Theos-Talk Archives (April 1996 Message tl00420)

At 07:21 PM 4/12/96 -0500, you wrote:
>>>CUT<<<<<<<

I hope it will not cause you any distress, or faintness, but I am going to
say that for the most part, I agree entirely with what you say. As you may
know I am one of those who very much prefers "isis Unveiled" to the "Secret
Doctrine" for many reasons that I find well and good. You're certainly
almost completely correct in your discussion of the Gnostics. Though I
personally would tend to agree with Plotinus (or Porphyry, as I think more
likely). There are a lot of things about the Gnostics that I agree with, the
one thing I disagree with is their Christianity. The other thing I disagree
with is their unrelenting dualism. The same is true, in a way, with
Buddhism. With Gautama's basic ideas, I totally agree, with what time and
disicples have done to those ideas, I do NOT agree. I think Mahayana
Buddhism is a reincarnation of all those things in the Brahmanic Religion
that Gautama was rebelling against. I certtainly don't believe in Karma, as
either Buddhism or Theosophy teaches it. But then I don't have to, because
Karma isn't mentioned at all in the three objects, is it?

alexis dolgorukii


>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.
>
>