Theos-Talk Archives (September 2007 Message tt00050)

A.P. Sinnett received the bulk of the existing Mahatma Letters.

Below is his LATER view concerning these letters:

"They contained masses of information concerning the natural truths
that have since become the fundamental ideas underlying Theosophy,
which were previously as unknown to Madame Blavatsky as to myself.
Reincarnation, karma , the planetary chains, the succession of the
root races, the sub-races and so on, were not tampered with. Madame
Blavatsky did not know enough about them at that time to make it is
possible for her to import confusion into information on these
subjects which passed through her hands. But unhappily she had
contracted - under conditions I will not attempt to elucidate - a
bitter detestation of spiritualism, and sometimes when the letters
touched on after-death conditions she wove this feeling into them.
The result was dreadfully misleading and the consequences very
deplorable." [A.P Sinnett, "The Early Days of Theosophy in Europe",
p.28]

But the inquiring reader might ask:

How did Sinnett really know that HPB had imported confusion into the
information given in the Mahatma Letters?

How did Sinnett determine that HPB had distorted the teachings on
the "after-death conditions"?

And even more importantly, how did Sinnett himself know the REAL
teachings on the "after-death conditions"?

How did he also come to the conclusion that Blavatsky had NOT
tampered with other teachings on "Reincarnation, karma , the
planetary chains, the succession of the root races, the sub-races
and so on"?

A number of other important questions should be asked about Mr.
Sinnett's assertions.

The following information may help to give the reader A WIDER
CONTEXT to Sinnett's above remarks.

In 1884, Sinnett came to believe he was in contact with the Master
K.H., independent of H.P.B. acting as mediator. Sinnett wrote in his
book "The Early Days of Theosophy":

"About this time [early July 1884] Mrs. Holloway, a wonderfully
gifted American psychic came to stay with us. . . . .She used to get
vivid clairvoyant visions of the Master, - could pass on messages to
me from K.H. and on one occasion he actually made use of her to
speak to me in the first person." p. 27

But the Master K.H. (in a letter received July 18, 1884) pronounced
Sinnett's claim false and untrue:

"You ask me if you can tell Miss Arundale what I told you thro' Mrs.
H [olloway]. . . . . .[But] I have never . . . communicated with you
or any one else thro' her. . . . . She is an excellent but quite
undeveloped clairvoyante. . . . ." "The Mahatma Letters", 2nd ed.,
p. 355

In an 1884 letter to Laura Holloway herself, KH wrote:

"I have denied ? black on white communicating with him [Sinnett]
through you. I have never done so, and this I repeat; but he clings
to his unwholesome illusion. . . . "

But apparently Sinnett had such a strong belief that KH had 
communicated with him through Mrs. Holloway that he even doubted KH's 
letter (quoted above) received on July 18, 1884.

Soon thereafter, Blavatsky wrote:

"My dear Mr. Sinnett,

"It is very strange that you should be ready to deceive yourself so
willingly. I have seen last night whom I had to see, and getting the
explanation I wanted I am now settled on points I was not only
doubtful about but positively averse to accepting. And the words in
the first line are words I am bound to repeat to you as a warning,
and because I regard you, after all, as one of my best personal
friends. 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, or something of the sort. . . . If
you -- the most devoted, the best of all Theosophists -- are ready
to fall a victim to your own preconceptions and believe in new gods
of your own fancy dethroning the old ones -- then, notwithstanding
all and everything Theosophy has come too early in this
country. . . . Yours, H.P.B."

Sinnett persisted in this "unwholesome illusion."

Notice what happened four years later.

Master K.H. in his August 1888 "S.S. Shannon" letter to Colonel
Henry Olcott wrote:

"Since 1885 I have not written, nor caused to be written save thro'
her [HPB's] agency, direct or remote, a letter or line to anybody in
Europe or America, nor communicated orally with, or thro' any third
party. Theosophists should learn it. You will understand later the
significance of this declaration so keep it in mind. Her [HPB's]
fidelity to our work being constant, and her sufferings having come
upon her thro' it, neither I nor either of my Brother associates
will desert or supplant her. . . . "

". . . (This letter) . . . is merely given you as a warning and a
guide; to others as a warning only; for you may use it discreetly if
needs be . . . Prepare, however, to have the authenticity of the
present denied in certain quarters." "Letters from the Masters of
the Wisdom", Series I.

Notice KH's words:

"Prepare, however, to have the authenticity of the present denied in
certain quarters."

When Sinnett was shown this KH letter in London, he wrote privately
to C.W. Leadbeater:

"It [the 'S.S. Shannon' letter] reads to me very much en suite with
the other letters in blue handwriting that came during the 1884
crisis, when Mm. B. herself admitted to me afterwards that during
that time the Masters had stood aside and left everything to various
chelas, including freedom to use the blue handwriting". (C.
Jinarajadasa, "The K.H. Letters to C.W. Leadbeater", p. 75).

IT SHOULD BE NOTED HERE THAT AT THIS VERY TIME [OCTOBER 1888], 
SINNETT BELIEVED HE WAS IN CONTACT WITH THE REAL MASTER KOOT HOOMI 
THROUGH MARY (MAUDE TRAVERS).

Therefore according to his "reasoning", this "S.S. Shannon" letter 
received by Colonel Olcott could NOT really be from the REAL Master 
K.H.!

For information on Mary (Maude Travers), see my posting at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/theos-talk/message/41850

At this same time (Oct. 1888), Madame Blavatsky wrote an article in
LUCIFER which contains the following passage which is VERY RELEVANT
to Sinnett's views.  The passage is probably written by HPB with Mr. 
Sinnett in mind!

HPB stated:

"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? For it is
hardly one out of a hundred "occult" letters that is ever written by
the hand of the Master, in whose name and on whose behalf they are
sent, as the Masters have neither need nor leisure to write them;
and that when a Master says, "I wrote that letter," it means only
that every word in it was dictated by him and impressed under his
direct supervision. Generally they make their chela, whether near or
far away, write (or precipitate) them, by impressing upon his mind
the ideas they wish expressed, and if necessary aiding him in the
picture-printing process of precipitation. It depends entirely upon
the chela's state of development, how accurately the ideas may be
transmitted and the writing-model imitated. 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 an 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 who would tolerate one single fraudulent
line in his name, would wink at an unlimited repetition of the
deception. And this leads directly to the following. All the so-
called occult letters being supported by identical proofs, they have
all to stand or fall together. If one is to be doubted, then all
have, and the series of letters in the "Occult World," "Esoteric
Buddhism," etc., etc., may be, and there is no reason why they
should not be in such a case-frauds, "clever impostures,"
and "forgeries," . . . . " 

Food for thought.

Daniel
http://hpb.cc