Theos-Talk Archives (July 1996 Message tl00712)

Regarding my comments on the Mahatma Letters, Eldon Tucker writes:


>Theosophy is not, though, a house of cards, standing upon some
>scientific tidbits, ready to collapse with the slightest
>perturbation. It does not stand or fall on any particular stray
>comment made regarding science in some book.
>

Actually -- a point I'm making is that the scientific titbits are not
titbits at all but comprise a large portion of the 19th century literature -
everything from the Cosmogenesis, Anthropogenesis - to the later clairvoyant
investigations of CWL. It's all science , and pronouncements are often made
regarding physical science. There's Atlantis, Lemuria, the rounds and races
(that relates to anthropology), Keeley's work, Astronomy. There are also
pronouncements on history - what the Chaldeans did or didn't believe. Of
course that a large portion of the work is devoted to symbolic and occult
business - so called occult science, but most of that can't be checked, so
you've no way of telling if it's all BS. But the stuff that can be checked
should be checked.

In the 20+ years that I've been associated with theosophists, I have noticed
that most theosophists distance themselves from the scientific
pronouncements and are uneasy about them - possibly because so many of them
are plainly wrong. I discussed this once with  John Algeo, asking - why the
new edition of CWL's "The Inner Life" had been so severely edited. The
answer was that the edited portions contained material that was found to
disagree with the present findings of science.

To me, it all smacks of a coverup of sorts. Theosophists have a tendency
when faced with such a discrepancy  either to edit  the discrepancy  out of
future editions, or explain them away with statements such as: "Atlantis is
only a myth", "The Masters weren't being literal", "This is an occult truth
and not a physical one." Or "You, Paul K., have the wrong background and
can't be a useful judge of these weighty matters..."

 These are to my mind all attempts to evade the fact that we are unwilling
to put Theosophy to the test, and  when  we are faced with discrepancies -
we are unwilling to admit that these exist. Because IF - Atlantis  never had
any physical (not to mention etheric or other) existence, the basic
teachings DO fall down like a house of cards. If the few statements that can
be checked in the teaching turn out to be wrong, then the ones that can't be
checked are probably just as wrong.

How about "There is no religion higher than truth"?

Paul K.