Theos-Talk Archives (May 2007 Message tt00043)

Sveinn Freyr,

You write:

------------------------------------------------
This controversial letter "No. 88"? Is by my
opinion not a letter written by an adept. It is a note scrap
that should not have been issued and designated
to master K.H. This scrap note has done much harm.
-------------------------------------------------

I am interested to know your thinking on why this letter "has done 
much harm".  

Personally I have studied this letter NO. 88 in great detail and 
have compared it to other RELEVANT letters in the Mahatma Letters as 
well as to what one can find in HPB's THE SECRET DOCTRINE and HPB's 
other writings.

You state that it was NOT written by an adept, the Master KH. I see 
no good reason for coming to the conclusion you make above. 

Consider the following.

In ANOTHER letter NO. 93B (4th chrono ed.) Master KH refers to these 
very notes that you reject:

-----------------------------------------------------
5) It certainly does, and I have touched upon the subject long ago. 
In my notes on Mr. Hume's MSS., "On God" -- that he kindly adds to 
our Philosophy, something the latter had never contemplated before --
 the subject is mentioned abundantly. Has he refused you a look into 
it? For you -- I may enlarge my explanations, but not before you 
have read what I say of the origin of good and evil on those 
margins. Quite enough was said by me for our present purposes. 
Strangely enough I found a European author -- the greatest 
materialist of his times, Baron d'Holbach -- whose views coincide 
entirely with the views of our philosophy. When reading his Essais 
sur la Nature, I might have imagined I had our book of Kiu-ti before 
me. As a matter of course and of temperament our Universal Pundit 
will try to catch at those views and pull every argument to pieces. 
So far he only threatens me to alter his Preface and not to publish 
the philosophy under his own name. Cuneus cuneum, tradit: I begged 
him not to publish his essays at all. 
------------------------------------------------------------

Notice KH's words:  "...that he kindly adds to our Philosophy...."

Compare the subject matter mentioned in this letter with the subject 
matter of Letter NO. 88.

So is this letter 93 B also not from an adept, Master KH?

And I repeat AGAIN what Master KH wrote in yet ANOTHER letter:

--------------------------------------------------------
I dread the appearance in print of our philosophy as expounded by 
Mr. H[ume].  I read his three essays or chapters on God (?) 
cosmogony and glimpses of the origin of things in general, and had 
to cross out nearly all. He makes of us Agnostics!! We do not 
believe in God because so far, we have no proof, etc. This is 
preposterously ridiculous: if he publishes what I read, I will have 
H.P.B. or Djual Khool deny the whole thing; as I cannot permit our 
sacred philosophy to be so disfigured. He says that people will not 
accept the whole truth; that unless we humour them with a hope that 
there may be a 'loving Father and creator of all in heaven' our 
philosophy will be rejected a priori. In such a case the less such 
idiots hear of our doctrines the better for both. If they do not 
want the whole truth and nothing but the truth, they are welcome. 
But never will they find us -- (at any rate) -- compromising with, 
and pandering to public prejudices.
----------------------------------------------------------- 

The above extract shows that the Master is referring to the same 
subject matter of Letter NO. 88.

And ALSO  consider Letter No. 90 in the Chrono. Ed.  Again the 
subject matter in Letter No. 90 is much the same as in Letter NO. 88.

And once again COMPARE the contents of Letter NO. 88 and the other 
letters I've quoted from with THE FOLLOWING ADDITIONAL elucidation 
by KH to Sinnett:

----------------------------------------------------------
....And thus according to Mr. Massey's philosophical conclusion we 
have no God? He is right -- since he applies the name to an extra-
cosmic anomaly, and that we, knowing nothing of the latter, find -- 
each man his God -- within himself in his own personal, and at the 
same time, -- impersonal Avalokiteswara.....
---------------------------------------------------------

Notice the words:  "...He is right --- since he applies the name to 
an extra-cosmic anomaly...."

I would suggest that Hume was doing the same thing as Mr. Massey.

And what is Avalokiteswara?

In yet ANOTHER letter, Master KH elucidates the term:

-------------------------------------------------------
...Avalokita Isvar literally interpreted means "the Lord that is 
seen." "Iswara" implying moreover, rather the adjective than the 
noun, lordly, self-existent lordliness, not Lord. It is, when 
correctly interpreted, in one sense "the divine Self perceived or 
seen by Self," the Atman or seventh principle ridded of its mayavic 
distinction from its Universal Source -- which becomes the object of 
perception for, and by the individuality centred in Buddhi, the 
sixth principle, -- something that happens only in the highest state 
of Samadhi. This is applying it to the microcosm. In the other sense 
Avalokitesvara implies the seventh Universal Principle, as the 
object perceived by the Universal Buddhi "Mind" or Intelligence 
which is the synthetic aggregation of all the Dhyan Chohans, as of 
all other intelligences whether great or small, that ever were, are, 
or will be....

...Avalokitesvara is both the unmanifested Father and the manifested 
Son, the latter proceeding from, and identical with, the other; -- 
namely, the Parabrahm and Jivatman, the Universal and the 
individualized seventh Principle, -- the Passive and the Active, the 
latter the Word, Logos, the Verb....
-------------------------------------------------------------

Notice the reference to Atman....and now compare these extracts 
about Avalokitesvara with the following extracts from Letter No. 88.

I willsuggest that part of the key to understanding what the Master 
writes in Letter NO. 88 is to be found in these choice extracts from 
that very letter:

----------------------------------------------------
...If people are willing to accept and to regard as God our ONE LIFE 
immutable and unconscious in its eternity they may do so and thus 
keep to one more gigantic misnomer. But then they will have to say 
with Spinoza that there is not and that we cannot conceive any other 
substance than God; or as that famous and unfortunate philosopher 
says in his fourteenth proposition, "practer Deum neque dari neque 
concepi potest substantia" -- and thus become Pantheists....

. . We are not Adwaitees, but our teaching respecting the one life 
is identical with that of the Adwaitee with regard to Parabrahm. And 
no true philosophically brained Adwaitee will ever call himself an 
agnostic, for he knows that he is Parabrahm and identical in every 
respect with the universal life and soul -- the macrocosm is the 
microcosm and he knows that there is no God apart from himself, no 
creator as no being. Having found Gnosis we cannot turn our backs on 
it and become agnostics.
-----------------------------------------------------------

Much could be added to the above quotes from H.P.B.'s THE SECRET 
DOCTRINE.

I would suggest that the underlying theme is consistent....from 
letter to letter, from extract to extract.... etc.

Each quote, each extract fits together like jig saw puzzle pieces to 
show the whole picture.

In other words, there is similarity/identity of key ideas and themes.

See also what Mrs. Hanson and Mr. Linton wrote in the 2nd edition of 
THE READERS GUIDE TO THE MAHATMA LETTERS on the subject matter of 
letter NO. 88. 

I would also suggest that you read and study the relevant extracts I 
provided from the Encylopaedia Brittannica.  See my posting at for 
these extracts:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/theos-talk/message/40539

These extracts help to give necessary background material that may 
help one to see what the Master is writing about....

Of course, each student and reader will have to determine if Letter 
No. 88 is from an adept or not, but it appears that the subject 
matter is consistent as one goes from one Mahatma Letter to another 
and as one then compares what is said on the same topic for example 
in THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

More could be written but I stop here.
This is a rough draft that I have not been able to proofread as I 
would normally do.

Hope some of this helps.

Daniel
http://hpb.cc


















--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, Sveinn Freyr <Sven04@...> wrote:
>
> This controversial letter "No. 88"?  Is by my 
> opinion not a letter written by an adept. It is a note scrap
> that should not have been issued and designated 
> to master K.H. This scrap note has done much harm.
> 
> Sveinn Freyr
> 
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 
> "Now we come to what is probably the most 
> controversial letter ... it is not a letter but some notes ...
> 
> These "Notes" have caused some people to reject 
> the whole occult philosophy because of the denial
> of the traditional concept of God.
> 
> The student is therefore asked to withhold judgment."
> 
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 
> Letter No. 88 
> 1                              (ML-10) Copied by APS Sept. 28, 1882
> 
> Now we come to what is probably the most 
> controversial letter in the volume. Actually, it 
> is not a letter but some notes made by the 
> Mahatma K.H. on what Hume called a "Preliminary 
> Chapter on God," intended as a preface to a book 
> he was writing on Occult Philosophy. The copy in 
> the British Museum is in Sinnett's handwriting.
> These "Notes" have caused some people to reject 
> the whole occult philosophy because of the denial 
> of the traditional concept of God. The student is 
> therefore asked to withhold judgment.
> 
> NOTES BY K.H. ON A "PRELIMINARY CHAPTER" HEADED 
> "GOD" BY HUME, INTENDED TO PREFACE AN EXPOSITION 
> OF OCCULT PHILOSOPHY (ABRIDGED).
> 
> Received at Simla, Sept. 1882.
> 
> Neither our philosophy nor ourselves believe in a God, ...
> 
>   least of all in one whose pronoun necessitates 
> a capital H. Our philosophy falls under the 
> definition of Hobbes. It is preeminently the 
> science of effects by their causes and of causes 
> by their effects, and since it is also the 
> science of things deduced from first principle, 
> as Bacon defines it, before we admit any such 
> principle we must know it, and have no right to 
> admit even its possibility. Your whole 
> explanation is based upon one solitary admission 
> made simply for argument's sake in October last.
> 
> You were told that our knowledge was limited to 
> this our solar system: ergo as philosophers who 
> desired to remain worthy of the name we could not 
> either deny or affirm the existence of what you 
> termed a supreme, omnipotent, intelligent being 
> of some sort beyond the limits of that solar 
> system. But if such an existence is not absolutely impossible, ...
> 
> yet unless the uniformity of nature's law breaks 
> at those limits we maintain that it is highly 
> improbable. Nevertheless we deny most 
> emphatically the position of agnosticism in this 
> direction, and as regards the solar system. Our 
> doctrine knows no compromises. It either affirms 
> or denies, for it never teaches but that which it 
> knows to be the truth. Therefore, we deny God 
> both as philosophers and as Buddhists.
> 
>   We know there are planetary and other spiritual 
> lives, and we know there is in our system no such 
> thing as God, either personal or impersonal. 
> Parabrahm is not a God, but absolute immutable 
> law, and Iswar is the effect of Avidya and Maya, 
> ignorance based upon the great delusion.
> 
> The word "God" was invented to designate the 
> unknown cause of those effects which man has 
> either admired or dreaded without understanding 
> them, and since we claim and that we are able to 
> prove what we claim  i.e. the knowledge of that 
> cause and causes  we are in a position to 
> maintain there is no God or Gods behind them. ...
> 
> 
> Copied out Simla, Sept. 28, 1882.
> 
> 1 Transcribed from a copy in Mr. Sinnett's handwriting. ? ED.
> 
>