Theos-Talk Archives (July 2006 Message tt00138)

Let us suppose the SPR actually withdrew its charges about HPB.

What would it really signify?? What would it really mean?

Well, first of all, it is the Council of the SPR who would have to
do this "withdrawing". And the council would have to vote on it.

Let us suppose there are 20 people on the SPR Council. 

Let us also suppose that the vote to withdraw the report was 11 to 
9. That is, 11 to withdraw the Hodgson report, 9 against doing so. 
What would be the significance of this vote?

If such a vote had actually taken place, and REGARDLESS of the
voting outcome, I would consider the voting results MEANINGLESS.

Why?

Think about it...people.

How many of the members on the council would even KNOW ENOUGH about
the Hodgson/Blavatsky case to be IN A GOOD POSITION to judge whether 
the original charges should be withdrawn or not???? 

I'm sorry but reading Harrison's article in the SPR Journal does not 
qualify one to be IN A GOOD POSITION....

I can tell you one thing.....I am not going to base my view about 
Madame Blavatsky and the validity of her paranormal powers, etc. on 
a vote of people who "as a group" may know less about her and the 
original controversy than your typical Theosophist!

What if the vote had been 11 for not withdrawing the report? What
could one therefore make of that vote?

My advice to interested readers:

If you are at all interested in determining the validity or
not of the Hodgson Report, read and study it FOR YOURSELF
and also read and compare it with the various critiques by
Harrison, Carrithers, Vania, Hastings, Besant, Kingsland, etc. and
well as some of the material written by defenders of the Hodgson 
Report.

Of course the EASIER WAY [the lazy man approach??] is to let some
one else do your homework and thinking for you and just accept that 
the SPR [whether formally or informally] withdrew the Hodgson Report 
and its charges against HPB, THEREFORE we can conclude that there is 
no substance to the charges, etc. etc.

Is this like the priest that tells the congregation: "Don't read
the Bible for yourself, I'm here to tell you what it really means"?

Now personally I came to the conclusion years before Harrison's
report was published that Madame Blavatsky was treated unfairly in
Hodgson's report and that there were good reasons to discount many
if not all of Hodgson's claims.

I came to MY OWN conclusions NOT by believing the SPR supported the 
charges or withdrew the charges BUT by reading AND studying the 
OBITUARY book plus also reading the Hodgson's report, the Coulomb 
pamphlet, the Patterson articles, the Gribble report and dozens of 
other books and pamphlets on the subject plus my own research into 
the primary sources.

Now maybe I am wrong in my own conclusions but at least they are my 
own conclusions and not the conclusion made as a result of some SPR 
council vote!!!

So Carlos Aveline and others of similar thinking, go ahead and 
succumb to "organizational" authority, in this case, the 
SUPPOSED "informal" withdrawing of the report by the SPR...

Daniel
http://hpb.cc