Theos-Talk Archives (February 1994 Message tl00008)

Hi Jerry H-E,

>
>      Looking at this from the point of view of laziness on my
> part--i.e. to find the easiest way to accomplish a task, I would
> propose that we use TSD for HPB's book.  SD for the subject
> matter of TSD is fine.

 SD and TSD is fine with me.

>      Therefore it appears that your solution (that TCF is the
> "psychological key" to the SD.) follows my third possible
> scenario--that Foster Bailey's statement is a misprint (or a
> mistake) that nobody ever bothered to change--i.e. that he
> misquoted or misunderstood H.P.B.'s prophecy to refer to THE,
> when it really referred to the SD.  But until we find the text of
> this prophecy, we won't be able to clarify this.

Foster Bailey wrote the preface to TCF in 1950, after
AAB had passed on.  I donot know what the 'occult status'
of FB was, and it is possible that as he was writing the
'Introduction' to TCF',  he only wanted to say a few words
about the reasons why TCF was written,  without being too
concerned about the disfference between the key to SD or TSD.
You seem to have done a lot of research in this area but I
venture to say that most ordinary readers of SD or TCF are
not concerned about this distinction.   May I suggest that
we take Foster's (and AAB's) statements that TCF is a
psychological key to SD at face value for now, and put this
aside as one of the questions to be resolved? I plan to
write to Lucis Trust about this question formally (and
also to enquire if the manuscripts of AAB's writing are
available for public view, and if the 'HPB papers that Mr. Prater
gave AAB' are available to the public now). Perhaps you
want to suggest some more questions before I send this
request to Lucis.

> Now regarding
> your argument that the Theogonic key is the same as the
> psychological key--I will repeat my original response, then your
> answer, followed by my response to your answer:
>
> My original response:
>
>      Your suggestion that the Psychological Key is AAB's term for
>      the Theogonic Key is inconsistent with the information we
>      have.  The term "psychological key" is supposed to have been
>      taken from a "prediction" made by HPB; therefore it was
>      HPB's term, and AAB is presumably using HPB's meaning. Since
>      we can't find the "prediction," we can't verify what HPB
>      meant (let alone verify the existence of the prediction).
>      If the two terms are synonymous, then why is this yet to be
>      found "prediction" the only instance in all of HPB's twenty
>      volumes of writings, where she uses the term "psychology" in
>      this way?

Let me paste a portion of my message of January 4 or 5:

"In the meantime, I have finished reading SD and started reading Isis
Unveiled (Adyar Edition edited by Boris de Zirkoff).  And what do I
find on p.xxvii of the Introductory material...a definition of
Anthropology, as embracing among other things, psychology, with
psychology, defined as "the science of soul, both as an entity
distinct from the spirit and in its relations with the spirit and
body".   It proves to me that HPB's use of the term psychology is
in the same exact sense as AAB's (see more references below as well)".

HPB has used the term 'psychology' in the sense of the 'science of
the soul' throughout her writings (I gave many examples in my
previous message and have found several more in Isis Unveiled).
The use of the term psychology by both HPB and AAB is to mean the
same thing.  On the other hand, I have not seen any place (other
than the one cited by you) in HPB's writings where she has used
the term 'theogonic'.  I have not come across 'theogonic' in AAB's
writing so far.  It is possible that HPB may have used 'theogonic'
instead of 'psychological' as she was always concerned about the
use of the term psychology by the materialists to mean something
totally different from what she meant to convey.  AAB did not have
that problem as she has clearly defined psychology to begin with
and she (or the Tibetan) was aware of the stupedous amount of
work that they were going to produce later, in the form of
the two volumes of 'A Treatise on the Seven Rays' that deal with
Esoteric Psychology.   Remember that all references to the
'psychological key' that we have seen so far have come from
either the autobiography or Foster Bailey's introduction to
TCF, both of which were written after 1945, by which time AAB
had finished writing her major works dealing with psychology.

>      I think you have made a very important point when you write
> that AAB may have employed terms used by Leadbeater/Besant.  The
> critical question is whether or not her meanings of the terms are
> consistent with Besant/Leadbeater or with Blavatsky.  If she uses
> a term used exclusively by Besant/Leadbeater, and not by
> Blavatsky, then we have to assume that she is also appropriating
> Besant/Leadbeater's meaning of the term, unless we can prove
> otherwise.

That may be the case, but this should be looked at on a case by
case basis and not blindly.  If you give me some examples of
Besant/Leadbeater terms that AAB has employed (and HPB did not),
I can dig out the references where the term may be defined in
AAB books, and we can compare her meaning with that of HPB
and others for similar terms.

>
>      Your request puts me into a bit of a bind.  Though I am not
> bound by any pledges not to reveal this material, nor did my
> source break any pledges, I still have come concern about raising
> the ire of pledged members who believe that this material should
> be kept secret.  I'm willing to risk their anger, and reveal the
> contents of some of this material, if any real good were to come
> out of it.  So I will have to put the question back to you by
> asking: If by revealing the contents of the E.S. materials, I
> show that key teachings in AAB's writings are in previously
> published E.S. writings that she had seen, then what would this
> mean to you?

It is hard to say what they may mean to me.  But I have a problem with
anyone 'lifting' someone else's material and using it as his/her own
without at least a due acknowledgement.  I am quite satisfied as
to why AAB used HPB's inner teachings/ES material etc. as she has
freely stated in her autobiography the reasons for doing so.  I'd
like to know why she used Leadbeater/Besant ES teaching as her
own (perhaps that will become clear as I come across these teachings).
The teachings themselves have to stand on their own.  I donot
believe that anyone is 100% right or 100% wrong, and HPB herself
freely admitted that her own writings could have errors in them.
If the Leadbeater/Besant teaching that AAB used is misleading or
incorrect or inconsistent with what else I believe to be true, I
will reject it.  However, let me hasten to say that to date I have
seen nothing in AS teaching or AAB writings that I can place in
this category of misleading teaching.

>
>      Regarding your allusion to the KEY TO THEOSOPHY, the Clara
> Codd version you are using is less than half the size of the
> original, and the material has been completely rearranged into
> the editor's own agenda as to what she wants to address--so that
> the questions no longer follow in the same context as the
> original, and half the book was edited out.  I hope someday you
> get and read the original version of the KEY TO THEOSOPHY, as
> Blavatsky intended it to be--not Clara Codd's abortion.  Also:
> how Clara Codd got Blavatsky to quote from Besant's A STUDY IN
> CONSCIOUSNESS (1902) in the KEY TO THEOSOPHY (1889), when the
> former was published thirteen years after the latter, and
> Blavatsky was long dead (1891), strikes me as miraculous.  Either
> you mis-read this, or else this is an example of Miss Codd
> rewriting history.

I hope you have read my message of yesterday on this. I am still
trying to figure out how I managed to make such a booboo!

>      I'm an English major in a masters program.  At the moment we
> are concentrating on what I have dubbed as "psycho-linguistic-
> postmodernism"  The class I'm winding up right now is a critical
> study in Poe's short story "The Purloined Letter"  from the point
> of view of the Lacan School of psychoanalysis.  The Lacanian
> school is based in linguistics and anthropology, and was very
> influenced by Heidegger, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, de Saussure,
> Levi-Strauss etc. instead of the biological sciences as in the
> Freudian School.  This approach to the nature of reality is
> called "postmodern," and plays a very large part in shaping the
> upcoming major paradigm shift of thinking that the western world
> is on the verge of experiencing.  Tomorrow, I'm supposed to give
> an hour oral presentation on the common grounds of thinking
> between Hegel and Lacan, concerning how the latter used and
> reinterpreted the former's ideas on the nature of reality and
> consciousness.  It's very complex stuff--I find myself spending
> one or two hours on a single page working through it just to
> grasp the ideas.  Even our Professor is still struggling to
> understand much of it.  Much of it is very Zen-like in that much
> of it cannot be intellectually grasped--it has to be understood
> through other faculties of perception--not the conscious mind.
>
Wow, I am amazed at what you do as part of a Master's program in
English.  Are you evaluated on your command of the language or
the ability to decipher these difficult to read materials (are
they all written in English??) ?  BTW, an elder brother of mine
and an elder sister, and a brother-in-law of mine back home in
India have each done a Master's in English as well, and all three of
them have been teaching college level English for some time.  I
did not realize how close this subject is to philosophy!

I was curious about the cover of Parucker's ES instructions;
it seems to have letters that belong to some language.  I could
recognize some of them as belonging to Sanskrit/Hindi but others
escaped any recognition.

Fraternally,

Arvind