Theos-Talk Archives (February 2002 Message tt00254)

Paul Johnson: "the writings of HPB, contains a vast amount of 
material on a huge range of subjects with a wide range of 
reliability/unreliability, coming from a lifetime's exposure to a 
formidable variety of sources (living and literary.) Within that 
range of material there are tremendous spiritual treasures along with 
a lot of stuff that is very dated and reflects the scientific and 
historical inaccuracies of extant sources available to her. The 
fundamentalist says it's all literally true and we shouldn't look to 
make any distinctions between parts that are historically accurate or 
not, practically applicable or not, wise or foolish, sincere or 
blinds, etc. The radical skeptic says it's all foolishness, 
inaccuracy, unreliability, practically worthless. In between those 
camps stand those of us who see the wide range of value and relevancy 
in the large body of material.

What's intriguing in the case of those who see the material this way 
is that we can find metamessages galore. At one level there is a lot 
of exposition of religious and scientific doctrines that say "this is 
how reality is, and this is how I (and the Masters) know it." But at 
a metalevel there is a lot of higher order commentary that tells us 
what to make of all that expository material, what our approach to 
truth ought to be, how to distinguish what is important and what is 
ephemeral in the material, which aspects might be distorted 
deliberately or accidentally and why, how seriously to take certain 
alleged paranormal phenomena, and so on. That has lasting value IMO 
and applies beyond the range of Theosophy per se. Brigitte has done 
a great job of finding HPB quotes in which she vigorously explodes 
her own self-created myths. I don't see this as accidental or self-
defeating; I think HPB deliberately planted all these little 
metamessages that tell us not to take the lower order expository 
stuff at face value and literally. As for historical perspective, 
all of HPB's writings for Katkov, especially The Durbar in Lahore but 
also Caves and Jungles of Hindustan, are a metamessage about her role 
in India compared to the version presented to the English via 
Sinnett, the Mahatma letters to him, and HPB's writings in English. 
HPB's letters to Hartmann give us metamessages about how we should 
take the whole Masters story. HPB's "confessions" to Conway and 
Solovyoff are metamessages about how we should take her phenomena. 
Her confession about her own lack of knowledge of the Tibetan source 
material she was writing about is a metamessage about the claims to 
years of study in Tibet. (Will dig this quote up, don't have it to 
hand.) 

Cayce does the same thing-- goes on and on in thousands of readings 
about people's past lives in Atlantis, exposition of its alleged 
history, etc. and suddenly, boom! undermines it all by saying 
something like "Atlantis as a continent is a legendary tale. Whether 
or not that which has been received through psychic sources...is true 
or not, depends upon the credence individuals give to this class of 
information." 

Mic Foster and ing John Beers are intelligent people and the reason 
they almost ended up believing Lopsang Rampa wholesale is the same as 
the lack of information about the origins and sources of Blavatsky's 
writings that in many cases even well read people are not in a 
position to recognise and on top of that are foooled by some who try 
to do so like people similar to the Daniel Caldwell type.

Paul: The search for metamessages is a dangerous one to the 
fundamentalist mind, because it allows one to work entirely within 
the canon, and yet come up with new discoveries that overturn 
received interpretations. It lends itself to abuses, as when Barbara 
Thiering imagines that the Dead Sea Scrolls are really about Jesus. 
But in the case of conscious esotericists, we can only assume that 
metamessages are present and that the obvious level of interpretation 
is often literally false."

Brigitte: Donald Lopez once wrote to me that at the University of 
Michigan,he once presented some parts of Blavatsky and expecially the 
more modern Lopsang Rampa having them read it without telling 
the students of his Tibetology class anything of its history. 

The students were unanimous in their praise of the books, and despite 
six prior weeks of lectures and readings on Tibetan history and 
religion (including classics such as R. A. Stein's Tibetan 
Civilisation), they found it entirely credible and compelling, 
judging it more realistic than anything they had previously read 
about Ti et, appreciating the detail about "what Tibet was really 
like," giving them "a true understanding about Tibet and Buddhism." 
Many of the things they had read about Tibet seemed strange until 
then; these things seemed more reasonable when placed within the 
context of a lama's life. It is not that the things Rampa described 
were not strange; it was that they were so strange that they could 
not possibly have been concocted. When I told them about the book's 
authors, they were shocked, but immediately wanted to separate fact 
from fiction. How much of the book was true?

With the author unmasked they awoke from their mystified state, and 
with eyes opened turned away from Rampa and toward me for authority. 
Each of their questions began, "Did Tibetans really ... ?" "Did 
Tibetans really perform amputations without anesthesia, with the 
patients using breath control and hypnotism instead?" "Did monks 
really eat communally and in silence while the Scriptures were read 
aloud?" "If a monk violated the eightfold path, was he punished by 
having to lie motionless face down across the door of the temple for 
a full day, without food or drink?" "Are the priests in Tibet 
vegetarian? " " Did priests really only ride white horses? " " Were 
horses really only ridden every other day?" "Did acolytes really wear 
white robes?" "Did cats really guard the temple jewels?"" "At the New 
Year's festival, did monks really dress as giant buddhas and walk 
through the streets on stilts?" "Were there really man bearing kites 
in Tibet?" And of course, "Did they really perform the operation of 
the third eye?"

The answer to each of these questions was no. But by what authority 
did I confidently make such a pronouncement? I had not lived in old 
Tibet and so could not contradict Rampa's claims with my own 
eyewitness testimony. It was, rather, that I had never seen any 
mention of such things in any of the books that I had read about 
Tibet in English, French, or Tibetan. From reading other books, I had 
learned the standards of scholarly evidence"… 
(next comes the part 
Theosophists don't want to hear aboutat all , so I will stop here, But
in spite of Daniel having copied Coleman's study on his web page, and 
in spite of Michael Gomes writing an appologetic essay typical for 
Theosophists on Coleman, the plagiarisms are still true, just as in 
spite of tausends of believers in the final truth of Lopsang Rampha 
and Eckankar, the same pattern repeats itself) And if you didn't get 
it, pls read this e-mail again.

 
Bri.