Theos-Talk Archives (December 1993 Message tl00132)

OK, here goes-- although with some trepidation, since I don't
want the Internet to be just a new way to make enemies-- and
get instant negative feedback.  But---

HPB told at least four mutually contradictory versions of her
later acquaintance with a Master she met in her youth in
London.

1. In Caves & Jungles he is called Gulab-Singh and is the
   Hindu ruler of a small state in central India.  According
   to this version, her first contact with the Master after
   their London meeting was through a letter he sent her in
   New York over twenty years later.

2. But she wrote to Prince Dondukov-Korsakov that Gulab-Singh
   was indeed based on this Master, but that her first contact
   with him after their London meeting was a letter he sent her
   in Odessa many years later, directing her to go to India.
   In this version, she never once saw him although he directed
   her itinerary by mail for more than two years.  They were
   finally reunited in Yokahama, Japan, where he summoned her
   from New York.

3. A third version is found in letters to Aunt Nadyezhda,
   identifying the Master HPB had met in London as a Nepalese
   Buddhist living in Ceylon, with whom she had renewed
   acquaintance via a letter he wrote her in New York.

All three versions conflict with the one found in letters to
Sinnett, which have become unchallenged Theosophical
orthodoxy despite all the other stories.

4. This orthodox version is that HPB met a man in London with
   whom she was reunited for years of occult study in Tibet
   well before the periods in Odessa and New York referred to
   in the other versions.

I don't use the word "lie" in the book because it has malicious
implications.  But surely three of these four versions are untrue
(if not all) and were told with deliberate intent to deceive.
Why?  Surely promises of secrecy bound HPB from head to foot,
as she put it.