Theos-Talk Archives (March 1995 Message tl00069)

According to Arthur Paul Patterson:

> I just finished reading the Mahatma letter and I am not awfully
> impressed, it might be a lack of historical background but I
> wanted to breifly speak of my reaction.  First of, I found the
> document awfully culturally and historically bound there are a
> lot of rationalist and reductionistic tonalities throughout.
> Sinnet, since I doubt enlightened beings would speak so
> limitedly, must have a very strong emotional response to historic
> Christianity and Judaism.

The letter is to Sinnett, not by him.  Consider, though, that
HPB and her Mahatmas were very concerned about the prospect of
Christian conversion of India.  There was so much missionary
activity at the time that India's spiritual and political
leaders welcomed HPB as a Western fellow-opponent of the
proselytizers.  But Olcott later admitted that the TS had gone
overboard in opposing Christianity.
 I am not fond of the worst aspects of those

> perspectives, which have enough intolerances of their own but
> Sinnet or whoever wrote this letter is not far from the
> intolerance they criticize.  I think this brings me to the second
> big reaction and that is that Theosophy is supposed to be
> trans-religious not anti-any particular religion.  I agree with
> much of the letter in way for instance on the ambiguity of the
> God image presented in the Scriptures, which is a hermeneutic
> problem not a problem of the best of monotheisim.  The
> anthropomorphism of the Scriptures needs to be considered
> symbolically or metaphorically.  I think that since their is a
> teleological purposefulness in the universe a personal metaphor
> for the Process might not be totally naive as Sinnet suggests.

Back when the letters were written, however, this kind of
thinking was not yet in vogue.

> I am still willing to read and craft my view given my total
> ignorance of the letters and their means of production.
> Nonetheless these are my first impressions.

Fair enough.  I hope we can all discuss our impressions without
flames and hard feelings.