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Sir: With reference to the correspondence on the Book of Dzyan, I wonder if I might have some space to say something on the positive side, and on behalf of Mme Blavatsky.
First, as to Mr Gardner's point about HPB possibly not having existed, to refute that there are the testimonies of hundreds of people who knew, her personally. Mr Boris de Zirkoff, who is: currently editing her Collected Writings, claims to be a distant relative and has a family tree to prove it. There are numerous photographs of her, and six negatives exist at the London Headquarters of the Theosophical Society in England, together with a note by the photographer on how they came to be taken.
About Mr King's point that the Book of Dzyan and The Voice of the Silence
are forgeries, if the Stanzas from the Book of Dzyan translated and quoted
by HPB in her Secret Doctrine are
forgeries, that would in itself make her one of the foremost sages and philosophers the world has ever known. Anyone who has seriously
studied them would agree that they are among the most sublime of the world's literature. As to The Voice of the Silence, that purports to be a translation (in part) of an old Buddhist scripture..The then Teshu Llama wrote a preface to one of its editions and he would hardly have done that if the text of the original, with which he was presumably familiar, was not extant. With regard to Mr Coleman's analysis of HPB's work, Isis Unveiled,
'I have looked up the appendix to Solovyoff's book and amongst other information, he says she quoted from 1,300 other works but she herself possessed very few books. I believe he is corroborated by other students, but I feel his inferences are very suspect. He says she was not widely read and that her actual knowledge of the subject matter on which she wrote was limited to the point of ignorance. However, that can hardly have been the case, as he says it took him three years to find and check the references! How came it that Mme Blavatsky knew of them and was able to write the book by hand (in two volumes of over 600 pages each), in less than two years? This also included the editing and publication time! How did she know that there were such passages and where to look for the " plagiarised" references? Was this not a feat in itself?
As to HPB knowing what she wrote about, it is reported that in conversation with the most erudite people, including professors and other specialists, she earned their greatest respect. Kabbalists of the stature of Macgregor Mathers wondered at her knowledge. She was granted the 'thirty-second degree in Freemasonry because she knew all the secrets (photos of the diploma have been published). However, she was never initiated into the rites in the ordinary way. Other evidence of her knowledge is in the Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge of the Theosophical Society in England, wherein are recorded her verbal impromptu answers to live questions from a group of students on some of the most abstruse of her' Secret Doctrine Teachings.
Mme Blavatsky was a Russian and learned most of her English in middle age, but another examiner of her work found that, at that time, she had the fifth largest vocabulary of any writer in the English language. In this she ranked with Milton and Skahespeare. Apart from English, she had a good knowledge of French and some knowledge of Italian and German. She obviously knew enough Latin, ancient Greek, and Hebrew to quote from their • classics. She also evinced a considerable knowledge of Stinscrit.
HPB was a phenomenon that will not be explained away by the Solovyoffs, the Hodgsons, the brothers Hare, the Colemans and a host of others. Her work was also far too great to be destroyed by the numerous authors of books purporting to give facts, often scurrilous ones, of her life, and making nothing of the teachings she tried to make known. Incidentally, nearly all the slander, gossip', distorted facts of her life, were current during her lifetime and were refuted directly by her or by those who knew her. There must remain the point that if through traducing and vilification H. P. Blavatsky cannot be discredited, then what she wrote must be regarded seriously. This for the modern worldly man would be a very daunting undertaking because of its lofty philosophy and standards. However, it would be infinitely rewarding, for an openminded study of her works could make for a saner, healthier, happier, more peaceful and spiritually regenerate mankind.
G. A. Farthing The Theosophical Society in England, 50 Gloucester Place, London WI
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