Theos-Talk Archives (September 1996 Message tl00272)

Murray,
One thing I think that I have failed to make clear is that I do not worship
at the hallowed hall of SCIENCE.  I don't worship the word and therefore I
don't see any need to try to make things fit into it.
But the word does have certain meanings and some of the attempts Theosophists
have used in the last hundred years to try to jam things into it have done
terrible violence to both.
There is no reason why we cannot take information and say that the classical
scientific method does not apply to it.  That does not necessarily make the
information untrue, or the method of gaining it invalid, it merely makes it
different.
It may be that the best way to pursue these matters is to go off on our own
and say to hell with science and the scientific community.  It won't make
visions of angels any easier to believe, but it will allow for a broader
range of knowledge of things that are possible yet unprovable.
So to get back to the original discussion, I do not deny that Hodson was
actually clairvoyant nor do I contend that all clairvoyants are crazy.  Dora
Kunz is one of the sanest people I know (and maybe one of the few sane people
I know).  My objection is to the assertions that go along with the
clairvoyance.  But the fact that some things he did were the result of
genuine paranormal ability does not mean that all the things he did were.
 And there is the matter of his mental state aside from the clairvoyant
activity.  It is probably necessary to try to separate those two things as
much as possible in attempting to determine what he really did accomplish,
but there were things that simply cannot be accepted.  Or to put it bluntly,
if you think I make fun of Robert Muller, just think of what I would be doing
with Master Pollidentus if I were doing this fifty years ago.  One of the
problems with Geoffrey Hodson may be that a good satirist never heard of him
while he was in his prime, but then humor is not a common thing in Theosophy,
(though to his lasting credit John Algeo does try) witness the lame attempts
at it in the notorious Hodge Podge Lodge that we in the US section are forced
to endure at every convention.
One of the things I've discovered as I do my own research is that we need our
skeptics and people to find things funny about us to keep us from believing
our own press releases.
Hodson probably could have benefited from someone who would have given him a
good kick in the rear every now and then just to remind him that he was still
human.

Chuck the Heretic