Theos-Talk Archives (July 2001 Message tt00273)

In a message dated 07/25/01 9:57:24 AM, blavatskyarchives@yahoo.com writes:

>The moral of this story is that one should carefully
>examine all editions of HPB's writings REGARDLESS of
>the publisher and try to ascertain if they are
>facsimiles of the originals and if not facsimiles,
>then are they truly verbatim with HPB's originals,etc.

If this were a forum devoted solely to scholars interested in determining 
originality and authenticity, without interest in the meaning or context of 
the work in question, I couldn't agree with you more. 

However, if there are readers here who are interested in studying the truths 
of theosophy, I think that the only judgments to be made as to the validity 
of a particular edition, whether original, revised, edited or not, is whether 
or not the reader can understand the teachings as they are tested against, 
correlate, and are consistent with a profound prior knowledge and 
understanding of the Three Fundamental Principles (which, as HPB stated, must 
come before any study of doctrinal theosophy itself). This, of course, would 
apply to spiritual and meditative teachings, as well.

In my view, since HPB admitted that she may have made mistakes or committed 
obfuscation's, due to her foreign usage of the English language in which she 
wrote, certain changes initiated by her trusted direct students, especially 
WQJ and, for example, his direct student, RC (without excluding Besant, Mead, 
Perucker, etc.) -- all of whom had much better command of the English 
language than she had -- might be quite justified (depending on the level of 
understanding of the particular editor). 

Accordingly, my recommendation to the discerning student or chela is -- with 
relation to the Secret Doctrine in particular, which was originally edited 
prior to publication by HPB -- to study only the originally published or a 
facsimile edition, and that whenever a particular point of theosophical 
teaching is in any way difficult to understand, or seems inconsistent -- when 
tested against a profound knowledge and understanding of the three 
fundamental principles -- to compare the statement with another, later edited 
version of the same book. 

But, generally, I have found in my own studies, that whatever may have seemed 
difficult to understand at the beginning of the original SD, has always been 
sufficiently clarified in later passages, so that such referrals to revised 
or post edited editions have never been necessary. In fact, when I did make 
such comparisons, for purposes of answering the questions of students working 
with post HPB edited or revised versions of the SD, I found the edited 
version sometimes added further obfuscation's that led to inconsistencies 
with the fundamental truths (which must be taken as a priori axioms -- if one 
is to make any sense out of further studies of the theosophical synthesis of 
science religion and philosophy). 

However, in the case of books or writings of HPB edited by WQJ, in particular 
-- whom HPB trusted beyond any other of her later disciples (Vide, his 
excellent and easily understandable condensation of the SD in the Ocean of 
Theosophy) -- I would say that his edited version of any of HPB's writings 
would be the one to choose for initial study. Thus, the version of the Voice 
of the Silence, for example, edited and annotated by WQJ -- which is far more 
clearly written and more easily understandable than the original manuscript 
by HPB -- is the edition of choice I would recommend to beginning students... 
As I would further recommend WQJ's transliterations of the Bhagavad Gita, as 
well as Patanjali's Yoga Aphorisms, over any other English translations of 
the original Sanskrit versions -- including those of some well respected 
Hindu gurus and European scholars. 

LHM