Theos-Talk Archives (November 1996 Message tl00064)

Alan:

[writing to Doss]

>>Geoffrey Baborka has spend a lot of time researching the issue and the
>>book was the result of his work. The conclusions reached therein are
>>satisfactory for me.
>>
>>If anyone has not seen this book, they may want to. If the conclusions
>>reached therein are not satisfactory so the reader/inquirer, then the
>>only other alternative is for himer (him/her) to investigate the
>>available materials and come to one's own conclusions.

>You didn't say whether his book is a TS published one.  I have, for
>example, his book, ~H.P. Blavatsky, Tibet and Tulku~.  This is a TPH
>Adyar publication.  I regard your reply as, regretfully, evasive.  I
>asked for your opinion of his conclusions, not his, and although you say
>they are satisfactory to you, I still don't know what they are, nor why
>you find them acceptable.  Can you not do a short summary for the
>benefit of myself and others on the list who may not be in a position to
>read his book, but who would, in any case, like to know what Doss's view
>is in Doss's words?

Geoffrey Barborka was one of an exceptional group of people that grew
up on the Point Loma theosophical property, getting raised from pre-school
through a college education under theosophical principles. As a young
man, he setup THE SECRET DOCTRINE and many other books on a linotype
machine. At a later age, he did an exhaustive study of THE SECRET DOCTRINE
and produced an exceptional commentary on it, THE DIVINE PLAN.

While it's true that his books were published by Theosophical Publishing
House, they are books in the same class as the Collected Writings of HPB,
also published by TPH. They represent a careful, exacting study of the
history and doctrines of Theosophy, from someone with a life-long training
in the subject. I'd put Geoffrey Barborka in the same class of writers as
Boris de Zirkoff, L. Gordon Plummer, W. Emmett Small, Elise Benjamin,
Judith Tyberg, Helen Todd, and others raised or having studied and worked
at Point Loma.

You may be too quick to assume that just because something is published
by TPH that it's immediately suspect.


-- Eldon