Theos-Talk Archives (July 2001 Message tt00285)

Thursday, July 26, 2001

Dallas offers:


Dear Friends:

The main problem with this reasoning is that we do not have the
MASTERS endorsing our work and thoughts as HPB had.

See the certificate given by both Masters to Dr. Hubbe-Schleiden
( PATH Magazine, VOL. 8, pp. 1-3.. If one reads carefully
through the MAHATMA LETTERS innumerable references to the
constant and close contact of H.P.Blavatsky and Masters will be
noticed.

If, in her article MY BOOKS, and elsewhere H.P.Blavatsky
acknowledges her faults that does not give us license to
"CORRECT" what she wrote. I think it is safer to let the
"original Texts" and Articles stand as published. We will, then,
not be burdening ourselves with additional doubts and suspicions
that we cannot completely verify.

Instead of being LITERAL, let's look for the COHERENT MEANING in
the original teachings of THEOSOPHY.

Best wishes,

Dallas

========================


-----Original Message-----
From: leon maurer@aol.com
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2001 12:01 AM
To: theos-
Subject: Re: Katinka's questions about verbatim editions


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.


Leon
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