Theos-Talk Archives (March 1995 Message tl00123)

Daniel Writes:

Since I sort of brought up the question through my first
impression of ML #10 I felt it necessary to make a brief
response.  As I have had a chance to read the responses of others
and to skim some of HPB's criticisms of Christianity I realize
that there appears to be a difference in tone between a majority
of her comments and the ML letter than got my attentions.
Blavatsky is scathing in her criticism of what I call the "public
Christianity" of her time.  See accuses it of spiritual
materialism, naive literalism( anthropomorphism of god being the
most blantant) and supplies other worthy critique of various
atonement theories.  While sacrastic in tone sometimes she
doesn't sound pompous in her criticism like that letter I read
ML10.  IMHO public Christianity has made the world less
spiritual, more collective and has supported heinious cultural
movements.  But the myth of Christ found in the Canonical NT and
the Gnostic Gospels has the potential to destroy the unsavory
aspects of institutional Christianity, especially Fundamentalism.
What I think bothered me, in the ML, the most was the penchant
for tight logic, (a nineteenth century rationalism), and the
apparent demeaning tonality.  I am not at this point of my own
pilgrimage ready to cast off the possibility of the theism of
personality for an impersonal process.  I don't think the
childish notions of a personal god who is little but a Sunday
School throw back is helpful but an I Thou rather than an I - IT
relationship with the Source of Creation is still attractive to
me.  Of course my personal perspective lies in the viewpoint,
some see it as mysticism, that language is too small a container
for most mysteries and that direct experience of the unutterable
can only be communicated in metaphor.  So to critique public
Christianity without getting to the deeper meaning of the
exoteric symbols is I think a weakness in those who blighly write
off the entire mythological structure of the Christian myth.  I
am with Jung who sees the Christ myth as the guiding myth of the
West however misrepresented.  Unfortunately the 18 and 19 century
missionaries demeaned other people's myths and forced convertion
along with cultural genocide in the name of Christ.

> So the criticisims are true to an extent but I am cautioning
> against bitter over reaction.
>
> As far as the various comments that have been made about
> so-called "anti-Christian" comments in the Mahatma Letters and
> also in HPB's writings, no one has reallly defined what they mean
> by "Christian" and "anti-Christian." Furthermore, the assumption
> seems to be made that it is somehow "wrong" and "bad" that HPB
> and the Masters made such criticisms! Maybe the criticisms are
> valid! What's wrong with pointing out some of the fallacies of
> certain "Christian" teachings? During the time HPB was in India
> in the early 1889s, Christian missionaries of various churches
> were active in India and Ceylon trying to convert the Hindu and
> Buddhists from their "false", "pagan" religions to the "true",
> "one and only religion"---Christianity!
>
> [Correction: "...in the early 1880s..."

HPB and the Masters also made criticisms of exoteric Hinduism and
exoteric Buddhism.