Theos-Talk Archives (March 1995 Message tl00173)

The first thing that strikes me upon rereading this letter is a
paradox.  Near the beginning, KH refers to HPB as foolishly
rushing into the wide open door leading to notoriety.
Elsewhere he is prescient of the shadow that follows all
innovations.  This seems to be prophetic of all the
tribulations that would result from publicizing the Masters.
And yet near the end, KH encourages Sinnett to publish his
experiences (which later became The Occult World)-- the very
act that most exacerbated HPB's notoriety.

There are at least two ways to consider this.  One is that the
author recognized all the painful costs associated with the
phenomena and Mahatma letters, but still considered the
benefits to outweigh them.  The other is that the author
thought that somehow things could be arranged so that these new
ideas, challenging phenomena, etc. could be publicized without
leading to disaster; but that the TS failed to
accomplish this.  There is something haunting to me in the
question of whether or not the SPR investigation and
condemnation was inevitable given the historical
circumstances.  Could things have worked out differently, if
someone (Sinnett? Olcott? HPB?) had made different choices at
some point?