Theos-Talk Archives (April 1996 Message tl00374)

Chuck writes,

> I will admit to being an arch-revisionist, but my reasoning is based on the
> fact that HPB was a great admirer of the Gnostics who taught exactly what I
> am saying.

It is not clear that you are an arch-revisionist if you are basing your work
upon HPB's.  Either you are revising her work, or carrying it on as she gave
it, or something of the two together.  Whatever label you choose for yourself
(and that is none of my business), it seems worthwhile to look into HPB's
roots and sources, her methods (or "skillful means," UPAYA in Buddhism) and
forward-looking purposes.

HPB seems to draw freely from many sources.  "The Gnostics" do make many
appearances in ISIS UNVEILED, fewer in the S.D. but "they" are still there.
 Quoted about 10 times less than Hindu and Buddhist ideas, it is hardly
enough "hits" to make a case over and against what the karmically-inclined
Easterns are saying, no?

Yet who are these amorphous "Gnostics"?  Are they opposed to moral teachings
and karma?  HPB mentions the Ophites, the Marconites, and quite a few others.
 And if you read closely (not between the lines, mind you, but just at the
words themselves) we see that HPB is arguing against the incorrect portrayal
of Gnostics by the very prejudiced and threatened Church Fathers, including
Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Epiphanius, Eusebius, etc. etc.

Before the actual discovery in 1945 of the 12 Gnostic Codices near the
Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi, the vast majority of our knowledge about
Gnostics was in the form of (partisan) quotation in the body of
opposite-thinking writers.  The one exception is of course Plotinus, who in
his Enneads (organized into sets of "nine," hence "enneads" by his disciple
Porphyry) has a section "Against the Gnostics" where he disputes with them
about impunging the character of the Demi-urge and his (lower) creations, but
largely agrees with most of their conceptions.

You with me so far?

As Elaine Pagels has written in her book, THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS, history is
written by the winners.  And as Ron Cameron, author of THE OTHER BIBLE,
taught me when I was in his class, who would have more reason to misrepresent
and libel the Gnostics than the early orthodoxy?  How can we really trust
what they wrote?  Their whole purpose was to undermine the credibility of the
Gnostics and crush the entire movement, by polemic as long as possible and by
force when necessary.

What better way to undermine threatening esoteric teachers than by maiming
them morally during their lives, or preferably after they are dead when they
can't argue anymore?

Why, we see this taking place in Theos-L daily, where people who want to
think their own way find it necessary to slash and burn HPB in order to
clear-cut a path for themselves.  If one cannot assault the philosophy of HPB
or the Gnostics, slander them morally, make them hypocritical demons, and
then the difficult philosophy can be backgrounded.  It is an old and
time-honored tradition of the black-hearted.

Thus the Gnostics were characterized by the early heresiologists as
"antinomian" meaning above or beyond the law.  And Irenaeus in his tiresome
tome LIBROS QUINQUE ADVERSUS HAERESES raises the names of group after group
only to slam them down again with words like "licentious," "morally corrupt,"
"child-sacrificers," "eaters of the hearts of the innocents."  Their
philosophy gets short shrift analytically.  It is not clear Irenaeus even
understood it (compare to the majority of Theos-L posts today)

Modern scholars, one and all, have deep suspicions as to whether any of this
occurred.  Rather, it was a rhetorical polemic designed to castigate the
Gnostic groups when attacks upon their philosophy failed.  There appears no
evidence that ANY Gnostic groups were sacrificing children, than ANY groups
were eating human hearts, etc.

It is probably true, however, that some Gnostics, in their contempt of the
worldly laws and the Creator who ordained them, became sexually quite giddy
and imagined themselves free of karma.  This is a minority group, and
probably confined to Western provinces (round Rome).

As documented in the 50-odd texts of THE NAG HAMMADI LIBRARY IN ENGLISH
edited by James Robinson, the majority schools of Gnostics -- Sethians
(Ophites), Valentinians, and even the very Christian Marcionites, if they are
to be included as Gnostics -- were extremely concerned with morals, and held
themselves to much higher standards than the orthodox Christians, whom they
felt were much lower.  The characterization the Gnostics used for themselves
was "PNEUMATIKOI" meaning "Those of the Spirit" while ordinary Christians,
the mediocre run who took no vows and studied no hidden wisdom, were deemed
"PSYCHIKOI" or "Those of the Psyche", which was still above those mongrels,
the materialists like the Sadducees etc.

All of that said, we find HPB upholding time and again the moral purity of
the Gnostics and the philosophical purity of their works, as opposed to
mainstream Christianity.  She does not side with the orgiastic and licentious
groups, and NEVER quotes them.  I defy anyone to locate a quote from any
antinomian Gnostic in HPB's works.  All her quotes are from the followers of
Valentinus -- Marcus etc. who were of the morally rigid traditions.

It should be no surprise that Theosophists have divided themselves into
similar categories today -- one side following the "original program" of
Theosophy and its Founders, and the other imagining that Theosophy is passe,
or grotesquely misinterpreting its Founders as "materialistic determinists".
 Chuck writes,

> We know that the universe does not quite work the way
> the materialistic determinists who founded the TS (and if you look at the
> material that is exactly what they were even though they refused to admit
it)
> thought it did.

What single piece of evidence can be manufactured to support the idea that
HPB, Olcott, Judge, or their Teachers, were materialistic determinists?  This
is laughable.  Just read PSYCHIC AND NOETIC ACTION by HPB, or her Addenda,
"Science and the Secret Doctrine Compared" in the S.D., both volumes.

It is one thing to say that HPB used blinds in her teaching, and to say that
HPB tailored her teachings to suit Western people where they were.  She most
certainly did both of these things.

That does not mean that she lied, or said things she didn't mean, or that she
was kidding about ethics and moral purity.  She says it too often and in too
many places to pretend we can overlook it.  "Skillful means" in Buddhism, and
in the myths of Plato, and in the Neo-Platonists under Plotinus (called
sometimes the Analogeticists), doesn't mean outright lies for the benefit of
the student, but truths which are not the whole truth.  Cf. Plato's myth of
Ur, in THE REPUBLIC, where the soul after death spends 1,000 years in a nice
place or a rotten one, and then gets assigned to its next body.  This is a
mythical (not a LITERAL) portrayal of karma and reincarnation.

Jesus does the same in the parables.  They are true so far as they go, but
hint at much deeper truths.  It is a vast misunderstanding of HPB and her
Teachers to assume that they were joking about ethics, or that they told
untruths only to hook the poor Victorians.  Rather, these pioneers ruined
their reputations and fortunes spreading ideas that were exactly COUNTER to
traditional Victorian thought.  This is not pandering to the masses, as you
suggest, but dedication to the eternal truths.

Please document, if you will, the assertions that (1) HPB or her Teachers
were materialistic determinists (2) that HPB ever quotes approvingly from
supporters of anti-ethical or amoral philosophies or behaviors.