Theos-Talk Archives (September 2004 Message tt00335)

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, Bart Lidofsky <bartl@s...> wrote:
> The implication of your statements is that thought has NOT
> evolved in 3000 years, that Jews are a bunch of volcano
> worshippers

I thought I made it clear that these ancient ideas had clearly been 
replaced by more sophisticated ones. I do not see how anyone could 
suggest that thought has not evolved in 3000 years. I may be a hick, 
but surely you would not think me THAT silly. In any event the 
volcano in question is long since extinct, and its cult is for that 
reason extinct as well. It is also known that the existence of 
volcanoes is the reason the ancients made the reasonable inference 
that there was a subterranean lake of fire which does not ses the 
light of day. That view is shared by modern geologists. Where they 
departed from more modern thinking is in imagining that because they 
deposited their dead in the ground, therefore at least some of them 
were tormented in this subterranean lake. I did not notice any 
material of a disrespetful sort in Breasted's DAWN OF CONSCIENCE, 
which used to be recommended reading by the Rosicrucians, a group 
that would not recommend atheist or disrespectful reading.

Anyway, I think the discovery that worshipping external things is the 
result of psychological projection makes it possible to see these 
ancient people more respectfully. We might dispute that a natural 
object is divine but the unconscious contents projected onto it are 
the same as those which motivate theists today. So they could be 
seen as adoring the unconscious contents rather than the entity onto 
which those contents were projected. They did not of course fully 
understand what they were doing, which has only been understood in 
the last century or so. The Romans did not believe their statues 
were deities, merely representations of deities. The migration from 
using external focal points for adoration could be seen as a 
significant evolution in practice, but not as reason for condemning 
our predecessors.

18693From: kpauljohnson <kpauljohnson@y...> 
Date: Thu Sep 9, 2004 2:59pm
Subject: Re: Leadbeater, Damodar and Krishnamurti

> Dear Gregory and all,

> What do you make of this:
>
> "closed, all pencils put away, and not notes taken. After
> hinting at her own approaching end (she was 60 on 1st October
> of that year) she said that she had been instructed to announce
> to the E.S. that the Inner Head had told her that her place would
> be taken by a much more advanced Chela and she went on to say
> that DAMODAR K. MAVALANKAR would be returning to the outer world,
> after initiation in Tibet, to become theosophical leader and
> OUTER HEAD of the School."

I argued some time ago that DK Mavalankar may have been the worldly 
identity of the adept named Dkual Kul (also DK). The most striking 
point of resemblance between the two is that both were called "the 
disinherited." a fact which does not pertain to any other major 
figure of the TS in that period. There were also other minor issues 
(the same initials, the same specialization in astral projection, 
etc.) As usual, there are points made in the TS material which argue 
against any possible identification, and the decision was made by 
others that the thesis was untenable. I think their objections are 
excellent but am still not convinced the two were not the same man.

Anyway, if Alice Bailey believed this to be true (which suggests that 
it may have been a belief current in the TS) it is interesting that 
she subsequently claimed to be getting messages from DK.

> I have speculated that Damodar did not die in the snow nor did
> he make it to Tibet, but went into seclusion in India; he could
> easily have still been alive 21 years later. Olcott wrote to HPB
> that he had received a communication from Damodar, and nothing
> about this report makes it sound like anything eerie or
> paranormal, just a letter. They both seemed to have known
> that he was still
> alive. Conceivably in 1907 he could have been planning to return
> to the TS which would have caused quite a sensation, and then
> backed out for some reason.

If this is true it likely had to do with his desire to reclaim his 
inheritance and status as a high caste Brahmin. Creating a sensation 
may have played less of a role in his mind than being wealthy. 
Especially now that his mentor was deceased and the society taken 
over by rather aggressive office politicians whose behaviors he could 
easily have found offensive (as I do).

> Remember that according to correspondence between the Founders
> the Sankaracharya of Mysore agreed to a scheme creating a Vedanta
> society that would be affiliated with the TS a la the Arya Samaj;
> Subba Row was somehow party to this scheme. But it fell through
> for some reason and my speculation was that the Swami got cold
> feet due to the Hodgson Report.

Damodar was disinherited because Blavatsky and Olcott were 
Buddhists. Dayanand bugged out for the same reason according to his 
own account. It is reasonable to extrapolate from this and surmise 
that the AS did the same for the same reason. Sankara took some 
flack during his lifetime for being a "crypto Buddhist" (according to 
his critics.) It is not unreasonable that this could have remained a 
sensitive issue with his admirers in the 19th century.