Theos-Talk Archives (March 1995 Message tl00145)

This weekend I had to work from 9-12 Saturday morning, and thus
read and replied to Dan's post in between waiting on 92 patrons
by myself.  The rest of the weekend was spent trying to deal with
the distress caused by his comments.  Saturday afternoon I went
kayaking on Smith Mountain Lake while brooding over such matters,
and came up with a metaphor for the conflict over my book's
discussion of the Mahatma letters.

Think of Theosophy as a large, deep, wide, beautiful lake.
Following the metaphor that is closest to hand in this part of
the world, it's an artificial lake.  This huge reservoir of deep,
wide wisdom has collected behind the dam constructed by HPB and
Olcott.  Whatever of the human religious and philosophical
heritage flowed into HPB's consciousness was therein contained
and defined in her writings as modern Theosophy.

In light of this metaphor, what The Masters Revealed does is to
survey the shoreline of the lake in order to identify where
tributaries flow into it; in other words to be specific about
where the water comes from, and how it enters the lake.  It
neither ventures below the surface of the lake (thus missing 99%
of the volume, which is under the surface) nor out into the
middle (missing the 99% of the surface that isn't adjacent to
shore).  So only the surface, and only the periphery is explored.
The shoreline is where the "water" --spiritual wisdom of
Theosophy-- can be observed to meet the "land"-- documented
history of the people and places involved in the emergence of the
Theosophical movement.  And the tributaries are the places where
particular currents flow into the lake, which collects waters
from many different sources.  The Masters identified in the book
are the people I met as I paddled up those tributaries.

The evidence that is deemed relevant to my inquiry is thus only a
tiny proportion of what Dan Caldwell would deem relevant to the
question of the Masters.  ONLY evidence that is specific about
places, names and/or times, e.g.  about physical trips to or
encounters with the Masters, is relevant.  (The shoreline).  All
the mayavi rupa appearances, paranormal letters, etc., are
irrelevant to my quest because they lead nowhere in terms of
identifying the historical Masters.  (The depths).  Only clues
that actually lead somewhere are pursued, and all the paranormal
stuff is bracketed as having no usefulness to the very specific
research project of identifying the historical individuals from
whom HPB derived information, inspiration, and guidance.

The introduction says something like "the definition of the term
`Master' as applied here is based on measurable, objective
factors" while "because their `spiritual status' and psychic
powers are inaccessible to historical research, these alleged
criteria are treated with agnosticism." The measurable and
objective factors involve being authorities in one or more
spiritual traditions, or literary figures, who served as mentors
to HPB.  Questions like "Who wrote the Mahatma letters" are
unrelated to my research objectives.  Why?

All the paranormal phenomena associated with the Mahatma letters
could be genuine, but if so, what implications would this have as
to the historical identities of the authors? None that I know of.
On the other hand, even if all the phenomena and letters were
fake, what does this tell us about whether or not the Masters
really existed, and if they did, who they were? Nothing as far as
I can tell.  But in my usual readiness to try to please all
critics by incorporating new material and points of view, I
agreed to touch on the question of the letters and paranormal
phenomena after receiving material from Daniel about it JUST
before my manuscript was due at SUNY for review.  So the new
material (of which pp.  174-75 are the remnant) was written after
the ms.  was submitted, tried to touch on many of Mr.  Caldwell's
objections, and ran to 1500 words or so.  But just as the
deadline for the final submission loomed, he told me that my
effort to deal with his objections was completely unsatisfactory,
and produced a whole bunch of new objections.  At that point,
never having felt that this line of inquiry had any place in the
book, I cut it down to a minimum.  Now the minimum that was left
in is being condemned as one-sided etc.  The book would certainly
not lose anything much by having this part cut completely.

Finally, I must in self-defense point out that this book existed
in a first draft BEFORE I ever dreamed that even one Master
figure would be identified.  Theosophical University Press
received a ms.  in late 1988 that was simply a series of
investigations into Theosophical history.  From then, through
their rejection in 1989, and with TPH through 1989 and 1990, the
manuscript was in constant evolution, revision, expansion.  Each
new angle (the Singh Sabha, the maharajas of India, the Masonic
connections of HPB) was explored independently of the previous
body of research.  Those publishers despaired of working with me,
I'm sure, as every month or so I'd be off on a whole new tangent,
and throwing out a lot of what I had done previously.  Even
through the 90s as I revised In Search of the Masters into the
two SUNY Press books, there were constant revisions, deletions,
new identifications of Masters (12 new to ISM out of 32).  No one
who dealt with me during the process of writing and research
would believe that there was some set of hypotheses I was out to
prove, and that my search for new evidence was insincere.  If
that had been the case, the book would not have metamorphized a
dozen times in the two years that most of the writing was done,
nor would it have continued to change radically for several more
years.  There is a large and respectable group of character
witnesses I could call on for verification that the book was in
continual and totally unpredictable flux during the period I was
supposedly twisting all the evidence to support preexisting
conclusions.

There are many people who are far more familiar than I with the
depths and breadths of the Theosophical teachings and history.
Many have delved into questions like tulku and precipitation from
various points of view.  This is like exploring the depths of the
lake.  But no one else, to my knowledge, has surveyed the points
where early Theosophical history interacts with political,
religious, and intellectual history, with comparable scope and
thoroughness.

Continuing the metaphor, the sequel follows the river on
downstream from the dam to explore the flora and fauna nurtured
by the same waters as they flow on toward the sea.