Theos-Talk Archives (April 2004 Message tt00022)

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "kpauljohnson" <kpauljohnson@y...> 
wrote:

>you are 
> conflating two issues here:
> 1. Evidence that others saw or corresponded with individuals who 
> were teachers of H. P. Blavatsky.
> 2. Evidence that anyone ever saw or corresponded with individuals 
> who bore all the stigmata attributed to "Mahatmas" in Theosophical 
> literature.
> 
> BIG DIFFERENCE IGNORED BY THEOSOPHISTS, GENERALLY.


Thank you for the reply, Paul. In a way, most of us (myself included) 
who write about this subject ("Masters") are outsiders. I don't use 
the word in any derogatory sense. It just means that we don't have 
first hand experience of the subject-matter.

In your book ("The Masters Revealed") you developed an interesting 
hypothesis about the identity of the "Masters", but in order to do 
that you had either to ignore or treat in a cursory manner important 
pieces of evidence that frontally contradict your hypothesis. For 
example, your treatment of the question 'Who wrote the Mahatma 
Letters' falls exactly in this category. It quotes a late book by 
Sinnett but fails to examine what he said in "The Occult World" which 
based in his correspondence with K.H., for example. In short, you did 
not take into account the clear, historical evidences from that time 
(1880s), coming from a number of members of the TS, both from India 
as well as from the US and Europe. Another important source of 
testimonial evidence are HPB's letters to Sinnett. The deep sense of 
sacredness which is present in her attitude and devotion to her 
Teacher impressed not only Sinnett and his wife, Patience, but many a 
member of the TS. She made clear that her entire life was dedicated 
to his work. To think of HPB as a "maha" master manipulator, 
psychologising influential members of the TS in order for them to 
believe in "Mahatmas" when no Mahatmas existed, is at least to 
belittle the enormity of her dedicated service to humanity. (I am 
fully aware that the expression "dedicated service" is not a 
technical category, but it is an important theosophical principle 
notheless.)

There is also a larger, historical source of evidence, which HPB also 
pointed to, in the fact that Adepts, Seers, Sages, Initiates, Mystics 
and Yogis did exist in every age. She did not invent them. And 
perhaps this is of the difficulties in dealing with this subject: the 
existence of the Mahatmas or Adepts is an integral part of the 
tradition of Occultism (gupta-vidya) that HPB made widely available 
through her writings. And as they themselves said, they are the 
product of a "generation of enquirers". Perhaps we who talk about it 
and speculate are just outsiders.

Pedro