Theos-Talk Archives (May 2008 Message tt00810)

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "prmoliveira" <prmoliveira@...> wrote:

> One of the memorable moments for her was her visit, together with Joy 
> Mills, to the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala in 1972. She (Helen Zahara)
wrote in a letter 
> to an Australian friend about the visit, on 2nd January 1973:
> 
> "The Dalai Lama was most gracious and we were served afternoon tea 
> (English style). We were with him for about fifty minutes. At first 
> he answered our questions in Tibetan and his secretary translated; 
> then he spoke in good English himself. After we had finished our 
> business discussion we got on to some philosophical talk. I asked him 
> if he knew of the work of H.P.B., how she had been trained in Tibet 
> and had taken her knowledge to the West. He did not seem to be aware 
> of this. Then I mentioned some of her writings which were based on 
> Mahayana Buddhism, particularly The Voice of the Silence. He looked 
> at me and said, "can you please explain its essence." You can imagine 
> the shock I got. Anyway I did my best aided by Joy and he said, yes, 
> it sounded like Mahayana Buddhism. We have been laughing ever since 
> at my trying to explain the essence of the V. of the S. to the Dalai 
> Lama."
>

As Dalai Lama had not even heard about The Voice of  Silence, one can
assume that most other Lamas also have not heard about this book. That
raises questions about Blavatsky's claims about the book. 
C. W. Leadbeater has given some important information on it. Here are
the passages from his commentary on The Voice of the Silence.
"Madame Blavatsky was always very ready to admit, and even to
emphasize, the fact that inaccuracies were to be found in all her
works; and in the early days, when we came across some especially
improbable statement of hers we not unnaturally laid it reverently
aside as perhaps one of those inaccuracies. It was surprising in what
a number of such cases further study showed us that Madame Blavatsky
was after all correct, so that
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presently, taught by experience, we grew much more wary in this
matter, and learnt to trust her extraordinarily wide and minute
knowledge upon all sorts of out-of-the-way subjects. Still there is no
reason to suspect a hidden meaning in an obvious misprint, as some too
credulous students have done; and we need not hesitate to admit that
our great Founder's profound knowledge in occult matters did not
prevent her from sometimes misspelling a Tibetan word, or even
misusing an English one.
She gives us in her preface some information as to the origin of the
book?information which at first seemed to involve some serious
difficulties, but in the light of recent investigations becomes much
more comprehensible. Much of what she wrote has been commonly
understood in a wider sense than she intended it, and in that way it
has been made to appear that she put forward extravagant claims; but
when the facts of the case are stated it will be seen that there is no
foundation for such a charge.
She says: '' The following pages are derived from The Book of the
Golden Precepts, one of the works put into the hands of mystic
students in the East. The knowledge of them is obligatory in that
school the teachings of which are accepted by many Theosophists.
Therefore, as I know many of these Precepts by heart, the work of
translating has been relatively an easy task for me." And, further on:
" The work from which I here translate forms part of the same series
as that from which the stanzas of The Book of Dzyan were taken, on
which The Secret Doctrine is based." She
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also says: " The Book of the Golden Precepts . . . contains about
ninety distinct little treatises."
In early days we read into this more than she meant, and we supposed
that this work was put into the hands of .all mystic students in the
East, and that "the school in which the knowledge of them is
obligatory " meant the school of the Great White Brotherhood itself.1
Hence when we met with advanced occultists who had never heard of The
Book of the Golden Precepts we were much surprised and a little
inclined to look askance at them and doubt gravely whether they could
have come altogether along the right lines, but since then we have
learnt many things, and among them somewhat more of perspective than
we had at first.
In due course, too, we acquired further information about the Stanzas
of Dzyan, and the more we learnt about them and their unique position
the clearer it became to us that neither The Voice of the Silence nor
any other book could possibly have in any real sense the same origin
as they."

Anand Gholap