Theos-Talk Archives (January 1994 Message tl00129)

Greetings Arvind from a very wet Central California.

     THEOSOPHICAL HISTORY was originally founded in 1985 by
Leslie Price in London. Dr. Santucci took over the Journal in
1990, and is published in Fullerton Calif. The booklet on Senzar
was published when the Journal was still in London. (That is
also why the booklet is so expensive.)  So to answer your
question, it is the same Journal, but is now Published in
California. You can subscribe to the address in the Journal I
sent you.

     That is the only journal of its kind. There is another
Journal of a similar format dedicated to the Baha'i Religion, but
that may not interest you. There are lots of Theosophical
Journals, each with different slants. Some that I subscribe to
that you may not have heard of are: ECLECTIC THEOSOPHIST (Point
Loma Tradition, Independent), CANADIAN THEOSOPHIST (Canadian
Section Magazine. Present Editor is into Bailey), THEOSOPHY
(U.L.T., Los Angeles), THE THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT (U.L.T. Bombay),
HIGH COUNTRY THEOSOPHIST (Boulder Co., Independent). There is
also SUNRISE (Pasadena Theosophical Society).

Now to respond to your latest:

> > As to AAB having taught the S.D., this doesn't impress me
> > one way or the other. I have seen people teach the S.D. who
> > are utterly incompetent to do so, and the students, being
> > less competent than the teacher, never knew the difference.

> I have a different opinion. OK, not all teachers are going to
> teach SD in the same way that you do as not all have the same
> understanding of SD as you do, since all have their own
> respective  level of evolvement. Some of them could be higher
> in competence  than you or I, others could be lower. The fact
> that AAB had taught  SD and was very familiar with HPB writings
> by the time that she started her work with the Tibetan to me
> means that she had at least one essential qualification in her
> background, to start the work of "rending the veil of Isis" (is
> this the right phrase?) still some more, after HPB had made a
> beginning.

     By incompetence, I mean incompetence. Teaching the S.D.
from different levels of understanding is one thing--teaching the
book when you don't have a clue what it is about is another. My
point is that because AAB taught the S.D. does not mean that she
understood it, nor does it mean that she was even familiar with
HPB's writings. This is something that I would have to determine
from what she wrote, *not* from the sample fact that she taught
the S.D

> I think that you, because of your background, are able to say
> a lot of things that I cannot. I have to assume that AAB in
> her Autobiography is telling the truth, for one thing. For
> another, I do not know how the personal pupils of HPB came to be
> so known  i.e. is it not possible that there were people that
> HPB taught at various places who have not been 'captured' in
> the various records?  I do not have the Unfinished Autobiography
> in front of me but I remember seeing the names of two elderly
> persons (ex-pupils of HPB) who taught AAB SD and other HPB
> material. Also on pp. 190-191. there are the names of Mrs.
> Prater,  Miss Sarah Jacobs and Dr. Jacob Bonggren (all old
> pupils of HPB according to these two pages). Why do you not
> consider these three persons as 'pupils' of HPB?

     Your use of the phrases "...telling the truth" and "wanted
to plagiarize" suggests to me that you are responding to
accusations that I never made or even intimated. Frankly, it
never crossed my mind that AAB was lying, or that she had any
intention to plagiarize anything. I'm only comparing her
statements with what I know. If her statements don't jive, there
can be lots of reasons why. I haven't suggested any reasons
because I'm still interpreting the data, and I'm not ready to
form conclusions. On the other hand, your statements in almost
every message saying; that you are convinced that AAB and HPB are
in perfect agreement; that AAB is HPB's successor; that AAB's
writings go beyond HPB's; that AAB was in direct contact with the
person that HPB knew as DK etc. are all conclusions that I am not
prepared to come to, based upon the evidence seen so far. As I
have stated before, this is an investigation to compare the
writings of these two people. An investigation like this has to
be done with a certain amount of neutrality--so I urge you to put
aside what you are "absolutely convinced" to be true, so that we
can examine evidence that addresses these very issues in a fair
manner.

     Now to clarify and to answer your above questions: Yes, I'm
in a position to "say a lot of things" that you cannot--but that
doesn't mean that I have concluded that AAB is lying. I'm only
comparing statements to documents. If they don't match, there
could be many reasons why. We just have to wait and see what
kind of pattern arises. You say that you have to assume that
AAB's Autobiography is telling the truth. I believe that I have
stated before that I take her statements on "face value," then
look into them. Is this an unfair way to proceed?

     As far as HPB goes; both she and Olcott kept diaries. We
have volumes of her letters; we have Olcott's letters; we have
the day to day records of the Society; we have memoirs of people
who personally knew HPB etc. The amount of documentation we have
on HPB's activities between 1875 and 1891 is so overwhelming,
that we can almost trace her life day by day. So to answer your
question, yes it is *possible* " that there were people that HPB
taught at various places who have not been 'captured' in the
various records."  But it is not *probable*. The only recorded
time that we have where HPB formally taught was for an eight
month period in 1890 until her death. She had twelve students,
and we know the names of them all: Annie Besant; G,R,S, Mead;
Alice L. Cleather; Isabel Cooper-Oakley; Laura Cooper; Emily
Kislingbury; Countess Wachtmeister; Herbert A.W. Coryn, Archibald
Keightley; Walter Old; E.T. Sturdy and Claude Falls Wright.
These are the only people who could rightly be called HPB's
"personal students."  My theory (for the moment) is that the
people AAB referred to as "HPB's students" were merely members of
the E.S. during her (HPB's) life time. Because these people
received teachings (through the mail) not given to the general
membership, I suspect that in her view, they were HPB's
"students."  It would be quite normal for these people to have
copies of E.S. instructions. If Miss Jacobs was the head of a
section, it would not be unusual that she would have photographic
plates of the Masters. Or new plates can be made from copies
anyway.

> Also, I do not understand the distinction that you are making
> between what Prater gave AAB vs what AAB already had in terms
> of the ES materials. AAB if she wanted to 'plagiarise' or use
> ES materials could have done so without the need of a copy of
> these from Prater. Here is what I understand from her
> description in these two pages: she seems to be implying that
> Prater somehow had been given ES material and other private
> papers of HPB with a 'mandate' to do with them as he pleased.
> He did not turn them over to WQJ but rather to AAB, as he
> thought that AAB was a 'better successor' to HPB than WQJ.

     My point is precisely that I am not making a distinction. If
Prater gave her his E.S. materials, that were the same as the
originals that she saw at the E.S., then--so what?  It only shows
that he was one of the early E.S. members, who instead of
returning his materials to the successor, gave them to AAB. If
that means that he did so because he believed AAB to be HPB's
successor, then "so what" again. Prater's status as an E.S.
member doesn't make him special. It only means that he was
around to sign up between 1888 and 1891. No one was refused.
Prater could have been the most brilliant student alive, or he
could have been a dodo. We don't know, and his membership in the
E.S. doesn't tell us anything. By the way, the proper person
Prater would have given the E.S. materials to in 1921, would have
been Annie Besant. Judge died in 1895. Therefore if Prater
thought AAB was a "better successor,"  the comparison would have
been to Besant--not Judge. Considering the torrent of
controversy going on in those days over Besant's decisions,
Prater would have had a lot of company in rejecting Besant.
Therefore, AAB's alusion to the U.L.T., I would say, was in
reference to the succession issue she would have heard so much
about at Krotona. It has nothing to do with Judge being the
rightful owner of Prater's E.S. papers, because Judge was already
long dead. As for "plagiarism,"  what does that have to do with
anything?

> I think that we need to look at successorship in a different
> way. If you mean the immediate successors to carry on the work
> of TS/ES there is no denying that persons like Olcott,
> Besant,WQJ or Parucker succeeded HPB in the sense of 'carrying
> on the work' of the basic organizations that she left behind.
> But in my opinion, successorship in terms of continuity of
> hierarchial teaching (2nd instalment) is what AAB is addressing
> here. This may appear strange to you, but I know hundreds of
> fairly well-educated people who feel that AAB was the successor
> to HPB. Why is she 'blowing her horn'?  For several reasons,
> but I could argue that she was not 'blowing her horn at all'
> but rather giving out the information for the benefit of her
> students (or readers of her book) so the students can relate to
> her teaching better.

     Blavatsky's successors were considered by different people
to be (among others); W.Q. Judge, K. Tingley, G. de Purucker and
Annie Besant. They were all continued the teachings (their own
version of them), expanded upon them, and were believed to be in
personal touch with the Masters. I also know many "fairy well
educated people" who feel that one or more of the above
individuals was the successor to H.P.B. Now how does AAB's
"successorship differ from these people?

> We may never have access to the papers but my attitude is to
> believe others in general until they are proven wrong, and if
> AAB says she had access to papers that said that HPB wanted ES
> named as, I am prepared to accept that (my personal opinion
> is that she would not lie about such a thing in any case).

     Once again, no one has accused her of lying. Even if such a
document turns up, I don't see it to be of much importance
anyway. I'm more interested in the "prophesy"  concerning the
"psychological key,"  That documentation would be very important.

> Can you give me (whenever you get a chance) the references
> equivalent to those given in TCF for my version of SD
> corresponding to those that appear in the beginning of TCF
> related to the three fires?

     As soon as I find it. It is in my pamphlet file which I
have been cataloging onto the computer. So far I'm only up to
"H," and I don't remember under what this was filed.

> OK you never asked the question, I should have said, 'your
> comment'. I write my messages many times without having your
> previous comments/questions in front of me and so have to 'wing
> it' based on what I remember of our previous discussion. I
> have two alternatives typically, one is to make a thorough
> analysis which may take a long time, the other is to not be
> 100% accurate in quoting you but at least get some responses
> back to you. As it is you have raced way ahead of me already.
> I think you will get far fewer responses from me if you expect
> me to be 100% accurate in everything I quote from your
> messages!  But pl do keep on pointing out where I make a
> mistake.

     Don't worry about it. I'll have to slow way down in a few
weeks anyway. Then you will probably be "racing" ahead of me.

> There is NO question in my mind that HPB was a high initiate
> and has given us all a lot to be thankful for. I am only adding
> to it that AAB (and indeed several others) have also
> contributed immensely to the knowledge base available in public
> today.

     And AAB's contribution is what we are evaluating.

     The INNER GROUP TEACHINGS arrived today. I will be sending
it and the Sloss book out tomorrow. Did you look at Purucker's
E.S. material yet?  I'm very interested in hearing your reaction.

Best

Jerry Hejka-Ekins