Theos-Talk Archives (October 2008 Message tt00450)

You are trying to prove A.P. Sinnett wrong by giving quotations from
letters that Blavatsky claimed to be from Masters. In reality
authenticity of those letters through Blavatsky is questionable. That
means you can not prove opinions of someone as false by saying "Master
said this in letter XYZ through HPB" 
Actually, we are in a situation where there are different persons
claiming to have received letters from the Masters. And these letters
contradict with each other. Recipients themselves accuse other
recipients of producing fake letters. 
Blavatsky was in even more advantageous position because she could
materialize any letter, and bring content into it that could support
her own views. You can't bring such materialized letter from Blavatsky
to prove others wrong. She could materialize any thought she wanted in
Master's handwriting and sign it with Master's name. 
Best
Anand Gholap


--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "danielhcaldwell"
<danielhcaldwell@...> wrote:
>
> A.P. Sinnett received the bulk of the existing letters from the 
> Mahatmas.
> 
> 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"?
> 
> Did Sinnett really know himself the true teachings of any of these
> subjects????
> 
> A number of other important questions should be asked and pondered on 
> about Mr. Sinnett's assertions.
> 
> The following information may help to give the reader A WIDER
> CONTEXT in which to judge 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. . . . "  From a transcription of this 
> letter in my possession.
> 
> 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."
> 
> But 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:
> 
> "...Occult truth cannot be absorbed by a mind that is filled with 
> preconception, prejudice, or suspicion. It is something to be 
> perceived by the intuition rather than by the reason; being by nature 
> spiritual, not material. Some are so constituted as to be incapable 
> of acquiring knowledge by the exercise of the spiritual faculty; e.g. 
> the great majority of physicists. Such are slow, if not wholly 
> incapable of grasping the ultimate truths behind the phenomena of 
> existence. There are many such in the Society; and the body of the 
> discontented are recruited from their ranks. 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. Suspicion and inharmony are 
> the natural result, the psychic atmosphere, so to say, is thrown into 
> confusion, and the reaction, even upon the stauncher students, is 
> very harmful. Sometimes vanity blinds what was at first strong 
> intuition, the mind is effectually closed against the admission of 
> new truth, and the aspiring student is thrown back to the point where 
> he began. Having jumped at some particular conclusion of his own 
> without full study of the subject, and before the teaching had been 
> fully expounded, his tendency, when proved wrong, is to listen only 
> to the voice of his self-adulation, and cling to his views, whether 
> right or wrong. The Lord Buddha particularly warned his hearers 
> against forming beliefs upon tradition or authority, and before 
> having thoroughly inquired into the subject."
> 
> "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
>