Hi everybody!

I have decided to finally buckle down, and read The Mahatma Letters. This is one of the classic books in Theosophy, and it looks like it contains advanced material. I am interested in hearing other people's reactions to this book.

Hey, Nick, Great idea.
I would suggest, if you can, you read Virginia Hanson's "Of Masters and Men" first. It is a fictionalized (fleshed-out) rendering of the historical context of the letters and is a quick read. It really helps you keep track of what is going on when you read the letters.
When you begin with the Letters (the Chrono edition), I suggest you also read HPB's letters to Sinnett at the same time, keeping pace. Margaret Conger produced a "Combined Chronology" - not sure if it is online - but you can just go by the dates in the books.
Also having Linton & Hanson's Reader's Guide is helpful, but Virginia's notes are added at the beginning of each letter, and so is not absolutely necessary.

There are three main threads running through the letters:
* The current events going on in the lives of Sinnett, Hume, HPB, Olcott, and the surrounding people, including HPB's phenomena, and the early TS
* The Master - Chela relationship, probation, and the consequences thereof,
* and The teachings themselves.

The most difficult part of reading the letters for me was trying to guess what Sinnett and Hume must have written to the Masters, the questions they must have asked, as we only have the Master's responses.

Jon,

Thanks for the tip. I have never heard of Hanson's book, so I hope to take a look at it soon.

I have the Barker version. Is there a big difference between the different versions?

I did not know that "Letters" and HPB's letters are connected. (Wow, read two different books, and try to keep track of what is happening in both books....)

Three different simultaneous threads? Oh, dear....

Right now, I only have the Barker book. Oh, well, I guess I'll just jump in for now, and see how it goes.

A. P. Sinnett passed away in 1921 leaving Maud Hoffman as his executor. Ms. Hoffman asked A. Trevor Barker to transcribe, edit and publish the letters, which he did in 1923. Because Barker saw difficuly in trying to put the letters into an accurate chronological sequence (many of the letters were not dated, or inaccurately dated), he chose to order the letters by subject.
But because each letter covered several topics (remember the intertwined threads), many people found Barker's sequence difficult.
Several attempts at ordering the letters chronologically were made, and finally in 1972 Vic Hao Chin republished the letters in a sequence suggested by George Linton & Virginia Hanson in their Reader's Guide. This is called The Chronological Edition, and is the one I would recommend.
With this edition, you can see the development of the correspondence and teachings. So, the letters are the same in both versions (still Barker's transcription), just in a different sequence.

Not quite. The Chron version is based on the 3rd edition of Humphries. There are slight differences in reading the original letters' MS. Just a word here and there, but sometimes an important word.

Hi everybody!

I have come across a passage that just stunned me. In this passage, Master KH scolds Sinnett for having a closed mind. The main points are:

- Have an open mind.
- Do not have a know-it-all attitude.

(Master KH felt Sinnett suffered from both.)

I am afraid that such weaknesse happen to Theosophists often. I have noticed several times (while attending Theosophical discussion groups) that some Theosophists have huge egos. As a result, some other people in the discussions have to be careful about what they say and ask, in order not to incur the wrath of the discussion leader. (How un-Theosophical!)

The discussion in the quote below is about the non-existence of God. Apparently, Sinnet has asked about God in a very closed-minded way, and gets strongly scolded for such closed-mindedness. Here is the link and the passage.

http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/mahatma/ml-22.htm

---

(Master KH is responding to a question or a statement from Sinnett. Sinnett's question or a statement was not included, but here is Master KH's response.)

As you say this need "make no difference between us" -- personally. But it does make a world of difference if you propose to learn and offer me to teach. For the life of me I cannot make out how I could ever impart to you that which I know since the very A.B.C. of what I know, the rock upon which the secrets of the occult universe, whether on this or that side of the veil, are encrusted, is contradicted by you invariably and a priori. My very dear Brother, either we know something or we do not know anything. In the first case what is the use of your learning, since you think you know better? In the second case why should you lose your time? You say it matters nothing whether these laws are the expression of the will of an intelligent conscious God, as you think, or constitute the inevitable attributes of an unintelligent, unconscious "God," as I hold. I say, it matters everything, and since you earnestly believe that these fundamental questions (of spirit and matter -- of God or no God) "are admittedly beyond both of us" -- in other words that neither I nor yet our greatest adepts can know no more than you do, then what is there on earth that I could teach you? You know that in order to enable you to read you have first to learn your letters -- yet you want to know the course of events before and after the Pralayas, of every event here on this globe on the opening of a new cycle, namely a mystery imparted at one of the last initiations, as Mr. Sinnett was told, -- for my letter to him upon the Planetary Spirits was simply incidental -- brought out by a question of his. And now you will say I am evading the direct issue. I have discoursed upon collateral points, but have not explained to you all you want to know and asked me to tell you. I "dodge" as I always do. Pardon me for contradicting you, but it is nothing of the kind. There are a thousand questions I will never be permitted to answer, and it would be dodging were I to answer you otherwise than I do. I tell you plainly you are unfit to learn, for your mind is too full and there is not a corner vacant from whence a previous occupant would not arise, to struggle with and drive away the newcomer. Therefore I do not evade, I only give you time to reflect and deduce and first learn well what was already given you before you seize on something else. The world of force, is the world of Occultism and the only one whither the highest initiate goes to probe the secrets of being. Hence no-one but such an initiate can know anything of these secrets. Guided by his Guru the chela first discovers this world, then its laws, then their centrifugal evolutions into the world of matter. To become a perfect adept takes him long years, but at last he becomes the master. The hidden things have become patent, and mystery and miracle have fled from his sight forever. He sees how to guide force in this direction or that -- to produce desirable effects. The secret chemical, electric or odic properties of plants, herbs, roots, minerals, animal tissue, are as familiar to him as the feathers of your birds are to you. No change in the etheric vibrations can escape him. He applies his knowledge, and behold a miracle! And he who started with the repudiation of the very idea that miracle is possible, is straightway classed as a miracle worker and either worshipped by the fools as a demi-god or repudiated by still greater fools as a charlatan! And to show you how exact a science is occultism let me tell you that the means we avail ourselves of are all laid down for us in a code as old as humanity to the minutest detail, but everyone of us has to begin from the beginning, not from the end. Our laws are as immutable as those of Nature, and they were known to man and eternity before this strutting game cock, modern science, was hatched. If I have not given you the modus operandi or begun by the wrong end, I have at least shown you that we build our philosophy upon experiment and deduction -- unless you choose to question and dispute this fact equally with all others. Learn first our laws and educate your perceptions, dear Brother. Control your involuntary powers and develop in the right direction your will and you will become a teacher instead of a learner. I would not refuse what I have a right to teach. Only I had to study for fifteen years before I came to the doctrines of cycles and had to learn simpler things at first.

But do what we may, and whatever happens I trust we will have no more arguing which is as profitless as it is painful.

Nick, this letter was actually to A. O. Hume, who was indeed quite arrogant in his conversations with the Masters. Mr. Sinnett was a bit more respectful in his tone.

Nevertheless, your point is well taken. There is a lesson here for all of us.

Humans today in general feel that we are at the top of the food-chain, and that we know all that can be known (or will certainly know it soon). We don't consider humility to be a strong character trait.

Theosophists are included in the above comment as well. We think that because we have read the Secret Doctrine, we know even MORE of what can be known. We can be worse than the rest.

One thing I found fascinating about the Letters, is how both KH and M can be critical of a person, and then a paragraph later, describe some trait of that same person as exemplary. They are not being judgemental as much as instructional, almost parental in tone.

Jon,

Ah, Hume not Sinnett, thanks for pointing that out.

Arrogance -- yes, that is the exact word I was looking for. Many times on the Buddhist Forum, I have read questions -- questions that go unanswered, or answered wrong. I would like to give answers, but I realize that my answer is a Theosophical answer, not a Buddhist answer, so I do not answer. It does give me a feeling of superiority that I am in this situation. As soon as I feel this coming on, I stifle it.

Arrogance is something we must be careful of. I feel it is one of the most difficult problems facing Theosophists today.