DANIEL CALDWELL AND JEROME WHEELER, CONVERSATION
The following is a chronological diary of the flow of letters as I received them with typos etc. included.
Daniel began (Oct 21) :
Is this a forged Blavatsky letter and should it have been excluded from Vol I? In an 1877 letter to her aunt, Madame Blavatsky wrote:
"Sahib [Master Morya] has been known to me for more than twenty-five years; he came to London....Since then I have not seen him, until I received a letter from him...three years ago..." [See Letters of H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. I, starting at the bottom of p. 352 and continuing on p. 353.]
This statement by Blavatsky seems to contradict what Blavatsky writes elsewhere about her relationship with the Master Morya.
Therefore is this 1877 letter a "forgery" and should it have ALSO been excluded from Volume I of HPB's Collected Letters with the other "questionable" letters mentioned by 3 readers and the editor in the latest issue of FOHAT????
Daniel H. Caldwell
Jerome wrote (Oct. 21):
Dear Bruce,
If you have not received the latest from Daniel Caldwell, here it is. This is academia type nitpicking FOR A PURPOSE, and most important for what it omits to mention:---
H.P.B. told Countess Constance Wachtmeister that she met her Teacher, Master M., in the physical body for the first time in London, and that this took place in Hyde Park,68 "in the year of the first Nepal Embassy," as she told Sinnett.69 The embassy of the Nepal Prime Minister, Prince Jung Bahâdur Koonwar Rânajee, took place in 1850; his party left Calcutta April 7, 1850, and sailed from Marseilles to Calcutta December 19th of the same year. The approximate time when H.P.B. met her Master would therefore be in the Summer of 1850. However, in her Sketchbook, now in the Adyar Archives, H.P.B. says that she met her Teacher at Ramsgate, on her twentieth birthday, August 12, 1851. She informed Countess Wachtmeister, however, that "Ramsgate" was a blind.70 In connection with both of these dates we run into several difficulties. According to the Countess, H.P.B.'s father was in London at the time, and H.P.B. consulted him about the Master's offer to co-operate "in a work which he was about to undertake." From H.P.B's sister's account of their youthful years, however, one gathers the impression that their father, who became a widower for a second time in 1851, was then in Russia. Writing to Sinnett,71 H.P.B. herself says that she was alone in London in 1851, and not with her father. Moreover, the Countess states that, after meeting the Master, H.P.B. soon left London for India.72 This, however, could refer to the year 1854 when she met her Teacher in London once again.
(Collected Works, Vol. I, p. xxxviii-ix)
No, Daniel, you do not need to dump this letter in with the Solovyov letters, or the infamous #7 letter.
[Jerome finishes by arguing that this (ignoring occult blinds) is a "'dead-fish attitude' toward HPB's writings" and before "studying theosophy how is one to know that there is a difference?"]
Daniel wrote (Oct. 22):
Dear Jerome,
Concerning my recent e-mail, you wrote:
"This is academia type nitpicking FOR A PURPOSE, and most important for what it omits to mention...."
You do NOT clarify exactly why it is "academia typ nitpicking" nor do you explain what you mean by "FOR A PURPOSE." Nor do I see what relevance your quote from Collected Writings has to the passage I quoted in my original email. Maybe you could tell us exactly what your point is. And the rest of your letter seems to bring in a great deal of material that has nothing I can see as directly relevant to the letter in question.
In summary, you make a number of assertions and as far as I can see you cite nothing relevant to back up those assertions.
Nevertheless, thank you for your comments and if you permit me I would like to post these comments of yours with your name on Theos-Talk. Maybe someone on that forum will be able to make sense of your arguments. Let me know if I may post it.
Daniel
Jerome wrote (Oct 23):
Dear Daniel,
The quote I sent you explains quite well, provided one has an interest deeper than the academic handling of Madame Blavatsky's material. If you will read the book you supposedly helped with and make an honest comparison ---- THE WAY THE LETTERS ARE WRITTEN, THEIR TONE, THEIR STYLE, IS AN OVERWHELMING PROOF!!
The date discrepancy is catching at straws in the wind.with a PECONCEIVED END IN VIEW. HPB wrote many letters to her Aunt, so if one reads them they should get the picture when compared with the letters pointed out by Sordo, Roos, and Smith. It doesn't take a genius to see that something is rotten in those inclusions. If not excluded altogether, WHY WERE THEY NOT PUT IN AN APPENDIX AND CLEARLY MARKED.
Daniel, this is DISHONEST EDITING!! Do you think it was honest??!! It is intriguing that you can see honesty and dishonesty very well when criticizing a ULT publication[1], but defend the same thing when the T.S. does it.
Date discrepancy is not at issue in the other letters, but out-of-character, bizarre statements contradicting the character presented in the other 20 volumes of Madame Blavatsky's writing.
my good regards,
jerome[1] If you remember I strongly agreed with you that The Voice of the Silence used at the ULT should have a SPECIFIC NOTICE that it was Judge's; 1893 version of The Voice of the Silence, and not the original published by HPB.
The following is edited out from several letters as the points are repetitive, again we pick up the thread with Daniel responding (Oct 23):
Jerome,
. . . [On the topic of the 1877 Blavatsky Letter to her Aunt] Yet elsewhere (as even Ramon Sordo writes) HPB says that she was with Master Morya in Tibet and elsewhere AFTER the early 1850's and during the 1860's, etc. See her letters to Sinnett.
Are you saying that this is NOT a contradiction . . . at least an apparent contradiction??? . . .
If you have an explanation please spell it out in ordinary terms.
Jerome wrote (oct 24):
Dear Daniel,
. . . Why did you support printing Letter 7 and the Solovyoff series?? What evidence can you bring to support this? Do you think this will help humans find assimilate the ideation in Madame Blavatsky's works? Will it help them make live their connection to their Higher Ego? These are not rhetorical questions . . .
Daniel responds (oct 24):
Jerome,
I repeat it again since I beleive it is a legtimate question. I had inquirers writing to me asking the question which apparently they wanted some light on. Assuming they asked in all sincerity the question I assume they wanted straightforward answers too if possible.
. . . Bruce . . . feel free to answer the question if you think you can throw some light on the subject.
Daniel
Jerome adds (Oct 24):
[The "Your actions" directly below refer to a tangential matter that I have tried to edit out of the letters as not being specific to the argument - ed.]
[Your actions illustrate a blind scholarship which] explains why the printing of letter 7 and the Solovyoff series were mixed in with Madame Blavatsky's letters.
[On the topic of blind scholarship obscuring "the magic of human heart", Jerome quotes from The Secret Doctrine]:
If too much of wrong superstition... "renders a man a fool," too much scepticism makes him mad. We prefer the charge of folly in believing too much, to that of a madness which denies everything, as do Materialism and Idealism. (SDI, 479)
Daniel Responded (Oct 24):
Jerome,. . . And when you write:
"It even explains why the printing of letter 7 and the Solovyoff series were mixed in with Madame Blavatsky's letters."
Well, first of all I was NOT the editor.
And least you forget the original editor of the letters (that is, John Cooper) intended those letters to be mixed in too. See his dissertation for proof of this and I recall nothing in his dissertation or in the final manuscript he sent to Wheaton where he said anything about the Solovyoff series. I assume you would have also criticized him for doing such???? I will check again Cooper's original material and see exactly what he wrote.
My view is that ALL the letters should be in the volume and I have no objection to notes being added to the letters. But readers and students should have easily at their fingertips all of these letters and should decide for themselves whether the letters are authentic or not. That was my original point to FOHAT.
Personally I prefer to believe Letter 7 is not authentic but just because I prefer that doesn't mean the letter is not genuine. Both Cooper and Algeo added a note warning the reader.
Readers need to learn to think for themselves. I believe in giving them full access to all the material.
Daniel
After reading this I paraphrased as follows (Oct 24) :
Dear Daniel,
I have been busy and have just had a chance to look over the correspondence between you and Jerome. Obviously, e-mails are a form of short-hand thinking so let me try to paraphrase what I see the two arguments as being. If I am wrong, then let me know.
What I see Daniel arguing is that there is a certain body of letters attributed to HPB. Whereas he may have his own ideas as to what letters are suspect and what letters are not, Daniel believes it is unfair to color the perceptions of the readers, that they should be allowed to come to their own conclusions as to the legitamacy of each letter. Daniel then points to a particular letter, that apparently contradicts other material written by HPB, as evidence that if we start to censor letters it becomes difficult to know where to stop.
Jerome argues this as being academic. Certainly a dead-letter reading of the material could lead to confusion. However, Blavatsky has made it abundantly clear that when dealing with her own personal history, especially when related to the Masters, she is not above the use of blinds to protect the privacy of these individuals. [This type of autobiographical information while feeding the curiosity of the personality, adds nothing to the betterment of humanity and can be truly said to be none of anyone's business - my own further comment, RBM.]
In addition, I see Jerome as pointing out that writers imprint their own personality into a letter when they write it. Students who have read volumes of Blavatsky's works with an earnest desire to understand, begin to be able to identify the rhythm of her work and whereas they may not take much notice of the rhythm when it is there, they certainly notice when it is not. [I would go further to say that words have their own energy and are reflective of the person doing the writing, the problem with the letters in question is that they do in fact give off a bad "vibe" - RBM] Consequently, there is a way in which to separate legitimate letters from spurious ones. The question that arises from this is: Does this "subjective" means of identifying spurious letters constitute a good reason for, at the very least, separating the subjectively identified spurious letters from those that are clearly legitimate?
This question is important because many ill-informed readers will turn away from Blavatsky when they read these spurious letters. If I understand some of the subtext of Daniel's argument, he is saying that those that are so easily disuaded may not be worth the effort, in the end, of attracting to Theosophy. Perhaps he sees these letters as a way of dissuading the "swine" from seeking after those "pearls" which they are not ready for. Dissuading the superficial may not be a bad idea, but I will argue later that this is not the way.
Clearly, the subjective feel of identifying spurious letters has been made into an objective science which can be brought to bear on these letters. Although I feel the judgment of a sympathetic student of Theosophy would be more accurate, the use of the appropriate scientist would achieve the same results. If the editor did not want to be accused of using "subjective criteria" to censor the letters (a fear that I really don't understand from the point of view of occult science), then why not bring in a scientific expert to do the job?
More importantly, what duty does the Student of Theosophy have to those who worked so hard to introduce this body of thought? Whose duty is it to protect the reputation of HPB and Judge? I am not saying that they were perfect souls or anything of that nature, all I am saying is that they tried to live what they taught. Why should we allow ignorant and pompous accusers to have greater weight than the accused? Looking to the east, why do students in the east show such great respect for the lineage of their own respective schools of thought? Are they not trying to say to others, look at the founders of our school of thought, are they not great men? Also, look at those who have followed and have used this body of thought to develop into great men or women in their own right. Not all maybe, but some. The aspirant who doen't know which way to go can then look at the various lineages and decide which schools seem to have more credibility, and focus on them. He looks at the fruit that these different systems produce. Being at this point unschooled, he has very little else to go on. What kind of lineage do Theosophists have? Is this not important? What is the fruit of a Theosophical life?
If we want to discourage the swine from pursuing Theosophy, I do not believe that this should be done at the expense of Judge or HPB. It seems that Theosophy is difficult enough to adequately discourage the supperficial. If I am wrong and we as Theosophists should not do everything in our power to set the record straight on Blavatsky and Judge then PLEASE TELL ME WHY? Daniel, why should I not expect my fellow Theosophists to actively promote Blavatsky and Judge as great human beings? Why should I be happy with a Theosophical publication that apparently makes no effort to this end, that in fact contains material that does the opposite? If Blavatsky and Judge were a cut above average humanity, why should we be afraid to point this out? Please explain this to me - I honestly don't understand!Robert Bruce MacDonald
Editor FohatRETURN TO COMMENTS ON LETTERS OF HPB, VOL. I