Theos-Talk Archives (March 1995 Message tl00259)

> My observation is that HPB's writings have not been taken
> nearly seriously enough outside the TS precisely because of
> distrust about their alleged sources.  While I doubt anyone
> will figure out exactly who wrote the Mahatma letters or how,
> it is possible to establish that HPB knew what she was writing
> about.  To show, as TMR does, that she was closely linked to
> the most learned experts of her time in such diverse fields as
> Masonry, Rosicrucianism, Sufism, the Vedas, the Vedanta,
> Theravada Buddhism, Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism, Sikhism,
> Spiritualism... is to establish her as at least worth
> considering as a serious author.  Whereas the consensus of
> non-Theosophical writers that she invented the Masters and
> wrote self-deluded channeling material, with no scholarly
> legitimacy, has prevented her writings from being appreciated
> properly.

Er, yes indeed.  I fear this will remain forever the case, the
more so as time passes, as many of her references would be very
difficult to check nowadays.  She does mention quite a few living
ordinarily human contacts in the SD, and I would have to agree
that the Kabalist sources she mentions are reliable in their
content and context.  At the same time, there is an awful lot of
Ralston Skinner and The Source of Measures which, to me, gives
her work an unbalanced side (as in measure, not psyche).

One problem is certainly the criticism of academics, who expect
chapter and verse, bibliographies, quotes form learned journals,
etc., etc.  (I know what this means, having been in both the AAR
and the SBL in my time:)).  Although there are such references,
it is difficult for us to know this late in the day how much of
the SD was "mediated" (or edited in the proper sense of the term)
by G.R.S.Mead, who was, I am told, her secretary during her SD
writing period.  Certainly he would have been a great asset in
her work with his background in, and support for gnostic ideas,
and is an "authority" in himself.  ["Thrice Greatest Hermes" and
similar works].

> In short, you are right that it doesn't matter exactly who the
> Masters were, and moreover her writings' value is the same
> regardless of where they came from.  But the fact that her
> teachings were derived from real teachers, and that she knew
> whereof she wrote, IS important to the goal of getting humanity
> to listen to her wisdom.

Amen. Get up off your butt, humanity!