Theos-Talk Archives (June 2007 Message tt00117)

John,

You make this important observation:

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What is important to me here is whether or not this statement By 
Master K.H. is a true representation of the Doctrine they possess and 
and have been taught themselves, and so teach others, including 
Theosophists. 
==============================================================

You have hit the nail on the head!!

That is also my thinking on the subject.

There have been and are different Theosophical students 
who have certain beliefs or have made certain assumptions, etc. and 
certain statements in one Mahatma letter or another 
don't accord with their belief or assumption.

Therefore said student declares statement as phoney or not from KH or 
distorted by HPB, etc.

There is a long history of this. 

For example, Sinnett didn't like certain statements in the letters 
such as what Master KH says about life after death, therefore the 
real KH couldn't have written or taught that.  HPB distorted the true 
teaching.  So thought Sinnett.

Col. Olcott didn't like what Master Morya dictated to HPB in that 
famous Prayag letter, so it couldn't of been from the real Morya so 
HPB must have been mediumistic on this occasion and distorted the 
real message.This was Olcott's "reasoning."

Many more examples could be given including Jake's "phoney" letter 
and Sveinn's Letter No. 88 "that should not have been issued and 
designated to master K.H."

If you list all the Mahatma letters that different students over the 
years didn't agree with and who concluded that these particular  
letters are phoney, etc., you probably end up throwing away half of 
the letters!

Now I'm not suggesting that any of these students don't have the 
right to do this.... but as an "outside" student and observer I 
really wonder if this is the way to go about studying the letters or 
the teachings.

Some of the teachings I don't necessarily even understand but I 
always ask myself, whose fault is that?  I would suspect that fault 
lies with me.  

Over the years I have read various statements by HPB or KH which on 
first reading didn't make any sense to me.  I would even say to 
myself, "that can't be true."  But further study, etc. showed me that 
I simply didn't know enough at the time to make an accurate 
assessment.

Also consider what HPB herself wrote on this very subject under 
discussion:

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My dear Mr. Sinnett, 

It is very strange that you should be ready to deceive yourself so 
willingly....Now you have and are deceiving, in vulgar parlance, 
bamboozling yourself about the letter received by me yesterday from 
the Mahatma. The letter is from Him, whether written through a chela 
or not; and -- perplexing as it may seem to you, contradictory 
and "absurd," it is the full expression of his feelings and he 
maintains what he said in it. For me it is surpassingly strange that 
you should accept as His only that which dovetails with your own 
feelings, and reject all that contradicts your own notions of the 
fitness of things....you imagine, or rather force yourself to imagine 
that the Mahatma's letter is not wholly orthodox and was written by a 
chela to please me....
============================================================
Quoted from:
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/mahatma/ml-133.htm

Or what she later wrote:

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....We have been asked by a correspondent why he should 
not "be free to suspect some of the so-called 'precipitated' letters 
as being forgeries," giving as his reason for it that while some of 
them bear the stamp of (to him) undeniable genuineness, others seem 
from their contents and style, to be imitations. This is equivalent 
to saying that he has such an unerring spiritual insight as to be 
able to detect the false from the true, though he has never met a 
Master, nor been given any key by which to test his alleged 
communications. The inevitable consequence of applying his untrained 
judgment in such cases, would be to make him as likely as not to 
declare false what was genuine, and genuine what was false. Thus what 
criterion has any one to decide between one "precipitated" letter, or 
another such letter? Who except their authors, or those whom they 
employ as their amanuenses (the chelas and disciples), can tell?....

Thus the non-adept recipient is left in the dilemma of uncertainty, 
whether, if one letter is false, all may not be; for, as far as 
intrinsic evidence goes, all come from the same source, and all are 
brought by the same mysterious means. But there is another, and a far 
worse condition implied. For all that the recipient of "occult" 
letters can possibly know, and on the simple grounds of probability 
and common honesty, THE UNSEEN CORRESPONDENT [KOOT HOOMI] WHO WOULD 
TOLERATE ONE SINGLE FRAUDULENT LINE IN HIS NAME, WOULD WINK AT AN 
UNLIMITED REPETITION OF THE DECEPTION. . . .
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And earlier in the same article HPB observed:

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....Such persons readily persuade themselves that later teachings, 
received from exactly the same source as earlier ones, are either 
false or have been tampered with by chelas, or even third parties.
=================================================== 

And HPB ends the article with this important point:

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The whole difficulty springs from the common tendency to draw 
conclusions from insufficient premises, and play the oracle before 
ridding oneself of that most stupefying of all psychic anæsthetics--
IGNORANCE. 
=======================================================
Quoted from:  Lucifer, October 1888. 
http://tinyurl.com/3b88b9
Caps added.

One such person was A.P. Sinnett.

Daniel
http://hpb.cc