Theos-Talk Archives (July 1994 Message tl00045)

According to LEWIS LUCAS:
>
> > ...That they were all part of one big occult brotherhood
> > is something for which I have found no evidence, and which
> > seems most improbable.
>
> I am surprised to read this. It strikes me as rather materialistic.
> Blavatsky spent a great deal of time and energy trying to establish
> the fact that there is much more to this world than what meets the
> eye (ie. physical senses). Why does it seem "most improbable" to you?
>
> Lewis

Materialistic?  How-- I don't see the connection.  What makes
it seem to you that I am denying the reality of everything
non-physical?  That is by no means a position I take,
either privately or in my writings.

What is improbable is that the characters I was talking about-- HPB's
adept acquaintances in Europe, Asia and America-- all knew one another.
(Something that she, by the way, never specifically asserted as far as
I recall).  There are some who overlap various categories.  For
example, James Sanua, an Egyptian Sufi Freemason of Italian Jewish
parentage who spent most of his life in exile in Paris-- and who was
fluent in 12 languages.  He was acquainted with a wide range of adepts
in various traditions.  But they weren't all acquainted with one
another.

Other adepts stayed pretty much within the confines of their own
cultures-- e.g.  Swami Sankaracharya in South India, Abdelkader in the
Middle East, Sengchen Tulku in Tibet-- so there was no way they could
have ever met.  And while many of them were highly advanced in their
native traditions, very few of them were cosmopolitan in the way that
HPB was.

If you are suggesting that people who had never met and who shared no
common languages could nevertheless all know one another on the inner
planes and be in conscious communication-- if there were evidence that
any of them had claimed such a thing I'd be more inclined to take it
seriously.  As to why I think it's improbable-- there's a rule of
evidence that states "extraordinary claims require extraordinary
proof." I hope you will at least grant that an international telepathic
network of people who showed no outward evidence of knowing one other
and had no common language would be quite out of the ordinary; I will
in return grant that it is not impossible.  (Only had I said
"impossible" rather than "improbable" would you have a basis for the
charge of materialism.)

This isn't the first time I've been faced with the inexplicable (to me)
suggestion that my portrayal of the adepts reduces everything to
physical reality.  No historian or biographer would focus at that
level-- what is of importance to historical explanation is the mental,
emotional, spiritual, social, political, etc.  etc.  realities of the
persons being discussed.  None of which "meets the eye."

In closing, perhaps I should clarify the point that I was referring
only to those individuals identified by my research; I won't extend any
generalizations to those who remain unknown.

Hope this helps.
Namaste