusations against H.P. Blavatsky, has been showing that they are in a somewhat similar position.  
 
As Mr. Algeo and Mr. Caldwell try to justify themselves, their main argument seems to be that they just decided to leave readers alone to freely choose between truth and lies. 
 
According to them, it is with this aim in view that they started publishing the worst false accusations, forgeries and libels ever produced against HPB since 1884-85.  
 
They act as if they ignored that any honest and decent editor has the active duty and legal responsibility not to publish any proved lies. Editors and Historians are not in the business of publishing false documents and libels.   
 
Mr. Algeo and Mr. Caldwell also pretend to ignore that the very Society for Psychical Research, SPR-London, which did condem HPB as a fraud  nearly 120 years ago, honestly  admited in 1986 that all accusations against HPB were false. 
 
Algeo and Caldwell insist in circulating old lies which suggest that HPB had a dirty life, and they publicize dozens of sordid details fabricated by Emma Coulomb and Vsevolod Solovyov. 
 
Both editors refuse to say what’s the real purpose of publishing libels against the founder of the theosophical movement, of which they still appear to be members.  
 
One possible result of such disguised attacks could be an attempt to render the public image of HPB morally comparable to that of “Bishop” C.W. Leadbeater. In this way, perhaps, as Leadbeater’s false theosophy and ritualisms fade away, it would be more difficult for the  members of the Adyar Theosophical Society to get back to the authentic philosophy of Theosophy and to find a renewed  inspiration in the heroic life example of HPB. 
 
Such a new  wave of false theosophy must be  shown for what it is –  until this oficial policy of attacks against HPB is abandoned by the TPH-USA.   
 
The first wave of false Theosophy coming from Adyar in the 20th century was ritualistic, pseudomasonic, neochristian and messianic. Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti was to perform the second coming of “Lord Christ” during 20th century.  As this mayavic wave now  loses its energy,  a new illusory action  emerges.  
 
The second wave of false theosophy started especially from the 1990s and consists of  an attempt to draw the wrong kind of attention over the person of Helena Blavatsky. 
 
As “leadbeatearism” is nearly dead, now  we have a “false blavatskianism”. Thousands of true but meaningless and useless details about HPB’s life are exaggerated and magnified, while the main attacks and lies against her are again made to circulate, now (for the  first time since 1875)  included in the theosophical literature. These unidentified slanders are passed around under the name of “liberty of thought”.  
 
For this new false theosophy, personality replaces Philosophy. HPB is shown as a freak, an odd and strange woman,  a curiosity of nature, a piece of museum.  
 
But her fine lifelong example of  purity and dedication to the ideal of human perfection is cowardly attacked in an attempt to destroy her in the eyes of unexperienced students.  
 
Mrs. Radha Burnier, the  international president of Adyar TS, does  write that those letters are spurious. But she  says no more, and she does nothing. 
 
Mr. Algeo included in his volume called “Letters of HPB”  a false letter in which H.P.B.  is made to offer her personal services to the Secret Police of the Russian Czar. Algeo says he believes that letter “may be true”. 
 
What are Blavatsky’s frank commentaries about the smart people  who  believe,  or pretend to believe, in that “fraud and spy theory”? 
 
She writes: 
 
“Those  (...) will have to explain what even my traducers of even the Padri class and Psychical Research Society have been unable to explain to this day, viz., the motive for  such fraud. They will have to explain  why, instead of taking and making money, I gave away to the Society every penny I earned by writing to the papers, why at the same time I nearly killed myself with overwork and incessant labour year after year, until my health gave way, so that but for my Master’s repeated help, I should have died long ago from the effects of such voluntary hard labour. For the absurd Russian spy theory, if it still finds credit in some idiotic heads, has long disappeared, at any rate from the official brains of the Anglo-Indians.” (2) 
 
Since Mr. Algeo and Mr. Caldwell both appear to be clever people and far from moron idiots,  it seems  we can hope they will change their editorial policy and will start having more respect for truth. 
 
Regards,  Carlos. 
 
 
NOTES:
 
(1) See The Esoteric World of Madame Blavatsky, by Daniel Caldwell, Theosophical Publishing House/Quest Books, 2000, 451 pp. The  book is a collection of testimonies, false and true,  about the life of  H. P. Blavatsky, and contains not only libels against HPB, but  direct, personal  attacks against Masters of  the Wisdom, besides abusing their sacred names. See also Letters of H. P. Blavatsky – Volume I , edited by John Algeo, Theosophical Publishing House-Wheaton, 2003, 634 pp, with very much the same stuff.   
 
(2) Why I Do Not Return to India, by HPB, in H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, TPH, India,  Volume XII, 1980, 859 pp., see pp. 161-162.  And also The Aquarian Theosophist, November 2004, p. 04. 
 
 


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