Theos-Talk Archives (April 2004 Message tt00531)

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "Dallas TenBroeck" <dalval14@e...> 
wrote:
> Does anyone really think "magic tricks" of any kind were necessary 
to
> secure attention to these works, then, and since -- I mean ,by 
serious
> students?

It was Bart Lidofsky and not I who said she used magic tricks. All I 
ever said is that there are frank admissions in the mahatma letters 
that the letters were palmed on people and not precipitated, which is 
true, and that most of the phenomena were done in such a way that the 
stories are not satisfactory evidence of miraculous phenomena because 
those same demos COULD have been done by mahic tricks. That is not 
the same thing as to say they ther WERE done by trickery, only that 
the evidence is not satisfactory. The difference is between making 
and reserving judgement. Hallucinatory beversages are mentioned un 
ISIS UNVEILED and have been said to be those described by P.B. 
Randolph. Rawson, who was her lifelong friend, is our evidence that 
she used hashish.

One thing that is clear from her writings is that she BELIEVED in 
ogenomena whether she ever produced any or not. What is more 
difficult to settle from the evidence we have is whether or not she 
succeedded in demonstrating them.