Theos-Talk Archives (October 2002 Message tt00262)

Steve: The burden is then to establish whether this claim is true, or 
whether the letters are actually the work of HPB, possibly unconsciously 
to herself. The question is complicated by the further claim that some 
of the letters were actually penned by mahatmas, and not 
by "amanuensis chelas," and the fact that some of them, such as the 
Shannon letter, could not have been delivered by either HPB or 
Damodar.

Steve: Why burden ? If someone claims Elvis is alive and he lives on 
Mars with his a wife and 14 children, why "we" have the burden to 
establish whether this claim is true or not ? "And of course one can live 
on Mars, have you been to the opposite side of Mars so you could claim 
otherwise" ?

Al kidding aside, you just dropped the word "amanuensis" yourself. I 
don't see a major mystery in the fact that that some of the letters, such 
as the Shannon letter, could not have been delivered other then by 
either HPB or Damodar. 

Even Paul Johnson who went out of his way (I know you don't agree 
with part of his thesis but that is not the point) the "proof" that there 
where people that Blavatsky fantasized to be like some kind of Masters. 
Johnson clearly stated that exept for in one case in London, he didn't 
believe any of his prototypes like for example Ranbir , Thakur Singh, or 
the Maharajah of Benares wrote any of the letters.

In fact Steve, no Indian/Thibetan/or Oriental person in their right mind 
would write what these so called "Mahatmas" wrote like" "The highest 
race (physical intellectuality) is the last sub-race of the fifth -- yourselves 
the white conquerors. The majority of mankind 
belongs to the seventh sub-race of the fourth Root race, -- the above 
mentioned Chinamen and their off-shoots and branchlets (Malayans, 
Mongolians, Tibetans, Javanese, etc., etc., etc.) and remnants of other 
sub-races of the fourth -- and the seventh sub-race of the third race. All 
these, fallen, degraded semblances of humanity." (Mahatma K.H. to 
Sinnet, This letter is on the internet )

So with "White" Brotherhood was clearly intended just that, whoever 
wrote this clearly identified himself/herself with white "Aryan" not even 
Indian. (Mahatma Letters to Sinnet in INDIA "yourselves the white 
conquerors")


Steve: "work of HPB, possibly unconsciously" 

Hume during his correspondence with the "Mahatmas" wrote that "in 
one week" he himself "could teach any ordinarily intelligent man, all, 
that in eighteen months, we ... have succeeded in extracting" from the 
mahatmas. 
"One might as well try to argue with a brick wall as with the fraternity, 
since when unable to answer your arguments they calmly reply that 
their rules do not admit of this or that," Hume wrote.
In the article on my web site about Hume his biographer writesabout 
Hume that : At the same time he accused Damodar of taking the letter 
of an aspiring chela, Edmund Fern, producing a `facsimile' of 
his `handwriting' and then telling Fern that it was `done by occult 
means!' Damodar should stop such `infernal nonsense' and remember 
that he had a `big microscope' and could himself `reproduce by similar 
occult means every single handwriting' he chose. `I don't go in for this,' 
Hume added, `because we call it forgery - but I can do it a great deal 
better than D. M. to judge by the sample.' He warned Blavatsky that if 
she did not `keep these boys in hand' they would `play the duce' with the 
Society.
He (Hume) wrote to a leading Madras Theosophist, Judge P. Sreenivas 
Rao, on 22 November 1882. That he found `the Brotherhood a set of 
wicked selfish men. Moreover, their `system' was one of `deception and 
tainted largely with sorcery in that they employ spooks' or `elementals to 
perform their phenomena.' `The deception occurred because once a 
person became a chela and `bound himself' by the vows which the 
adepts exacted, `you cannot believe a word he says'. `Every chela,' 
Hume insisted, was `a slave of the most abject description - a slave in 
thought as well as in word and deed'. (end quote)


K.P.Johnson in an interview from two years ago (a copy of it is on my 
web site) stated: Harrison allows for the possibility that in altered states 
of consciousness HPB wrote in handwritings so different from that of her 
normal waking personality that they could not be recognized as coming 
from the same hand, even by experts. Given Olcott's testimony to this 
effect, and abundant references to HPB as "amanuensis" of the Masters, 
it seems to me the most plausible explanation of the physical origin of 
most of the Mahatma letters. There are two particular logical problems I 
find in Harrison's study, specifically in his Replies to Criticism. First, he 
distinguishes between Hodgson's thesis that HPB was "an ingenious but 
common fraudster and impostor having no supernatural powers 
whatever" who produced the KH letters with intent to deceive and the 
alternative that the writing was "received automatically, in trance, sleep, 
etc., unknown to the conscious personality until he or she reads it." 
These are presented as mutually exclusive alternatives that exhaust the 
possibilities. I think the evidence leads us rather to consider that 
different letters were produced in different circumstances, and that no 
one-size-fits-all assumptions about those circumstances can be 
stretched to accommodate the various instances of questionable 
authorship. 

Second, Harrison asks "if we accept Olcott's testimony as evidence that 
HPB could write in altered states of consciousness, do we accept his 
further testimony" about a specific paranormal event he witnessed, 
and "if not, why not? I do not see how you can select or reject evidence 
to suit your argument. Olcott's testimony is that HPB possessed psychic 
powers in abundance. You cannot accept both Olcott and Hodgson." My 
response to this is to say that we can accept Olcott's testimony as 
evidence of what he believed he had witnessed without accepting that 
his interpretation of his experience was accurate. That HPB appeared to 
be writing in a trance state from which she emerged with no memory, 
that she behaved as if this were the case, can be accepted as fact based 
on Olcott's testimony and others from the period. That she "possessed 
psychic powers in abundance" is Olcott's inference and not at all in the 
same category of evidence. Contemporary scholars cannot accept either 
Hodgson or Olcott as infallible interpreters of evidence, nor as unbiased 
reporters of that evidence. But each is a crucial primary source, and the 
testimony of each must be included in the process of sifting and 
weighing evidence for and against HPB's claims. Each deserves full, 
skeptical scrutiny. Neither can be assumed to be always right or always 
wrong. But the gist of Harrison's study, as I see it being "spun" by 
Theosophists, is to dismiss Hodgson across the board and allow 
continued acceptance of Olcott's and HPB's claims as entirely reliable. 

Brian: So I posed these two questions a few days ago could it be that 
the letters where written partially "unconsciously" as you (Steve) 
mentioned. There is this famous case in the 19th century of Helene 
Smith or whatever was her name that wrote in "Martian script."
So I posed these two questions a few days ago:

A)Could it be like "Spirit writing" (in handwriting that appears other then 
that of the "medium") is very common in spiritualist circles. 

B) There is also the question why W.Q. Judge had so little difficulty 
imitating the "Mahatma Letters" hand writing ?

Start with reading the research of the Hare brothers once more , and 
then check the letters yourself again and I am shure it will be obvious.

Brian

--- In theos-talk@y..., "Steve Stubbs" <stevestubbs@y...> wrote:
> --- In theos-talk@y..., "brianmuehlbach" <brianmuehlbach@y...> 
wrote:
> > In spite of the fact that millions of people claim "The Protocols 
> of Zion" 
> > are not a fraud, I say it is. And so are the Mahatma letters that, 
> > although not identical with, are just as much concocted as The 
> Protocols 
> > of The Elders Of Zion.
> 
> The internal evidence in the Protocols is quite different. The same 
> problems of evidence do not appear in the Mahatma Letters. The 
> problem in the latter case is that the claim was made that the 
> mahatmas dictated the letters but did not write them, and that 
> Damodar and HPB (the "amanuensis chelas") wrote them, but that 
they 
> contained the thoughts of others. The burden is then to establish 
> whether this claim is true, or whether the letters are actually the 
> work of HPB, possibly unconsciously to herself. The question is 
> complicated by the further claim that some of the letters were 
> actually penned by mahatmas, and not by "amanuensis chelas," and 
the 
> fact that some of them, such as the Shannon letter, could not have 
> been delivered by either HPB or Damodar.