Theos-Talk Archives (February 2002 Message tt00297)

The implication is that Blavatsky was lying when she says she 
saw pages of books in the "astral light." However, suppose that
she was one of those rare people who has the gift of eidetic imagery 
and photographic memory. Suppose furthermore that having read those 
100 books she had no conscious recollection of much of their content. 
Suppose also that her unconscious mind stored photographic images of 
much of this material and was able to present it to consciousness in 
the form of "visions" in the "astral light." In that case, it is
reasonable to assume that she was describing her experience 
accurately and that the experience could be better explained in 
psychological terms than in terms of miracles. According to the law 
of parsimony, that would seemingly be more reasonable than the fraud
hypothesis of her enemies, or the "astral light" hypothesis of her 
worshippers, This explanation allows Blavatsky to be right inasmuch 
as her description of her experience goes, and ditto with
Coleman, since what he said can be easily checked and found to be 
true. It would be "paranormal" in the sense that not just anyone can 
do it, but it would not be "paranormal" in the sense that Daniel 
Caldwell uses the word, to describe something which is miraculous
and outside the range of human potential.

The polarity here is the same as with the Ootan Liatto story. Some 
insist that we have to find some "miraculous" explanation for it, and 
others insist that Olcott was lying. A better approach seems to me
to be to totally accept the statements of these people regarding what 
they experienced, and ask what it means. We allow ourselves in this 
case to question their INTERPRETATION of what they experienced, but we
do not question their truthfulness. We therefore eliminate one 
hypothesis (i.e., that they are lying in certain cases when it serves 
our purpose to say they were lying and not in other cases) and the 
argument becomes more parsimonious.

As for the recent comment someone posted that the truth is likely to 
turn newcomers away, I think that is not a problem. There are at most 
a few thousand Theosophists in a world with some five or six billion
people in it, so there is no army of newcomers to turn away. Besides, 
if Theosophy can only be promoted by concealing the truth, it is not 
worth saving."

I think Sufilight might think different of that, he is thinking in 
lightyears, and he is a firm believer in Indries Shah, the one who 
was able to con poor J.G. Bennet.
Bri.