Theos-Talk Archives (December 2001 Message tt00446)

--- In theos-talk@y..., "adelasie" <adelasie@s...> wrote:
> Dear Paul,
> 
> Thanks for your efforts, but it is doubtful that anything you could 
> say would make me perceive the way you do. 

Dear Adelasie,

That is only fair and right. Nothing *I* say about Dallas should 
make you share my perceptions of him. But reading his own words 
might, and I'll find a recent abusive example in the archives and 
email you about it privately FYI.

However, this is not 
> a bad thing. There is plenty of room for differences of opinion.

That was always true of the Theosophical movement for me up till I 
got published by SUNY Press. Then it turned out there was no room 
for differences of opinion on certain subjects according to certain 
people.

Your 
> perception of our colleague Dallas, for instance, is based on your 
> experience and your orientation to that experience, as is mine 
> based on mine. Mine does not contain anything like what you 
> describe. Your orientation to theosophy is evidently very different 
> from mine as well, since you appreciate comments of a type that I 
> find relatively useless and even unecessarily derogatory. But so 
> what?

I was thinking about the two camps here last night and it occurred to 
me that we have a mutual disconnect on the question of signal vs. 
noise. To me, Steve is almost all signal and Dallas almost all 
noise. That is, I tune in only for openminded discussion of 
Theosophical history with people who are more interested in finding 
new angles to consider than in defending a fixed body of truth they 
believe they have discovered. I suppose to you, the situation is 
reversed and you perceive Dallas's writings as signal and Steve's as 
noise.

Much of the hostility on the list is due to the fact that each group 
perceives the other as ruining the whole atmosphere. I can't have a 
freewheeling, comfortable conversation with Steve and Brigitte and 
Bill and Chuck and Jerry about HPB etc. without some fundamentalist 
shouting about how evil we are to be having such a conversation, and 
how we ought to stop, and how no one has the right to say anything 
about HPB that the fundamentalist in question dislikes. This is 
infuriating, because this is the one place such conversations *might* 
occur, and yet they are invariably shouted down by fundamentalists or 
at least the attempt is made. Brigitte and Steve are made of far 
sterner stuff than I; they haven't been shouted down successfully as 
I have in the past.

We are all pursuing the path according to our ability and 
> aspiration. I might suggest, however, in the light of your extreme 
> hostility toward Dallas, who, in my experience has always been a 
> champion of truth and wisdom, that you examine your own motives 
> a bit. 

Never need to have that suggested to me; I do so daily. My personal 
wounds have healed but left scars. I never spend any time thinking 
about mean Theosophists apart from when reading this list. Have been 
preoccupied with other subjects for many years now. But when I see 
others getting "the treatment"-- the *very same* treatment I got, it 
brings up all the horrors of the mid-90s for me and evokes the same 
feelings of bewildered pain. So the main motive for my denouncing 
Dallas is my anguish at seeing someone else treated just as rudely as 
I was, and wanting to provide support to the victim.

Do you have too big an investment in being right? I don't 
> particularly agree with your conclusions as published, but I do 
> support your right to espouse them. Can't you agree that there is 
> more than one side to any issue? 

That is made absolutely clear in my books, and it is also absolutely 
clear that Dallas would totally reject that statement when it comes 
to HPB. There is only one side. Sylvia Cranston is the final 
authority; any questions about HPB not addressed by her ought not be 
addressed by anyone.

William Quan Judge once said 
> that when someone is angry with us, our best course is to 
> investigate our own life to discover what we have done to generate 
> their animosity.

The problem with that is that no one I have ever known personally to 
any degree, which includes scores of Theosophists, has ever responded 
angrily to my books. People *who have never known me* are angry 
*not* with Paul Johnson the person, but with an imaginary construct 
of what *sort* of person would have written such a horrible attack on 
poor innocent dead HPB. Dallas's anger has nothing to do with me 
personally or anything I have *really* done, but with his attachment 
to a particular view of HPB and his perception of any other view as a 
vicious attack on her. So, what I did in my own life to generate the 
animosity of Dallas and his ilk was to write books that came to 
conclusions they didn't like. End of story. Anyone else writing 
about the same material would get the same reaction.

Did you ever try that? We are only responsible for 
> our own actions, not for the actions of others. Blaming our 
problems 
> on others

The hostile Theosophical fundamentalist reaction to my books isn't 
*my problem* but that of the Theosophical fundamentalists, a problem 
they blame on me because they don't perceive their own dogmatism and 
intolerance. What was ruined was the opportunity for a certain kind 
and level of historical discussion to unfold. I escaped the 
consequences, moving on to the topic of Cayce and now to regional 
history. I don't blame the fundies *personally* for my own wounds, 
because they motivated me to move on to new fields of endeavor that 
are even more rewarding. But I do blame them *for what they have 
done to the Theosophical movement* which has become a travesty of 
what I thought I was devoting my life to in the 70s-90s. The 
Theosophical movement remains stuck in the mud, absolutely resistant 
to any kind of nonsectarian historical consideration of HPB and her 
Masters.

indicates that we have not really internalized the 
> teachings of the Masters. I make these suggestions because they 
> are methods of learning self-control that have been useful to me 
> during the years, not, please understand, because I wish to debate 
> past issues with you. I have never read anything posted by Dallas 
> that I did not find sound and well-founded in deep study of 
> theosophy, which is to say, ancient wisdom.

Will send you a citation, but just recently he wrote some very rude 
and unsound things to Steve, personally insulting and irrelevant.

I have learned a lot 
> from reading his writings, and have once in awhile found therein an 
> especially precious link in the development of my understanding. I 
> have found him to be extremely forebearing and kind, when tested 
> to the limit. Perhaps if you found otherwise, you need to take a 
look 
> at your own motives, your own actions.

And perhaps if you can read the things he writes and not see how 
consistently he is rude, dismissive, and high-handed in dealing 
with "heretics" then you need to take a look at your own motives for 
being blind to what *so* many others are complaining about. Is this 
pattern of behavior something you *do* not see, or *will* not-- 
perhaps because you know Dallas personally and he's not the 
fundamentalist monster in person that he is online?

That is usually the best 
> course, when we find ourselves driven to such extremity as you 
> seem to be, carrying on about lynching, etc. 

Believe me, the most extreme words ever addressed to me in my life 
were from your hero, and if you read them addressed to yourself you 
would have NO TROUBLE perceiving the lynch mob mentality.

You see theosophy as 
> discussed by him and others as fundamentalist. I see it exactly the 
> opposite. But we don't have to quarrel.

Of course not. But we can have a discussion of what Theosophical 
fundamentalism is, based on objective criteria. I'll post on that 
shortly. Then the question of whether or not an individual fits the 
model can be left up to the reader to judge.

There is room for both 
> views. One day history will show which was more in tune with 
> natural law, but in the meatime, we are all just students. Can't we 
> cooperate and try to assist each other to learn. What can we hope 
> to accomplish otherwise?
> 
We can do exactly that. But not as long as some of us look down on 
and denounce others *simply for trying to explore history without 
having to bow down to dogma*.

Regards,

Paul