Theos-Talk Archives (December 2001 Message tt00474)

Eldon B.:"The theosophical philosophy does not stand nor fall
based upon the details of the personal lives of the
people who first wrote about it in the 1800's."

Brigitte: I think there is a misunderstanding here that might at its 
source have propaganda purposes. First of all it is the dragging 
certain theosophical teachings like the use of drugs in the higher 
secret initiations, to a mean level making something "personal" out 
of it, wich it isn't, it was part of the teachings as Blavatsky 
clearly stated. An second of all people like Blavatsky who wrote in 
the 1800's did so based on various book sources of the 1800's plus 
older theosophical printed sources , including from other 
Theosophical groups, the so called theosophical current as A.Faivre 
and Dr.James Santucci, edior ot Theosophical History Quarterly call 
it.

Or to say that the primary function is the study and the theosophic 
ideas the way Blavatsky put them together (see the idea-historic work 
of Brendan French earlier presented on this list ) one has to be 
aware that that is indeed based on the above, pure "history" and 
noting else. One will only be able to really understand Blavatsky if 
one study's the truth about her in the context of the literature of 
her time, and not the fiction, or only the re-invented early 1900's, 
British version "they" called "theosophy".

Since Eldon quoted Paul, suitable in this context is what 
Paul wrote :
"What you call doubt, I call intellectual freedom and inquiry, and 
it is of the very essence of what the modern Theosophical movement 
claims to embody and encourage. What you might call "freedom from 
doubt" I would call intellectual death.

And is the keystone of universal theosophia the specific claims of 
one particular 19th century author? Could the keystone of theosophia 
*possibly* be the truth of one particular person's assertions? What 
arch collapses if we start to doubt that everything HPB said about 
Masters was true? Weren't HPB and Olcott pretty explicit that such 
an approach was anathema in the TS?"

Since it can be shown that theosophy is an ongoing invention, has an 
ongoing evolution (Paul wrote "Perhaps the spirit of Theosophy can 
only be found outside the contemporary Theosophical movement?") it 
would be good if this forum opens itself to all forms 
of "theosophy", past, present, future.
See 
also: 

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/theos-talk/message/4390 

http://hss.fullerton.edu/comparative/Esotericism%20and%20Occultism%
20.pdf

Brigitte

http://www.unet.univie.ac.at/~a7502210/index.html