Theos-Talk Archives (January 1997 Message tl00614)

> GUILT AND INNOCENCE
> > > 
>      The backbone of Mr. Caldwell's argument is that I am
> guilty of a variety of authorial sins great and small.  Faced
> with his barrage of blame, I will focus on the highlights of
> each section of his critique, responding to charges that are
> particularly crucial but trying to keep the length reasonable.
> My books are far from perfect, and some of his objections are
> well-founded.  But the level of outrage Mr. Caldwell conveys at
> my few faux pas betrays a fierce blame that is essentially
> moral and spiritual rather than scholarly.  In my concluding
> remarks on Theosophical orthodoxy I will explore the reasons
> for the disproportionate blame and outrage my books have
> aroused in Mr. Caldwell and others.
> > > 
> PART I
> > > 
>      Mr. Caldwell expresses some confusion as to whether my
> hypotheses about Morya and Koot Hoomi are a "suggestion," as I
> express it in one place and Joscelyn Godwin also puts it, or
> whether I claim to have presented a "persuasive case."  He
> misreads the passage which states that HPB provided enough
> information to make "a persuasive case" for identifying them
> with Ranbir Singh and Thakar Singh respectively.  I never
> claimed to have *presented* a persuasive case; the passage in
> question simply meant that the evidence in Blavatsky's
> writings was persuasive enough *to me* that I felt obliged to
> offer these hypotheses as *suggestions* in my books.
> "Persuasive" is an extremely subjective term, and I would never
> have imagined that Theosophists of a certain mindset would find
> any amount of evidence persuasive concerning the Masters'
> prototypes.  On the other hand, many non-Theosophists have
> been convinced by my books that Ranbir Singh and Thakar Singh
> are persuasive enough as prototypes to prove that Morya and
> Koot Hoomi are not *entirely* fictional, as has long been
> assumed outside Theosophical ranks.
>      As to my claiming to have proved to the satisfaction of
> many scholars my "thesis concerning M. and K.H.," again Mr.
> Caldwell misreads the intended meaning.  In this passage from
> an Internet posting, I simply stated that *if* many scholars
> were satisfied that I had proven Morya and Koot Hoomi to be
> fictionalizations of *other people* this would not detract
> from the truth of HPB's spiritual teachings.  My impression
> from feedback received is that most readers are persuaded of
> the fictionalization hypothesis-- that M. and K.H. are based on
> real people but that HPB's characterizations of them are not
> historically accurate.  This is not the same as claiming that
> most readers are persuaded about the specific status of
> Ranbir Singh and Thakar Singh as prototypes; I myself remain
> unsure of the extent to which M. and K.H. are based on these
> prototypes, on other people, or on HPB's literary imagination.
>      Mr. Caldwell accuses me of omitting or downplaying
> evidence that shows deficiencies in my hypotheses.  
> I suspect this is true of all authors on the subject,
> but cannot help wondering if any writers on Blavatsky are
> *less* guilty of it than I.  To cite only recent authors,
> neither Sylvia Cranston on the orthodox side of the fence nor
> Peter Washington on the skeptical side show nearly as much
> appreciation for ambiguities in the evidence as I have.  Nor do
> they or comparable writers show any respect for or interest in
> opposing views.  Repeatedly my books admit to the tentativeness
> of the conclusions offered, which is a real innovation in
> literature about Blavatsky.  Yet I am denounced by Mr. Caldwell
> and Dr. Algeo (in *The American Theosophist* and *Theosophical
> History*) as deceptively claiming a certainty that is
> unjustified by the evidence.  In light of the books such as Ms.
> Cranston's that they cite as exemplary, I cannot help doubting
> their fairness and objectivity.  I repeatedly and explicitly
> proclaim the ambiguity of the evidence and the tentativeness of
> my conclusions, yet get blamed for being a "true believer" in
> my own hypotheses by Theosophists who show themselves to be
> *real* true believers in attitude and action.  Something
> strange is happening here, and I can only conclude that it is
> related to projection.  I invite readers to survey the entire
> body of literature attempting to explain HPB's relations with
> the Masters, and name a book that is less dogmatic in approach
> than mine.
>      In the case of an alleged visit by Master Morya to Olcott
> on July 15, 1879, described by the Colonel in his diary, Mr.
> Caldwell asks "And if the real flesh and blood Morya was at
> Bombay on that particular July day while Maharaja Ranbir Singh
> was residing in Kashmir, cannot one reasonably conclude that
> Ranbir Singh has `no connection' whatsoever to the Master
> Morya?"  An assumption is buried in this question, and it is at
> the heart of Mr. Caldwell's criticisms.  This is that there is *one* 
> "real flesh and blood Morya" rather than several.  Should we assume that all
> stories told about Morya are in fact about the same person?  In
> fact, this is logically impossible, as shown in this passage
> from *The Masters Revealed*:
>      HPB told at least four distinct versions of her
>    acquaintance with the Master she met in her youth in London.
>    In *Caves and Jungles of Hindustan* he is "Gulab-Singh," the
>    Hindu ruler of a small Central Indian state.  According to this
>    version, her first contact with him after their London meeting
>    was through a letter he sent her in New York over twenty years
>    later.  The most frequently repeated story was that M. was a
>    Buddhist living in Tibet where she studied with him for a long
>    period in the late 1860s.  But in yet another variation, she
>    wrote to Prince Dondukov-Korsakov that her first contact with
>    him after their London meeting was a letter he sent her in
>    Odessa many years later, directing her to go to India.  In this
>    version, she never once saw the Master although he directed her
>    itinerary by mail for more than two years.  They were reunited
>    at last in Yokahama, Japan, where he had summoned her from New
>    York.  Finally, HPB wrote to her Aunt Nadyezhda that her Master
>    was a Nepalese Buddhist living in Ceylon, with whom she had
>    renewed acquaintance via a letter he wrote her in New York.
>    With four mutually contradictory versions of the same
>    character, all that can be concluded is that most if not all of
>    HPB's stories about him were false.
>      It would be more accurate to say that the conflicting
> Morya stories cannot be true *and* about the same person,
> although they may contain true bits and pieces about several.
> But Mr. Caldwell, Dr. Algeo and other Theosophical critics seem
> quite unwilling to face the obvious and undeniable truth
> revealed by the above passage.  Either HPB manufactured most of
> these stories about Morya, allegedly her personal Master, out
> of whole cloth, or she combined stories about several different
> prototypes in different versions to different people.  In light
> of this clearcut evidence, Mr. Caldwell's argument that one
> story about Norya which cannot plausibly be about Ranbir Singh proves
> that the maharaja has "no connection whatsoever to the Master
> Morya" is extremely naive.  His failure to address any of the
> major evidence on which I base my identifications is presumably
> due to his belief that this is unnecessary since he can come up
> with conflicting details elsewhere.  But according to my
> composite model, conflicting details can be drawn from other
> prototypes or from imagination, and do not permit us to ignore
> the rest of the evidence.
>       Like Frederick Crews in the New York Review of Books, Mr.
> Caldwell mistakenly assumes that I "accept the accuracy and truthfulness
> of Olcott's account" of his meeting with Ooton Liatto and friend.  To cite
> a story without comment is not to endorse its accuracy, and I
> have strong doubts about rain being made to fall inside a
> room.  I would presume, however, that Olcott really met two
> men, one of them at least a Cypriot, and wrote about it to C.C.
> Massey.  Beyond that, one can only guess what might have really
> happened during the visit and what role Olcott's suggestibility
> may have played.  Since HPB mentioned in her scrapbook that the
> Cypriot Hilarion was in New York at the same time, this led me
> to hypothesize that Olcott's "Ooton Liatto" was the same
> person.  Mr. Caldwell asserts that I "assume the accuracy of
> this 1875-76 account by Olcott even when there is no other
> evidence to confirm it."  In fact, as he comments in his own
> previous paragraph, HPB also noted the visit of Hilarion at the
> same time and place, which is supporting evidence.  Both of
> these pieces of evidence, a private letter and a private
> scrapbook entry, are less likely to be disinformation than
> is material designed for public consumption, as the testimonies
> concerning Morya and K.H. in Tibet and Sikkim were.  The time
> factor also weighs in favor of the reliability of the
> evidence, since in 1875 and 1876 there was not an elaborate and
> well-publicized body of claims about Mahatmas to be justified
> and defended, as there was after 1881.
>      Mc. Caldwell makes a false accusation in his account of
> our correspondence concerning Olcott's diary entry about the
> visit of Morya to Bombay on August 4, 1880.  By 1993 I had
> condensed *In Search of the Masters* to about a third of its
> former length, and had long since deleted the speculation that
> Jamal ad-Din was the Master described in *Old Diary Leaves* as
> visiting at that time.  I wrote this to Mr. Caldwell when he
> informed me of the diary entry giving the name of the adept in
> question, which he appears to have forgotten.  When he writes
> "Had I not provided him with that crucial piece of evidence,
> would Johnson have repeated the incident in *The Masters
> Revealed* with the same speculation that this Mahatma was
> Afghani?" I can answer with a definite no.  Proof of this can
> be seen in the manuscript of *TMR* which had already been
> submitted to SUNY Press at the time.  More to the point is the
> philosophical issue at hand, when Mr. Caldwell writes "And if
> it is unlikely that this Adept is the Maharaja of Kashmir, then
> is it not fair to suggest that Johnson's hypothesis concerning
> Ranbir Singh/Morya is also unbelievable?"  The answer to this
> question, as before, is "Only if one assumes that all
> references to Morya are in fact accurate *and* refer to the
> same historical person."  I have shown that this cannot
> possibly be so in the case of HPB's references to this Master;
> why should one expect Olcott to be any more consistent and
> reliable?  Particularly so when we consider the question of
> "Gulab-Singh" being equated with Morya by HPB but portrayed as
> a different adept by Olcott.  We are truly in a hall of magic
> mirrors, in which simplistic assumptions are bound to mislead.
> Mr. Caldwell simplistically assumes that testimonies about the
> Masters by HPB and Olcott must be either totally true or
> totally false.  This assumption underlies his entire assault on
> my work, and does not withstand scrutiny.
>      It is worth mentioning at this point that I traveled to
> India for six weeks during research for my first book, which
> was then under consideration by Theosophical Publishing House--
> Wheaton.  That publisher took a year before rejecting the
> manuscript.  During that year, after traveling halfway around
> the world, I was refused access to Col. Olcott's diary and
> other contents of the Adyar archives by TS President Radha
> Burnier.  Her message was that I could not have archives access
> because there was no archivist on duty.  Meanwhile, three other
> researchers there at the same time, working on less
> controversial topics, were provided archives access.  Mr.
> Caldwell chided me later for not considering the evidence of
> that diary, but never offered to let me see a copy or explain
> how he obtained one.  Had I been given the opportunity to
> examine it by Mme. Burnier or Mr. Caldwell, I would have given
> much attention to its contents.  To this day I have yet to see
> it.
>      In his reference to my description of Olcott's account of
> meeting a Master at the Golden Temple, Mr. Caldwell notes that
> I assume this to be the same character described by HPB in
> *Caves and Jungles* as Ram-Ranjit-Das, also a Sikh aristocrat
> with a role at the temple.  He is quite right, as I was indeed
> guilty of making an unjustified assumption since the passages
> could be referring to two different people.  On the other hand,
> until Mr. Caldwell explains the difference between "figuring
> among the guardians" and "being one of the guardians" I stand
> by my interpretation of the phrase.  Moreover, I absolutely do
> not assume that these passages refer to Thakar Singh
> Sandhanwalia, as is proven in the very passage in which Mr.
> Caldwell accuses me of that.  How could I write "One might find
> dozens of names to choose from" while assuming that the
> passages refer to a particular person?  I very explicitly made
> the point that I offer only a hypothesis, that other candidates
> are possibilities, but that there are reasons to consider
> Thakar Singh the most likely.  This is one of several cases
> where my world of infinite shades of grey gets caricatured by
> translation into Mr. Caldwell's world of black and white.
>      This is further seen in his argument that I "accept the
> accuracy and truthfulness" of Olcott's and Blavatsky's accounts
> "at face value" in some places, which "delights" him, but not
> others.  This is a misreading.  To accept their relevance as
> evidence that is probably true is quite another matter.  At
> any rate, here we again find the heart of Mr. Caldwell's
> implicit argument, which is that the Mahatma letters as well as
> the statements of Olcott and Blavatsky about the Masters must
> all be accepted as gospel truth, or all be rejected as lies.
> His intense hostility toward my work, combined with his near
> silence about anti-Theosophical writers, suggests that he is
> not nearly as offended by total rejection of Theosophical
> claims as he is by a selective evaluation of the evidence.  But
> the responsibility of any historian faced with a body of
> confusing and internally contradictory information is to
> *weigh* his sources, which I have done.  When I discount the
> portion of K.H.'s letter of October 29, 1880 in which he refers
> to crossing over to Ladakh on his way home from Tibet as
> "disinformation" there is a reason why passages in the same
> letter about his spending time with HPB in Amritsar are taken
> as more plausible.  This is not because I have some attachment
> to the Punjab or aversion to Tibet, as Mr. Caldwell might
> guess.  There are abundant reasons for regarding references to
> the Punjab and Kashmir in the Mahatma letters and the writings
> of HPB as primarily historical, while suspecting the
> references to Tibet as being primarily fictional.  These will
> be discussed below.
>      In his passage about the visit of Olcott, Brown and
> Damodar to Lahore, Mr. Caldwell states that I "believe Olcott's
> testimony at face value."  Not quite; for example I have strong suspicions
> about how a message formed inthe palm of Olcott's hand.  Furthermore,
> Mr. Caldwell's passage "Of course, it was Thakar Singh" is a total
> misrepresentation of the spirit of my work; the passage in question contains
> no such words.  I have simply stated that Thakar Singh is, to
> date, the most likely candidate I have found.  What I do contend is
> that a visit occurring during a journey that is well grounded
> in historical evidence, documented by three witnesses who
> portray the Master as arriving and departing in a quite
> corporeal manner, is much more solid evidence relevant to
> identifying K.H. than is found elsewhere in Theosophical
> literature.  Furthermore, the coincidence of Olcott, Brown and
> Damodar spending their days in Lahore in the company of Sirdars
> and Singh Sabha leaders, then receiving nocturnal visits from
> Koot Hoomi and Djual Kul, suggests a link between the Singh
> Sabha and these Masters.  The following week, the same kind of
> Mahatmic contacts continued while the three travelers were in
> Ranbir Singh's palace, suggesting a similar link with him.
> That does not mean that any evidence can be accepted or
> rejected at face value; only weighed in comparison to other
> evidence as more or less credible and relevant.
>      On pp. 14-15, Mr. Caldwell notes that I mistakenly
> identified W.T. Brown's pamphlet *Some Experiences in India* as
> having never been published before, and took this as implying
> that is was possibly withheld under orders of HPB and Olcott.
> This was indeed a careless mistake, resulting from reading
> elsewhere about a work by Brown that was never published and
> confusing the two.
> > > 
> PART II
> > > 
>      In his case for evaluating all claims by Col. Olcott about
> the Masters by a single standard, Mr. Caldwell cites a letter
> in which Olcott reported being awakened from sleep in Ceylon in
> 1881 by Morya, who made him take dictation for an hour.  He
> then goes on to describe a case where Morya "showed himself" to
> Olcott and HPB, and an "appearance" by Morya before six other
> people.  All of these are equated with the Ooton Liatto case,
> which is much more clearly one of *physically* present people
> conversing with Olcott.  But Mr. Caldwell does not seem to
> recognize that these "appearances" sound more like paranormal
> visitations than normal physical visits.  How can he assume
> that such appearances, if genuine, were not Ranbir Singh, since
> he does not know whether or not the maharaja was capable of
> such phenomena?  What does he know of other people who were,
> who might therefore be more plausible candidates for the Morya in
> these stories?  This section of his argument shows naivete in
> conflating different categories of evidence.  The principle
> which seems to elude Mr. Caldwell is that extraordinary claims
> require extraordinary proof.  My explanation of HPB's
> relationship with the Masters relies on ordinary factors and is
> based on ordinary historical evidence.  Mr. Caldwell is
> defending extraordinary claims about HPB and the Masters, on
> behalf of which he cites evidence of a far more dubious and
> ambiguous kind.
> > >